http://www.thenation.com/article/166961/reproductive-rights-and-long-hand-slave-breeding
Therefore, sexual and reproductive freedom is not simply a matter of
privacy; it is fundamental to our and the law’s understanding of human
autonomy and liberty. And so constraints on that freedom are not simply
unconstitutional; they effectively reinstitute slavery.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk
by Satjajit Das
"Walter Bagehot, the famed economic historian and founder of "The Economist", noted that people are most credulous when they are making money." 17
"The rule of extreme money is that everybody borrows, everybody saves, everybody is supposed to get wealthier. But only skilled insiders get richer, running and rigging the game." 18
"Mankind mistook money, a lubricant of society and the economy, for an end in itself. It created a cult and worshiped the wrong deity, building every more elaborate edifices and liturgies dedicated to its worship. It was a one way street. It is now too late to turn back." 19
"Walter Bagehot, the famed economic historian and founder of "The Economist", noted that people are most credulous when they are making money." 17
"The rule of extreme money is that everybody borrows, everybody saves, everybody is supposed to get wealthier. But only skilled insiders get richer, running and rigging the game." 18
"Mankind mistook money, a lubricant of society and the economy, for an end in itself. It created a cult and worshiped the wrong deity, building every more elaborate edifices and liturgies dedicated to its worship. It was a one way street. It is now too late to turn back." 19
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Mencken: For every subtle and complicated question, there is a perfectly simple and straightforward answer, which is wrong.
Mencken:
For every subtle and complicated question, there is a perfectly simple and straightforward answer, which is wrong.
U.S. Intellectual History: Historicizing the Conservative Think Tank by Jason...
U.S. Intellectual History: Historicizing the Conservative Think Tank by Jason...: Dear Readers: Today I present to you a guest post by Jason Stahl (@stahljason). ------------------ A few weeks back, Andrew professed his...
Sunday, March 11, 2012
The Conservative Gulag
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March 10, 2012
Go to Trial: Crash the Justice System
By MICHELLE ALEXANDER
Columbus, Ohio
AFTER years as a civil rights lawyer, I rarely find myself speechless. But some questions a woman I know posed during a phone conversation one recent evening gave me pause: “What would happen if we organized thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people charged with crimes to refuse to play the game, to refuse to plea out? What if they all insisted on their Sixth Amendment right to trial? Couldn’t we bring the whole system to a halt just like that?”
The woman was Susan Burton, who knows a lot about being processed through the criminal justice system.
Her odyssey began when a Los Angeles police cruiser ran over and killed her 5-year-old son. Consumed with grief and without access to therapy or antidepressant medications, Susan became addicted to crack cocaine. She lived in an impoverished black community under siege in the “war on drugs,” and it was but a matter of time before she was arrested and offered the first of many plea deals that left her behind bars for a series of drug-related offenses. Every time she was released, she found herself trapped in an under-caste, subject to legal discrimination in employment and housing.
Fifteen years after her first arrest, Susan was finally admitted to a private drug treatment facility and given a job. After she was clean she dedicated her life to making sure no other woman would suffer what she had been through. Susan now runs five safe homes for formerly incarcerated women in Los Angeles. Her organization, A New Way of Life, supplies a lifeline for women released from prison. But it does much more: it is also helping to start a movement. With groups like All of Us or None, it is organizing formerly incarcerated people and encouraging them to demand restoration of their basic civil and human rights.
I was stunned by Susan’s question about plea bargains because she — of all people — knows the risks involved in forcing prosecutors to make cases against people who have been charged with crimes. Could she be serious about organizing people, on a large scale, to refuse to plea-bargain when charged with a crime?
“Yes, I’m serious,” she flatly replied.
I launched, predictably, into a lecture about what prosecutors would do to people if they actually tried to stand up for their rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees the accused basic safeguards, including the right to be informed of charges against them, to an impartial, fair and speedy jury trial, to cross-examine witnesses and to the assistance of counsel.
But in this era of mass incarceration — when our nation’s prison population has quintupled in a few decades partly as a result of the war on drugs and the “get tough” movement — these rights are, for the overwhelming majority of people hauled into courtrooms across America, theoretical. More than 90 percent of criminal cases are never tried before a jury. Most people charged with crimes forfeit their constitutional rights and plead guilty.
“The truth is that government officials have deliberately engineered the system to assure that the jury trial system established by the Constitution is seldom used,” said Timothy Lynch, director of the criminal justice project at the libertarian Cato Institute. In other words: the system is rigged.
In the race to incarcerate, politicians champion stiff sentences for nearly all crimes, including harsh mandatory minimum sentences and three-strikes laws; the result is a dramatic power shift, from judges to prosecutors.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1978 that threatening someone with life imprisonment for a minor crime in an effort to induce him to forfeit a jury trial did not violate his Sixth Amendment right to trial. Thirteen years later, in Harmelin v. Michigan, the court ruled that life imprisonment for a first-time drug offense did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
No wonder, then, that most people waive their rights. Take the case of Erma Faye Stewart, a single African-American mother of two who was arrested at age 30 in a drug sweep in Hearne, Tex., in 2000. In jail, with no one to care for her two young children, she began to panic. Though she maintained her innocence, her court-appointed lawyer told her to plead guilty, since the prosecutor offered probation. Ms. Stewart spent a month in jail, and then relented to a plea. She was sentenced to 10 years’ probation and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. Then her real punishment began: upon her release, Ms. Stewart was saddled with a felony record; she was destitute, barred from food stamps and evicted from public housing. Once they were homeless, Ms. Stewart’s children were taken away and placed in foster care. In the end, she lost everything even though she took the deal.
On the phone, Susan said she knew exactly what was involved in asking people who have been charged with crimes to reject plea bargains, and press for trial. “Believe me, I know. I’m asking what we can do. Can we crash the system just by exercising our rights?”
The answer is yes. The system of mass incarceration depends almost entirely on the cooperation of those it seeks to control. If everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation. Not everyone would have to join for the revolt to have an impact; as the legal scholar Angela J. Davis noted, “if the number of people exercising their trial rights suddenly doubled or tripled in some jurisdictions, it would create chaos.”
Such chaos would force mass incarceration to the top of the agenda for politicians and policy makers, leaving them only two viable options: sharply scale back the number of criminal cases filed (for drug possession, for example) or amend the Constitution (or eviscerate it by judicial “emergency” fiat). Either action would create a crisis and the system would crash — it could no longer function as it had before. Mass protest would force a public conversation that, to date, we have been content to avoid.
In telling Susan that she was right, I found myself uneasy. “As a mother myself, I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t plead guilty to if a prosecutor told me that accepting a plea was the only way to get home to my children,” I said. “I truly can’t imagine risking life imprisonment, so how can I urge others to take that risk — even if it would send shock waves through a fundamentally immoral and unjust system?”
Susan, silent for a while, replied: “I’m not saying we should do it. I’m saying we ought to know that it’s an option. People should understand that simply exercising their rights would shake the foundations of our justice system which works only so long as we accept its terms. As you know, another brutal system of racial and social control once prevailed in this country, and it never would have ended if some people weren’t willing to risk their lives. It would be nice if reasoned argument would do, but as we’ve seen that’s just not the case. So maybe, just maybe, if we truly want to end this system, some of us will have to risk our lives.”
Michelle Alexander is the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”
More in Opinion Sunday Review Sun. 8 am (11 of 28 articles)
Editorial | The Landscape: When States Put Out the Unwelcome Mat
Read More »
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Democracy Inc. : managed democracy and the specter of inverted totalitarianism by Sheldon S Wolen
Democracy Inc. : managed democracy and the specter of inverted totalitarianism by Sheldon S Wolen
Really part of the 20th century the great social and political theorist Max Weber wrote feelingly of the "disenchantment of the world" brought about by the triumph of scientific rationalism and skepticism. There was he contented no room any longer for occult forces, supernatural deities, or divinely revealed truth. In a world dominated by scientifically established fact with no privilege are sacrosanct areas that would seemingly have a difficult time retaining a foothold. But only did Weber underestimate the staying power credulity; he could not foresee that the great triumphs of modern science with them so provide the basis for technological achievements which, far from banishing the medical but unwittingly inspired.
The medicals also nourish from another source, one seemingly more incongruous the scientific-technological culture. Consider the imaginative world continuously being created and re-created by contemporary advertising and rendered virtually escape-proof by the enveloping culture of the modern media. Equally important, the culture produced by modern advertising, which seems at 1st glance to be resolutely secular and materialistic, the antithesis of religious and especially of evangelical teachings, actually reinforces that dynamic. Almost every product promises to change your life: it'll make you more beautiful, cleaner, more sexually alluring, and more successful. Born-again, as it were. The messages contain promises about the future, unfailingly optimistic, exaggerating, miracle-promising–same ideology and advise corporate executives exaggerate profits conceal losses but always with a sunny face. The virtual reality of the advertiser and the good news of the evangelist's complement each other, a match made in heaven. Their zeal to transcend the ordinary and their bottomless optimism both feed the hubris of superpower. Each colludes with the other. The evangelist looks forward to the "last days," while the corporate executives systematically exhaust the world scarce resources.
Really part of the 20th century the great social and political theorist Max Weber wrote feelingly of the "disenchantment of the world" brought about by the triumph of scientific rationalism and skepticism. There was he contented no room any longer for occult forces, supernatural deities, or divinely revealed truth. In a world dominated by scientifically established fact with no privilege are sacrosanct areas that would seemingly have a difficult time retaining a foothold. But only did Weber underestimate the staying power credulity; he could not foresee that the great triumphs of modern science with them so provide the basis for technological achievements which, far from banishing the medical but unwittingly inspired.
The medicals also nourish from another source, one seemingly more incongruous the scientific-technological culture. Consider the imaginative world continuously being created and re-created by contemporary advertising and rendered virtually escape-proof by the enveloping culture of the modern media. Equally important, the culture produced by modern advertising, which seems at 1st glance to be resolutely secular and materialistic, the antithesis of religious and especially of evangelical teachings, actually reinforces that dynamic. Almost every product promises to change your life: it'll make you more beautiful, cleaner, more sexually alluring, and more successful. Born-again, as it were. The messages contain promises about the future, unfailingly optimistic, exaggerating, miracle-promising–same ideology and advise corporate executives exaggerate profits conceal losses but always with a sunny face. The virtual reality of the advertiser and the good news of the evangelist's complement each other, a match made in heaven. Their zeal to transcend the ordinary and their bottomless optimism both feed the hubris of superpower. Each colludes with the other. The evangelist looks forward to the "last days," while the corporate executives systematically exhaust the world scarce resources.
Debunking Economics by Steve Keen
Title: Debunking Economics
by Steve Keen
Chapter 2.
After the turmoil of the. The late 1960s the recession of the early 1990s, economists have finally worked out how to deliver economic nirvana. To do so, they rejected many of the concepts that had been introduced into economics by the 'Keynesian revolution' in 1930s.
The resulting theory of economics was called Neoclassical Economics, to distinguish it from the 'Keynesian economics' it had overthrown (though in a confusing twist, major subgroup within neoclassical economics called itself “New Keynesianism”). In many ways, it was a return to the approach to economics that had been dominant prior to Keynes, and for that reason it was often referred to as 'the Neoclassical Counter -Revolution.'
A practical level, neoclassical economics advocated reducing government intervention in the economy letting markets–especially finance markets–site economic outcomes unimpeded by politicians, bureaucrats or regulations. Counter-cyclical government budget policy–running deficits during downturns and surpluses during booms–gave way to trying to run surpluses all the time, to reduce the size of the government sector. The only policy tool in favor was manipulation of the interest rate–by a politically independent central bank which itself was controlled by neoclassical economists–but the objective of controlling the rate of inflation.
At a deep theoretical level, neoclassical economics replace many tools it seems that Keynes and his supporters had developed to analyze the economy as a whole (“macro economics”) with their own tools. Unlike the analytic tools of Keynesian macroeconomics, the new neoclassical macroeconomists toolset was dry correctly from microeconomics–the theory of how the individual agents in economy behave.
The Purge:
In teaching, core courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics financial person non-neoclassical ideas. The new pod non-neoclassical course continued his option to give dissenter something to do, but generally, non-neoclassical staff so that most of your teaching time giving tutorials and subjects that taught neoclassical ideas with which they fundamentally disagreed. They toed the line intuition and marketing–though they would occasionally grumble about it, to encourage dissent students who seem more critical than the run-of-the-mill.
In research, the purge was more complete, because neoclassical editors and referees could exclude the dissidents from the journals they edited...
Non-neoclassical economists in general gave up on the citadels orthodoxy and instead establish their own journals in which to communicate with each other, and vigorously criticize neoclassical theory....
In public policy, as in the most prestigious journals, neoclassical economics reigned supreme. Few dissidents were ever appointed to positions of public influence, and most bureaucratic positions were filled by graduates from the better colleges who-because of the purging of non-neoclassical ideas from the core curriculum-generally didn't even know that any other way of thinking about economics was possible. To them, neoclassical economics was economics. (8-9)–
-------------------
Chapter 2
Modern-day economics students are insufficiently literate because economic education eschews the study of the history of economic thought... Understanding this literature in its raw form requires an appreciation of some quite difficult areas of mathematics–concepts which require up to 2 years of undergraduate mathematical training to understand.... most economists do not have this level of mathematical education.
Instead, most economists learn mathematics by attending courses in mathematics given by other economists. ... The side effect that economics has produce its own peculiar versions of mathematics and statistics, and has persevered with mathematical methods which professional mathematicians have long ago transcended. This dated version of mathematics shield students from new developments in mathematics back, incidentally, undermine much of economic theory.
One example of this is the way economists have reacted to “Chaos theory”. Most economists think that Chaos theory has had little or no impact--which is generally true economics but not at all true in most other sciences. This is partially because, to understand Chaos theory, To understand area of mathematics known as ordinary differential equations. If this topic is taught in few courses on mathematical economics--and where it is taught, it is not covered in sufficient depth. Students may learn some of the basic techniques for handling what are known as “second-order linear differential equations,” but chaos in complex begins to manifest themselves only in "third order nonlinear differential equations”.
Economics students therefore graduate from Masters and PhD programs with an uncritical and unjustified belief that the foundations of economic analysis are sound, no appreciation of the intellectual history of your discipline, and an approach to mathematics which hobbles both a critical understanding of economics, and the ability to appreciate the latest advances in mathematics and other sciences. 21
Don't overrate sincerity: one of my teachers once said “Don't overrate sincerity. The most sincere person you'll ever meet is the media chase you down the street with ax, trying to chop your head off!" 25's once I heard in
------------------
Chapter 10
Marx rejected Say' s initial proposition that “every producer asked for money in exchange for its products, only for the purpose of warning back funny again immediately in the purchase of another product”. Instead, Marx pointed out that this notion asserted that no one in a market economy wish to accumulate wealth. If there was never any difference between the value of commodities somewhat bizarre to sell and buyer the market, but no one would ever desire to accumulate wealth. But essential feature of capitalism is the existence of a group of agents with precisely that attention.
Believers in Sage principle of walruses law might find these agents rather bizarre, since in their terms these agents are thieves, who wish to take more than they give. However, far from being bizarre these agents earn essential part of a market economy they are known as capitalists. 215
by Steve Keen
Chapter 2.
After the turmoil of the. The late 1960s the recession of the early 1990s, economists have finally worked out how to deliver economic nirvana. To do so, they rejected many of the concepts that had been introduced into economics by the 'Keynesian revolution' in 1930s.
The resulting theory of economics was called Neoclassical Economics, to distinguish it from the 'Keynesian economics' it had overthrown (though in a confusing twist, major subgroup within neoclassical economics called itself “New Keynesianism”). In many ways, it was a return to the approach to economics that had been dominant prior to Keynes, and for that reason it was often referred to as 'the Neoclassical Counter -Revolution.'
A practical level, neoclassical economics advocated reducing government intervention in the economy letting markets–especially finance markets–site economic outcomes unimpeded by politicians, bureaucrats or regulations. Counter-cyclical government budget policy–running deficits during downturns and surpluses during booms–gave way to trying to run surpluses all the time, to reduce the size of the government sector. The only policy tool in favor was manipulation of the interest rate–by a politically independent central bank which itself was controlled by neoclassical economists–but the objective of controlling the rate of inflation.
At a deep theoretical level, neoclassical economics replace many tools it seems that Keynes and his supporters had developed to analyze the economy as a whole (“macro economics”) with their own tools. Unlike the analytic tools of Keynesian macroeconomics, the new neoclassical macroeconomists toolset was dry correctly from microeconomics–the theory of how the individual agents in economy behave.
The Purge:
In teaching, core courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics financial person non-neoclassical ideas. The new pod non-neoclassical course continued his option to give dissenter something to do, but generally, non-neoclassical staff so that most of your teaching time giving tutorials and subjects that taught neoclassical ideas with which they fundamentally disagreed. They toed the line intuition and marketing–though they would occasionally grumble about it, to encourage dissent students who seem more critical than the run-of-the-mill.
In research, the purge was more complete, because neoclassical editors and referees could exclude the dissidents from the journals they edited...
Non-neoclassical economists in general gave up on the citadels orthodoxy and instead establish their own journals in which to communicate with each other, and vigorously criticize neoclassical theory....
In public policy, as in the most prestigious journals, neoclassical economics reigned supreme. Few dissidents were ever appointed to positions of public influence, and most bureaucratic positions were filled by graduates from the better colleges who-because of the purging of non-neoclassical ideas from the core curriculum-generally didn't even know that any other way of thinking about economics was possible. To them, neoclassical economics was economics. (8-9)–
-------------------
Chapter 2
Modern-day economics students are insufficiently literate because economic education eschews the study of the history of economic thought... Understanding this literature in its raw form requires an appreciation of some quite difficult areas of mathematics–concepts which require up to 2 years of undergraduate mathematical training to understand.... most economists do not have this level of mathematical education.
Instead, most economists learn mathematics by attending courses in mathematics given by other economists. ... The side effect that economics has produce its own peculiar versions of mathematics and statistics, and has persevered with mathematical methods which professional mathematicians have long ago transcended. This dated version of mathematics shield students from new developments in mathematics back, incidentally, undermine much of economic theory.
One example of this is the way economists have reacted to “Chaos theory”. Most economists think that Chaos theory has had little or no impact--which is generally true economics but not at all true in most other sciences. This is partially because, to understand Chaos theory, To understand area of mathematics known as ordinary differential equations. If this topic is taught in few courses on mathematical economics--and where it is taught, it is not covered in sufficient depth. Students may learn some of the basic techniques for handling what are known as “second-order linear differential equations,” but chaos in complex begins to manifest themselves only in "third order nonlinear differential equations”.
Economics students therefore graduate from Masters and PhD programs with an uncritical and unjustified belief that the foundations of economic analysis are sound, no appreciation of the intellectual history of your discipline, and an approach to mathematics which hobbles both a critical understanding of economics, and the ability to appreciate the latest advances in mathematics and other sciences. 21
Don't overrate sincerity: one of my teachers once said “Don't overrate sincerity. The most sincere person you'll ever meet is the media chase you down the street with ax, trying to chop your head off!" 25's once I heard in
------------------
Chapter 10
Marx rejected Say' s initial proposition that “every producer asked for money in exchange for its products, only for the purpose of warning back funny again immediately in the purchase of another product”. Instead, Marx pointed out that this notion asserted that no one in a market economy wish to accumulate wealth. If there was never any difference between the value of commodities somewhat bizarre to sell and buyer the market, but no one would ever desire to accumulate wealth. But essential feature of capitalism is the existence of a group of agents with precisely that attention.
Believers in Sage principle of walruses law might find these agents rather bizarre, since in their terms these agents are thieves, who wish to take more than they give. However, far from being bizarre these agents earn essential part of a market economy they are known as capitalists. 215
Debunking Economics: the Naken Emperor Dethroned by Steve Keen
"The Marx-Schumpeter-Minsky perspective thus integrates production, exchange, and credit as holistic aspects of a capitalist economy, and therefor as essential elements of any theory of capitalism. Neoclassical economics, in contrast, can only analyze an exchange or simple commodity production economy in which money is simply a means to make barter easier." (221)
Rorty: Achieving our Country
Richard RORTY: achieving our country
National pride is to countries with some perspectives to individuals: a necessary condition or self-improvement. Too much national pride can produce bellicosity in imperialism, just as excessive self-respect and produce arrogance. The just is too little self respect makes it difficult for a person to display moral courage, so insufficient national pride makes energetic and effective debate about national policy unlikely. Emotional involvement with one's country–or glowing pride feelings of intense shame aroused by various parts of its history, and by various present-day national policies--is necessary and political deliberation is to be imaginative and productive. Such a liberation will probably not occur unless pride outweigh shame.
The need for this sort of involvement remains even for those who, like myself, hope that the United States of America will someday yield up sovereignty to attend the so-called “the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World.” Presented Federation will never come into existence unless the governments of the individual nation states cooperate in setting up, and unless the citizens of those nation states take a certain amount of pride (even rueful and hesitant pride) in the government's effort to do so.
Those who hope to persuade a nation to observe itself need to remind their country of what it can take pride in as well as what it should be ashamed of. They must tell inspiring stories about episodes and figures and nations past--episode and figures to which the country should remain true. Nations rely on artists and intellectuals to create images of, and to tell stories about, the national past competition for political leadership is in part a competition between differing stories about a nation self-identity, and between differing symbols of its greatness.
In America, at the end of the 20th century, few inspiring images and stories are being proffered. The only version of national pride encouraged by American popular culture is a simpleminded militaristic chauvinism. But such chauvinism is overshadowed by a widespread sense that national pride is no longer appropriate. In both popular and elite culture most descriptions of what America will be like in the 21st century are written in tones either a self-mockery or of self-disgust. Considered two recent novels: Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, the seller and Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, a critical firm is not as widely read. Both are powerful novels. Readers of either may well think it absurd were Americans to continue to take pride in country. Snow crash kills of the 21st-century America in which the needs of the entrepreneurs hand won out over hopes of a free and egalitarian society. The country has been divided into small franchise enclaves, within each of which is a single Corporation--IBM, the Mafia, Gen-Tech--holds the rights of high and low justice. US government has gone into business for himself as one more corporate entity, running its own little enclaves. There is no overall political entity, much less any sense of citizenship, that binds the Eastern and Western states together, with links even the various districts of the big cities.
In Snow crash, the relation of the United States to the rest of the world is symbolized by Stevens most frightening creation--what he calls "Raft.” This is an enormous agglomeration of floating hulks, drifting endlessly round around the Pacific Rim, inhabited by millions of Asians who hope to jump ship and swim to North America. The Raft is a sort of vast international slum ruled by cruel and anarchic criminal gangs; it is quite different from the orderly franchises run a profitable business prices, respecting each other's boundaries and rights, and what used to be the United States of America. Pride in being an American citizen has been replaced by relief at being safer and better fed the nose on the raft. Lincoln and Martin Luther King are no more present in imagination Stephenson's Americans that our men were Cromwell or Churchill to the imagination of the British Orwell described in his book 1984.
Snow Crash capitalizes on the widespread belief that giant corporations, and the shadowy behind-the-scenes government acting as an agent of the corporations, now make all the important decisions. This belief finds expression in popular thrillers like Richard Condon's Manchurian Candidate and Winter Kills, as well as in more ambitious works like Thomas Pynchon's Vineland and Norman Mailer's Harlots Ghosts. Find
National pride is to countries with some perspectives to individuals: a necessary condition or self-improvement. Too much national pride can produce bellicosity in imperialism, just as excessive self-respect and produce arrogance. The just is too little self respect makes it difficult for a person to display moral courage, so insufficient national pride makes energetic and effective debate about national policy unlikely. Emotional involvement with one's country–or glowing pride feelings of intense shame aroused by various parts of its history, and by various present-day national policies--is necessary and political deliberation is to be imaginative and productive. Such a liberation will probably not occur unless pride outweigh shame.
The need for this sort of involvement remains even for those who, like myself, hope that the United States of America will someday yield up sovereignty to attend the so-called “the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World.” Presented Federation will never come into existence unless the governments of the individual nation states cooperate in setting up, and unless the citizens of those nation states take a certain amount of pride (even rueful and hesitant pride) in the government's effort to do so.
Those who hope to persuade a nation to observe itself need to remind their country of what it can take pride in as well as what it should be ashamed of. They must tell inspiring stories about episodes and figures and nations past--episode and figures to which the country should remain true. Nations rely on artists and intellectuals to create images of, and to tell stories about, the national past competition for political leadership is in part a competition between differing stories about a nation self-identity, and between differing symbols of its greatness.
In America, at the end of the 20th century, few inspiring images and stories are being proffered. The only version of national pride encouraged by American popular culture is a simpleminded militaristic chauvinism. But such chauvinism is overshadowed by a widespread sense that national pride is no longer appropriate. In both popular and elite culture most descriptions of what America will be like in the 21st century are written in tones either a self-mockery or of self-disgust. Considered two recent novels: Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, the seller and Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, a critical firm is not as widely read. Both are powerful novels. Readers of either may well think it absurd were Americans to continue to take pride in country. Snow crash kills of the 21st-century America in which the needs of the entrepreneurs hand won out over hopes of a free and egalitarian society. The country has been divided into small franchise enclaves, within each of which is a single Corporation--IBM, the Mafia, Gen-Tech--holds the rights of high and low justice. US government has gone into business for himself as one more corporate entity, running its own little enclaves. There is no overall political entity, much less any sense of citizenship, that binds the Eastern and Western states together, with links even the various districts of the big cities.
In Snow crash, the relation of the United States to the rest of the world is symbolized by Stevens most frightening creation--what he calls "Raft.” This is an enormous agglomeration of floating hulks, drifting endlessly round around the Pacific Rim, inhabited by millions of Asians who hope to jump ship and swim to North America. The Raft is a sort of vast international slum ruled by cruel and anarchic criminal gangs; it is quite different from the orderly franchises run a profitable business prices, respecting each other's boundaries and rights, and what used to be the United States of America. Pride in being an American citizen has been replaced by relief at being safer and better fed the nose on the raft. Lincoln and Martin Luther King are no more present in imagination Stephenson's Americans that our men were Cromwell or Churchill to the imagination of the British Orwell described in his book 1984.
Snow Crash capitalizes on the widespread belief that giant corporations, and the shadowy behind-the-scenes government acting as an agent of the corporations, now make all the important decisions. This belief finds expression in popular thrillers like Richard Condon's Manchurian Candidate and Winter Kills, as well as in more ambitious works like Thomas Pynchon's Vineland and Norman Mailer's Harlots Ghosts. Find
Winner-Take-All Politics:
- Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turner It’s Back on the Middle Class, by Jacob Hacker (Yale political scientist), and Paul Pierson (Berkeley Political scientist).
“The Debate should not be whether government is involved in the formation of markets. It always is. The debate should be whether it is involved in a manner conducive to a good society.” [p. 82 Legal Realism]
See, Walter Lippmann, “Drift and Mastery.” Drift is the failure of a captured politics to adjust to the ever-changing markets and the way the lust for money and power finds a way to get around established rules. 83
Politics must “master” the greed of the market.
In American politics it’s easy to create gridlock—the filibuster. 85
The economic tyranny of the few. FDR
Calvinist social Darwinism 87 Economic success as a sign of superior personal character, and the reverse as a sign of individual moral failing. 87 (CNBC commentator in 2009 launched a tyrade against the government promoting bad behavior by helping out “loosers” and the surrounding traders cheered.
During three progressive eras, “a dynamic democracy tempered and civilized a dynamic capitalism.” 91
Nixon and the politics of resentment (95) [interface with Christian resentment].
A new metaphor of politics based on what actually gets done, i.e., policy, is based individuals, but on “organized combat”. 102
The individualism myth or narrative (as well as the moral accounting metaphor or morality tale: people get what they disserve) is uniquely American, and it hides the “massive organizational realities [that] lurk behind the individualist façade.” 103
The myth of the “entrepreneur”: “We extol scrappy upstart competitors even as we drive our Toyotas to Wal-Mart, pick up remodeling supplies from Home Depot, grab fast food from McDonalds, and check out our Bank of America accounts with software from Microsoft running on an Intel chip.”104
Why aren’t politicians voting for policies that promote middle and low income families: The politics of organized combat. 113
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a metaphor for the relentless pursuit of profit by banks and big companies.115
Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).119
Business Roundtable an the March Group restricted to corporate CEO’s 113 of the top Fortune 200 accounting for nearly half the economy in 1972. 120
The emergence of “idea factories” [independent of academia], foundations and think tanks. Conservative: American Enterprise Institute.
Josephy Coors, John Olin (Olin Foundation), William Simon.
Heritage Foundation was not based on the academic model of investigation objective policy analysis, but one of ideology and marketing for the purposes of public policy persuasion; marketing, and “proselytizing” rather than investigate. For the GOP. 123
Charles Walker: American Council For Capital Formation, “…to sell the proposition that what was good for America’s richest corporations and individuals was good for America.” 124
Business groups initiated the politics of obstruction: drift. 127
An old rule of politics: Don’t field the team unless you can win. 129
“Business bankrolled an intellectual infrastructure committed to advancing the religion of free markets, refining messages for public consumption, and marketing them [marketing religion]..” 180
Money to democrats played as different role: insurance [like short selling]…and went to “moderates” for the purposes of blocking, dilution, or delay. 180
“Gramm was perhaps second only to Alan Greenspan as a high priest of deregulation.” 197-98 (huge $ for his wife as well) Graham went to work for UBS (Switzerland’s largest bank) which had to be bailed out by the Swiss gov. in 2008.
Greenspan “When I am on Wall Street, to me that’s a holy place.” 198
National Federation of Independent Businesses (600,000 members); Tom Delay..former pest control business owner who said EPA was “the Gestapo of Government, pure and simple. 205
Chamber of Commerce (large employer organization) 206
Radical tax organizations: Grover Norquist’s, American’s for tax Reform (ATR); and Stephen Moore’s Club for Growth (CFG)208
What will it take to pry up the “poisonous roots” of the winner-take-all culture and politics. 288
What is the difference between an hereditary aristocracy and a economic artistocracy?
“As in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang lost out to their much more resourceful and coordinated opponents..”301
“A vibrant, dynamic capitalism requires the guidance that only a vibrant, dynamic democracy can provide” 301
The Political Mind, G. Lakoff
The Political mind by Lakoff
[Thought: small business owners think of corporate “business” the same “frame” that they think of themselves…as “business men”. How can we change that frame, so that to vote for “corporations” is to vote against their own self-interest.]
Classic: The rags to riches narrative (p. 29).
No American narrative for: The Cheap Labor Trap: “a ladder with no rungs.”
Classic: reinvention of the self.
American Redemptive narrative.
Was Anna Nicole Smith a “Innocent Ingenue” : a sweet, smart woman, trying to make her way in a man’s world—the Marilyn Monroe narrative (p30); or a “Gold Digger”? They are mutually exclusive narratives, “Pick one and it will hide the other.” (31).
The Protective father narrative.
“We live our narratives” (p33).
“My goal as a cognitive scientist and a citizen is to make the cognitive unconscious as conscious as possible, to make reflexive decisions reglective.” (p. 34).
“When you accept a particular narrative, you ignore or hide realities that contradict it.” (37)
“The deep narratives are fixed in the brain: the synapses of the neural circuits characterizing them have been so strengthened that the highly general, deep narratives are permanently parts of our brains.”
“…each word is defined relative to at least one conceptual frame. (reference to Charles Fillmore) Those frames evoke other frames in the system. Understanding involves drawing out the logic of the frame…What cognitive semanticists have found is that we think in terms of systems of concepts, systems that fit together and make sense (43).
“When we apply this technique of analysis [cognitive semantics] to political speeches, interviews, call-ins on talk shows, op.eds.,…certain recurring patterns of thought emerge—general modes of thought based on assumptions about what is the right thing to do….98 percept of it is unconscious [I would say preconscious], unseen, but making sense of what is actually said.”
“Behind every progressive policy lies a single moral value: empathy, together with the responsibility and strength to act on that empathy.” (p. 47). “The ethics of care.” The role of government is protection and empowerment.
Deregulation and privatization do not eliminate government, they only make it unaccountable and take away it’s moral mission. It merely shifts it to corporations, to private sector, and the ethics of profit with not public accountability. (p. 63).
Adam Smith was not a “conservative”62:
Health care is not a commodity. 66
Mythical narrative in conservative thought (p. 68-69)
Biconceptualism (or contradictions in worldview and values); the values of Saturday night (drinking, gambling, etc.) and Sunday morning. 71
The folk theory of moral essences, and conservative moral unconscousious. 79
Why are fundamentalist Christians conservatives: they view god as a stict father. Authority, obedience, discipline, punishment, good and evil. 80.
The nation as family metaphor: 75-82. Strict vs. nurturing (gender neutral).
The brain, primary metaphors (family), and government: a Governing institution is a family. 85-86.
The moral foundations of our society are being changed, transformed into a conservative, strict father, moral system. 91
There are dramatic (characters, plots, etc.) and somatic (emotional) structures and textures of our brains. 93.
Metaphorical thought governs moral thought and action..especially in politics. 94
The moral accounting metaphor: 94 “Well-being is wealth.
Moral Accounting is the basis of the philosophy of utilitarianism—the greatest good for the greatest number. 95 The rail yard switchman example: switch one way, one dies, switch the other way, 4 dies. “Moral arithmetic.”
The Moral Order metaphor: the logic behind the metaphor p. 98. What is natural is good. Natural hierarchies are good. God-man, Man-Nature, Adults-children, Western culture-non Western culture, American-other nations, men-women, Whites-non-whites, Christian-non-christian. The “divine right of kings” ; power and wealth is seen as a sign of morality and purity, hence a deserved social status; the Great Chain of Being..the lion, the most powerful preditors, the “king of beastas” and portrayed as noble. 99
‘Reverse Moral Order” metaphor: the oppressed are more moral than their oppressors.
Morality is Cleanliness metaphor: purification rituals; “wash your sins away.” 100
Morality is Well-being: we feel good when we do good. Prewired for empathy and cooperation.
“The metaphors of morality arise from bodily experiences of well-being.” “They are not ‘mere’ metaphors…The tell us what the heart of morality is”. 101
“Empathy is at the center of the progressive moral worldview.” 101
“Empathy is normal, and it takes a special education (such as basic training in the army), a special heartlessness, or a brain injury, to disengage it.” 102.
We are hardwired for empathy..mirror neurons.
Conservative often us the fear framework; Progressives use the empathy frame, responsibility and hope. 105
Morality is care vs. morality is Obedience to Authority. (nurturing parent, strick father model).
Why is “manliness” a political issue: It “fits” with the “strict father” metaphor (106).
Scooter Libby: he was loyal to the authority (GW) and therefore virtuous. 107
The existence of two different models of family, in the presence of the primary metaphor of a Governing Institution is Family, gives rise to two very different ways of conceptualizing governing institutions, including different moral worldviews and modes of thought. “These arise unconsciously.” 107
Progressive Christianity has a nurturing parent model for God;
A conservative fundamentalist Christian “might well have”…”God as a strict parent threatening the punishment of eternal damnation for violating God’s commandments…” 108 (is there research on this?)
There are evangelicals who are environmentalists; conservatives who believe in environmental controls. (biconceptualism)
One may support coal mines to support jobs, or to protect corporate profits. “Reasons matter” 110
“Democracy is too important to leave the shaping of the brains of American’s to authoritarians.”
“A New Consciousness”
“A deep ecological consciousness is also a spiritual consciousness: it encompasses our deepest connections to the world and to each other, if is fundamentally moral, it acknowledges gratitude, and it evokes aw every day. Real reason is emotional, and an ecological consciousness has aw as it’s central emotion.” 123
Prototypes and Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” who drove a Cadillac :160 Reagan used the welfare queen myth while campaigning in the south. What made this possible were strict father framings: morality requires discipline; discipline in the market leads to prosperity; a lack of honest prosperity means laziness, lack of discipline, and immorality. To be against Welfare was to be against good white taxpayers supporting lazy uppity blacks.
Immigrants are the new “welfare queens”. 161
The conservative “bad apple” frame: Libby, Abu Ghraib, Enron (Lay), why does the bad apple frame work? It’s the Hero-Villain narrative, and more difficult to discuss systemic, ideological, or institutional villains, e.g., a “captured regulatory system” and privateering. 165-167. [“Government, socialism, are ideological villains]
Causation: The strict father model, “responsibility” is focused on the individual, reward and punishment. The nurturing parent model requires that responsibility be shared, that problems can be individual and/or systemic. For example, what is the cause of crime: bad people in the conservative frame; in the progressive frame bad people AND systemic issues of culture, discrimination, and lack of education. 188
Direct causation, and the primary metaphor of Causes are forces, is easy to understand [it’s “experience near”]; systemic causation is more diffuse and difficult to understand [experience far].
Cognitive semantics. 197
Political psychology: J.T. Jost , “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” Psychological Bulletin 129, no. 3 (may 2003), 339-375. Politicial conservative personality was marked by a need for authoritarianism and dogmaticism (or an intolerance of ambiguity, the epistemic and existential needs of a conservative person included a need for closure (in order to avoid uncertainty); regulatory focus (in order to cultivate discipline), and terror management. Or “conservatives show a higher personal need for order, structure, and closure. 198
Evolution selects groups on the basis of in-group competition, not competition—whether ants, biological films, or human beings.”205 (reference to H. Kern Reeve and Bert Holldobler)
The concept of 19th century “self-interest,” “utility,” and universal rationality is central to economic theory and political theory. Market’s are persons, with a “invisible hand”. Well being is reduced to economic utility. 206
Democrats put themselves in an untenable position when they argue from utility when they are really motivated by empathy. By arguing within the frame of the utility narrative, they fail to trigger empathy and the moral narrative, and they set themselves up for criticism from conservatives, who are specialists in the narrative of utility. 207
They set themselves up for being a “special interest” themselves, courting voting blocks. 209
Foreign policy metaphors: Nations are persons acting out of self-interest to maximize it’s military “strength”, economic “health” economic, and military “influence”. This rational action model “excludes culture, religion, national identity, social and political structure, the nature and level of development, etc.”210
Nation as Person includes “Adult and Children States, where maturity is industrialization”. Thus the nonindustrial nations are seen as “developing” or “underdeveloped” nations. …”that they should take the advise of the adult/industrialized nations as to how to develop (accept “free market” economics) or face “fiscal discipline” from the IMF and World Bank.210
Nation as person is related to national “competition,” and this competition is a zero sum game. John Nash: revolutionized “zero-sum game theory” with the “Nash equilibrium”, or the application of non-zero sum game strategies. 211
In literal models, “there are no alternative interpretations of the facts being modeled—no alternative framings.”
”’Externalized’ costs are outside the model.” Frames oversimplify reality. Frames stylize the facts, simplify and thereby cast a shadow on facts not noticed by the model. 218
The “cost” of pollution, was traditionally outside of the business model as an “externality”…something that taxpayers must pay to clean up, pay to filter water, costs to the health care system, etc.
The “cost” of gasoline includes “hidden costs” outside the Commercial Event frame”, ten’s of billions of dollars in subsidies to oil companies for exploration, billions of dollars a year for Coast Guard and Navy protection of oil tankers, billions of dollars a year in military costs to protect the operations of American oil companies abroad. 219
“Infrastructure costs are outside the model, while taxes are not”: “taxpayers put together their common wealth to build an infrastructure for everyone to use, especially in doing business. Highways, communications satellite system, the Internetf, the educational system for training employees, the banking system for making low cost loans available, the judicial system for adjudicating contract disputes, the SEC for making the stock market possible. 219
The model contains no cost for using the model itself” : the cold war, zero-sum model of Mutual Assured Destruction, created a arms race that was extremely expensive, and the current abundance and spread of fissionable material. 219
The model is taken as defining reality: “When you are applying the model, you are not only using all the metaphors defining the model but also the metaphors fitting the model to the stylized facts; that is , to a model of reality that is also not literal.” 219 [the financial crisis and the quant].
“The model is taken as defining what it means for a human being to be rational…it is often seen as natural for people to act so as to maximize their self-interest (or profit) and unnatural for them not to. Those who profit most are therefore seen as doing what comes natural, and those who profit much less are seen as irrational, unnatural, lesser beings who don’t deserve much no matter how hard they work.” 220
non-zero sum solutions…win-win situations. 221
Good summary of “real reason” , reflective vs. reflexive thought. 223
Cognitive bias:
Reflexive biases that effect Reflective judgements:
1. Optimism bias: Generals of war, policy makers, 35% of americans who think they will be in the top 1% of income earners.
2. Fundamental attribution error: people tend to overemphasize personality, character, or essence based explanations, rather than situation based explanations: Everyone has an “essence” (liberal, Islamofacist, conservative) that governs their behavior, rather than situational causes. Fits into the Hero (good)-Villian narrative.
3. The illusion of control: people exaggerate the control they have over important outcomes.
4. Reactive devaluation: a proposal is worth less because another side has offered it.
5. Risk aversion: a gambler refusing to cut his losses: the “cut and run” metaphor.
6. The salient exemplar effect: citing a well-known example of a rare phenomenon tends to make people believe the phenomena has a high probability.
These biases are based on the reflective [preconscious] unconscious use of metaphor, framing, prototyping, etc. 227-229
The Power of language, and the power of language in politics.n 231
“Don’t think of an elephant”: you can’t do it because you cannot consciously control your own neural system [which produces the image as you hear the word, just like questions, assertions, and words automatically produce frames for interpretations. To activate a frame is to activate a worldview—a word activates a whole system of frames and metaphors.
“The more that system is activated, the stronger its synapses become, the more entrenched it is in your brain—all without your conscious awareness. That is why the conservative message machine [echo chamber of Fox news, wall street journal, talk radio] operating over 35 years, has been so effective.” 234
The frames and narratives of the word “tax relief” p. activiates the “Rescue from Affliction” metaphors and narrative: “…those taxed are victims” the government is the villain, and opponents of taxation are heroes. Thus, “tax relief” makes sense in conservative worldview.
“…there are contexts in which “tax relief” does’t make sense. Suppose you are thinking from a progressive worldview, in which the role of government is to protect and empower citizens—to make possible highways, communication systems, public schools, the banking system, the stock market, the courts, and in addition to protect us not just by the use of force, but in the areas of health, disasters, clean air and water, civil rights, consumer protection, and so on. From this perspective, taxes make possible our freedom to, in the case of empowerment.” So in what sense is paying taxes an “affliction” we need relief from?237
“It is possible to understand taxes as making the good things in America happen and to literally feel good about contributing to the good of the country.” 238
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Kazin: Crony Capitalism and History
Published on The New Republic (http://www.tnr.com)
Why ‘Crony Capitalism’ is as American as Apple Pie
- Michael Kazin
- March 8, 2012 | 12:00 am
Conservatives
are supposed to cherish tradition, to draw on customs and policies
which worked well in the past to guide what office-holders ought to do
in the future. So it is ironic, if not hypocritical, that they
constantly peddle a notion about the separation of business and
government that has no basis in American history. “The voters,” asserted
Mitt Romney, after his victory in the Washington caucuses, “want a
conservative businessman who understands the private sector and knows
how to get the federal government out of the way, so that the economy
can once again grow vigorously.”
In fact, the Republican nominee-to-be is distorting a long and bipartisan tradition of government support for big business in America. Conservatives now object to “crony capitalism,” but for much of U.S. history, businessmen have been hungry for it. Since the early nineteenth century, the government has helped fuel economic growth and corporate profit-making, and savvy businessmen and, recently, businesswomen have lobbied hard to keep those benefits coming.
Public money and support were essential to creating the nation’s infrastructure in the decades before the Civil War. State and federal funds helped build every major turnpike, canal, bridge, dock, and railroad line. As the historian Steve Fraser writes in The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, all these enterprises were thus “quasi-public creations … Governments granted them franchises, incorporated them, lent them money, invested in them, provided them with tax exemptions and subsidies and land grants, and even, at times, shared in their management.” And where would Sears and Roebuck or the publishers of books and magazines have been without the postal system? The efficient and egalitarian federal mail knit American manufacturers and consumers into a continental market.
All this was merely a prelude to the Gilded Age, when the U.S. government boosted industrial growth, and corporate profits, in a multitude of ways. Congress appropriated over half the capital for the transcontinental railroad and donated huge land grants to the companies which built it. That famous golden spike might as well have been stamped with the words, “Made in D.C.” At the same time, Republican majorities in both Houses subsidized American industrialists by erecting high tariffs on goods made by their European competitors.
The federal executive was also a trusted ally of employers who faced labor unrest. When railroad workers went on strike across the nation in 1877, President Rutherford Hayes, a Republican, dispatched the army to put them down. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, sent the troops to crush another uprising by the men who built and operated the trains. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court obligingly brushed aside legislation by states to rein in big business by ruling that such laws violated the rights of corporations to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been enacted to give citizenship to freed slaves. This was how corporations, in Romney’s memorable phrase, became “people too.”
By the turn of the century, a sizeable number of Americans were calling for an end to the torrid affair between business and government. Before World War I, progressives pushed through measures to curb the trusts, regulate the money supply, and protect consumers from unsafe meat and drugs. Yet the largest meatpacking corporations also welcomed the FDA, knowing it would signal that their products were safe to eat while raising the costs of production just enough to drive smaller firms out of business. And even those private bankers who had protested the creation of the Federal System soon recognized the value of a stable currency for planning future investments.
Conservatives detested the Keynesian policies that every president from FDR to Nixon adopted. But major corporations were quite happy to gorge themselves at the federal banquet table. Agribusinesses got crop subsidies and irrigation projects, aerospace and defense firms got lavish, cost-plus contracts to manufacture everything from H-bombs to lunar modules, and drug companies kept their prices high with the blessing of patent monopolies. The Federal Highway Act enabled the building of 41 million miles of interstates—a great boon to construction, real estate, and trucking firms, which together composed what might be called the “suburban-industrial complex.” All this government largesse, funded by high marginal tax rates, helped produce a quarter-century of growth that some economists refer to simply as “the golden years.”
Thus, the private sector that Romney and his fellow Republicans love to celebrate became large and prosperous only with aid—financial, legal, even regulatory—from public officials. The real political question has never been, should government be large or small but whose interests should it serve?
Corporate executives have always understood this fact and learned how to work the system that right-wing ideologues would have us believe is a recent invention of “socialist” Obamaites. For example, the health insurance industry paid billions of dollars to lobbyists since the 1990s to guarantee that any universal health care law would not damage their business. As Ezra Klein writes in The New York Review of Books, this kind of money “gives you an opportunity to shape the way members of Congress think—an opportunity that is not available to those who don’t have $4.86 billion to spend on lobbying.” And so the Affordable Care Act, which has many virtues, does not include a public option.
Even if he knew this history, Mitt Romney would probably still spend the next eight months promising to free the economy from the shackles of “big government.” But if that rhetoric ever became reality, there would be nothing conservative about it.
Michael Kazin’s most recent book is American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation. He teaches history at Georgetown University and is co-editor of Dissent.
In fact, the Republican nominee-to-be is distorting a long and bipartisan tradition of government support for big business in America. Conservatives now object to “crony capitalism,” but for much of U.S. history, businessmen have been hungry for it. Since the early nineteenth century, the government has helped fuel economic growth and corporate profit-making, and savvy businessmen and, recently, businesswomen have lobbied hard to keep those benefits coming.
Public money and support were essential to creating the nation’s infrastructure in the decades before the Civil War. State and federal funds helped build every major turnpike, canal, bridge, dock, and railroad line. As the historian Steve Fraser writes in The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, all these enterprises were thus “quasi-public creations … Governments granted them franchises, incorporated them, lent them money, invested in them, provided them with tax exemptions and subsidies and land grants, and even, at times, shared in their management.” And where would Sears and Roebuck or the publishers of books and magazines have been without the postal system? The efficient and egalitarian federal mail knit American manufacturers and consumers into a continental market.
All this was merely a prelude to the Gilded Age, when the U.S. government boosted industrial growth, and corporate profits, in a multitude of ways. Congress appropriated over half the capital for the transcontinental railroad and donated huge land grants to the companies which built it. That famous golden spike might as well have been stamped with the words, “Made in D.C.” At the same time, Republican majorities in both Houses subsidized American industrialists by erecting high tariffs on goods made by their European competitors.
The federal executive was also a trusted ally of employers who faced labor unrest. When railroad workers went on strike across the nation in 1877, President Rutherford Hayes, a Republican, dispatched the army to put them down. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, sent the troops to crush another uprising by the men who built and operated the trains. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court obligingly brushed aside legislation by states to rein in big business by ruling that such laws violated the rights of corporations to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been enacted to give citizenship to freed slaves. This was how corporations, in Romney’s memorable phrase, became “people too.”
By the turn of the century, a sizeable number of Americans were calling for an end to the torrid affair between business and government. Before World War I, progressives pushed through measures to curb the trusts, regulate the money supply, and protect consumers from unsafe meat and drugs. Yet the largest meatpacking corporations also welcomed the FDA, knowing it would signal that their products were safe to eat while raising the costs of production just enough to drive smaller firms out of business. And even those private bankers who had protested the creation of the Federal System soon recognized the value of a stable currency for planning future investments.
Conservatives detested the Keynesian policies that every president from FDR to Nixon adopted. But major corporations were quite happy to gorge themselves at the federal banquet table. Agribusinesses got crop subsidies and irrigation projects, aerospace and defense firms got lavish, cost-plus contracts to manufacture everything from H-bombs to lunar modules, and drug companies kept their prices high with the blessing of patent monopolies. The Federal Highway Act enabled the building of 41 million miles of interstates—a great boon to construction, real estate, and trucking firms, which together composed what might be called the “suburban-industrial complex.” All this government largesse, funded by high marginal tax rates, helped produce a quarter-century of growth that some economists refer to simply as “the golden years.”
Thus, the private sector that Romney and his fellow Republicans love to celebrate became large and prosperous only with aid—financial, legal, even regulatory—from public officials. The real political question has never been, should government be large or small but whose interests should it serve?
Corporate executives have always understood this fact and learned how to work the system that right-wing ideologues would have us believe is a recent invention of “socialist” Obamaites. For example, the health insurance industry paid billions of dollars to lobbyists since the 1990s to guarantee that any universal health care law would not damage their business. As Ezra Klein writes in The New York Review of Books, this kind of money “gives you an opportunity to shape the way members of Congress think—an opportunity that is not available to those who don’t have $4.86 billion to spend on lobbying.” And so the Affordable Care Act, which has many virtues, does not include a public option.
Even if he knew this history, Mitt Romney would probably still spend the next eight months promising to free the economy from the shackles of “big government.” But if that rhetoric ever became reality, there would be nothing conservative about it.
Michael Kazin’s most recent book is American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation. He teaches history at Georgetown University and is co-editor of Dissent.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Elain Pagels: The Book of Revelation
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/07/148125942/the-book-of-revelation-visions-prophecy-politics
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Anger and God
The god of the ancient Hebrew
texts is certainly sometimes described as an Angry Old Man--and he
certainly slaughtered a lot of Canaanites for that hated worldview,
polytheism. But I'm not sure the god Jesus agreed with him on that
one--it's hard to reconcile with the "turn-the-other-cheek", love thy
enemy message. The Koran certainly follows that Hebrew tradition,
advocating that the "hatred of injustice" is a virtue, and Mohammad was
indeed a model warrior. I have never seen a story of the Buddha, simply
an enlightened man, however, getting angry. I may be wrong, just
haven't encountered it--even the Zen-influenced samurai does not kill
out of anger or hatred.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
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