Gradual Recovery

By Mike Crouse

This past months travel took us to state logging association annual meetings for both California and Oregon, in addition to a very soggy logging story in Oregon as well, part of the reality of winter on the coast. The mood at the conferences was cautious but optimistic, not for a great year by any stretch of the imagination, but for a better year, with most crews, while reduced in size, finding a better climate for work in the coming year.

California's conference has been in Reno the past 20 years, as it is centrally located and fairly inexpensive, an appealing mix. It's always sobering to visit the California loggers; reminds me that regardless of how bizarre things are in other states, California has got to be one of the more challenging places to do business. Their openly hostile policies towards business are mind boggling. The latest we'd mentioned last year in their changing rules on diesel engines, which essentially outlaw "Type 0" diesel engines (and machinery).

The remaining engines and machines must meet their particulate emissions standards, which as you might guess are the highest in the country, something which they seem to take pride in while they are oblivious to the bottom line effect on business. The current regulations exempt the five northern counties where most logging is done, but as we all know, exemptions can magically vanish at the whim of some legislator.

Should you have an older machine, there is some hope in the form of particular filters, available for many (but not all) machines, but again as you might expect this comes at a cost, as one presenter explained, "...from $8,000-$56,000." Yikes you say? That is not all: most require periodic servicing, taking the machine out of service. The good news is you can keep operating at least.
California's burgeoning debt is staggering...$43 Billion last we'd heard... yet they continue their legislative assault on business. Must be very frustrating to live in Northern California and have your state legislature and your federal representation controlled by Southern California.

Compared to California, Oregon business climate is better, but the same flocks of loons guiding California politics are out of control in Oregon as well, with a tax referendum that imposes taxes on "the rich" (that would be businesses small and large) to help fund their growing (yes growing) bureaucracy, which has increased in size while businesses have restructured to mesh with the sluggish economy.
Perhaps the brightest spot at the AOL's annual meeting was in hearing from Cong. Greg Walden, whose grasp and understanding of not only forestry but the balance of multiple use management, along with fiscal responsibility and accountability.

We think we're beginning to see some awakening of public interest in reigning in their elected officials. There's nothing like bringing unemployment home in urban America to heighten interest in errant policy. The lesson which both Republican and Democrat parties need to grasp is their allegiance MUST be to their constituency, and what is good for our country's health, rather than the health of their re-election finance fund, or the needs of business or unions. What we really need is a change in leadership from each of the parties.

Progress

There's an advantage in understanding history, and great substance to the phrase, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," (sometimes called Santayana's Law of Repetitive Consequences)." The lesson missed generally leads to preparing for the next conflict with yesterday's tools and methods. Business and economy, just as in war, changes with time, and you must anticipate, prepare and adjust to the current circumstances and deal with them based on what you know and what you both see and anticipate.

From the economists we'd heard (who we also respect and believe) over the past year, this recovery will be unlike those of the past decade that saw a rapid decline and a similar rapid recover, and instead will be a far more gradual and take far longer.

And while business is still slow, the general perception from most is while business is soft, the climate as a whole is improving gradually, and similarly confidence is improving with time. The housing and equity bubble's burst vaporized a lot of cash and in its wake seriously shook the very trust on which the economy is based.

Thus while there are systemic issues that are still hindering economic progress, the other issue is uncertainty in the market place, now the least of which is the climate created and fueled by both state and federal governments and their insistence on creating uncertainty in the business place under the guise of improving the economy. While businessmen live with risk by the very nature of business, it's essential you understand the rules, the risks, and predictability of your risk so you are able to control those risks and generate a profit... and that's the rub: the federal government and many of the state government's attitude towards business.

The trend of the past few decades has been a legislative shift from establishing policy towards more micromanagement via regulation and legislation. Government's purpose has historically been to level the playing field, establish the rules and regulations designed to level that field. However the shift of the past decades has come from the elected and governing class's growth both in numbers and budget, and their accompanying shift in attitude towards their electorate.

The talk is serving "their customers" but the only similarity to business in far too many instances comes from their interest in their customers as a "revenue stream," which feeds the coffers. Added to that trend has been the shift not only in making the playing field level but in punishing business, not only in fines but in some states with both civil and criminal charges. Thus with all the conversation of government action "creating" jobs the harsh reality is that massive push from many states, and the federal government, to increase taxes, fees, paperwork, rules and regulations, is reaching a fevered pitch approaching religious zeal from those who find capitalism (i.e. business) to be a curse.

There is a two fold reality that seems to escape the capitalism/business hate mob: 1) business creates capital by creating business, supplying a wanted product, employing people, and paying the very taxes that support governmental operations; 2) their continual rattle of swords is smothering creativity and killing the very small businesses that have made our economy the envy of the world.
The advice: reduce the size, scope, and spending of government the same way business has done over the past few years. That means restructure, reduce middle management, doing more with less, increasing efficiencies, and automate. And perhaps most of all, STOP threatening and killing the business core that makes the economy grow. Small business is different from the corporate behemoths. The sooner the climate shifts from strangling small business to encouraging tax and regulatory certainty, the sooner our economy and our future will recover.

Newspeak

The life and times we live in brings to mind a book I'd read back in high school, George Orwell's "1984," published in 1949. The work of fiction was a fairly dark vision of the future featuring central world government control, the loss of individual identity, in a very different world order, where good and evil are relative terms. Similarly it never ceases to amaze how casually terms are thrown about, and how their meanings are not absolute but very vague... being morphed in an attempt to confuse rather than clarify your meaning.

Progressive, for instance, has been used in parallel with individual freedom, responsibility, and accountability in establishing a level playing field, with laws, rules, and regulations designed to accomplish that end. Thus progressives are also aligned with another term lost to vagueness: tolerance. Tolerance typically has meant not necessarily agreeing with but accepting and listening to other points of view. As it is currently used in reality, tolerance is accepting the view of those who agree with media, and government largess, and dismissing all other points as uninformed if not abysmally stupid.

Similar misleading and nebulous language has become commonplace when used on public budgets, incomes, and expenses. Whereas the terms increase and reduction was used to frame the amount spent or cut compared to the previous year, this too has been morphed in a manner only attorneys could refer to as "crafting" by complicating the language with a nice twist. Thus if the budget item had been projected to increase 10%, and instead was increased only 6%, that increase in a budget item would be publicized as a "cut" in spending, when in fact it was not.

Is it any wonder the general public is confused as to what goes on in government? The reason is clear where the language fails... the goal is to confuse, not enlighten.

This is how we hear explanations from Washington DC that may pass for progressive, and modern, (such as the recent "stimulus" package being responsible for creating and SAVING a certain number of jobs) that are in fact sheer spin and bluster.

In past generations we had a media who would call attention and shine light on such linguistic alchemy, but when the same media sees themselves as the news rather than reporting the news, any hope of enlightenment goes up as so much hot air.

Such open deceit does not make for a healthy debate, and in fact serves to stifle that very debate by confusing for the sake of one side's prevailing over another... good politics, horrible public policy for which we and future generations are paying.

Presently the elected class and policy makers are so busy defending their public policy turf they succumb to the temptation of mis-speak, obscuring the purpose, writing in vague terminology, and attempting to cover their folly with volumes of paper and reports carefully sculpted and presented in volumes so massive that in fact few, if any, have actually read, let alone understood, what they are signing.

Truly understanding an issue, legislation, spending, takes a back seat to the current "crisis mentality" of passing it now because now is the time! Huh? Is it any wonder we are up to our haunches in debt and spewing forth more of it with each passing moment?

Thus we have the stimulus bill, cash for clunkers, cap and trade legislation, global warming, and the health "reform" presented as the crisis de jour that requires immediate (read "any" action) for the sake of appearance, and we'll worry about the details later.

Had the Continental Congress gone about business in this fashion, we'd still have the Union Jack as our flag, and enjoy tea for lunch.

The cure for this bastardization of language so prevalent in our politically correct times is the light of public attention being cast on the practitioners of newspeak.

The entrenched "national media" appears to be so hopelessly mired in being opinion driven rather than actually reporting a story; we have little sympathy for their rapidly declining future and fortunes.
The hope, we feel, comes from the more local media who have to live with their work, and the vastness of the internet in generating an array of sources and thus views. Where this will play out in the long run is too early to tell, but overall the press, particularly the entertainment media of TV, cable and radio of today would make principled journalists and chroniclers of history turn over in their grave.
We need to return to clear language, with clear meaning, to convey our times as they are, not as one ideologue, pundit, or another would want to spin it.