Fix corporations to fix campaign finance

The US Supreme Court’s wrongheaded decision on corporate campaign contributions raises the specter of billions of corporate dollars flooding the electoral process. But the core issue goes beyond campaign financing. It’s time to restore corporate sanity, as I wrote in The Guardian. From spending millions on lobbyists to paying eight-figure bonuses to self-proclaimed masters of the financial universe that collapsed the global economy, corporations have gone crazy. The problem is simple – shareholders that own companies have lost their rightful power to supervise the executives who manage them, so can’t prevent them from acting recklessly and spending investors’ money foolishly; the inmates are running the asylum. The solution is also simple – fair corporate elections that give investors a legitimate chance to elect boards of directors that will, as the law requires, protect shareholders’ investments. Until corporations fix their own elections, they shouldn’t meddle in others.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.

Ask not how Obama changed Washington…

Assessing Barack Obama’s first year as president, I’m not surprised by the disappointing list of accomplishments and continued business as usual in Washington. But I didn’t expect the nation’s political conversation to get away from Obama’s White House as badly as it has, given what an astute campaign his team ran. I still hold out hope that president and his team are merely incompetent or just going through a bad patch and that the Nixon’s funeral rule doesn’t apply.

At the 1994 funeral of Richard Nixon (which I watched in Beijing during my first visit to China, right before cycling to Mao’s tomb in Tiananmen Square), I understood why all the living ex-presidents, regardless of party, and incumbent Bill Clinton felt obliged to attend. But when Clinton took the podium and said good things about Nixon, it taught me a key lesson: Clinton and Nixon and the rest of the politicians at that funeral were all on the same side, and that wasn’t the side I was on. I’m still hoping that someone on my side has finally gotten into the White House, and that they will deliver change we can believe in.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.

Nopenhagen saviors US, China deserve praise

In the fallout from last month’s failed climate change conference, the US and China emerged as villains. But the real blame for turning Copenhagen into Nopenhagen rests with the UN, small developing countries, and environmental groups. Those parties had little to contribute to the negotiations and were committed a flawed concept that, even it had been adopted, would not have effectively curbed emissions. The US and China, countries that really can make a difference in emissions, came up with a plan that can actually help save the planet, and they deserve to be praised for it.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.

Macau turns 10

This weekend marks the tenth anniversary of Macau’s switch from Portuguese colony to Special Administrative Region of China. Over the past decade, Macau has been successful beyond anyone’s expectations. In 1999, with criminal gangs shooting it out in the streets, this city of 550,000, measuring just 29.2 square kilometers (11.3 miles), with virtually no resources, three official languages that don’t include English, and a centuries-long legacy of misrule looked set to remain a backwater with a colorful past and grim future. Ten years later, Macau has attracted billions of dollars in investment en route to becoming the world’s leading gambling destination, boasting the world’s fourth highest per capita GDP.

So why isn’t Beijing smiling about Macau’s success? Read all about it in Asia Times.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.

Put Mother Earth on Your Holiday Gift List

Apropos of the season and the Copenhagen climate change conference, think about Christmas trees. Not the usual evergreen for Yuletide (or whatever holidays you may or may not celebrate) but giving trees as presents. For example, Project Oikos sells trees and lets recipients do the planting in selected locations. There are other organizations that will make Mother Earth part of your holiday celebration, and there’s never been a better time to support them. You’ll be helping a friend in need.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.

Happy FU Day!

“On November 13th, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife. Deep down, he knew she was right, but he also knew that someday he would return to her. With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his childhood friend Oscar Madison. Several years earlier, Madison’s wife had thrown him out, requesting that he never return.

“Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?”

That’s the opening from The Odd Couple television series, starring Tony Randall as Felix and Jack Klugman as Oscar. Please join me in celebrating this and every November 13th the date where it all began. The Odd Couple is one of the few works to have succeeded on Broadway (as wickedly funny Neil Simon stage play originally cast with Art Carney as Felix and Walter Matthau as Oscar), on film (starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau), and as a weekly TV series. Reruns of the series were a staple of programming on New York’s WPIX-Channel 11 during the 1970s and 1980s (along with The Honeymooners and the original Star Trek). WPIX also used Odd Couple episodes to fill time during rain delays of its New York Yankees telecasts. I’d often root for a thundershower to get a little Felix and Oscar with my hardball.

Beyond celebrating The Odd Couple, what’s the meaning of Felix Unger Day? It has the through-the-looking-glass quality of meaning whatever you want it to mean. For me, it’s about the possibilities and limits of reinventing yourself. TV’s Felix eventually does get over his first wife (at least for a while), he learns to tolerate Oscar (and vice versa), but he’s still Felix, relentlessly neat, obsessively organized, and honking from his allergies. As Oscar says, after he dies, Felix will spend eternity, “Haunting and cleaning, cleaning and haunting.” As I’ve learned in my own journey from New York to Hong Kong and beyond, changing your latitude only gets you so far; you also need to change your attitude.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.

Tennis diplomacy scores an ace in Bali

The women’s tennis tour season finale in Bali has been overshadowed by the withdrawal of US Open semifinalist Yanina Wickmayer after drawing a suspension from World Anti-Doping Association for failing to report her whereabouts to authorities. But, as I report in Asia Times, the Commonwealth Bank Tournament of Champions provided a step on the road to better understanding between Muslims and Jews. Israel’s Shahar Peer took part in the tournament in Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, splitting her two matches. Her participation in Bali contrasts with Dubai, which denied Peer a visa earlier this year, and with 2006, when Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry denied permission for its Fed Cup team to travel to Israel for a scheduled match. If ping pong worked for the US and China, maybe tennis can help thaw relations between the Indonesia and Israel.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.

Business wisdom from Dr Willie Mays

I started out at the bottom of the baseball world – I was a fan. I became a baseball writer, covered several World Series and wrote a couple of books as well as countless articles on America’s national pastime before I moved on to television and business reporting. At one stage I was a columnist for the award-winning shareholder rights website eRaider.com. Occasionally I found lessons for investors from baseball history and legend. Here’s a column I wrote in December 2000 that I’d like to share on the eve of what promises to be an exciting 2009 World Series. (A note on the headline: a couple of years ago, for no apparent reason, my alma mater Yale awarded an honorary doctorate to Willie Mays, baseball’s greatest living player.)

Tommie Agee, centerfielder and leadoff hitter for the 1969 world champion New York Mets, died of a heart attack Monday at age 58, too young. I last saw Agee about 15 years ago, in the offices of New York’s Queens Borough President, where he was trying to find funding for a program for the underprivileged. A native of Mobile, Alabama, Agee embraced the city that embraced him, and as an alumnus of baseball before free agency, he needed to earn a living after his playing days and opted for a town where he remained a famous name.

Agee was the offensive leader on a team that won an unlikely championship with pitching and defense. After Agee sparked a victory over the Chicago Cubs, the team that looked to be running away with the National League’s Eastern Division in the summer of 1969, Chicago’s pitcher threw at Agee’s head in his first at bat the next day. Agee dove headlong into the dirt to avoid the bean ball, dusted himself off, and tripled, a symbolic moment that showed the Mets would not go away.

In Game Three of the 1969 World Series, Agee had what might have been the greatest day in Series history. (And as a 13 year old cutting school for a seat in the upper deck at the first fall classic game ever at Shea Stadium, it was certainly my greatest day in World Series history.) Agee homered leading off against the Baltimore Orioles’ Hall of Fame pitcher and underwear model Jim Palmer, then singlehandedly made that run stand up. In the fourth inning, Agee sprinted, back to home plate, to catch a slicing drive high above his head, backhanded, that saved two runs. In the seventh inning, his diving catch on the warning track with the bases loaded saved at least three runs. The Mets won 5-0, for a 2-1 Series lead, and put the Orioles away within 48 hours to win a most improbable championship.

But this Commentary is not about Tommie Agee or the indomitability of the human spirit that made the 1969 Mets the flesh and blood version of the little engine that could. Agee’s grabs drew immediately comparisons with the greatest in World Series history: Sandy Amoros’ mad dash in 1955 through a vacant leftfield in Yankee Stadium to pull in Yogi Berra’s bid for an opposite field home run; Brooklyn’s Al “Gionfrioddo goes back, back, back and makes a one-handed catch against the bullpen; oooh, doctor,” as Red Barber called it, to pluck Joe DiMaggio’s drive in 1947 (in a rare display of emotion on the field, DiMaggio kicked the dirt as he rounded second base, his sure home run transformed into out number three); and what is generally regarded as the greatest robbery ever, Willie Mays—whose 1972 acquisition by the Mets ran Agee out of town temporarily—on Vic Wertz in the 1954 classic.

Tie game, eighth inning, two men on. Indians slugger Wertz already has three hits off Giants’ starter Sal Maglie, so New York manager Leo Durocher calls for a relief pitcher, lefthander Don Liddle. Wertz says he never hit a ball harder, into the vast expanse of the Polo Grounds’ centerfield, where the fence was nearly 500 feet from home plate and the steps up to the clubhouse were in play. Mays chased down the drive like a wide receiver, made the catch with his back to the infield about 460 feet from the launch point, then threw a strike that kept the runner on second from scoring. Many witnesses (including Mickey Mantle worshipper Bob Costas) place Mays’ play in the realm of the impossible; there is no way a ball hit that hard and far could be caught.

The lesson for investors doesn’t come from Mays or Wertz, but from the pitcher, Liddle. After the catch, the Giants manager Leo Durocher went to the mound to remove Liddle, since he’d given up a blast that would have been a home run in any other park, including Yellowstone. As was the custom in those days, Liddle waited on the mound until his replacement arrived from the bullpen. When the next pitcher reached he mound, Liddle offered these words of encouragement: “I got my guy.”

Sometimes the bottom line doesn’t quite get to the bottom of things.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.

Novelist wrestles Asian trophy wives

Award winning novelist Christopher G Moore has been in New York this month for the US launch of Paying Back Jack, the 10th installment in his Vincent Calvino crime novel series. Moore also writes literary fiction – I’m a big fan of Waiting for the Lady, a novel set in Burma that centers on Aung San Suu Kyi – and books about Thai language. In addition to a favorite read of mine, Moore has been a friend for 15 years, and a mentor as both a writer and an expatriate in Asia.

In a show of extraordinary bravado or extreme foolishness, Moore recently tackled the subject of Asia trophy wives on his blog. Moore lives in Bangkok and is married to a Thai woman, so the subject is fraught with particular danger for him. But, as usual, Moore writes intelligently on this highly charged cross-cultural subject.

What I found astonishing was the article by Ying Chu that triggered Moore’s consideration of the question. The article is an outstanding example of how vapid popular magazines have become. I’ll simply add one footnote: of all things I’ve previously heard (from mutual acquaintances) and read about Wendy Deng, Rupert Murdoch’s current wife, the word “trophy” hardly seems applicable.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.

East meets West at the Ubud Writers Festival

Two years ago, my novel Hong Kong On Air was launched at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali. I blogged for Lonely Planet.com about the festival that year, and I think those posts still convey a sense of this spectacular event.

At Wednesday’s opening press conference, playwright and former political prisoner Wole Soyinka of Nigeria, the first Nobel laureate on the Ubud program, noted the festival’s origin as a counterpoint to the Bali bombings of 2002. “Ubud had been on my radar for some time,” Soyina said. “I was drawn to it as it was a response to an act of the cessation of life.”

As night fell, participants celebrated another opening at Ubud’s Royal Palace albeit without the full moon of 2007. But again this year, under Bali’s magical influence, at the opening dinner, camaraderie and learning were already evident on the menu for readers and writers alike.

If you’re in the region, the event runs through Sunday, followed by the festival’s first event outside Bali at Yogyakarta’s Borobudur temple on Tuesday. If you’re far away, start making your plans to attend the Ubud festival next year.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.