Friday Cat Blogging from the Left Paw Society

Tuna

On silent thought

Great little editorial here by Ignacio Ramonet on the role of intellectuals. He mentions, in passing, that Bernard Henri-Levy is "indulg[ing] in exhibitionist self-destructiveness." Yeah, no kidding. The man who is often quoted as France's most important philosopher (and who is therefore understood to be a "French Leftist"), actually writes for a conservative magazine and is often nothing more than an apologist for conservative ideology. Also, his road trip last year, meant to cast him as some kind of new de Toqueville, produced one of the most boring series of articles I've recently read. (It was in the Atlantic Monthly, another stealth conservative magazine, IMHO).

Like so many on the right, BHL fights so hard to un-explain (philosophically distort) the obvious truth that his writing becomes tedious. As Lloyd Benson would say, I knew de Toqueville, and BHL, you're no de Toqueville. Anway, read Ramonet's little piece on public intellectuals and you'll see why we are where we are.

Silent thought

By Ignacio Ramonet

Once again, during the recent revolt against the First Employment Contract, the enthusiasm and dynamism evident on French streets were in marked contrast with the disconcerting silence of French thinkers and writers. The same was true during the November riots in the banlieues. There was a lot of chattering, but few, other than such rare figures as Jean Baudrillard and John Berger, were able to read the events, uncover their deeper significance and suggest what they might portend. With no relevant or encouraging diagnosis forthcoming, society was left in the dark about its symptoms and in danger of succumbing to further crises.

In France an intellectuel is defined as someone who uses a reputation in science, the arts or culture to mobilise public opinion in support of causes that he or she regards as just. In modern states, it has been the role of the intellectual for two centuries to make sense of social trends, illuminating the path towards greater liberty and less alienation.

What the recent crises have demonstrated is how much we miss the analytical intelligence of Pierre Bourdieu, Cornelius Castoriadis and Jacques Derrida, to name three great thinkers no longer with us. A sense of loss has inspired us to examine the current war of ideas. Are there any real thinkers left, or has the media explosion shattered their authority? Why (as if the hatred of fascists and the aversion of the American right were not enough) do such writers as Bernard-Henri Lévy indulge in exhibitionist self-destructiveness? There is a central issue here - the way in which, in publishing and the universities, private interests are enlisting prestigious thinkers as allies in an ideological struggle.

Here are a few thoughts on the subject from some major thinkers in the past. First, Michel Foucault (1): “For a long time, ‘leftwing’ intellectuals spoke out as masters of truth and justice . . . They were heard, or claimed the right to be heard, as representatives of the universal. To be an intellectual was to be, to a degree, the conscience of all. But it is many years since intellectuals were called upon to fulfil this role. Intellectuals became used to operating, not within the universal, the exemplary, the just-and-true-for-all, but in given sectors, in the specific contexts where their own working or living conditions situated them . . . Working in such situations undoubtedly gave them a far more concrete and immediate awareness of struggle. And there they encountered problems that were specific, not universal, and often different from those of the proletariat. I would argue that this brought them closer to the masses, since these were real, material, everyday struggles in the course of which they often encountered, albeit in a different form, the same enemy (the multinationals, the police and legal machines, property speculation) as the urban and rural proletariat. That is what I mean by ‘specific’, as opposed to the ‘universal’, intellectual.”

Then there is Gilles Deleuze on what to do with ideas (2): “A theory is exactly like a toolbox. It must serve some purpose. It must work, and not just for its own sake. If there is no one to use it, starting with the theorist, who thus becomes a practitioner, it is either worthless or its time has not yet come. You do not go back to a theory, you make others and there are always more to be made.”

Pierre Bourdieu (3) proposes a new and radical thinktank: “Many historians have highlighted the role played by thinktanks in the production and imposition of the neoliberal ideology that now rules the world. To counter the work of these expert groups, appointed by our rulers, we need the help of critical networks . . . They should form autonomous intellectual collectives, capable of defining their own objectives and the limits to their agenda and action.

“Groups should start with negative criticism, producing and disseminating tools to defend us against symbolic domination, increasingly backed by the authority of science. Drawing on the strength afforded by their collective skills and authority, such groups can subject the dominant message to logical criticism, targeting its vocabulary, also its arguments. They may subject it to sociological criticism by highlighting the factors influencing the people who produce the dominant message, starting with journalists. They may counter the supposedly scientific claims of experts, particularly in the field of economics.

“The whole structure of critical thought for political purposes needs rebuilding. This cannot be the work of just one great thinker, locked in solitary thought, or the appointed spokesperson of some body, speaking on behalf of all those deprived of the means to speak. On the contrary, intellectual collectives can play an essential role, helping to lay the foundations in society for the collective production of realistic utopias.”

Right: reality-based utopias (i.e., hope and striving for a better future, not some crazy-scheme like gated communities, Disneyland, or Celebration Florida).

I have to say, though, that I've read all of these folks, and, frankly, I also find them tedious (but undeniably pithy). For our think-tanks to work, we have to get back to simpler language and direct engagement rather than engagement filtered through theory. Simple does not mean simplistic. When theorists opt for too much academic language, they opt for disengagement--hence my problems with much of this. Baudrillard, for one, took off his academic masks after 9/11 and wrote some of his most probing works, which also happened to be a culmination of his cultural intuitions of the last 40 years.

We do not need the supposed "authority" of obscure language to inform a progressive future; reality itself provides us with plenty of examples of the failures of the right (and left) to allow us to move ahead. Public polls on heath-care, on clean air and water are the models for this.

Friday Cat Blogging from the Left Paw Society

Staring at a puddle, or the sky in the puddle, or something. Besides the NSA, of course, who really knows what cats think?

Independent Women

As I was perusing Wikipedia last night, I came upon Norman Podhoretz's wife's name, Midge Decter. It turns out that Decter created something called the Independent Women's Forum. I was curious and scooted over to their site. It didn't take long to see that the IWF seems more about Right-Wing propaganda than helping women. A quick look at the blog and you know you're in Michelle Malkin territory:

Some choice quotes from the blog

On Human Rights:
Aren’t you sick of all the propaganda about awful it is for the "tortured" Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects detained down at the U.S. Naval base at Guananamo Bay?

On Iraq:
Michael Barone blows the lid off a story that the mainstream media is covering up:

“Things are better than you think. Yes, I know, most Americans are in a sour mood these days, convinced that the struggle in Iraq is an endless cycle of bloodshed, certain that our economy is in dismal shape, lamenting that the nation and the world are off on the wrong track. That’s what polls tell us. But if we look at some other numbers, we’ll find that we are living not in the worst of times but in something much closer to the best. What do I mean?”

On Grief:
Another tragic automobile accident claimed the lives of two promising high-school girls over the weekend. Quite predictably, grief counselors are descending vulture-like on their school this morning.

It’s a safe bet than none of the youths will be told to suck it up and be dignified.

Ok, you get the drift: things are GREAT in Iraq; torture is good; counselors undermine the American culture of "personal responsibility." They sound like one of those outfits that the Bush administration could get along with...Hey, wait a minute! Look what I found: The IWF was given a grant to "to focus on the immediate promotion of women’s full political and economic participation in Iraq."

Obviously, the IWF is a culturally sensitive organization that is uniquely qualified to bring their brand of "feminism" to Iraq and I'm sure that they got their grant fair and square. No matter that Lynn Cheney, Midge Decter, Kate O'Beirne are among its former directors.

Yes, they got their grant because

IWF is the essential, informed, articulate voice of thoughtful and caring mainstream women in the policy and media battles that shape our nation's future. While showing that we have both a head and heart, we promote voluntary, cooperative approaches to life's challenges that can brighten the future.

I love these people.

"William! William! Get your hands...

off my cash!" Tom cried.

"You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers, Delay. This money's mine and I'm going to put it, uh, in my freezer," William shouted back, never once diverting his gaze from the former exterminator's black, devious eyes.

But William Jefferson felt a pang of fear run down his spine. Delay was "The Man." He ran The System. He knew how to cause pain, how to get Homeland Security on your ass, how to humiliate you, how to put you on life support and piously, mockingly pray for you on TV. Delay was a monster and a machine.

Finally, swallowing hard and hoping that Delay hadn't noticed the expression of doubt that had crept across his face, William spoke again:

"No way, man. I'm not giving you a dime. You never let me in on your game, why should I give you a cut? No. No fucking way. Look at you. Your wife, your kid--they've earned 500K just from working for your PACs. You can walk into Citronelle, smoking a Cuban, and a free table just appears. You see, I don't have friends named Bush, Cheney, Abramoff, Scanlon, Ralph Reed or Terry Schiavo--I'm just one man."

Delay looked down at the William's briefcase. His nostrils flared as the scent of money filled the room, then a look of calm came over the man from Sugarland's pock-marked countenance as he spoke:

"That's right, William. You're just one man, and that's why you'll go down in flames. That's the number one rule of America: failure, like success, is only individual. Do you think the news programs are going to take the time to explain a system? Does anybody remember the Keating Five and John McCain? How about Neil Bush and the S&L scandal? Nope. Question the individual, not the racket... "

"Sir!" an aide said, busting in, "there's a vote in five minutes."

Delay turned around and headed out the door. Pausing a moment, he turned to William and said:

"Too bad, William, you could have been a Republican."

Little did he know, but Delay was right. You never question the system and you never operate outside of it. Furthermore, you never--never--go into public life with any combination of the names "William" and "Jefferson."
****

Excerpts from "Conversations Overheard in a Capitol Hill Restroom."

Police State Porn

The NSA story seems like old news now, having come out last week, but I can't seem to get it off my mind. For a while, I was merely indignant, but then I realized that this latest revelation was echoing in my mind because it was also a reverberation of so many other moments in this administration's history. The story also reminded me of the state of our country, not only politically, but also socially. What kind of community allows this to happen? I am not--I don't think--a naive fool who thinks we should be one happy family, but I do believe that our nation has the possibility of better communicating a few national aspirations to each other and perhaps even fulfilling them.

Currently, we Americans have the illusion that watching our neighbors is the same thing as living with and taking care of them. We seem to think that keeping an eye on each other leads to protection, that surveillance is the same as guardianship, that knowing ourselves through voyeurism can somehow replace real community. This is tragic--but not necessarily inevitable as some historians would have us believe.

A real community watches out for itself, but it does not cast narcisisstic, domineering glares. Its members know each other and not merely of them. A community has institutions that reflect it such as health care and schools and libraries. Of course, not only do Americans often lack this sense of civic community, the Bush administration is actively undermining our ability to create such a thing. And that is perverse.

The current administration's obsession with controlling, gathering (and possibly abusing) surveillance is nothing more than a form of voyeuristic pornography for an elite for whom even the illusion of domination, of total information (and sensory) knowledge brings pleasure--and certainly gathering it all, all the information, all the records brings merely over-stimulation, not true understanding, interaction or follow-through. And perhaps follow-through and arrests are not really the intent.

Indeed, today on CNN when Bill Frist refused to say (citing secrecy) whether the NSA's culling had delivered even a single arrest, it is highly likely that he didn't name an arrest because there haven't been many, if any at all. In fact, the program probably does not deter terrorism or catch terrorists. But this lack of anti-crime effectiveness in no way diminishes the effect such a program has on the American psyche as an intimidating information-gathering practice. Nor does it diminish the feeling of power it confers upon those who control it. And that is why I call it pornographic and voyeuristic, because consummation (in this case, criminal convictions) need only be a distant dream as long as the power feeds those who find use in this technology. Our leaders seem addicted to this feeling and, for them, dealing with the FISA court is like looking the adult store clerk in the eye. It diminishes power. It ruins the effect.

Of course, all of this parallels (in form and sometimes function) the "legalization" of torture, the previous NSA wiretapping revelations, the perverse use of language in things like the Clear Skies Act (Initiative?) and Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL), the strangeness (cruelty) of appointing a racist judge on MLK's birthday, and the countless acts of disrespect and imposed indignity documented over Bush's already interminably long tenure in the White House. As Lambert at Corrente noted (according to FDL), Bush explained the NSA program right in front of a large graphic detailing the NSA's "choke points" where they do their information gleaning. That is called rubbing your nose in it. It is a form of humiliation that brings pleasure to some.

So forget for a moment, if you will, that we have laws in the form of a constitution. Forget that we have a congress. Forget that we have a FISA court. Instead, think of community and all of the above as iterations of a form of community that protects itself from outside threats, from inside threats, and all the while protects the weakest members within that community from its predators. It is from that sense of community that the laws, the constitution and the courts originally arose. Now, regardless of their implementations and interpretations through history, we should strive for that sense of natural law and common good. And that is why the predation and voyeurism are dangerous: they are not merely prone to abuse, they abuse, demean, demoralize and eventually weaken the very community they supposedly serve.

So when the cries of incompetence, stupidity, hubris and greed are more or less forgotten, one defining description of the the GW Bush presidency will remain, must remain: that of the predator, of overwhelming and inexorable predation that gets off on power, that gets off on peeking, prying and on the effect such acts have. Predation of labor. Predation of markets. Predation of public lands. Predation of foreign lands. Predation of public discourse. Predation of our "unalienable" rights to privacy in our bodies, our homes and in our communities. We have been violated.

Sorry

for lack of posts. I hope to find a minute in the next few days.

Illogical and Inane at "The Nation"

This week The Nation has a particularly inane article (behind its firewall) that simultaneously channels Joe Klein and the DLC. In "Help Wanted: GOP Managers (With Pay Scales Soaring, Only Bumblers Are Willing to Work for the Government," Thomas Geoghegan succeeds at what so many Washington pundits are good at: speaking from a purportedly Democratic point of view while consistently undermining Democratic and democratic ideals. To say that Geoghegan's article is silly is to give it too much credit. Moreover that implies that the progressive left should laugh it off. We shouldn't, and here's why.

The article starts off by making a few correct points:

It seems that the Republican Party, the business party, the party of management, has a lot of difficulty managing. Our government cannot execute the basic plays. Let's look past Katrina, and FEMA, and Michael Brown. Let's look past the mismanagement of the oil and gas leases out West, the FDA's bungling over Guidant and its appointment (subsequently retracted) of a veterinarian to head the Office of Women's Health. Let's just consider the new Medicare drug program. The Bush Administration can't even perform a simple thing like getting people off the state Medicaid computer list and onto the Medicare computer list. In 2004 there was a serious shortage of flu vaccine. John Kerry failed to make an issue of it, but the voters should have been alarmed. It was an omen of the bungling to come in New Orleans. This is a government that cannot do even simple things.

Ok. Clear enough. But, starting with his second paragraph, Geoghegan goes seriously astray: "It appears that the Republicans when in power have no good managers. In an economy of superstars who make millions, the GOP can't afford to hire them, especially the ones who are indifferent to public service and gravitate to the Republicans in the first place--or to no party at all." [Emphasis mine]

Let's put aside for a moment some of Geoghegan's assumptions that business superstars are necessarily better managers than promotions from the ranks; that anyone making less than a "superstar" salary must be less competent; that someone who is indifferent to public service is going to enter government (at any salary) and act in its (and the people's) best interest.

Geoghegan goes on to write:

What may be more crippling to Bush's efforts to recruit people is not the CEO pay but the pay of the vice presidents just below them. That's where the government might look for talent to manage at the assistant secretary level. But it is questionable how many of these managers can afford public service--for a year perhaps, but not for three or four, much less two presidential terms. A friend of mine in a top-rank job at a huge global firm told me of a colleague of his in a rising American company. The colleague was now head of personnel, or human relations. "And do you know what his salary is?" my friend told me. "It's $5 million a year." Five million dollars a year--for a personnel director. It is unlikely this man is going to go home and tell his wife, "I'm ready to work for $120,000 a year because I want to help George Bush reogranize the Census Bureau."

[snip]

Now what's most distinctive about Bush is that he's floundering to find managers.

[snip]

There should be some sympathy for George Bush's attempts to persuade a talented human relations manager to give up $5 million a year to take a job writing regulations for the Federal Register. It seems unfair to question the patriotism of such people...It's hard to take in the scale of sacrifice.

You know, I do question the patriotism of anyone who puts money above public service. Sacrifice? How is that people who preach all day about the sacrifices of soldiers can't subsist on over 100K per year? But let's assume government jobs are too big of a "sacrifice" for people on Wall Street and K street. Are there any real Americans left to do the job?

Well, millions of firefighters, school teachers, soldiers and others live happy lives in this country without being solely motivated by money. Perhaps they couldn't manage FEMA, you say. Fine. Yet there are governors and state-level managers around the country who have spent their lives in dedicated public service who could easily manage FEMA, Census or any other government branch. Even George Bush hired a competent, rich Secretary of Treasury, Paul O'Neill. O'Neill did a good job, he was honest, reliable, concerned--and therefore he was forced to retire. And therein lies the problem with Geoghegan's assumptions about our president. Is it not possible that what normal citizens see as mismanagement (by Brown, by Chertoff, by Rumsfeld) is actually precisely the result that George Bush and corrupt Republicans want? Is is not possible that many right-wing people want to manage government towards implosion and failure because their goal is to eliminate or severely reduce public programs like Social Security, Medicare, FEMA, HUD, or HHS? I would argue that Republican rhetoric of the last twenty years has embraced the anti-democratic and oftentimes racist values of those who opposed FDR and of the John Birsh Society. I would argue that structural failure at, say, FEMA, is actually considered a sucess by some people like Grover Norquist, who wish strangle government until it dies. I would argue that George Bush agrees with Grover Norquist, as his tax program proves, and that George Bush is doing his part to hasten the collapse of the Great Society and the New Deal. Given this, no one should have sympathy for George Bush.

We should fear our president for his ability to do harm, and we should fear his pseudo-critics (who are actually apologists) like Geoghegan, who fail to understand the connections between our government's failures and the underlying "conservative" philosophy that seeks their doom.

Furthermore, pointing out the exorbitant salaries of corporate America does little to convince me that paying government managers more is necessary, nor does it convince me that "only bumblers" are willing to work for government. Perhaps I am one of those "Liberals [who] tend to sneer about the revolving door and how so many in the GOP cash in on public service via lobbying on K street." Well, since all that GOP cashing in is proving to be highly felonious, well, allow me a sneer or two. Also allow me to believe that K street is not good for America regardless of its reality.

Geoghegan doesn't convince me either that our government is naturally full of "bumblers" and that we need corporate assistance. Is Geohegan saying that Richard Clarke is a bumbler? Are all of our generals? The FAA? The National Park Service? These agencies have, without a doubt, numerous mid- to upper-level managers more than capable and more than willing to the job. Likewise, there is more than ample evidence that Bush and the Repbulicans want to gut government programs. In other words, Bush did not promote internally because, as I said, he has neither the American people's nor its government's interest in mind.

Bush does not deserve our sympathy, he deserves our scorn--as do Geoghegan and the Nation's editors for publishing this article that sounds like it emanated from the fingers of Joe Klein. Really. There are more problems with Geoghegan's argument that I won't go into, and this article should have been sent back as a first draft with the words "Rewrite after checking with reality and an exorcist specializing in DLC possessions" written on the first page. With so many good journalists like Jeremy Scahill and Naomi Klein to call, The Nation could have filled these pages with an opionion worthy of its reader's time. They didn't and in so doing they hurt the Democratic and democratic causes they normally serve.

It's Mayday...

Today should be the day when all but the most essential workers in the U.S. get the day off. Alas, today is Law Day. And, you know, sometimes symbolism is important, and today should be a symbolic day. It is a date that commemorates the weekend, the 8-hour workday, child-labor laws, etc. Instead, our governmen t calls it Law Day, as if worker activism and the law were contradictory. I wonder how many high-school teachers are using today as a teaching moment about anti-labor forces in the U.S.? I wonder how many of them feel comfortable doing so?

Full Metal Pinochet

Driftglass says it like it is:

These are the fuckers who learned at the feet of Nixon. And who believe that the mistakes Nixon made had nothing whatsoever to do with him trying to do a sweep-and-clear of the Constitution with a flamethrower.

According to their Milhousology, the only errors Tricky Dick ever made were tactical. That in the end he didn’t have the nerve to do what needed to be done: burn the tapes, chuck a few dozen journalists and liberals into federal graybar – maybe have one or two executed for ginned war crimes to tune up the rest -- and roll a few tanks in the streets if necessary.

That he pussed out when he should have gone Full Metal Pinochet.

Friday Cat Blogging from the Left Paw Society

All-time-stupid web-feature award (a rant)

Is it "Foreign policy for idiots" or "Foreign Policy: For Idiots"? Take a look at this "web feature" over at Foreign Policy and see what you think?They even tell us how! Wow! I'm floored! What insights! What depth! (No more !'s, sorry.)

I've always known that FP wasn't the world's most serious "serious" magazine, but this? Just when I begin think the mindless, brain-washed Washington crowd can't go any lower in my esteem, they give me a present like this. I know, America needs a policy magazine that even its senators can understand, but do we have to insult everybody in the process. Honestly, this looks more like psy-ops to condition 14-year-olds for Porter Goss' next target, and perhaps it is. Or, just as likely, these are these the flash cards they use to prep Bush.

But let's allow FP to tell their own story:

Founded in 1970 by Samuel Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel, and now published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., FOREIGN POLICY is the premier, award-winning magazine of global politics, economics, and ideas. Our mission is to explain how the world works—in particular, how the process of global integration is reshaping nations, institutions, cultures, and, more fundamentally, our daily lives.

And they go on to say about themselves:

What You WON'T Find in FP

• Cliché sound bites masquerading as reportage
• Predictable, read-them-a-hundred-times analyses of examined-to-death global stories
• Polite essays that fail to challenge your assumptions, excite your passions, or raise your ire

Well, I'm really glad they put up this assassination web feature. FP really avoided the sound bites and facile assumptions this time.

In case you didn't know it, Samuel Huntington, still the editor at FP, has penned such racist and xenophobic classics as Clash of Civilizations and Who Are We?. He is a Harvard professor (parents beware--there's still time for your kids to apply elsewhere) who gets a lot of money for penning theories that justify American belligerence. There's also Moises Naím. According to Wikipedia:

Dr. Naím served as Venezuela’s minister of trade and industry and played a central role in the initial launching of major economic reforms in the early 1990s. Prior to his ministerial position, he was professor and dean at Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración, in Caracas. He was also the director of the projects on economic reforms and on Latin America at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dr. Naím was also associated with the World Bank on two occasions, first as an executive director and later as a senior advisor to the president.

He is currently one of six members of Time magazine's board of international economists and is also the Chairman of the Group of Fifty, an organization of the CEO’s of Latin America’s largest corporations.

World Bank, Caracas, Group of Fifty.... Interesting that we find Hugo Chavez in this list of most-likely targets. But, hey, these are our foreign policy leaders!

Anyway, that's my rant du jour. You'll have to go do some more digging if you want to find out more about Huntington's dubious scholarship. You can start here at the Left Coaster, if you want. As for me, I would love to come to some brilliant conclusion here. Unfortunately, my brilliant conclusion is that the people informing our foreign policy and teaching "our best and brightest," as the saying goes, are simply not that brilliant.

Google Earth Photo Tour

Well, I've just finished my Google Earth photo tour of Tijuana. (Note: you need to download Google Earth before this is of any use to you...). The pictures are part of an essay about the trip, about the economics of exploitation, about NAFTA...

You can download the kml file by clicking here:

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number=401334


And here's a link to the bbs posting:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=401334&page=0&vc=#Post401334

Death of the American Dream, Long Live the Dream

(x-listed a dKos.)

A few months ago I wrote about a Honduran woman I met trying to cross the border. In Mexico, she had fallen off a train, had her leg crushed and been thrown in the bushes to die. She was found, given medical care and a prosthesis, then shipped back to Honduras where the local company manager said she was too "f**ked up" to get a job. Her alcoholic step-father said about the same. So here she was in Tijuana telling me she was going to try to cross again and make her way to Boston. She was young, tough, seemed smart, but--I couldn't help thinking--also a little delusional. Eventually it occured to me (this was at the time of the mine tragedies earlier this year) that most Americans harbor similar illusions about America, particularly about class mobility here. Today a new Reuter's story explains this:"America may still think of itself as the land of opportunity, but the chances of living a rags-to-riches life are a lot lower than elsewhere in the world, according to a new study published on Wednesday".

There is both hope and sadness in the fact that people, like hard-working fifth-generation miners, still cling to the American Dream, believing that sucess is unrelated to social connections, that hard work and grit alone will move you ahead. The hope, in my opinion, is not just American, but human. It's the belief, perhaps faith, that things can get better. The sadness is the empty promise our economy holds out to most of those who have the dream. And the hollowness of the Horatio Alger ideal has become especially true under the the Bush Administration, where the dream has descended to the point of cynical propaganda:

The likelihood that a child born into a poor family will make it into the top five percent is just one percent, according to "Understanding Mobility in America", a study by economist Tom Hertz from American University.

By contrast, a child born rich had a 22 percent chance of being rich as an adult, he said.



"In other words, the chances of getting rich are about 20 times higher if you are born rich than if you are born in a low-income family," he told an audience at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank sponsoring the work.


He also found the United States had one of the lowest levels of inter-generational mobility in the wealthy world, on a par with Britain but way behind most of Europe.[Reuters]

While all of this will sound like America bashing. That is not my intent. I have travelled a lot and there are many things I love about my country, and, yes, the American psyche. But a true accounting of the economic reality is necessary if we are to move ourselves and others forward and out from under the economic lies of trickle-down and finance-for-finance's-sake markets. (Indeed, the Financial Times has yet another article on the dangerous levels pure finance has reached (it's behind the firewall). Meanwhile, over at European Tribune, the inimitable Jérôme à Paris has posted this graph on income inequality:

No wonder the wealthiest aristocrats in America are seeking to end the estate tax.

Democrats for too long have shied away from discussing economic difference. Democrats have been losing a lot of elections too. An honest discussion of the economy is a vital step, not only in confronting the prejudices of our own economy, but in sponsoring a more democratic political sphere.

Multi-Millionaires and billionaires band together to form lobbying to repeal the estate tax. Millionaires and Billionaires stay at the same hotels, play golf at the same country clubs, sit on each other's corporate boards. Yet these same people fight unionization and local coalitions. Millionaires pay for representation in congress, but they do not want to let people leave work to vote.

James Galbraith, in this month's Mother Jones says, in his own words, that what passes for modern economics is a broken theory. He goes on to note how, in theory and practice, current economics fails us:

In a predatory economy, the rules imagined by the law and economics crowd don't apply. There's no market discipline. Predators compete not by following the rules but by breaking them. They take the business-school view of law: Rules are not designed to guide behavior but laid down to define the limits of unpunished conduct. Once one gets close to the line, stepping over it is easy. A predatory economy is criminogenic: It fosters and rewards criminal behavior.

Why don't markets provide the discipline? Why don't "reputation effects" secure good behavior? Economists have been slow to answer these questions, but now we have a full-blown theory in a book by my colleague William K. Black, The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One. Black was the lawyer/whistle-blower in the Savings and Loan and Keating Five scandals; he later took a degree in criminology. His theory of "control fraud" addresses the situation in which the leader of an organization uses his company as a "weapon" of fraud and a "shield" against prosecution--a situation with which law and economics cannot cope[http://www.motherjones.com/... ]

In other words, Galbraith's words, America has become a predator state, not only to Iraq or Central America, but to its own citizens.

My American dream is to see more Americans coming together to fight (like they do a dKos) for their rights and for a fairer economy. It is to see a real discussion of our real economy and all of its many, many shortcomings. Indeed, what is far more inspiring than simple faith in some abstract "American Dream" that does not hold up to scrutiny is actually looking at all the crap that goes on, from Enron to Katrina to Iraq, and saying you've had enough of it and that you are going to fight. Luckily, a few "heterodox"(unorthodox) or "post-autistic" economists are looking at their own field with skepticism too.

I don't know where we'll be 10 years from now, and I'm a realist about how long it will take to repair the damage (social and economic) of the past, but I do have one hope: the American Dream is dead, long live the American dream (you know, the democratic, egalitarian one).

Wednesday Eco-Blogging for Haiti

I've been a Google Earth traveller for quite some time now. Man, it's addictive. So as I've been pursuing some work about Haiti, I thought I would share this with you. It is what it looks like: a screen shot of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the same Island of Hispanola.
Even a cursory glance at the image reveals the significant color difference between Haiti on the left and the Dominican Republic on the right. This is due to deforestation, not climate or topography. Haiti, the world's' second oldest democracy is also one of the poorest countries on earth. Deforestation is the result of woodcutting for fuel, which, in turn, is the result of an highly imbalanced economy in which monetary and energy distribution are heavily tilted towards the ruling class. Now, trapped in a cycle of ecological poverty (cutting trees leads to erosion which leads to less fertility which leads to further deforestation, etc.) it will take a major effort to bring any sort of balance back to the system. Of course,"balance" here should not just mean ecological balance, but social welfare and a smart energy policy to make better use of the island's resources. Hugo Chavez is pledging to work with Préval, and that is truly a sign of hope. Not that I agree completely with the president of Venezuela, but the U.S. continues to undermine and pillage (through the IMF, USAID, etc.) the country, most recently pushing for a despotic privatization movement. As a result of slavery here, it took the U.S. some 6 decades to even recognize Haiti as a country. Perhaps our government should now show some benign neglect and let Haitians choose their leaders and the countries that give them aid. It would be the first benign thing the U.S. has ever done for Haiti.

That's my eco-thought for the day.

Whistle Blowing, American Style

"You know how to whistle, don't you?
You just put your lips together and blow."
Lauran Bacall to Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not

Whistleblowing may sometimes be illegal, but it is not always immoral. With that in mind, and in the wake of the whistleblowing episode over the CIA's secret prisons, I thought it would be a good time to talk a little more about moral agency and righteousness in an era of corruption. To do so, let's get away from the King and his courtiers within the beltway, and take a short look at the extraordinary courage of average workers in the face of an increasingly oppressive government in the hands of Republican-party operatives. Did you know, for example, that 1 in 14 government workers has been harassed for reporting waste, fraud or other improprieties?

Part I: The Corruption
Indeed,

"According to government surveys taken since 1992, one in fourteen federal employees reported being retaliated against in the previous two years for making disclosures concerning health and safety dangers, unlawful behavior, and/or fraud, waste, and abuse. Other surveys suggest that many public employees simply do not report problems because they think efforts to expose the problems will not lead to improvements." [PEER]

While much whistleblowing may deal with accounting and fraud, there are perhaps graver matters to contend with. The non-partisan Project On Government on Government Oversight reports that:

Security guards at only one of four nuclear power plants are confident their plant could defeat a terrorist attack, according to interviews conducted by POGO for this report. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulates the utilities operating nuclear power plants. The utilities generally subcontract with private guard companies for security services. The security guards say morale is currently very low and that they are under-manned, under-equipped, under-trained, and underpaid." POGO Report

Or read this, about non-disclosure agreements at DHS:

"Security guards at the Department of Homeland Security were forced last month to sign agreements not to disclose information the agency deems sensitive — an attempt, according to several current guards, to silence them after recent high-profile revelations of security breaches at DHS. The guards, employed by Wackenhut Services Inc., were told to sign pledges, called “non-disclosure agreements,” on March 10, the day after former guard Derrick Daniels appeared on NBC Nightly News alleging security lapses at the agency’s Nebraska Ave. complex headquarters in Washington, D.C. The timing raises questions about whether DHS and Wackenhut misused the agreements and ignored whistleblower protections in an effort to prevent the guards from disclosing additional information about security lapses at DHS headquarters. According to one guard, Wackenhut supervisors threatened to fire employees who did not sign the non-disclosure agreements. Wackenhut recently lost out on bidding for a new security contract at DHS to Virginia-based Paragon Systems LLC. Nevertheless, Wackenhut guards will continue to provide security at DHS headquarters for the next few months, according to a department spokesman."[Pogo blog]

Part II: The Takeover
While some folks may see all of the above as simply further indication that our government is a wasteful organism, something much more sinister is afoot. As the previous quote illustrates, the government is demanding silence and is taking advantage of the legal no-man's land between the government and its contractors to ensure that whistleblowing and non-favorable publicity remain low-level and low-intensity. More disturbing than that, the Republican propaganda machine is imposing its media model on low-level employees, doing things like distributing "new 'talking points' ...to all park superintendents to urge them to begin 'honest and forthright' discussions with the public about smaller budgets, reduced visitor services and increased fees" [Secret Plan].

Read Chris Mooney's blog and you can see a litany of political agendas superimposed upon the science community. It is very disturbing and represents yet more evidence that the Republican model is being carried further and further down the ladder of government. It is not just Brownie that Americans need to worry about, it is about the institutionalization of the Republican model. The model that has, in effect, seized control of our media during the last 15 years or so is now re-shaping our government in its image: the CIA under Goss, the federal judiciary, the Supreme Court, mid-level administrators in DOI, DHS, State and many other agencies. The list is long, and, make no mistake, while many of these people will be hard-workin career people, many others are politically motivated. Glenn Greenwald, in a diary about his new book How Would a Patriot Act?, reiterates how the Bush administration has used every tool in the book to push its takeover agenda:

A substantial portion of the book is devoted to highlighting the ways in which the administration has used rank fear-mongering and an endless exploitation of the terrorist threat to attempt to obscure and justify these abuses. Those manipulative tactics have not only enabled them to embrace these most un-American powers right out in the open, but they are also threatening to alter, perhaps irreversibly, our national character.

Perhaps most importantly, the book documents the fact that even when all other intended checks on government excesses fail -- when the media, the Congress and the courts are co-opted or are otherwise neutralized -- Americans always have the ability, inherent in our system of government, to put a stop to abuses and excesses, provided they choose to exercise that power. But to do so, it is necessary that it first be understood just how radical and dangerous our government has become under this administration, and making the case that we have arrived at exactly that point is the primary purpose of the book.[Pre-order the book here.]

Part III: Fables of the Reconstruction
When Abraham Lincoln died, so died the real reconstruction of the South. Democrats, during the latter portion of the 19th-century, were able to design government bodies that reinforced the racist social model the white Elites desired. Racism, once institutionalized in the form of slavery, was now an oppressive pseudo-democratic model that would remain at least until the 1960's and which still has serious repercussions today. Of course, as I discuss here, it is the Republican Party that now carries the racist banner with surreptitious (and overt) pride.

So, indeed, what is a Patriot to do? Now what?

The Democrats must plan for their own version of a Reconstruction period. They must rebuild the government in the form that is democratic (not necessarily Democrat). To do so, they will have to, to the extent possible, separate the career civil servant from the career party operative. This will demand tearing down government agencies, renaming them, giving them a new mission. Think DHS, but done right.

I don't know to what extent the people now positioning themselves for president have thought about this, but I hope there are some think tanks out there discussing this, for "our" government (not democrat, not republican) will not be truly ours until there is some sort of purge. Democrats must not be afraid of this, they must not "forgive and forget." What is happening is far too pervasive and far too dangerous for that. Let's hope that someone is making plans.

[Updated to include G. Greenwald posting, which you should go read to see some of the AMAZING right-wing comments. Quite hilarious.]

Metaphors for America: MFA

I thought this picture at americablog was a great metaphor for America (speaking to Bush). I'm sure some others will come to me soon...

"C'est du lapinisme!" Quote from Les 400 Coups

America, the compromised

I just finished this long comment over at Digby's place. I figured I would post it here since I might as well remember what I write. Besides, I wanted to post this picture anyway:

Digby

We seem to have a little glitch in our national psyche that won't go away. It isn't just southern anymore. The misadventure of the last five years has been run by a southern dominant political party, but its architects were elite, cosmopolitan intellectuals. This is an American problem and we are going to have to get rid of it if this country is going to survive.

I couldn't agree more. We are still paying the price for the Missouri Compromise and for the failed Reconstruction period after the Civil War. This is true for race relations, as Katrina and its aftermath amply prove, and, just as importantly, it is true for class relations.

I am not a Civil War historian, but I am from the South and lived in the South for a long time before coming to L.A. One thing I know about red states is that they are a model of colonialism and extraction, seeking to suck out the fruits of natural resources and human labor where they can.

If the most efficient means of labor/resource extraction means classifying a group of people as sub-human, then that is the obvious path. If that becomes socially or politically unacceptable, then other means become necessary. The South's loss in the civil war was as much a social conversion as it was a resource failure. In fact, it is a myth to think that the South lost because it did not have industry. The South lost because people gave up. If the average Southerner in 1864 really believed in slavery and that the slave-owner society was really helping the average citizen, then the South, in 1866 or 1867, would have resembled Iraq in 2006--there would have been widespread rebellion, uprising, guerilla war. This did not happen. Why? The answer if of course complicated, but, in part, it is because many, many white people were oppressed by the upper-class land owners. These whites, while having many more benefits than slaves, obviously, understood that the system was working against them. It was not their war to begin with. How else does one explain the huge desertion rates in the Southern army? (I know, I'm generalizing.)

To get back to my point, and perhaps yours, something changed during reconstruction. As soon as Blacks had "equal" status, they could become the boogeyman for Whites. White Elites exploited this to their full advantage and began to mythologize racism and the "Golden Age of the Old South" through groups such as the KKK --and the Southern Democrats.

The racist mythology allowed poor Whites and rich Whites to find a common ground at the beginning of the 20th century, and at the present. The Republican party, as everyone knows, constantly summons this racist mythology through hint and allusion by nominating racist judges on MLK's birthday, by avoiding speaking to the NAACP, through talk radio and TV pundits. And this is where it gets dangerous, as D. Dneiwert, among others in the blogosphere, points out. The racist myth is so pervasive, so easy to tap into, and so powerful (because its fallacies seem to explain so many things), that a word here, an image there, and our Mass Media has fed into and propagated a racist creed. It is a creed that is false, but powerful because it imbues the believer with power, with an impression of superiority, and this "superiority" crosses class lines, and that is the ultimate scam.

So it isn't just Southern (it never was, it was just more so), and it isn't just race. I have lived abroad, and I will say that America is one of the most racist places I know. Racsim is a huge, huge problem. That said, I feel that it is the ability of the myth, through racism, to elide over class issues that is causing us problems today. It isn't that the "South" has taken over; it is that the extractors, those adept at mining the land and its humans, have come into power. Their belief system in 1860, like now, was exploitation (of blacks and whites), elitism, and expansion. The extractors, now as then, are constantly seeking new territories and peoples at the lowest cost. It is their way of hiding the true cost of their (and our) wealth.

They know that the weath of the here and now almost always comes at the price of people and land. They just don't care.

Look at how the Republican leadership frolics in New York and L.A., supposedly speaking for the "common man", while, in reality, the red-states they represent are among the poorest regions of the country. Though to a lesser degree, Kansas and South Dakota are to America what Africa and South America are to the "developed" world.

This is the Brand America they have created; its purveyors are Fox News and Malkin and Bush. They are all racists, they are all elitists, and they just don't care. The only hope is not it some PC version of eliminating racism, but in re-forming the instutions that purvey the racism and exploitation of Americans, namely government, big business and the media.

Whoever the next president may be, the only real hope is in "demolishing" large swaths of the federal government, and by that, I don't mean getting rid of it, but re-doing it. The Republican party has infiltrated every nook and cranny of government and will hold on to those positions no matter what. The only way to get rid of them is to litterally re-invent the departments from the ground up, removing, where possible, the revolving doors, promoting career officers, etc. Re-organize is perhaps the best term, but there will need to be some creative destruction before the demons of the Republican party, which are overwhelmingly the demons of the Civil War and the Reconstruction, are sufficiently reduced, removed, or whatever.

I do not want to absolve the Democrats in this. They carry a huge blame historically in promoting racsim and exploitation, but, presently, they are simply a weak, rudderless party. The Republicans are, and they know it, up to something far more dangerous and corrupt. It will take an earnest Reconstruction of government to repair what the Repblicans have done and continue to do and to make progress in alleviating the burdens of our national demons.

[Update: I see that other people are working on a Grand Unified Theory, all inspired by Digby's musings.]

What have I done to deserve this?

http://themodulator.org/archives/002373.html

Oh, well. Thanks for the other posts.

Philomath, etc.

I was struck by the amount of foresting, or, more properly de-foresting going on in the whole area between Athens and I-20 between Atlanta and Augusta. The size of the area with so few houses was also surprising. Eventually, I came upon Philomath, and, though I'd been several times before, I found the house with tree trunks as intriguing as ever.