Gee, that's rich

After decades of casting everything the government does with "your" tax money as a communist plot, now the Republican party can't muster enough votes to use the government when they need it most: to save their own institutions.

This is the gamble conservative politicians take by arguing that government solutions to anything are all wrong, all the time: When the private sector finally throws itself under the bus, Americans expect "personal responsibility" to be the order of the day.

If Americans lack the sophistication of thought required to accept that they be held to a different standard of accountability than the people running their country, perhaps that is because they've never been leveled with in the first place. It would appear the Republican party has caught its tiger by the tail.

Their prosperity, and ours

Chrystia "[Sarah] Palin is a true feminist role model" Freeland turns her powers of observation to the economy today when she writes: "[T]here is no denying that the financial crisis, and the Treasury and Federal Reserve's response to it, mark the end of a long, prosperous era of American laisser-faire capitalism in its purest form..." And, in fact, she is correct: there is no denying that there is a financial crisis to which the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have responded. Unfortunately, there are plenty of grounds for denying everything else.

First of all, there has been no lasting example of "laisser-faire capitalism in its purest form" anywhere ever. For the last three hundred years there have been various moves on the part of private collectives to run national economies for their own short-term gain, with varying levels of government intervention to cope with the social problems (inequality, poverty, social unrest, "externalities," etc.) and macroeconomic challenges (monopolies, market failures) that inevitably arise.

What is packaged and sold to the ordinary citizen as a kind of self-sustaining, rationally-based system of supply and demand under the banner of "laissez-faire" or "the free-market," is really just a malignant tumor that will -- indeed -- grow tremendously until it kills its host, as history bears repeated witness. Profound government intervention in the economy is in fact the only mechanism by which "market forces" haven't completely destroyed themselves in practice, which is why all modern "capitalisms" incorporate some greater or less degree of it, by definition. As such, it is pointless to ask whether government should be involved in the economy; the appropriate question is on whose behalf should the government intervene. And this is because the government is intervening all the time.

With regard to the long era of American prosperity brought about by business groups being "free" to pursue narrow concerns with government help: it's true that this has brought about an unprecedented prosperity for the tiny minority who have wrapped the "national interest" around their needs. Yet, presumably, the "laisser-faire capitalism in its purest form" to which Freeland refers is the same period to include: the gradual break-up of the middle class; skyrocketing inequality; the illegal attack on unions; wage stagnation; the spread of unmanageable work/schedule demands; the adoption of new part-time/temp work standards; increased diagnosis of anxiety, depression and attention deficit problems as related to job insecurity; the general deterioration of public services and community welfare; and a recognition among younger generations that they will never exceed the standards of living achieved by their parents -- in other words, everything that has happened in the last 35 years or so, orchestrated to the delight of the American business classes, who took their tax cuts and made enlightened use of them by speculating so wildly they upended their own meal-ticket and now insist the rest of the population pay the bill -- thus "requiring" more social cut-backs because they kicked the country one more pass down the path of bankruptcy. Well, that's prosperity for you.

In lieu of a New Deal, a raw one

Congress and the various branches of US industry have jerry-rigged a formal response to the ongoing crisis of capitalism, with fingers crossed that it might steer the country back to business as usual.

Plenty will be said about this in the near future, with no shortage of in-depth consideration of every last detail, which, after all, is the job of the major media vis-a-vis the privileged constituencies which advertisers hope to ensnare. This is a crisis that affects the people and organizations that manage the economy of the country, so it's going to be headline news forever until it either subsides as a problem or is transcended in importance by some other concern. In this respect, it is quite different from something like, say, poverty, which is merely a crisis of the poor, and therefore an accepted reality, barely noted. Financial disasters, like most disasters, may hit the poor the hardest, but that is not the motivating impulse behind this intervention.

There is some talk among liberals that the current financial crisis coupled with an Obama win may lead to a New Deal-style resurgence of public policy geared towards public need. Unfortunately, this misses what the public was doing at the time of the Great Depression to force an otherwise business-loyal government to recognize basic public concerns: many were trying to overthrow the economic system altogether. There was widespread socialist mobilization, including a socialist party based in the American union movement; and they were organized enough to articulate an alternative vision of how the country could be run, many components of which were incorporated into the New Deal and in turn precipitated the greatest expansion of the middle-class in American history.

Where is that today? Contrary to liberal aspirations, change does not come from one good man (or woman) pulling the levers of state power. It comes by diffusing power sufficiently so that it extends into the lives of those affected by it. That means people have to prepare themselves to act on the issues that matter to them, firstly by educating each other on what they are, and secondly by having some practical method for addressing them. This is what was happening on a large scale in the 1920's and 30's which led to significant economic gains for "the rest of us" in the decades to follow, but which doesn't seem apparent today. If so, it is nobody's fault but our own.

"Once in a century" rip-off

Bill Gates saves Africa

The Wall Street Journal has "philanthropy" feature today discussing a UN/Bill Gates/Son of Warren Buffet plan to "fund [an] agriculture market for overlooked small [African] farms" -- which is basically a euphemism for "keeping the majority of the population from starving."

The article makes some remarkable statements, among them:

Small African farmers, who provide most of the continent's agricultural output, have never had a reliable market to sell their food. Many of them are in remote areas with little access to transportation rely on archaic networks of small traders who set prices.

Small African farmers have never had a reliable market to sell their food. They grow their crops, no one wants any of it -- and this has been the basis of African civilization for thousands of years. Making matters worse, they live in "remote areas" -- like inside Africa -- instead of in port cities or other locales favored by global commerce and tourism. They have to rely on "backward" methods of getting their product to market, since they don't own trucks and in some cases barely have roads, which they apparently require since they don't "have markets" of their own to begin with.

Enter Bill Gates, et al., who will generously fund a UN program to buy food from small African farmers for reuse as humanitarian aid for other starving people with no means of livelihood and no access to viable markets. Thus Bill Gates will create them.

The fact is that Africa has always had markets, the problem is that they are flooded with mass-produced foodstuffs from wealthy, industrialized countries. People go hungry when they can't sell what they grow to their neighbors, because their neighbors are buying imported food for less than the cost of domestically-produced food. It also doesn't help that they are in competition with "large African farmers," or, foreign corporations that monopolize land tracts, retooling them for the production of whatever crop will bring the highest export price, regardless of whether it is efficient or sustainable to grow them in a particular climate or region, or whether it is something the locals can eat (e.g. coffee).

These are industrial trade policies pursued by wealthy nations on behalf of whatever business groups dominate their economies, and, subsequently, their governments. That business may not be so good for the small African farmer is the direct result of the fact that it is so good for industrial producers in more powerful countries. But since mass famine can lead to political instability and chaos, business is not in favor of mass famine. It is rather in favor of low-intensity famine which it can lament as an unfortunate reality of the world we live in -- unless, of course, there is some way to integrate small producers into the global supply chain which neither 1) imposes business costs, or 2) infringes on the sovereignty of business operations.

In essence, it is left to others to clean up the mess made from profits. It is government's job to at least make certain that the mess does not become so unmanageable that the very making of profit is jeopardized. This is as true in financial catastrophe as it is in human epidemics. It is also a notable fashion among those who have already played the profit game so successfully that they leave themselves few challenges except to parlay their wealth into high-profile, headline humanitarianism. African farmers can't do it, but Bill Gates can -- never mind that African farmers are systematically denied the chance. Naturally, Bill Gates throwing money at the poor is better than Bill Gates doing nothing; but, insofar as state-facilitated profit got us into this mess (and Gates knows its treasures better than most), it is hard to look at its greatest beneficiaries with special appreciation when they seek to further capitalize on a sudden interest in others.

About voting

Voting in the United States is a lot like selecting your dinner option at a wedding reception. Much is made of the fact that you get to choose your meal. Yet there are very good reasons why people don't limit themselves to chicken or pork every time they contemplate eating: these staples can't hope to express the full range of what appeals to people about food as a subject. They also impose on those who would prefer to eat neither.

Much like food, people have a broad diversity of interests on the subject of social relations. Having two parties dominate this field at a national level inevitably imposes ridiculous constraints on anybody who wants to participate in civic affairs. The whole breadth of divergent human inquiry is crudely recast into a mold set by the deciding class, which in our case incorporates both "liberal" and "conservative" views: there are corporate executives who think "creationism" is BS and want reproductive rights for their daughters, and there are members of the US Chamber of Commerce who love shooting guns and don't believe in global warming. What they share is an understanding that they own the country; everybody else's role is to fall in line on the basis of any issues peripheral to this consensus.

We are left to decide whether we are "chicken" people or "pork" people, "red state" or "blue." It is little wonder that so many of us choose to abstain altogether.

The diagnosis of a dick

Rush Limbaugh had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week which concluded with the statement, "We've made much racial progress in this country."

I always like hearing such optimism coming from those most invested in a difficult subject. I mean, when you hear the name "Rush Limbaugh" what else comes to mind if not "racial progress?" It's as if the tobacco industry came out with a study which said, "We've made loads of progress with lung cancer in this country!" Or if John McCain's prostate declared Sheryl Crow's mammaries healed.

The moral of the story here is that even the truth can be wielded as a weapon, all things not being equal. It's true: we've made much racial progress in this country. So what hurdles has Mr. Limbaugh's race overcome lately?

A note on personal responsibility

"Personal responsibility" is one of many songs sung by the powerful to the weak as a way of diverting attention from the basic truths that keep one at an advantage over the other. If you listen closely, you will hear the music everywhere, because there is no place where power does not require perpetual defense and deflection against the natural tendency of the weak to perceive that their weakness is not wholly of their own making; that, in fact, the powerful have marshaled most of their advantage in the name of ensuring that the weak remain subordinated to their needs.

That the powerful devote so much of themselves publicly to subjects like personal responsibility owes to the fact that, in the end, the powerful do not live by the same rules as the weak. For example, the self-proclaimed "masters of the universe" justify their monopoly on economic life by arguing that markets make have made it so, all while living daily with an implicit government guarantee precisely because they monopolize the economy. "We can't let the economy get out of hand, after all" -- which is just another way of saying "out of the hands of those who have monopolized it." "Just think of what will happen to Main Street," which is certainly a valid concern when Main Street is beholden to the arbitrary whims of international finance, with little to say about it one way or the other. The rule holds true whether it is the airlines or the auto industry or industrial agriculture or banking or finance: whoever owns the productive wealth of a nation is ultimately in a position to demand that the government preserve their ownership in the face of whatever malady may arise.

Well, these are the conditions we have accepted, and so it should not come as a surprise when government by and for the possessing classes inevitably intervenes on their behalf at everybody else's expense. This is the very definition of "personal responsibility" under the circumstances: the responsibility of the working person to sacrifice for their "masters" when times are good, even more so when times are bad; and, as if that was not enough, to devote additional time in serious consideration of how their personal failings have contributed to their plight. The worker files for bankruptcy and is still liable for her debts; now she is responsible for industry's as well.

Throw the captain overboard

It must be one of the least controversial notions in history that people who assume a position of unchecked authority over others tend to use that position for their own self-interest at least as much -- though usually more -- than they do for whatever official purpose the position implies. For Americans, the concept is probably most familiar when related to the undertakings of government, due largely to the scrutiny that particular institution came under in the formation of their country, as well as its continued influence over so many dimensions of social life, right up to today.

But as ripe an occasion for abuse of power that any large, centralized government will always provide, the modern nation-state is only one avenue in US society where substantially undemocratic practices arise. In fact, much more than merely "springing up," such practices are in fact the basis of contemporary private enterprise, which is premised on the notion that a minority class should be entrusted with the fundamental workings of the society -- what is invested, what is produced, how it is distributed -- in the pursuit of short-term gain for themselves, in accordance with a theory which argues "public gains" will inevitably arise from "private vice." The public may impose constraints on the scope and nature of this activity through government regulation, but otherwise has no say in the matter. Whereas government is at least potentially democratic -- it can be influenced through participation -- the private sector is essentially unaccountable to communities, to employees, to the planet and to future generations; and, increasingly, even unaccountable to shareholders, for whose benefit the whole project is supposedly rigged; except, that is, through the indirect, johnny-come-lately hand of government, and at the level of consumer purchase -- also a very winding road when it comes to enforcing good behavior, though occasionally effective.

Well, that is a generous reading of theory. In practice, one need only scan the headlines of past weeks to see where responsibility for such a weighty entitlement -- the management of the economy for your own short-term benefit -- ultimately lies: in trillion dollar payouts from the public to their economic stewards for the explicit purpose of re-establishing their authority over an economy they lost by making it self-destruct.

So far removed from any sane conception of transparency, the underpinnings of our economy as it as been permitted to run are being handed back to these people because nobody else is in a position to offer an alternative. The public has never been invited to think about, or even understand, these issues, and the government has been paid to keep out of the way. A minority class has assumed the helm, and they have run everybody else aground, either by forcing them to toil longer and for less when times are good, or by setting fire to the ship altogether when they finally achieve their goal of eliminating any restraint that might stop them. Meanwhile the planet and its inhabitants are in various ways hurtled towards extinction, in pursuit of short-term gains for these few. Under the circumstances, one might be forgiven for doubting whether those who steer the economy even understand their own self-interest, let alone anybody else's.

Category Dumb

Once the gale-force winds of Hurricane Greenspan have quieted down and the task begins to survey the wreckage, the men of best quality will want to know: what went wrong?

Since systems of power don't naturally tend towards useful introspection, one should expect many rounds of useless exhortation.

John McCain, whose ride to the White House on a plate of pig-lips and moose-patties has begun to look premature, may well have christened the narrative destined for widest circulation: that Wall Street traders fell prey to the wrong "values," transmogrifying a Christly-inspired consumerism into a debased "casino economy." Purged of this secular slant toward the balance-sheet -- through a course of rigorous Vietnamese internment, perhaps? -- Wall Street will be ready to receive the "change," or possibly the "reform," so desperately required.

Well, this is all par for the Republican course. But now elements of the market clergy are singing a similar tune. The Financial Times culls a management professor at Wharton who notes that leadership and big-picture thinking are lacking in the financial markets -- i.e., qualities that are outside the scope of what the job demands, and more likely than not stand in direct conflict with "success" in that industry. The problem is not how success is defined, but that individual traders and their leadership did not adequately second-guess their entire profession, fall behind, and inevitably risk their livelihood for the betterment of human society. Yes, now there is a realistic prescription for preventing systemic failure in the future.

A note on American corporatism

If there is any broad lesson to be drawn from the current spate of federal-corporate bail-out betrothals, it would do well to include an acknowledgment about the kind of economic system we really have: when push comes to shove, it is government that comprises the economic foundation of modern society, not private enterprise. Without some kind of government framework, private enterprise inevitably self-destructs; in the present case, this has transpired because rules established after the Great Depression were set aside in a "financial modernization" act in the late 1990's which effectively deregulated the industry beyond what it could sustain. Now disaster has struck, it is the government, not markets, which is sifting the fallout.

The centrality of government as the facilitator of material goods -- being the insurer, the lender, the provider of last resort -- is never lost on the classes which benefit most from the relationship, which is why so much is expended on their part in lobbying the government hourly while simultaneously declaring to everyone else that it is "the problem" which we all need "out of our lives." After all, if the average American came to view the government as the only game in town when it comes to re-establishing an eight hour day, five-day week; or securing affordable health care and a guaranteed retirement income, our system of "socialism for the rich" might instead become socialism for the average Joe -- and, unfortunately for the rich, Joe outguns them numerically by a considerable margin, especially when the system is marginally democratic.

This goes a long way towards explaining the (largely successful) undertaking on the part of American business and even government to promote "anti-politics" -- or, the widespread revulsion for and abstention from politics -- among Americans generally, who are groomed to admire corporate conglomerates as some bizarre example of "individual liberty," while forfeiting a real individual prerogative to participate in the governance of their own affairs.

Observer

Now that bankruptcy is poised to edge out heart disease and adventurism as America's leading export, gentlemen of distinction want to know where the smart money is going next.

Capitalism's man on the street has a hunch that big Pharma will continue to exceed expectations for a handsome return. After all, if people were stressed-out and depressed when times were good, just think of the possibilities for the future.

Play it again, Uncle Sam

Maestro?

A note between jobs

When the worker loses her job, Wall Street cheers. When the investment banker loses his shirt, the worker has lost her home. How many homes for every shirt?

This is why I have no infatuation for society "managed" by capital; I throw my lot in with the majority.

Wall Street succumbs to 30 years of Wall Street Journal editorial page advice

The fourth largest US investment bank declared its insolvency today, the latest development in an ongoing financial crapstravaganza which former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has called a "once-in-a-century" event, with Americans enjoying the best seats in the house. The collapse of Lehman Brothers came after government-led negotiations with industry failed to secure a buyer, owing to Wall Street's bad health generally and Uncle Sam's refusal to sufficiently bankroll the transaction to their liking. Initial optimism that Bank of America might intervene on Lehman's behalf was scuttled when the country's largest commercial banker walked away in a deal solicited by Merill Lynch; similar scrambles were reported to be the practical outcome of consultations held ostensibly on Lehman's behalf.

Averting an acronymn-inspired apocalypse

To all appearances, cultivating melanoma at the Jersey shore this week in a bid to "get away from it all" very nearly made me miss the near-miss wholesale collapse of the international finance system, as the subject was not broached in either of the John Stewart or Stephen Colbert reruns I consented to in my bedchamber after dinner. Luckily, NPR made some mention of it all on the drive up; but, as often happens when NPR covers important topics, their academic expert in this case seemed scarcely able to explain the situation to himself, let alone to an audience who had never heard of government sponsored enterprises (GSE's) of a sort like the Federal National Mortgage Association, or "Fannie Mae."

The situation was not helped by an interviewer who insisted that "when we hear the word 'nationalization,' people like to think of Hugo Chavez!"; and asked "doesn't China own Fannie debt?" or whether or not we really have a "free-market" economy now that government is parceling bailouts like prescription painkillers at happy hour; all of which strikes me as neither here or nor there when the bottom line is that central agency responsible for buying up the vast majority of our home mortgages drank -- or more to the point, was permitted to chug -- the same subprime Kool Aid as the private banks who are in the game solely for profit.

True to form, congressional Republicans now assail Fannie for ever having a public purpose in the first place and point to privatization as the solution -- because we all know how well that end of the capital markets is working out. You see, the whole problem is government meddling in the economy; meanwhile Lehman Brothers looks ready to be rocketed to the great financial leper colony in the sky, with AIG and Merrill Lynch not far behind. And nevermind that it was a conspicuous lack of meddling on the part of government which precipitated the financial meltdown of 1929, thus rendering an organization like Fannie Mae necessary in the first place. Oh, history, would you just shut up for once!

Ixnay on the ack-of-experiencelay

Liberals would do well to tread softly on Sarah Palin's provincialism -- her lack of advanced degrees, her small-town background; her limited, mostly religiously-informed conceptions of world affairs -- since Republicans view this as their strongest connection to the ranks of middle-America workers to whom the election now largely belongs.

Whatever Palin lacks in political experience, she is more "like" the average blue-collar worker for precisely that reason. Republicans hope that to attack her for lack of proper pedigree is to tell working people that they suffer the same basic deficiency, owing mainly to their station in life. In an electoral process which more closely resembles a season of American Idol than any rational deliberation over policy, who people "like" is unfortunately the basis on which public appointments to the executive branch are made. Remember we are talking about a country that endorsed eight years of George Bush because he was so "authentically lacking" it evoked a familiarity of people with whom we have shared beers.

Freedom costs a Buck Oh Five

Pity John McCain. The nobler portion of his Vietnam experience has been reworked into a Passion-of-the-POW/Rapture-of-the-Rightwing mythology with everything implausible going for it except aliens. Adding insult to injury, the fable was penned by the hands of the very conservative commissars he has ostensibly loathed for just this manner of Machiavellian douchebaggery in the past, and all for the transparent benefit of the same Jesus-encrusted nutbags he most despises/has extended the office of vice presidency to. The narrative, to the degree comprehensible, goes something like as follows...

Imagine you are being digested alive in the Vietnamese equivalent of the Great Pit of Carkoon's Sarlacc, with nary a thread of patriotic zeal woven into your entire freedomless, "me-first" corporeality to help bide the time. You thought you were a whole person, self-starting and independent of mind, but only through generous application of the southeast Asian digestive enzyme were you disabused of your natural human impulses and veritably abused with the transcendental promise of the particular nation-state whose particular domestic rulers thought it wise for you to kill and/or be killed (and/or permanently molested) in their place and on their behalf; and, as it would transpire in this case, all for jack. Forty years later you have arrived on the national stage, prepared to complete this circle of life as it was revealed to you in the viscous bas-relief of your own dysentery.

That's the story, anyway -- doubtless as much a surprise to the conductor of the Straight Talk Express as it is to anyone with the cognitive wherewithal to resist chanting "USA, USA" in response to varied external stimuli. Now it is left to him to pimp the perpetual farce, perpetrate the proverbial fraud, and pummel the already impoverished perspicacity of his world-weary fellow American lest the fantasy come undone. All things he, at one point or another in his esteemed career, might have frowned upon in principle, but which the wages of great power now demand; a rigorous shaking of the geriatric "money-maker," as it were. Or as the Catholic school bully of my formative years once remarked, "The time has come to pay the piper."

The new business feminism: Work is freedom

I like how the American business community is championing women's initiatives from the early 20th century -- like the right to employment -- and repackaging them as an attractive alternative to "militant" or "radical" feminism -- which is to say women's contemporary concerns. That's right, ladies: don't let the old boys club prevent you from returning to work three days after you give birth; show them you will keep at it for their sake -- gender differences be damned!

Country first

Vietnam. Now there was a just cause.

Behold the conservative feminist

Several pieces in the business press today suggest that Sarah Palin is a feminist: indeed, a greater example of a feminist than Hillary Clinton. The reasons cited include the fact that Palin is a working mother, and, on the Hillary score, Palin got where she is today without riding the coattails of some powerful man.

What "feminism" means is never coherently explained, so subsequent arguments turn into a predictable mess, loosely smeared around the formula that women + power = feminism. This is how FT columnist Chrystia Freeland arrives at the conclusion that achieving power without a man is more feminist than the opposite.

My own understanding of feminism is that it stands in opposition to any exercise of authority which denies women the opportunity to decide for themselves on issues which primarily affect them. (This is really just a restating of the classical anarchist position toward all authority -- that power requires the consent of those affected in order to have legitimacy -- in this case as it applies to gender.) So the test of feminism is not merely whether women hold positions of authority, but whether the authority held is legitimate vis-a-vis affected women.

By this measure, it is hard to see how Sarah Palin qualifies as a feminist; certainly not by the criteria that "she works," as there is no serious systemic challenge to American women pursuing this anymore. On the other hand, whether or not women are compensated in an equivalent fashion to their male counterparts when they work is another question entirely. Where Palin falls on this practice, and what she is doing about it (e.g., speaking out, supporting legislation; or, alternatively, keeping quiet to advance her own career at the expense others), would be a much better measure of her commitment to feminism. Unfortunately, all of the efforts to paint Palin a feminist have done so by conflating a conception of "good feminism" with behavior that is in fact already socially-prescribed -- or sanctioned -- for women by others.

Sarah Palin

McCain's vice-presidential pick has vowed to pop a virtuous cap through the very glass ceiling Hillary could only swat using the hammer of popular appeal and the sickle of dirty politics. Yet the RNC's strategy certainly smacks of a Laura Croftian approach to advancing women in power: construct an oddly-proportioned female avatar attractive enough to men -- namely, one that never challenges their world view and, even better, reinforces their prejudices -- and even they can be brought round to the feminist cause!

In the early 1990's, Laura Croft shattered the glass ceiling for ample-assed video game heroines with munificent mammaries, in the title Tomb Raider. She wasn't like those cock-hating, neo-nazi militant -- probably lesbian -- feminine characters like Princess Zelda, who were forever sending one out on endless errands with little to no prospect for conjugal reward, and who worst of all, with the exception of her ears (and who cares about those), insisted on being drawn to scale. I remember reading interviews with gamers at the time who confessed they didn't mind assuming the role of woman whose default orientation towards the player was always buttock-first except in sequences where a wandering teat might block the view.

As it is with the gelatinous adolescent gamer, so it may be with the contemporary conservative male. Here is Sarah Palin, a woman after their own hearts: a former beauty contestant and pseudo-businesswoman turned politico-familywoman; a self-proclaimed Christian firearm enthusiast who eats red meat and sees patriotic petroleum as the answer to the global eco-energy catastrophe. I have to commend the Republicans for depositing some excitement into the final lap of an increasingly somnolent campaign season, even if it amounts to little more than a dolled-up version of their own erotic fantasies -- in this case featuring a live human female. Congratulations.

News Digest

Russia: In all the western coverage of the Russian-Georgian crisis, find me an analyst who argues that US missile networks in Eastern Europe are part of the problem and I will give you a person without an interview.

Denver: Bill and Hillary speak; "Can't you smell the unity!?"

BOTOX: It's all about freedom of expression... (thanks Mary Beth)

Naomi Klein on Obama

One more CEO against EFCA

Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus writes today that "America [will] become France" if a new labor bill, the Employee Free Choice Act, were ever to become law. "It would virtually guarantee that every company becomes unionized," he says in the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Marcus' fears are reinforced by an experience he had in the 1970's, when he traveled to England only to discover "the airport workers, bus drivers and garbage collectors were all on strike." An investor in the British company he was looking to acquire remarked that "the U.K. was finished," explaining that the tax rate was 75%. This anecdote comprises the total body of evidence Marcus proffers in support of his paragraph's lead assertion that "[c]ountries other than france have suffered the consequences of bad labor laws" -- i.e., unions are susceptible to work stoppages, and employers are susceptible to hyperbole.

It's worth noting that Marcus does not explain why the EFCA is objectionable except on the above grounds that unions represent interests other than management, and that this bill could expand their base of support. As a result, he favors the current "secret-ballot" process of union certification simply because it has proven effective in achieving the opposite result: when employers have more time to respond to an organizing drive, they have more opportunities to thwart it, both legally and illegally. The EFCA would simply require majority signatures in a workplace to create a union. This can only be construed as "undemocratic" if one believes an employer should enjoy a de facto veto over the entire process.

Joe Biden: Mine eyes have seen the hoary!

Change we can deep-knee in.

Or Does It Explode?

There are few sights more pathetic than a man who so transparently hopes to wield authority over others that it frustrates his every attempt at doing so.

What is wrong with feminism today

I am about to tell you...

The beginning of Wikipedia's entry on feminism:

Feminism is a discourse...

Feminism is a discourse. Do you know what that means? Do adolescent girls? What about my mom? Or my sister?

To me, it sounds like feminism is a conversation with someone who can't say four words without becoming incomprehensible because they simply have too much graduate school debt to feel comfortable doing otherwise. But perhaps that is just me.

Alternatively, I suppose it is possible that feminism is more like a fireside chat with Tina Fey -- or perchance a drunken confession from Paris Hilton. I mean, who really knows what feminism is anyway -- and how could we ever? It is just a frilly pink mystery.

Now tell me what in world Joe Biden is going to do about it. This is a man whose track record with the Thosepeoples of the world may well have him penning a pro-woman tract entitled "What Women Get from Men: DICK; Take It Anyway You Want To"; that is if by "penning" I mean "pasting" -- which apparently I do. Yes, ladies, we may be screwed with Biden, but at least we won't be beaten.

When School Isn't About Education

Every institution has a bias that reflects the interests of its owners and management. In the case of American education, we are talking about public education in a country that is run by business. If you have ever been employed in a business, you know the prevailing concerns are that you a) show up on time, b) follow orders, and c) produce results in the manner prescribed. Compare that to your experience in the public school system. It is not a coincidence.

Institutions are complex, however, and there are always competing trends which may depart, sometimes significantly, from any de facto mandate. Paradoxically, this often includes participants who too rigorously advocate on behalf of the ostensible -- in fact, "official" -- purpose of a given institution: hospital staff who preference patient need over insurance company rules; journalists with a professional commitment to pursuing the truth; educators who teach critical thinking skills and endorse an impartial passion for learning, no matter where it may lead.

All of these are examples of contradictions within institutions that are either tolerated or subject to corrective action, depending on degree. Rarely, an individual case may be embraced for its usefulness to the reputation of an institution, reaffirming its "official mission" in the face of some scandal that was probably precipitated by its actual practice. Administrative discipline will frequently fail in instances where there is either adequate public exposure or where there is a widespread commitment among employees to the official mission versus a mere deference to power. Managers with the most power often know best when to yield, whether to public outcry or internal resistance, precisely because they have the most to lose.

US workers pay more from less unionization

Workers in the European Union are faring better than their American counterparts in the latest economic downturn due to higher unionization rates and job-security legislation, according to a feature in today's Wall Street Journal. Even non-union workers have benefited from union-negotiated laws linking wage-increases to inflation.

These types of measures predictably come under fire from economists who emphasize the dangers of a wage-price inflationary spiral, and naturally that would not be a good outcome. However, what we know at present is that millions of American workers are under significant economic stress in a way that their EU counterparts are not. Whether or not EU labor policies will lead to a wage-price spiral is an important question, but it is still a question, not a certainty. Given the impact that higher unemployment rates have on people's lives, one might hesitate to adopt a hawkish position on inflation in response to problems that are not yet obvious. (Albeit this is only a concern when the quality of "most people's lives" is assigned some value -- a dubious notion when we are talking about the breed of business economists who can praise "jobless recoveries," and so on.)

Dean Baker additionally points out the threat posed by US-style wage-stagnation to domestic consumption, and its potential role in hastening economic decline.

An orientation toward power

Great injustice is rarely countered by any perfect application of power. Feminism can exclude the less affluent; African-American advocacy groups can be homophobic; anti-colonialist movements substitute domestic despots for foreign ones; anti-war, pro-environment vegetarians can behave as terrorists; and almost every group either trivializes the contributions made by women or is openly hostile to them. The urgency of a good cause can too easily provide the basis for other abuses, which is why I believe Foucault once named the "strategic adversary" as being "the love of power -- in our everyday lives and behavior; the worship of the very thing that dominates and exploits us."

This is why I can only pledge fealty to the greatest dispersal of power possible -- not to parties or politicians or even "causes" in the abstract, since these are often the best vectors for the illegitimate application of power, invariably in the name of something just. All authority should be viewed impartially with great skepticism, until the guilty are proven innocent.

Musharraf resigns; Washington fields candidates for Pakistan

In the eyes the freedom-loving west, Pervez Musharraf was Pakistan's idealist strongman who merely suspended the constitution, sacked Supreme Court justices, jailed activists and imposed martial law when his authority was challenged. After all, to err is human, but to dutifully carry out Washington's will in an Islamic republic divine!

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As Condoleeza Rice recently clarified, democracy is a "unified political-economic model" of which the United States is the preeminent example. It follows that we can export ourselves to countries that still labor under the delusion of democracy as a political process to which all public choices are subject, including economic ones. This contributes handily to US fondness for dictators -- or the Chinese Communist Party, for example -- when they impose favorable economic or security outcomes in the face of whatever their respective populations would freely choose. Remember the first western appraisal of Musharraf after his 1999 coup: "He is someone we can do business with." This speaks volumes.

The War Train: A Singing Metaphor



In this clip, government convinces the public to sing from its war hymnal until the public realizes its mistake.

The Unbearable Lightness of Jihad

Perhaps it is refreshing for statesmen and journalists of the older set to strike a Cold War pose after taking it on the chin for so long with this terrorism junk. Don't get me wrong: terrorism is great in a pinch, but will it really buy you a fleet of F-22s and an X-Box 360 for every soldier? Maybe the notion of Osama Bin Laden turning the free world into a seventh-century Islamic caliphate using horse-riders and Kalashnikovs isn't the best long-term narrative for a defense-based economy after all. China and Russia on the other hand: they can't disappear into the mountainous borders of Obscuristan; nor can they disperse their armies like swarthy, bearded spores across all continents while occupying none, scarcely sustaining a ripple in the minds of Americans for very long, especially when gas is $4 a gallon. All I know is that if I-95 is going to be propped up with sheetrock and particle board because using public money for public purposes = socialism, people would probably feel more comfortable subsidizing invisible tanks and nuclear-armed Wall-Es if they got to focus their wrath, a la competitive sporting events, on the palpable evil of existing nations.

Naomi Klein on Milton Friedman, Oil and the "Shock Doctrine"

US response to Russia makes the worst of a bad situation

Western analysis of the Russian-Georgian conflict is discounting long-standing Russian security concerns, and setting the stage for a series of provocative policy responses that will only exacerbate tensions in the region.

The greatest of these mistakes is arguably the US-sponsored "missile defense" project in eastern Europe, first billed as a requisite defense against Iran but now fast-tracked under the new pretext of Russian intransigence. Russian officials have said this single issue transcends any territorial dispute on their border -- surely comprehensible to Western observers were they to imagine "defensive" Russian missiles deployed in Mexico; or, as recent history would have it, Cuba.

American efforts to paint Russia the aggressor in order to advance military objectives in Europe are only likely to fuel the kind of siege mentality that prevailed in Moscow through its Soviet years, giving added incentive to regional expansionism. This is not a course to which any sane observer should hope to return. Regrettably, failure of Western media outlets to provide any manner of even-handed analysis of the Russian-Georgian affair, coupled with the bellicose declarations of our resident lunatics, is doing much to push us in that direction.

Wal-Mart lies to employees about new union bill

Wal-Mart may be the subject of an investigation into whether it violated federal election laws by discouraging employees from voting Democratic this fall. Video released to the Wall Street Journal depicts store managers circulating inaccurate information about the Employee Free Choice Act, and calling Democratic efforts to pass the bill "scary."

In the hour-and-a-half meeting, held for managers in a Southern state, the leader tells employees that their wages may be reduced to minimum wage for up to three months before a contract is negotiated, that union authorization cards violate workers' right to privacy by including their Social Security numbers on them and that if a small unit within a store votes to unionize, the entire store will be unionized.

"If you have 10 associates in a photo lab and six sign union authorization cars, now the store is unionized," the meeting leader told employees. "Six people can make a decision for 350 people," which is about the average number of workers in a Walmart supercenter.

Wal-Mart CEO, Lee Scott; the National Association of Manufacturers, and the US Chamber of Commerce are some of the biggest players to come out against passage of the EFCA. Their public strategy has been to argue against the bill on the grounds that it would harm workers by exposing them to a more viable organizing process, leaving less room for company interference. But the fact that internal discussions (in this case, within Wal-Mart) do not mirror these public concerns, and in fact contain numerous fabrications about the law, suggests that industry is not being forthright in its objection to the bill.

Wall St. outsources to India


from The New York Times

“There’s a huge amount of grunt work that has been done by $250,000-a-year Wharton M.B.A.’s,” Mr. Kessler said. “Some of that stuff, it’s natural to outsource it.”

He added, “These are middle of the office jobs, not back office, but they’re not the people on the front line.”

After research, the next wave may include more sophisticated jobs like the creation of derivative products, quantitative trading models and even sales jobs from the trading floors.

I am eager to hear the forthcoming arguments about how this practice represents "unfair trade" and puts national security at risk when it affects more than just manufacturing jobs and lower-income workers. Oh, sweet anticipation.

With little to gain, US favors Russian-Georgian ceasefire

International reaction to the conflict between Georgia and Russia has been unanimously in favor of a ceasefire, which offers the best hope for the region's affected civilian populations.

The consensus stands in contrast to other regional conflicts in recent years. In 2006, the United States backed Israel's massive bombing campaign against Lebanon, killing over a thousand Lebanese under the pretext of "existential" self-defense against rebel rocket attacks which killed 44 Israelis. The ceasefire agreement, had it arrived earlier, could have reduced both figures substantially. However, absent pressure from the US, Israel was given broad license to keep civilians on both sides in harm's way as the country's leadership tried vainly to impose a political solution by force. Capitalizing on this power advantage was called exercising "Israel's right of defense" by the American intellectuals and officials who helped prolong the bloodshed.

In the current conflict, the United States is allied with the weaker nation, making protracted hostilities much less attractive. Georgia is neither strong enough to stand up to Russia, nor perceived as valuable enough to risk igniting a wider conflict, so the US favors an end to hostilities and a return to the status quo. Fortunately, this gives the international community more leverage with Russia, who, as the stronger party in the conflict, doubtless sees an advantage in sustaining its campaign, much as the US and Israel did in 2006.

Naomi Klein on China, the Olympics and "McCommunism"

Israel expands settlements in Jerusalem; quiet "What we sees, we takes"-policy has worked before

An Israeli plan for new residential construction in Jerusalem has drawn fire from the European Union, which says the move undermines the Middle East peace process. Israel is proscribed from new settlement activity both by international law and as a condition of the US-sponsored negotiations it has officially endorsed. However, ongoing US military and political support for Israel has largely outweighed any costs associated with continued illegal behavior.

Finally! Some good news...

"The antichrist isn't going to be an American, so it can't possibly be Obama. The Bible makes it clear he will be from an obscure place, like Romania."

Defending a worker's right to be fired

George McGovern wants the Democratic party to protect a worker's right to a secret ballot in union organizing drives. That is nice. I wonder if George McGovern will protect a worker's right not to be illegally fired in the months or years it takes to actually hold a secret ballot, however, all while the employer dances circles around the law or draws plans to close the offending facility (or merely threatens to do so). Oh, yes, I forgot: the fine for illegal firings is $5, adjusted for inflation. I can understand why George McGovern's first concern -- shared by the Chamber of Commerce and Lee Scott of Wal-Mart, btw -- is to preserve a worker's right to a secret ballot. Standing on a chair in the company cafeteria and asking your co-workers if they would accept instant union status would be more secret than the high-theater farce that exists now.

Solzhenitsyn

It's distressing to me how people like Alexander Solzhenitsyn or Elie Wiesel will bear witness to the suffering of the most vulnerable only when they, or people like them, are included in this category. They don't take principled stands that preference the poor under any political context, but rather make politics a condition of their advocacy. This is all the more horrible considering that their most celebrated works -- "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and "Night," respectively -- seem explicitly aimed at the injustice of organized social violence against defenseless populations as a rule, not merely because it happened to them. Yet Wiesel is notoriously uncritical of Israeli policy towards its ghettoized Palestinian subjects, while Solzhenitsyn somehow came around to championing Putin's authoritarianism after winning the Nobel prize for ably chronicling Stalin's.

Domestic drilling will not relieve high gas prices

Congress has breached a weeks-long impasse over an energy bill ostensibly aimed at alleviating high gas prices, but which economists say will carry no benefit for American consumers at the pump. Top Democrats have resisted lifting a ban on off-shore drilling, but popular support for increased production combined with Republican efforts to cast opponents as obstructionist has made that stance politically untenable.

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The oil industry and their allies in Congress have successfully argued that the solution to high gas prices is increased domestic production, namely in areas that have previously been off-limits (in this case for environmental reasons).

It is widely recognized that this kind of drilling will have no meaningful impact on prices, since the amount of oil projected is too small, the time frame too broad (it can take decades to establish new production), and the often misunderstood reality that oil is sold on a world market: just because it is produced here does not mean it is consumed here. Advocates, such as the Bush administration, do not deny any of this, instead claiming that the move will "send a message" to oil markets, thus relaxing prices.

The new compromise can be read as victory for oil companies, whose scope of operations will be expanded to ecologically sensitive areas, and who stand to profit most from the undertaking. Also, members of Congress will appear to be taking action on high gas prices during an election season, as opposed to doing nothing; which, apart from crafting a long-term move away from fossil fuels and supporting renewables, is about all they can do about energy costs in the short-term anyway.

Operation Scheduled Departure

The Bush administration has launched a new initiative in its war on NAFTA refugees by inviting them to deport themselves at their own expense. Surrendering would incur no penalty other than to return to one's home country, where the same conditions that encourage border-crossing -- landlessness, joblessness and hunger -- remain.

The move may be seen as a last-ditch effort for the White House to expel as many "illegal people" before the end of the Bush term. The administration's prior strategy -- raiding private homes with tactical assault teams in order to "capture" illegal suspects -- proved less popular with local communities.

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The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened Mexican markets to subsidized US agro-exports -- like corn -- which undercut local farmers. It also eliminated Mexican subsidies for small and mid-sized farming, displacing many peasant communities, and consolidated land-holdings under multinational conglomerates. This had the anticipated effect of pushing Mexican peasants either into domestic manufacturing or, in many cases, over the border and into the US.

Mustafa Barghouti: Palestinians have already compromised a compromise

FT

"In one case, an experienced terrorism prosecutor who was considered by some in the DoJ as 'head and shoulders' above other ­candidates was denied a counter-terrorism job by Ms Goodling because his wife was active in Democratic politics. The post was later filled by a registered Republican candidate who did not meet the basic experience-­related qualifications of the job."

That's What She Said

"When you have a systemic challenge like the war in Darfur, it requires more than a few mercenaries, even very well equipped and very well trained," he said.

[UN chief of peacekeeping Jean-Marie] Guehenno was responding to a question about an editorial in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal titled "Mercenaries for Darfur."

What Batman and Bush Have in Common

from the Wall Street Journal

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war.

This is the best piece of political satire not to appear in The Onion in a very long time.

Murdoch's Journal

The Wall Street Journal has sponsored a poll asking American voters whether they better identify with the "background and values" of a white POW on one hand, or a non-white, multi-ethnic, Ivy league-educated man who was raised by a single parent in Indonesia and whose middle name is "Hussein," on the other.

The responses form the basis of a front-page feature in today's paper -- so dense with intrigue one gets the impression it was applied by trowel with Mr. Murdoch's own quaking hands.

Petrol-funded US thinktank says 100% green energy possible in 10 yrs

from the FT

Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington thinktank, said: "Mr Gore has moved a long way from the solutions recommended in An Inconvenient Truth : replace your light bulbs with compact fluorescents, buy a hybrid car, and telecommute from home.

"We couldn't come close to [his] goal of producing all our electricity from solar, wind, and geothermal energy in 10 years without coercive, even authoritarian government."

It's not always easy getting the "other side" of a story, journalistically speaking. Especially when one side is Al Gore speaking about global warming. Invariably, protesters will either be energy companies or -- as in this case -- the organizations funded by them.

This is a good example of how even high-end reporting can be undermined by the twin perils of time-constraint and a lack of willing takers.

The paradox in this case is that Mr. Ebell is right: confronting global warming will require governmental "coercion" of the interests he represents, as prescribed by an overwhelming majority of Americans -- in other words, a fairly straightforward democratic process. That he has chosen to label this authoritarian is more than likely because the outcome does not benefit his employers.

Alterman on Obama



Listen to Boromir talk about all the good he would do for Gondor if only he could have the ring of power!

"If you want to be effective in this country, you have to operate from within the consensus." Alterman does not elaborate on whose views make "the consensus," but what he is talking about is elite consensus, not popular consensus.

Elite consensus on Israel, for example, has been to back its most reactionary elements, whereas popular consensus (in the US but also worldwide) has favored a negotiated two-state settlement with the Palestinians. But since popular concerns do not count, our elected leaders must "get things done" by deftly balancing the demands of various elite groups.

Suggesting that democracy might be a welcome ALTERnative to one or another group "doing some good" on everybody else is nothing more than a romantic recipe for electoral loss. That may be true, but how much do we gain by winning, and is it enough?

Whites satisfied with racial progress

from the Financial Times

According to a survey by the University of Chicago, 79 per cent of the US's blacks believe either that they will not achieve racial equality in their lifetime, or that it will never be attained. In contrast, almost two-thirds of whites believe it has already been achieved.

I can't fail to reference William Kristol's op-ed following Obama's Philadelphia speech on race in March, when he wrote, "Over the last several decades, we’ve done pretty well in overcoming racial barriers and prejudice."

Now, if you had to choose between America's two favorite races -- aka "white" and "black" -- which would you guess William Kristol belongs to?

Martin Luther King, Jr. just loved the limelight

It should be clear to everyone of respectable opinion that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s role in the civil rights movement was largely inspired by his insatiable love for attention, and that his assassination stemmed mainly from his jealously of younger upstarts like Malcom X taking the bullets first.

Michael Eric Dyson, sociology professor at Georgetown University and Baptist preacher has this to say about Jeremiahgate:

If YouTube were around when Martin Luther King Jr. preached to black churches, I'm afraid he would be as viciously condemned as Jeremiah Wright, for he said the following to black congregations: "America was founded on genocide, and a nation that is founded on genocide is destructive."

It's worth remembering that King was widely condemned for his opposition to the Vietnam war and his "Poor People's Campaign" for economic justice by the very Northern establishment types who loved him so for exposing the myriad sins of the South. It is very important when you are endorsed by power never to step outside the role you are assigned to.

Change We Can Upheave In

from the New York Times

This country needs a healthy and open discussion of race. Mr. Obama's repudiation of Mr. Wright is part of that.

Are you a person of color who would like to be praised for initiating a much-needed national discussion on race? Easy! Just find another person of color who is already talking about race and denounce them. Then keep quiet. This time-honored trick will earn you many a friend in high places.

NYT: Black preacher too charismatic

Yesterday the New York Times ran what was for all practical purposes an editorial on Jeremiah Wright disguised as a news story. Among the insights to be gained was this gem:

[I]t turns out that Mr. Wright doesn’t hate America, he loves the sound of his own voice.

It's hard to know what particular tool the author thought an African-American pastor would use to ply his trade if speaking was too much in bad taste.

Wright is accused of enjoying himself too much, speaking excitedly -- and on topics ranging from the bible to world affairs to black history! He is also indicted for making the very forum that developed in response to the media's portrayal of him as "anti-American" too much about himself and not enough about Obama. In conclusion, Jeremiah Wright is simply too much the black preacher, and too little the campaign asset to be useful to anyone of importance at the Times or within the Democratic party.

Official anthem of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999

The Rub: Wright is Right, but not quite White

Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, has a knack for saying things that are broadly incomprehensible to people in high places.

Here is one example:

Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles...

Now, to be sure, one can debate the extent to which the United States has done "terrorism on other people," particularly if one was raised within its borders, and especially if one has, with hard work, ascended to some position of importance within either its media or university system, or other avenue of influence.

But here is a useful rule of thumb: people who aren't in the line of fire can do lots of things that the people who are can't. When you are hiding your family from US produced ordnance, or from the "security services" of your US-backed dictatorship, you need not debate with loved ones over the "quality" of the experience being provided courtesy of the American tax-payer. And in the event that you lose a loved one, you need not debate internally whether or not it was "worth it" -- human life being a finite resource, it probably wasn't.

Do such circumstances come about as a result of US policy? It is the kind of question that is best posed to a Nicaraguan farmer or a Saudi Arabian woman -- people who live in close proximity to the effects of our policies -- rather than, say, our highly-educated friends at Harvard or NBC; or at the editorial pages of the New York Times -- people who hear the kinds of things Jeremiah Wright says and faint. Not that there is anything wrong with them -- they just don't see very far beyond their own experiences, nor are they paid to do so.

Carter bitch-slaps Bush on Middle East

It is not a good sign when the business of a nation must be carried out on a volunteer basis by ex-statesmen who have not held office in over a quarter century. Nevertheless, Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas leaders in Syria this week was the most constructive development in the Mideast "peace process" since the Bush administration adopted the crisis as its pet cause.

In talks with Carter, Hamas consented to respect any agreement negotiated between rival faction leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israel, provided such an agreement was ratified by Palestinians in a referendum.

The Bush administration reacted with wrath at Carter's initiative, as it undermined the ongoing US/Israeli narrative that "there is no partner" for negotiations in Gaza, a popular justification for the ongoing military and economic embargo there. Mideast scholar Juan Cole writes that up to a million Palestinians now face starvation as the UN has been prevented from distributing food aid by the blockade.