THE ILLUSION OF LEADERSHIP

No matter where you look the leadership of many institutions is manned by folks who cannot tell the truth and seem to make up laws as they go  From judges, to bankers, to presidents , to military leaders,to ceo's they all lead us into a catastrophic ending.

For years I have observed what appears to be big problems in military leadership.  Captains and Exec's and Command Master Chief's have been relieved for mostly unstated causes.  Some have been tied to harassment. Now there is a new survey of active duty sailors that says 90% of them say they do not trust their leaders.  Something definitely is going on in the Navy particularly.  More collisions at sea then I can remember.  Many more technical blunders like building ships that cannot do the mission they were supposedly designed for, buying big ticket items that are not needed and not wanted. Attempting to attack pay and benefits of active and retired sailors as they think the demand for them  will diminish as the Navy automates.

It's easy to pick on presidents, one at a time or as a group and many have done so in many ways.  I will simply say we have not had a president that was for the people since at least 1980.  Since Ronald Regan set us on the course of conservative economics the course has been followed by each party when they have the reins.

This slacking of the reins during the years after 1980 has allowed our bankers and ceo's get filthy rich, some with quasi legal methods and others flat committed felonies in the pursuit of personnel wealth at the expense of the working man.

So far I have targeted the big leaders but the truth of the matter is that the sickness flows down the ladder to those of who serve below.  It would be easy to say it's because of the flawed leadership at the top that those below somehow don't want to do their jobs.  One of the most glaring examples comes to mind in thinking about the attack of the towers, when it was announced by the EPA that the air  quality around the towers was safe.  Just about any fool could look at the clouds of crap flowing in the streets and know it  was toxic , and it turned out to be very toxic killing many first responders from respiratory illness.

Agency heads, one after the other appear before Congressional committees and appear to have little knowledge of the agency they head.  There is a possibility that they were playing stupid but when you look at the performance of their agencies you are lead to believe they don't have a clue.

This latest Ebola adventure is a perfect example  of leadership failing to take command of a problem and we are finding out facts one would have assumed would be the natural flow of things. Finding out that the CDC has no legal authority over rules it puts in place was a shocker.  We  find that the Dallas hospital invented it's own rules that proved to be inadequate in the end.   Being shown the protection provided by Doctors Without Borders vs what the Dallas hospital provided gave us a clear idea of who was screwed up, and that there were no enforceable rules in place.  The second nurse from the Dallas hospital was out of town when she got a fever and called the CDC before catching a flight home, they said sure fly your ok to go.  There own guidelines say that she should have been put into isolation immediately.  Once again an agency poorly led with employees not up to par handling cases as this.

I have to throw in a dig against the Federal Reserves handling of the economy.  After throwing trillions of dollars into saving the banks act surprised that it did not bring about a recovery.  Meantime said banks and their Hedge fund buddies raped the American economy by running stocks and commodities up and down like a  yoyo , along with the corporations themselves buying back their own stock instead of investing in the economy and it's people.  This week QE was stopped and of course the market took it unkindly and plunged, and event long overdue.Now there is talk of more QE to stabilize the markets.  It won't do a thing for the real economy but they will probably follow the same ole path.

Take a look a Europe, they are entering what some are calling a third round of recession when a stronger look will tell you that they never came out and that we really are in a different kind of depression.  Different in that nobody calls it that, but when you look at the real numbers instead of the manufactured data we have been in a constant downturn world wide for a very long time.  With the austerity binge going on world wide to think that somehow that would bring about a recovery was far from the truth and if they didn't know it would work you fall back on the leadership is not up to the task that it should be able to handle.

Everywhere you turn from government to business to educators all seem to be leading us down the wrong path.  Conservative economic thinking has been a disaster demonstrated world wide since at least 1980.  It looks like nobody ever looks at history for guidance they follow the little red ball of conservative thinking.

I could go on raving about this and that but I think you get my drift by now.  We are in a depression and the powers that be have no intention of leading us out to prosperity. How anybody could think any of the fixes would work is beyond my grasp.  My big problem is I can see no White Knight leading us out of darkness.  With money controlling government what chance do we have?

It's sure as hell isn't putting a Congress controlled  (both houses) by republicans.  If you think things have not being going in the right direction just wait and see what a fully conservative congress will give us.

PREPARE TO DIVE you will need to run deep and quiet to come out the other side of this mess.