On Tuesday night, on PBS, I watched back-to-back documentaries. The first was an absolutely amazing and riveting story about the birth, growth, and recent decay of America’s municipal water systems, called Liquid Assets: The Story of Our Water Infrastructure. And the second was an absolutely amazing and riveting story on Frontline about the recent destruction of America’s retirement pension systems. Both episodes cataloged the capital starvation of two of our most critical, life-giving and life-sustaining systems. Add to water and retirement the decay of our health care system, the disarray of our energy system, the travesty of our education system, the rot of our political system, the dissolution of our regulatory systems, the destruction of our environmental systems, the pollution of our food system, the crookedness of our financial system, the compromising of our commercial systems, and you can see we’ve got some problems that are going to take some new capital and then some.

Several months ago, I lacked the courage to even boo one of the scions of this despicable state of affairs as his local star-struck sycophants cheered him. But a few days ago, at a press conference in Iraq, a brave Iraqi journalist removed his shoes, his only immediate weapon for fighting back against the man who had ordered the invasion of his country and the resulting destruction of Iraqi lives. The journalist furiously launched both shoes at the head of George W. Bush, invoking the defenseless orphans and widows who are among Bush’s prime victims. Bush, as usual, would later joke about the incident. Compared to his crimes, throwing some shoes at someone doesn’t even rank as a misdemeanor. And in this case, the shoes even missed their target.

And yet Muntazer al-Zaidi now sits in an Iraqi jail facing charges. Like Iraqis demonstrating on his behalf, I too declare my solidarity with him, and I demand that he be released unharmed and uncharged. In all truth, it wouldn’t be a crime if George W. Bush and Richard Cheney were both pelted with shoes at any public appearance for the rest of their lives, or at least until the smirks are wiped from their faces and their smug jokes and assertions cease.

We are going to fix our systems. We are going to invest our capital in worthwhile projects. We are going to rebuild our country. It isn’t going to be free. We should all expect to pay the true costs. If we have to replace all the old crumbling water pipes with new ones, don’t expect your water bill to be $8 dollars a month. So get your wallet out. And take your shoes off. The time for target practice is past.

I’m Leo Gold. This is The New Capital Show.

These black ladies were the labor that made the kitchen and the catering business go. But they were much more than that. They were almost family, and when I visited they took care of me as if I was their own, and I played with their children, met their husbands, and learned a little about their lives. They were always ready with smiles, and kisses, and hugs, and sometimes I just liked to sit there and watch them work, cutting trays of vegetables, baking enormous cakes, generating party tray after party tray for transport in the station wagon to the bar-mitzvah at the synagogue, the wedding at the hotel, or the mourners at the private home.

As life and the years went on, and family circumstances changed, I visited less, but each time still the women were almost always there, a little older, perhaps a bit slower, but still ready with smiles and hugs and interest in me. I remember asking about John Kennedy, and if everyone remembered his assassination in their city. And then I became an adult, and didn’t visit much anymore. Leitha died several years ago, my grandmother retired her catering business, moved into a high rise recently, and that was that.

So many, here and around the world, watched Tuesday night in awe and amazement as a man with dark skin color was elected to the highest office in the world. For a relative few, the moment brought, and continues to bring, almost inexplicably, fear, but for many more, the moment brought almost inconceivable communal and personal joy, which continues in a bright, giddy afterglow two days since. I was one of those in the second group, for I was cared for, fed, and loved by a cadre of black women working in my grandmother’s kitchen when I was a little boy. For me, part of casting a vote for Obama, and waiting for the election returns to confirm his victory, was an unconscious exercise in repaying my own debt, of reaching back to those days in the late sixties and early seventies spent in my grandmother’s bountiful kitchen in Dallas, Texas, where people with black skin were not only distinctly unthreatening to me, but were life-giving. Over the past months, as the Obama campaign hurdled milestone after milestone, I found myself thinking of Leitha, of Emma, of Pansy. I thought about how they had affected me, how lucky I had been to be around them, so that I could receive this present moment in time with the proper feelings it deserved.

And I wondered, even though Leitha is now gone, how they all might feel about watching Barack Obama elected President. On Tuesday night, as the world’s jaws dropped, its eyes widened and grew moist, and the tears fell, I got my answer, an answer even beyond my imagining. The world felt cozy and wholly unthreatening the other night. Just as it had all those years ago when as a young boy I bounded from tray to tray, all around me the smell of baking bread and cookies, urged on with no restrictions, no admonitions, only smiles and affection, by some of the most lovely ladies ever to grace the planet.

I’m Leo Gold. This is the New Capital Show.

One of the things I believe is that KPFT and Pacifica are vital resources, disseminating many truths to a nation that cannot yet fully hear them. And until the nation hears them, we must keep it going. Economic times are hard and getting harder, and it’s especially during those times that we must make sure that the institutions that touch our lives are taken care of. Next week, KPFT will enter its fall fund drive. With the economic crisis deepening, none of us know if the station’s fundraising goals will be met. And so for me to be where I stand, I am hereby kicking off this year’s drive with a 2 year $1000 pledge to the station. I hope that in the week ahead, you too will consider how you can help. This crisis is bringing change, a lot of it painful, but I believe that the world is now fundamentally turning our way, toward peace, justice, and prosperity.

Many continue to grope to understand two things: how we got into the financial crisis, and how we get out. I was struck by the ancient lament recited in the synagogue prayer book last night:

Who among us is righteous
enough to say: ‘I have not sinned?’
Born of love to love,
we grow weary,
heavy with regret,
sorry for ourselves,
and afraid to know
what might have been.

Look now to the cities:
see the broken streets,
poor and decayed
and all afraid.
See them and ask:
What have we done?

On the first question, how this crisis happened, we are in this financial crisis because we have made vast amounts of investment in projects that yield no or negative returns. From the war in Vietnam, to so-called strategic defense missiles, the destruction of our environment, the launching of frivolous missions into space, government subsidies into vast unproductive segments of our economy, a decades-long costly and failed narcotics interdiction attempt, the trillions of dollars of capital in grandiose and excessive homes and all the junk that fills them, the needless and costly invasion of Iraq, to many other wasteful and worthless projects, we have lost huge amounts of investment capital, both our own and capital we've borrowed. Most horribly, we have caused the loss of human capital and goodwill capital, and our military has caused and continues to cause the deaths of civilians, including small innocent children. After this unfortunate festival, lenders want their money back and don't want to lend for more foolishness. Lenders no longer trust the solvency of the borrowers, nor do they have much faith in their skills to invest the money properly, because the borrowers have shown little prior ability to do so. When you hear about derivatives and swaps and securitization as the reasons, I recommend that you ignore it, as those financial devices are proximate, not root causes of the crisis. Had any of these disastrous investments instead brought real returns, we would not be arguing about how they were financed or how their risks were hedged. In short, we would not be in crisis had we been good investors in our own future.

And on the second question, how we get out of this mess, the answer is not complex and beyond anyone’s understanding. We get out of this financial crisis by first stopping doing the foolish things with money, time, and energy that we've been doing, and then invest with intelligence in projects that will earn good returns. It means only investing in projects that guarantee the delivery of a greater benefit later than the amount of inputs invested today. There are many, many such projects that fit this order in America, and the world over. Here are several:

1. Energy, including conservation, infrastructure enhancement, and alternative sources
2. Public transportation, including intra-urban and inter-urban
3. Education, including rebuilt schools, new programs, and better-paid teachers
4. Environment, including preservation and restoration
5. Agriculture, including chemical elimination and just treatment for animals
6. Health, including universal risk management, sickness prevention, nutrition improvement, and education
7. Military, including downsizing and conversion to true peacetime status
8. Urban restoration, to reverse the suicidal dilapidation of our cities that began in the 1960’s and caused by the systematic withholding of investment stemming from white racism
9. Finance, including the re-development of sound capital management and financial education for all Americans
10. Population therapy, including the provision of therapeutic social services to the many Americans now thoroughly traumatized by poverty, war, domestic abuse, substance and food abuse, economic trauma, racial and ethnic discrimination, and lastly those millions of vulnerable Americans who now suffer from political ideological abuse and brainwashing at the hands of those hell bent on destroying the American nation, its government, and its people.

This list, and similar additions to it, will occupy trillions of dollars in investment at a time when many people have lost their nerve to spend capital on projects. It will employ and re-assign millions of workers, many of whom are now idle and underpaid, including teachers, environmental scientists and engineers, family and small farmers, battle-fatigued warriors, urban planners and architects, social workers, and yes, even creative and well-meaning financiers and bankers. And it will provide high returns on investment for a century to come. Rather than providing the illusory, flim-flam returns generated by the now-dying former financial economy, wherein people have been paid enormous sums to produce little to no national economic benefit, these projects and others like them provide real returns. These projects will put companies to work selling their products and expertise, and they will cause new companies to be born. They will help banish the fear currently permeating our economy and our people, and they will set us on a course for far brighter days ahead.

I'm Leo Gold. This is the New Capital Show.

I’ve been doing this to arm you for precisely this moment, the moment when oil increases in price to more accurately reflect its worth, when that increase causes consternation among the citizens and voters of this country and the world, who have been so poorly served by their leaders in planning for such a future, and for the moment in this country when this event causes the Bush Administration and its allies to propose the solution of increasing our own domestic production.

Just in case you don’t remember, let me remind you of the numbers, which are available to everyone at the Energy Information Administration website (http://www.eia.doe.gov).

We Americans currently consume about 7.5bbl (billion barrels) of oil per year, 1/3 of which is produced domestically, and 2/3 imported.

Since 1949, the US has produced 157 bbl, and we have imported another 125 bbl, for a total consumption during that time of almost 300 billion barrels of oil. That, my friends, is a lot of oil, and it should cause you to consider where we are going to get another 300 billion barrels of oil if the next fifty years is supposed to look like the last.

In 1980 when Ronald Reagan came to office on the first wave of discontent over high gasoline prices, we produced 3.1bbl and we imported another 2.3bbl. To put this in perspective, after a combination of almost three decades of Republican deregulation and improved drilling technology, we now produce 40% less oil domestically. And thirty years after we got our first look at the dangers of foreign oil dependence, we now import almost twice as much foreign oil. I’m assuming that this is not exactly the result that the Great Communicator promised to deliver with Republican rule, but Reagan’s heirs are counting on the possibility that you won’t bother to look at the numbers.

In truth, there is no leadership that could have maintained domestic production above 1980 levels. The reason is that, since we have used so much, we are almost out of oil in this country. And yet, yesterday, George W. Bush appeared at the White House with his feckless Secretary of Energy and feckless Secretary of the Interior, and proposed that there are ample supplies of oil in the United States to meet our needs, and he described these supplies:

First, Mr. Bush says there are 18 bbl offshore in the waters of the outer ocean coastal shelf currently prohibited from access, for environmental reasons, by the US Congress. Next, there are 10 bbl in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. And finally, Mr. Bush claims there are 800 bbl, an astonishing amount, stored out in the mountains and deserts of the American West. Let’s take a moment and add up those numbers: 18 + 10 + 800 = 828 bbl. Now let’s divide those numbers by the 7.5 bbl consumed by our country annually for our present way of life: 828 / 7.5 = 110 years. Thus, Mr. Bush stood before us yesterday and argued that here in the United States of America we have enough oil to last 110 years. The problem, he argues, is that Democrats and environmentalists have enacted legislation that prevents us from accessing those supplies, and the result is $4.00 per gallon gasoline. The solution, therefore, is to lift those restrictions and invest with gusto in extracting that oil.

It’s a neat and compelling argument. So neat and compelling that I have already begun receiving email from conservative family members that show the cartoon cat Garfield pointing out that the “dipsticks” in Washington are preventing us from getting our oil and are causing economic hardship.

The only problem is that Mr. Bush’s arguments are either irrelevant or wrong. The outer coastal shelf may well hold oil, but even at the 18 bbl Mr. Bush cites, it is an amount equivalent to about two years of national supply. An authoritative project study on the Energy Information Website projects a mean return of 2.5bbl, or less than a year’s supply, in the Arctic refuge. And what can we say about 800 bbl of shale oil? Well, here is what one commentator at the Colorado School of Mines, which has spent more time on trying to get energy from oil shale than most other institutions, writes:

“To date, commercial oil in significant quantities from oil shale remains a fond hope, subject to wry statements including: "Shale oil--fuel of the future and always will be." In 1946, a real estate promoter erected a sign along what is now U. S. 70, regarding the minor shale oil boom at the time: "Get In On the Ground Floor." It is still not too late to get in on the ground floor. But all plans to do so have been at least temporarily discontinued. Perhaps oil shale will eventually find a place in the world economy, but energy demands of blasting, transport, crushing, heating, adding hydrogen, and the safe disposal of huge quantities of waste material are large. There appears to be a positive net energy recovery from oil shale processing, but it is low and does not compare with net energy from conventional oil well drilling. The large amount of water needed to support any major oil shale operation along with the supporting infrastructure of housing is also a difficult problem. The western U. S. oil shales are in the headwaters of the Colorado River, which already has more water rights against it than it can meet. Most of the time the river now no longer reaches the Gulf of Lower California.

The President of the United States, the person who has been elected ostensibly to be as honest as possible about what is possible and what is prudent, is now suggesting that the future of American transport energy lies in blasting, transporting, crushing, heating, adding hydrogen, and producing huge quantities of waste material from the American West. But that is not honest. Here is honest:

Americans: we drive vehicles that are too big, and we drive them too far, and we do not have other options – like walking, biking, or public transportation, because we have not invested in those options. Because we have not invested in those options, we do not have the right to expect that they would exist right now as gas prices rise. Americans: we live in homes that are too big and located too far from our work. The solution to these problems is not to destroy our country by desperately blasting and drilling away at the marginal deposits of oil that now remain to us after a century of depleting them, or to engage in science fiction to turn rocks into oil. The solution is to begin to change our cars, our homes, our cities, our systems, and our ways, and to not divert from that course no matter what the price of a barrel of oil does on any given day. Then, and only then, will we be free.

But doing what needs to be done will not come from George W. Bush or his allies or successors. They would not do what needs to be done when oil was cheap. They are not doing what needs to be done when it is more costly. And they will never do what needs to be done. It will need to be done over them, around them, and through them

This past weekend I traveled to West Virginia, a state of extraordinary natural beauty, to go whitewater rafting. It is also a state of great natural resources, of timber, and especially of coal. We glided in rafts through peaceful currents and raging rapids, the sun glinting through beautiful 50 year-old sycamore, oak, hickory, poplar, and ash. The old growth trees were long gone, cut down over a century ago to make way for the mining operations, the remnants of which lay scattered along the river gorge like ghost towns. But at least the mountains remain, the only thing left by last centuries miners, giving the foundation for new growth and new life.

But coal mining today is not like coal mining 100 years ago. Today in West Virginia, coal mining companies are removing entire mountains, pushing them into valleys, destroying streams and habitats, so that we can run our appliances and air conditioners. That vision of mountaintop removal, a vision close to hell, is not visible to tourists on protected West Virginia rivers. That hell, a hell born from the beliefs, assumptions, and approaches of George W. Bush and his supporters, is kept hidden from view, off the highways, away from the parks, accessible only by airplane. That hell is being perpetrated in the American East, and it should be stopped. But George W. Bush not only has no intention of stopping it in the East, he now proposes to unleash it on the American West, to crush and pulverize the Rocky Mountains and cook them down for oil. For Bush and his supporters, our country, an intricate web of careful, mindful relationship between the land and its people, has simply become a concept of resource meant for human comfort.

It’s my hope that most Americans are wising up to these games. In the wake of 9/11, George W. Bush sought not to punish those who were responsible, but instead to implement an entire military and geopolitical vision across vast swaths of the planet. The result has been an enormous project with harmful effects. It is the same with $4.00 gas, where Bush now seeks to implement an energy vision of vast scope and harmful effect.

Just as there are problems presented with $4.00 gas, there is also great opportunity. But it’s not the kind of opportunity that George W. Bush, his supporters and followers, see. Towards the end of our trip down West Virginia’s New River this past weekend, we floated beneath one of the world’s tallest bridges, spanning the deep, leafy green river gorge, and on the far bank I suddenly saw congregated a crowd of about thirty on the shore, and six people standing waist deep in the water, holding hands. I realized I was about to witness a baptism in the river. Our boat fell silent as we all watched. I consciously searched my mind for the media conditioned biases about evangelical Christianity, and about Appalachia and hillbillies. But the weekend with the friendly, gracious and caring people of West Virginia had dispelled any that might have existed. I watched with emotion and open heart as two individuals were plunged into the cool, clean waters of the river, and emerged to cheers.

And I suddenly realized that these West Virginians, who have lived through destruction of their world for over a century, and who continue to live with it, understand better than most of us, where salvation can be found. For them, as it does for all of us, it lays literally with, and in, the river.

I pay for my visits with Howard out of my own pocket, and at $125 a visit it’s not cheap, but with as many things going on in life, I now view it as a nice luxury to be able to go into a quiet office and talk to someone who is bound by confidentiality and required to give objective care. Also, I should add that I am not diagnosed with any illness and am prescribed no medication for mental or emotional deficits, though if I were, I’m not sure I would tell you. As a financial advisor in private practice, I have my own health insurance policy for my family, a policy with Blue Cross that dates back to my bachelor days. And as my family has grown, I have added my dependents to the policy.

That policy has worked pretty well, but our agent recently advised me that it is an older policy and that more modern plans with more modern features are available, including so-called Health Savings Account Plans, which work a bit like IRA’s for healthcare. And so our family set about to update our health insurance. As an individual family applying for insurance, we are required to answer full medical questionnaires concerning all past and present conditions. My wife filled out the information on herself and our two small children, and she disclosed, because they asked, that she had sought the help of a therapist counselor in the wake of our personal tragedies. And I answered mine. At the end of the questionnaire is a place for my testament that I have answered truthfully. I therefore indicated, because they asked, that I have seen and continue to see a counselor, Howard.

Blue Cross decided that they needed more information, and so, in a call scheduled with a phone bank of customer service nurses, a functionary asked for more detail about my visits with Howard. I explained that the visits are related to life counseling, family matters, work-related advice, and so forth. I explained that I pay for them myself, and that I am not diagnosed with or prescribed anything. Blue Cross then sent their decision in writing, and it reads:

“Thank you for your application for coverage with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas. Upon careful review, we determined that Leo is not eligible for coverage, and we are only able to offer Leo’s wife coverage at an increased premium rate. Our decision was based on our current underwriting guidelines and Leo’s medical history, which includes outpatient counseling received every two weeks, as communicated during the telephone interview. We are only able to offer Leo’s wife coverage at a premium rate due to her medical history, which includes outpatient counseling received as communicated during the telephone interview.”

So there it was. My ongoing visits with a counselor for non-medical purposes resulted in denial of coverage. And my wife’s visits with a grief counselor in the wake of devastating tragedies, resulted in her acceptance but only at premium prices. The letter goes on to say that

“All insurance companies have underwriting guidelines to determine if a policy may or many not be issued to an applicant. These guidelines are then applied uniformly to all applicants, in full compliance with federal and state regulation.”

In other words, Blue Cross believes that it applies a standard set of criteria to make its decisions, that it applies those criteria objectively and without discrimination, and one of those criteria is that if you currently have a therapist they will not insure you, and if you had a therapist they will only insure you at a premium; and furthermore, Blue Cross believes that its decision is legal and permissible under the current laws of the United States of America and the State of Texas. And for all I know, they’re right about every single one of those assumptions. Still, Blue Cross left an opening, indicating that I could submit additional information that might better shed light on the matter, when they wrote that:

Additional medical information may be submitted in writing for possible reconsideration from the physician treating the condition.

So Howard wrote a letter to Blue Cross:

Mr. Gold makes use of our meetings at his own discretion, and would be free to give these up at any time with no untoward consequences. Mr. Gold pays for these consultations out of his own pocket. In our meetings we have discussed family history and ways to optimize vocational choices and personal communication in the face of the challenges of multiple responsibilities. Our regular conversations make Mr. Gold a much more insurable individual than your average individual who has not benefited from the insights of professional interpersonal consultation. Mr. Gold is not diagnosed with a mental health problem.

We waited to see if that would do the trick. I was neither hopeful nor skeptical. Blue Cross responded:

We have reviewed the additional information from Howard, and regret we must maintain our original decision.

Well, at least the nice woman who signed the letter said they regret it. And so that was that. Blue Cross had no intention of granting me coverage under my application. As a consolation they informed me:

"Enclosed is a Notice of Availability of Coverage under the Texas Health Insurance Risk Pool. This health insurance plan may be available to you due to medical history.”

In other words, because I visit with a therapist every two weeks, Blue Cross is not willing to insure me, but is willing to refer me to a state-run insurance program.

Here is what the Pool’s website says about itself:

The Texas Health Insurance Risk Pool was created by the Texas Legislature to provide health insurance to eligible Texas residents who, due to medical conditions are unable to obtain coverage from commercial insurers. The Pool also serves as the Texas alternative mechanism for individual health insurance coverage, guaranteeing portability of coverage to qualified individuals who lose coverage under an employer group plan, church plan or state plan, as mandated by the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

The Program continues to serve the State of Texas as an important "safety net" for individuals who have been denied health insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions, can afford the Pool's premiums, and do not have other coverage options. The stated mission of the Pool's Board of Directors is to foster public awareness of the Pool and provide eligible Texans with cost-effective health coverage that is consistent with major medical policies available in the commercial market.

I looked a little deeper at the Pool’s information, and to my surprise I discovered that the fulfillment arm of the Pool – the physician network, treatment management functions, and so forth - was contracted to an outside company, and lo and behold, that company is Blue Cross. The relationship between the Pool and Blue Cross is so intertwined that Blue Cross representatives regularly attend and participate in the Pool’s Board of Directors meetings. I’m not saying there’s anything illegal about this, but let’s consider the ironies: a Republican legislature, inveterately and philosophically opposed to government health care, writes legislation that allows insurance companies to exclude applicants who simply have a therapist, thereby ensuring that there will be a need for a government health insurance pool; and that government health insurance pool, because it does not have the resources to offer all elements of a health plan to its participants must contract with the very entity whose refusal of coverage resulted in the need for the pool in the first place. It’s no wonder that we Americans spend 15% of our GDP on health care, with all the inefficient bureaucracies, public and private, designed to pass people from entity to entity like hot potatoes. There are approximately 27,000 participants currently enrolled in the Texas Pool.

This past Sunday I watched John McCain, who is running for President of the United States, answer questions on one of the morning political talk shows about health care. McCain, when asked why he opposed a national health plan, laughed defensively: “Go to Canada! Go to the UK!” as if they were threats. Well, last week Frontline, the great PBS documentary series, did exactly that: they sent TR Reid of The Washington Post, to the UK, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland to look at their health care systems. I encourage everyone to watch “Sick Around the World" online and to encourage others to watch it. Links are available on today’s show. Frontline’s piece shows that McCain’s taunts are empty lies, blustery shows of bravado covering for an absolute absence of facts, which are: national health plans in other modern countries work; there are a variety of models to choose from, with a wide spectrum of government and market-based options; most people in those countries like their health care systems; and those countries – every single one of them - pay less for health care – sometimes significantly less - as a percentage of GDP than does the United States. Elizabeth Edwards, the cancer-stricken wife of former Presidential candidate John Edwards, points out that three generations of McCains have enjoyed US government-sponsored health care, since McCain, his father, and grandfather have all been career government employees. McCain, asked about this, responded weakly that this was a “cheap shot,” but really it’s a demonstration of how hypocritical is the position of this man who professes to have the integrity necessary to lead this country. When pressed on his plans for people with pre-existing conditions (like himself, since he has had bouts with melanoma), McCain advocated that he would create an expanded Medicare risk pool for people – like me – who are turned down by private insurers for pre-existing conditions. That is to say, John McCain envisions the Medicare system taking over the work that the Texas Pool is currently doing. McCain finished off his comments about his opposition to a national plan by passionately decrying that “Families should have the choice!”

We are a young family, self-employed with a successful business, honest, hard-working, and quite healthy by the standards of most Americans – and you listen up John McCain – the choices we were given by Blue Cross were:

1. Shut down a successful business and take some new job solely to obtain group health care coverage
2. Stop visiting with Howard, even if I find it to be valuable and pay for it myself
3. Remain on an outdated, disadvantaged health plan, or
4. Apply for the state run health pool

Our family applied for health insurance in the State of Texas in the United States of America in the year 2008. At the time that we applied, we already had insurance with the same company; we were simply trying to update our coverage. Still, our application served as a clear assessment of how a major private insurer views us. In a long questionnaire, the insurance company asked us about every single health condition, and we answered honestly. The insurance company rejected me for coverage and offered expensive coverage to my wife and small children, effectively offering us a situation that would have separated us as an insured family, with my wife and small children covered by one plan, and me forced to go elsewhere. It’s certainly not as bad as being separated as a family on the rail platform at Auschwitz, but it’s a far cry from the way self-employed families should be treated.

In the end, we told Blue Cross they could keep their coverage - we would simply remain on our old outdated plan with them - and that is exactly what we have done. I get no pleasure from publicly discussing on the radio my own and my family’s medical insurance or health matters. But if it will help raise awareness about the real choices we face – not the false choices from John McCain’s feverish imagination – then it’s worth it. Our family’s case is a demonstration of the degree to which health insurance companies, sanctioned to operate in our state by our legislature, cherry-pick the absolutely pristine applications for their “risk” pools. Far from supporting entrepreneurs, sole practitioners, and other small businesses, these entities – public and private - have instead institutionalized discrimination against them. If you are an employee of a corporation, company, government, or organization, your employer generally provides insurance and you answer few or no health questions when you enroll. But if you are an individual or family, you are subjected to thorough scrutiny, and you may be rejected or experience price discrimination even if your malady is simply that you value talking with a therapist for grief or life counseling.

At the same time that Blue Cross was rejecting and discriminating against our family for our belief in mental health services, a new HBO drama, In Treatment, was climbing the ratings, attracting new and dedicated viewers. The New York Times recently reported on the soaring popularity of its main character Paul Weston, an empathetic psychoanalyst, as the show portrays him in a session each night with his different patients: a young woman in a relationship crisis, an Iraq war veteran, a teenager with a troubled family, a couple having marital problems, and even Dr. Weston himself whom we see visit his own therapist. In Texas, Blue Cross would cover none of these people, and the state legislature would have no problem with that. Viewers apparently find the show’s dialogue, setting, and premises to be authentic and compelling. And after viewing a few episodes, I agree that it’s a good show – so much so that it’s my hope that John McCain, the Texas state legislature, the actuaries at Blue Cross, and our federal government, might themselves catch an episode, and say “Wow, maybe I could use some of that…”

Because – honestly - they really could.

Suddenly, the cell phone, with me in case a client called, rang.  It was my brother: One of the attorneys in his office had extra tickets and would I like to go see Bruce Springsteen that night?  If I did, I would have to drive back to Houston in the afternoon.

Did I even want to go to the concert?  Brother told me it would be at the Toyota Center (to which I had never been but assumed it was a large impersonal arena) and our seats were probably way up high.  I thought back to high school when I went to see the Rolling Stones at the Astrodome and walked out after a handful of songs, so awful was the sound and so miniscule the ants on the stage.

He pressed for a decision.  Would I get up from my paradise and drive to Houston to see Bruce Springsteen?

I hadn’t been to a big rock show in a long time, although my experience is that the older I get the more disappointed I am by such events – all of them, whether it’s big rock n’ roll, big sports, big political events, and so forth.  I had actually seen Springsteen in 1980 when I was 14 years old, twenty-seven years ago.  Young and already famous, he was a major cultural figure with an edgy angst, writing about the dreamers, schemers, workers, husbands, wives, the losers, the frayed, the brokenhearted and the hopeful of the American (white) working class.  He was the authentic thing, hailing from Asbury Park, New Jersey, and his energetic show was terrific, a mixture of dark odes and upbeat boisterous rockers played for hours until both performer and audience were thoroughly tired.

And then, almost right after that concert, my musical tastes began to change as I discovered other genres - and I stopped buying Springsteen’s albums.  But other people didn’t; in fact, with the album and song Born in the USA, Bruce Springsteen became an American icon, packing stadiums to hear his anthem.  It seemed to me that many of his new fans missed the deeper concerns in his songs and focused only on the righteous patriotic anger in the chorus of that one song.  And so the years went, Springsteen releasing more music, some of it vital and urgent, and some of it missing the earlier intense high water marks, while I discovered and listened to other things.  And so it was odd to me that there on that extraordinarily beautiful spring day, sitting in a meadow of flowers on a cell phone, I heard myself tell my brother “Okay pick me up at seven.”

We sat in the upper deck smack in the middle facing the stage.  As the roadies prepared the stage I noted with disappointment that they were the same size as Mick Jagger had been decades before in the Astrodome; thankfully, two large projection screens flanked the stage.  When the lights went down, the music came up, and where we were sitting the sound was extraordinary, traveling and wafting the length of the arena funneled directly up to our seats.  It was also extraordinarily loud.  Modern arena concerts are strange: if your seats are distant from the stage, it’s as if you came to listen to a loud soundtrack and watch a big screen television, while the actual famous celebrities whom you came to see fade into insignificance on the stage.  I found myself mostly watching the projection screen all night, feeling a little embarrassed: I left the meadow to watch a big television and have my ears blown?

Springsteen, even as he approaches sixty, was as earnest and hardworking as ever.  And as he went through the songs, I suddenly realized why I had come: I wanted to see whether this influential icon would make it clear to his audience where he stood politically, and to try and sense if he was being heard.  Several songs in, he took his acoustic guitar for a solo turn and told the audience that he had written this new song “in the excitement of knowing that the last eight years of bad management were about to end.”  Maybe a third of the Houston audience cheered, the rest remained politely silent.  I assume when he uses this line in New York City he gets a much bigger cheer.  Toward the end of the night, he introduced another song by disparaging torture, rendition, and wiretapping, and he ended the night with a homebrewed Irish jig about immigrants - past, present, and future - coming to “This American Land.”  For this number, the lights came up and I could see the full expanse of my co-listeners.  I scanned the crowed carefully.  All – and I mean all – appeared to be white faces, many middle aged.  The one black face that I could detect in the enormous room belonged to Clarence Clemmons, Springsteen’s iconic big daddy sax man.

And then I realized that back in 1980, at the time of that first Springsteen concert, I left Springsteen at the same time that his large fan base of white, working class rockers came to him.  They made him rich beyond all imaginings, but it seemed to me that it came at a cost, as he spent the next decades trying to hold on to these fans, as any entertainer wants to do, while trying to explain to them what was happening to them economically and politically, as he sang about the Vietnam War, factory closings, marriages straining under financial pressure, and the elusive American Dream.  In the past week, Barack Obama has been pilloried for using admittedly poorly chosen words to focus well-meant attention on how working class Americans have based their votes on issues other than economic issues, and how that has resulted in the election of callous, market-obsessed Republicans and economic catastrophe for people living in places like New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.

Bruce Springsteen is loved here in Texas, but he is revered in those other places, a native son of the working class mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states.  And while the drama, or perhaps the stultifying grind, of the Pennsylvania primary goes on, I couldn’t help but wonder who Bruce Springsteen will pull the lever for in November.  He gave a hint of it when he alluded briefly to a “new wind blowing” while introducing a song.  Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie – they are among our great modern folk singers, fusing the musical vernacular with the concerns and travails of everyday people.  No musician has focused as consistently and passionately on the subject of the American white working class as Bruce Springsteen.  The people of that strata are his subject, his muse, and his audience.  Sitting last row center at the Toyota Center, I heard The Boss loud and clear.  And I dearly hoped that the rest of his audience there that night, or anywhere else in this country or in the world, was finally hearing him too.

I’m Leo Gold.  This is The New Capital Show.

If you’ve got good ears, and if you don’t before your first time, you certainly will after, you can almost perceptibly hear it in the voice of the promoter.  This was my first time, and I thought I could almost hear it in every one of their voices – in Adam’s, David’s, and in Thomas’s – but though they all seemed somewhat over-excited, they were all persuasive, and I agreed to hear the pitch.  Thomas, a Swede, was traveling to several US cities to meet investors, and we decided he would stop in Houston.  I would pick him up at the airport and meet at one of the hotels there.

If you don’t hear it in the voice, then you might see it in other things.  I remember thinking that his luggage was awfully nice, the absolute top of the line, the same with his winter jacket, but I overruled that too thinking it was just a European thing to have the nicest designer stuff.  Besides, David had told me that Thomas had been successful in his first venture, so that explained how he had money.

His presentation was smooth, except for a verbal tic that he had and a bit of a nervous laugh.  I overruled those too, choosing to give him the benefit of the doubt: who was I, a liberal, to discriminate over a verbal tic, and here he was making a business presentation in a language other than his first, something I had never even attempted.  Instore.com was designed to capitalize on Thomas’ contacts in the cell phone business, and was to provide a sales, distribution, and maintenance program for corporate cell phone fleets.  As Thomas described it, employees of large corporations received their phones from their companies, and it was a pain in the ass for their IT departments to manage those programs.  Instore was designed to outsource the rapidly growing corporate cell phone programs, and it had a leg up, according to Thomas, because of his deep contacts with the Swedish phone maker Ericsson.  It sounded good, and we promised to think about it.

If you don’t hear it in the voice, and you don’t see it in the luggage or clothes, then you might figure it out from the legal work, or lack thereof.  Legitimate startups get good lawyers to draft solid paperwork, often reams and reams of incorporations, rights documents, stock offerings.  Indeed, there are reputable law firms whose practices revolve around the creation of extensive documentation required to start a venture-backed company.  I was familiar with this type of paperwork, because I had previously backed a startup venture that was now doing well.  Instore, though, was “in a hurry” to take advantage of the “extraordinary” market opportunity, so there would be some paperwork but the detailed stuff would be forthcoming later.  Okay – I took a deep breath and accepted it.  We ultimately decided to invest a hundred thousand dollars in the latest world beating, earth-shaking Internet firm, Instore.com.

David would later insist that he himself had lost all his money in Instore, although he hadn’t actually paid for his shares, but had instead loaned some money to Thomas and received his shares as payment for rounding up American investors.  Of course, he told me that afterwards, after lying to me originally about paying for his shares.  He insisted that he was stunned and furious at what had happened, that he knew nothing about it beforehand, and he even hired a lawyer in Stockholm to pursue Thomas, though nothing ever came of it.  And in fact, Instore did hire people and put up a server.  I would occasionally over the months check the site to see how it was coming and I was always somewhat concerned that it didn’t improve more rapidly; it seemed to be the same pages each time I visited.  When I pressed, Thomas assured me that it was the secret sauce behind the pages, all the stuff linking the corporate customers to the Instore system, that was so critical.  He claimed they had some customers too.  David would accuse Thomas of making off with half of the $6 million that had been raised from investors, of using the money to party in San Tropez, buy a sports car, have a luxurious wedding in Paris for his wealthy French girlfriend.  Thomas claimed that all the hard work and failures at Instore had actually bankrupted him and he didn’t have a Swedish krona to his name anymore.  All I felt was degraded embarrassment, and I wanted to get as far from it as I could and forget it while at the same time always remembering it.  Like most good educations, this one was expensive.

I say it was my first time.  But really, now that I think about it, it was my second.  Curiously, my first one also occurred in Europe.  I was in college and traveling in Paris, staying in hostels and the like, and suddenly there was a card game conducted on a box in the street.  There was a dealer, and two players, apparently, like me, pedestrians from the street caught up in the game.  I should have heard it in the voices, especially since they kept changing languages, from French to German to who knows what, as they tried to find my frequency.  “American?” the dealer finally asked, and I nodded, and with that the cards went down One, Two, Three, and for 20 bucks I just knew – just KNEW - where the ace had landed.  I pointed to my card.  He turned it, and it was of course, anything other than an ace.  And just like that, in the blink of an eye, my money was gone.  And I suddenly realized that the two other players were not actually other suckers like me, but partners with the dealer.  For a moment I thought about demanding my money back.  I did a mental calculation: three of them versus one of me on some Paris backstreet, and $20.  I walked away, feeling the same degraded embarrassment I would feel ten years later over much more Instore money.  For a college student traveling in hostels, $20 was an expensive education.

And what have those and other educations taught me? 

First, be initially skeptical of any investment opportunity.  Not to the point that you risk ultimately ignoring the opportunity, but to the point that you possess a good first line filter. 

Second, be initially skeptical of anyone presenting an investment opportunity, including people you know well, for they may be fallible as well. 

Third, you are better off in most cases paying a management fee to an intermediary, like a reputable fund manager, than venturing into a field in which you are a novice and about which you know little. 

Fourth, listen to what your body is telling you – if the opportunity or the promoter feels wrong, they probably are. 

Fifth, if you’re not sure or feel ambivalent or confused about an opportunity – don’t do anything, just take a pass. 

Sixth, be careful with your capital – once it is lost, it may not be easy to replace. 

Seventh, diversification can have benefits – unless an entire system has become fraudulent, which is possible, you may find some safety in a crowd. 

Eighth, beware of rapidly rising markets, they draw fraudulent people and produce more frauds than any other market, as people get desperate not to miss out.  If you’re seeing the opportunity – whether it is Internet stocks, or houses, or gold, or whatever – on the front page of US Today, it may not be too late, but it’s probably getting close to it.

Ninth, study and follow the best, as they have a history of being able to smell fraud and avoid it.

Tenth, do not be greedy about anything.  Greed and ignorance are the two preconditions for a victim of fraud.

Eleventh, if it happens to you, don’t beat yourself up for too long.  Virtually everyone is defrauded at some point in their lives.  Make sure to learn from it.

I’ve no idea where Thomas Martensson is today, and I don’t care.  I’ve made successful investments before him and since.  One of the curious things about fraud, is sometimes you’re never absolutely sure that the promoter intended outright fraud, or something just somewhat shy of it.  Regardless, I’ve decided it’s better to leave nothing to chance, and I’ve decided I prefer absolute rectitude in all walks of my life: investments, politicians, friends, associates and so forth, because really, there’s not much that feels worse than that feeling of degraded embarrassment that you get when you realize you’ve been had.

I’m Leo Gold.  This is The New Capital Show.

Humans first came to this continent, this hemisphere around 15,000 years ago, probably during the last Ice Age.  15,000 years may sound like a lot, but it’s not – humans populated Africa, Asia, Europe all for 100,000 years.  Of the major populated continents, only Australia has been populated by humans for less time than the Americas.

The most common theory is that the original Americans appear to have come from Asia, and arrived here via a massive frozen glacier, an ice bridge, that at the time linked Alaska and Siberia.  From that original trek, humans spread throughout: across the North American plains to the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, down through the tropical climes of central America, and ultimately throughout the vast jungles, mountains, and plains of South America - from the tip of the ice bridge to the tip of South America.  There are theorists who posit other ideas – that humans crossed in boats from Asia, for example – but they too nevertheless envision a small band that gradually spread across the hemisphere.

No one asked the original immigrants to show their papers, and no one made them citizens.  The hemisphere was wide open.  The cultures of future native Americans derived from those original immigrants, and over 10,000 years the traditions, industry, agriculture, and histories of the Sioux, Maya, Aztec, Incas, and so many more emblazoned their impacts on the land.  Those cultures claimed the land, and made it theirs.

In 1492, the first Europeans arrived in the hemisphere and immediately called the land theirs.  They came with their own culture and technologies.  Their culture made little if any allowance for the validity of those that they found here, and their technologies and diseases decimated natives.  That eradication has been so rapid and so complete in many places, especially here in North America, that many, and probably most, descendants of the Europeans, don’t even blush when stating that the land is theirs, and pledging their patriotism to a place to which their fathers and mothers came at most two hundred years ago, and many far less recently, as did mine.  With natives dead or confined to reservations, there is not much here to remind the Europeans that they are relative newcomers.

Feeling for the land is a function of the mind and heart.  The real issue in immigration, of course, is control.  And yet few Americans are willing to state that their current opposition to additional newcomers is based upon their control of the land; instead, they tend to point to their law books and their patriotism.  Proper historical readings are almost absent from the debate, since the “right” to the land does not hold up very well in the context of the history of the treatment of natives.  There have even been takings of European land by other Europeans, for example, in the Mexican War.  And yet despite this dubious historical episode, modern Americans even state that modern Mexicans have no right to achieve legal citizenship, work for low wages, and live in areas that were forcibly taken from their ancestors by the ancestors of their employers.

Whenever I am at my ranch, there are always at least a few minutes when I find myself wondering: “Is this really my land?  Whose land is it?  If it’s mine, what made it possible for me to acquire it?  Something I did?  The property laws of the United States of America?  How did it occur that this land came under those laws?  Whose laws, if any, was it subject to before the current ones?  Under what conditions would it cease to be mine?”  The issue of immigration is inextricably intertwined with the issue of land, and all of the issues that are concomitant with it, including the issue of nation.  Those who oppose poor migrant workers fervently go all the way back to their beloved Founding Fathers, whether named Columbus, or Washington, or Houston, in expounding their patrimony and their stated right to enforce it.  The great irony is that if they were to go back just a bit further, in some cases back just a few more years, they would find in the historical record that that their founding fathers and mothers were immigrants who literally took this land, sometimes using force, cunning, and unequal strength of arms, from the descendants of that small band that crossed the Alaskan land bridge.

And if you look closely at the faces of those in our factories, construction sites, of those pressed into immigration jails, indeed of those working in our own kitchens, you too will see the descendants of the land bridge: Asiatic in color and appearance, they are the blood descendants of natives, and if you have any shame, you would acknowledge that they have as much right as anyone to be here.

A few weeks ago George Lakoff spoke here and was asked about the immigration issue.  He responded that most immigrants to this country live very stressed economic lives, and that the poorest 25% of our population enables the other 75% to live very well, with clean homes, child care, and other cheap services.  We should, in Lakoff’s view, express only gratitude to those who come to this country, legal or not, for the enhanced economy that their cheap wages allow.  Instead, many Americans loudly and shamelessly excoriate immigrants while at the same time accepting the economic benefits that they accord.

At dinner that night with my family, it dismayed me greatly to listen as one of my family members, someone only a few decades removed from immigrant status themselves, made statements against today’s immigrants.  My family members are in this country because 100 years ago my ancestors bravely boarded ships to escape economic and racial hardships, and availed themselves of liberal US government immigration policies designed to bring people from Europe to populate the growing cities and factories, and to settle the interior of the continent that had just been taken from natives by the US government, its Army, and its citizens.  During my own lifetime, the southwestern part of the United States, states like Texas, California, and Arizona, has experienced a period of similar rapid growth.  But in my lifetime, conservative US government policy has failed to make sufficient legal room for today’s brave, oppressed immigrants living not an ocean away, but just to the south of the national border.  And even though they seek to come, and have come, for the same economic benefits for which my own ancestors themselves came and automatically received citizenship, both the government and the citizenry treat them differently.  Where my own ancestors were allowed to enter a legal process that ultimately led to my own attendance at the nation’s finest schools, today’s immigrants are forced to arrive and work surreptitiously, in the shadows. 

It is time that those who heap vitriol on immigrants, get some back themselves.  That night at dinner, I made a start of it.  By the time dessert came, served of course by our longtime El Salvadoran housekeeper, I left no doubt in anyone’s mind that it was actually I who felt most strongly about the issue of immigration.  And though I doubt I changed any minds that night, I’m pretty sure I made clear that I would have no truck with the hypocrisy of modern American immigrant bashing.

I’m Leo Gold.  This is The New Capital Show.

In the past few weeks, the tenor of the race for Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party has turned pretty ugly.  It is an ugliness that I do not appreciate and that I do not like.  A few days ago, I asked a prized and trusted aide, a woman of enormous intellect and skill, Samantha Power, to resign from this campaign after she made a disparaging remark about Senator Clinton, and that will be my policy with any member of my campaign who makes such remarks.  I also encourage all of my supporters to refrain from such comments.  Our campaign is based upon my pledge to bring change in policies and change in approaches in this country.  I intend to uphold that pledge in all aspects of my campaign.

I do not wish to get into how or when the comments began, but I believe there is ample evidence to show that Senator Clinton’s campaign believes that it benefits from such comments.  There are those who ask or expect that I should answer increasingly rancorous and divisive comments by Senator Clinton, her campaign workers, and her supporters with in kind comments.  I will do no such thing.  Senator Clinton and her campaign are not threatening me physically, which would indeed call for me to defend myself, they are instead throwing verbal punches that are weak, wild, poorly developed, and most of all, missing any target whatsoever.  The appropriate response to such attacks, as any trained boxer or martial artist knows, is to simply step to the side and let the poor puncher punch herself out.  Voters themselves will have to decide who is more Presidential, a flailing, throw the “kitchen sink” candidate, or one who strives to uphold the dignity of the Presidency.

I am willing to give up many things to gain the Presidency.  Among those is daily, regular, precious time with my two little daughters, who like all little girls are better off when their father comes home from work each day.  Unfortunately, that is not possible right now, and may not be possible for a long time.  Nevertheless, I have made the decision to run, and we are winning, and my family is doing the best it can to allow me to be both a father and a candidate.  I have sacrificed many things to run.  But one thing I will not sacrifice is my integrity.  And by responding in kind to comments from Senator Clinton, her aides, or others, comments that are exaggerations, distortions, distractions, or even lies and innuendoes, I will sacrifice the integrity that I have worked all my life to build.

I do not know if it is worth it to Senator Clinton to gain the Presidency while losing her integrity.  It was apparently worth it to her husband, former President Clinton, to fight to keep the Presidency despite losing much integrity in a White House sex scandal.  Only Mr. & Mrs. Clinton can know the length to which they are willing to go to regain the office of the Presidency.  It’s my hope that they too have now come to place their integrity above the office, and that they will so instruct their aides and supporters for the remainder of this campaign, however long it may go.

Our campaign leads in delegates elected in primaries and caucuses across the nation.  The lead is such that Senator Clinton has no chance to catch up in the remaining primaries and caucuses to come.  Let me say that again so that everyone is clear: no chance.  Senator Clinton could gracefully recognize this fact, put our party first before herself, and withdraw from a campaign that she cannot win.  Nevertheless, she shows no intention of taking this step, and we therefore intend to campaign as vigorously as ever in the remaining contests and at the end of them  - we will continue to lead in delegates.  Vigorous campaigning does not mean disingenuous, dishonest, uncivil, or angry campaigning.  Vigorous campaigning means hopeful, positive, energetic, inspirational and substantive campaigning.  In order for Senator Clinton to gain a nomination that she may hold more dearly than her own integrity, she will try to engage in tactics outside the main primary and caucus proceedings.  If she decides to pursue such tactics, let me assure everyone that we will meet her with strength and force, and her efforts too will fail.  We are energized by this battle, we are winning, and I will be the Democratic Party’s nominee for President.

I am willing to put my faith in the American people.  I believe that now, as it has developed, our country faces a choice between policies and between politicians.  Between policians who would lose their integrity, or who have already lost their integrity, and those who intend to keep their integrity.  I believe that the American people understand that we can have a civil politics practiced by civil politicians who have civil aides and civil supporters.  Since we began our campaign, the American people have shown that they want these things, and have responded by putting our campaign in the lead.  In the next weeks, we will go to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, West Virginia, and other states.  I ask the people, of all religions, gender, persuasions, and ethnicities of those states to join with the others who have already convened at polls and caucuses in other states, and I ask for your support.

I’m Leo Gold.  This is the New Capital Show.

My mind didn’t quite compute this at first.  He’s flying to San Antonio to get his elite status, as if his elite status was being stored in some locker at the San Antonio airport.  And then it began to dawn on me: my brother had purchased a roundtrip airplane ticket to fly to San Antonio and immediately back with absolutely no purpose other than to rack up some frequent flier air miles.  How strange, I thought.  I guess that elite status, which allows so-called “free” upgrades to first class when such openings are available, is highly coveted.  And then I forgot about it and went back to preparing lunch.

A few days later, as I was vegging out in front of the TV over the holidays, one of the networks threw up a story on this very activity, and I learned then that what my brother had undertaken is known as a “mileage run.”  The story further described an entire subculture of Americans who engage in this activity using their own shorthand language for routes and airports and planes, and the existence of websites and magazines that help mileage runners plot their routes to maximize the mileage bang for their ticket buck.  There were interviews with mileage runners who would board, for example, in Seattle, fly to Denver, change planes and head to Cincinnati, return west to San Francisco, and then head home again for Seattle.  All of this aerial joyriding for no purpose other than to rack up miles towards elite status.  There is no interest in visiting Denver, Cincinnati, or San Francisco.  There are no people to see in those places.  The mileage runners do not even really care where they are in earthly geographic terms, all they really know is that they are in a new airport waiting to take off for another airport, sit back, be served some drinks and packaged food, and tick off the miles.

Now, I’ve taken a few airplanes myself in the past few years, and I of course understand the desire to get the hell out of the coach section of the airplane and into first class.  And now with two small children, I understand that I am one of those loud and messy family groups from which others are desperately trying to escape.  But I honestly don’t know how to even begin to think about the economics of the mileage run, not that airline economics has ever been easy to understand.  Presumably, the airlines like this type of activity as it fills seats, even though it is the very definition of frivolous and unnecessary travel.  Why not institute a way to purchase comparable air miles towards elite status without actually forcing someone to board a plane?  Then the mileage runner’s goal could be met, and an airline seat could be preserved for someone who truly wants to travel to a destination.

I tried to research what percentage of domestic air seats are purchased for mileage running, but couldn’t find anything.  It may be a totally insignificant number, and not worthy of analysis, much less a monologue from me.  Or it may be some surprisingly high number of total commercial passenger traffic, say 2% or more, that in effect forces the nation’s air fleet and air traffic, and therefore fuel consumption and carbon emissions, to be that much larger than they need be.  But either way, if there is one metaphor for the vast quantity of unreasonable and illogical waste of planetary resources common in modern American culture, it seems to me it would have to be mileage running, in which people fly around in coach class on cramped fuel-consuming jets so that they don’t have to fly around in coach class on cramped fuel-consuming jets.

 I’m Leo Gold.  This is The New Capital show.