Keep Fear Alive!

We Americans love fear. We love to terrify ourselves with the prospect of imminent death. A lot of that is due to the fact that most of us lived under the real threat of nuclear annihilation for a half century. That fucked us up in a big way. It made us fear junkies. So that even when the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed we still needed our fix of self-induced terror. Soon people were whipping themselves into a frenzy about diseases like Ebola. And there were cheesy movies with Dustin Hoffman and Donald Sutherland and that guy in the haz-mat suit falling to the ground. After that, people got hysterical about Y2K – for no good reason. But somehow all this worry in the 90s was very fake. We were all trying too hard; it wasn’t authentic. Then 9/11 occurred. And, finally – Phew! We could all live in real fear, again! What a relief. It was like greeting an old friend you hadn’t seen in a long time. It was familiar and comfortable.

But, I wonder, are we getting over our fear of terrorism? Recently there has been a flurry of stories in the press about the avian flu virus which could spread to humans with devastating results. There’s also been a lot of coverage about a new, deadlier strain of HIV. The press are clearly reaching for their tried-and-true “This new plague will kill us all!” trope. Why? Could it be that we Americans are finally getting over 9/11? Do we need new things to be terrified of? Doesn’t Al-Queda scare us like used to? Is the magic gone? I suppose only time will tell.

And the Winner is...?

Ever since William Safire resigned from the editorial page of The New York Times I’ve been wondering who would emerge to take his place as that paper’s leading windbag and dumb-ass. I think that, clearly, the competition has boiled down to Thomas Friedman and David Brooks. And judging by this, it’s safe to say that the latter is in the lead. Brooks, apparently, is all steamed up that America’s economic future is being destroyed. And who’s responsible? The elderly. With their Social Security and their Medicare and their prescription drug benefits, they’re going to cost this country trillions. The geriatrics and their political arm, the AARP, are leading us into budgetary “decadence”. He writes:

We may as well be blunt about the driving force behind all this. The living and well organized are taking money from the weak and the unborn.

Those bastards! And who will stand against these dentured vampires as they suck the lifeblood out of our unborn children? No one! Not even the President! Bush has threatened to veto any changes to his Medicare prescription law. Brooks goes off the deep end:

[Bush] now threatens to veto something - and it's something that might actually restrain the growth of government…Have we entered another world, where up is down and rationality is irrational?

Brooks then prophesizes that someday a “millionaire” will emerge to lead a mass movement against these parasitical seniors and their lackeys in the government. He (or She) will restore fiscal sanity. Notice, though, that in this fantasy it’s a millionaire who’s going to lead us. It is unthinkable to Brooks that a non rich person could politically matter – even in a mass movement. To him (and he’s not unique in this) only the wealthy have significance; the unrich masses (namely, us) count for nothing.

I Become Unspeakably Pedantic

Thomas Friedman recently wrote in The New York Times:

The fact that the extremists and autocrats have had to resort now to unspeakable violence shows how much they have failed to win the war of ideas on the Arab street. (empahsis mine)

Unspeakable? No, we can speak of the violence. In fact, we speak of it all the time – murders, beheadings, bombings, etc. It’s not “incapable of being spoken of”. Just as in the case of Robert Jamieson (see below), I have to wonder if Friedman actually thinks about the meanings of the words he uses. Get a dictionary, Tom.

To the barricades!

It seems the Europeans are engaged in an economic race to the bottom. The European Union wants to adopt a proposal to liberalize Europe’s service sector. (Clearly, I’ll have to add “liberalize” to my “List of Words that Mean I Get Screwed”) The proposal would allow companies that provide services throughout Europe to use the standards of their “country of origin” rather than the standards of the country where the work is being done. So, for instance, if a Slovakian company does work in France, they can pay Slovakian wages (low) and benefits (bad) rather than French ones (tres bon). Not surprisingly, the French and Germans opposed this but the British support it. Whether it is adopted - and in what form - will probably depend upon how many people take to the streets.

A Follow-up

Wal-Mart’s sweetheart deal with the Department of Labor is getting quite a bit of attention. Some Congressmen are now asking for an investigation and even Lou Dobbs of CNN has his dander up over the DoL’s behavior. (And a danderized Lou Dobbs is a scary thing.) However, whether anything significant will come out of all this controversy has yet to be seen.

Nice Deals You Won't Get

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article describing how thousands of wealthy families are legally avoiding the federal estate tax by putting their money into so-called dynasty trusts. Over the past few years, a number of states have altered their laws so that the tax-exempt trusts, which used to last only about 90 to 120 years, can now last for centuries or even forever. It varies from state to state. In Wyoming and Utah, for instance, the trust can last for 1,000 years; in Florida, 360 years; in Alaska or South Dakota, til the end of time. It’s estimated that about $100 billion has been socked away in the trusts. More here. In Congress, the Joint Committee on Taxation released a report recommending closing of the dynasty trust loophole. Ain't gonna happen.

WSJ also had an article about the development of South Lake Union here in Seattle. Paul Allen, one of the richest men in the world, owns 60 acres of land which he is turning into a biotech center. However, he’s getting $500 million of city, state and federal funds to do so. As deputy Mayor Tim Ceis put it, “They [Vulcan, Inc., Allen’s company] need to make a profit on this as well. They’re not doing this to be a benefactor to the city.” If you say so, Tim. Allen is, not surprisingly, giddy over the development, believing it will spur growth. As he put it: “A couple of projects go up and people say ‘Hey, this is a great place to move my company.’” Perhaps. Of course, he might want to read this article about a recent report which concluded that many people are being priced out of the home owning market here in Puget Sound.

It’s sort of like Field of Dreams with a twist: If you build it, they would come if they could afford it.

Oh yeah, this one's a keeper!

Here’s another example of bad Seattle columnists. This time, it’s Bruce Ramsey from The Seattle Times. On January 26th he wrote:

We Americans are an independent people. We find our own jobs, our own marriage partners and rear our own children. We allow ourselves access to alcohol, gambling, guns and bank cards. We mess up some of these things at one time or another, but generally come out OK, and would never entrust them to the government.

Wrong. We’ve entrusted almost all of them to the government. Guns, booze, and gambling are all heavily regulated by state and federal agencies. So are banks. As for finding marriage partners, ask a Mormon or a gay (or a gay Mormon!) whether or not government is involved in their ability to choose. And, finally, we may not entrust the government to rear our children, but we certainly entrust them to educate them.

Honestly, it's stunning that garbage like this gets published.

Seattle's Worst Columnist?

Is Robert Jamieson the worst columnist in Seattle? It's tough to say. There's a lot of competition. Nicole Brodeur is pretty bad. So is Joni Balter. It seems that Knute Berger and Jim Veseley are in a contest to determine who's more boring. But still, for pure, 100%, fresh-squeezed awfulness you can't beat Jamieson. His latest howler was when he referred to Congressman Jim McDermott, recently returned from a trip to Darfur, as "a messenger for whom human caring knows no borders." Wow. Did Jamieson ever think about what his words actually mean? According to him McDermott, like Christ or Buddha, has a compassion for humanity that is literally boundless. Gee, maybe we should all start calling McDermott, "The Mahatma" (or, perhaps, "The McHatma"). In reality, though, I think "grandstanding" is the only thing for which McDermott has no borders. Or was it "napping"? Once again, tough to say.

...but you can buy toothpaste for a nickel!

The US Department of Labor recently fined Wall-Mart $135,000 for violations of child-labor laws. In the future, though, the DoL said they will give Wal-Mart 15 days notice before they investigate any "wage and hour" violations. Nice deal. I wonder if Wal-Mart security gives their shoplifters 15 minutes notice? More here.

Arthur Miller about the Depression (from his autobiography Timebends):

It was not that people were more altruistic but that a point arrived - perhaps around 1936 - when for the first time unpolitical people began thinking of common action as a way out of their impossible conditions. Out of dire necessity came the surge of mass trade unionism and the federal government's first systematic relief programs, the resurgent farm cooperative movement, the TVA and other public projects that put people to work and brought electricity to vast new areas, repaired and built new bridges and aqueducts, carried out vast reforestation projects, funded student loans and research into the country's folk history - its songs and tales collected and published for the first time - and this burst of imaginative action created the sense of a government that for all its blunders and waste was on the side of the people.

Mea Culpa

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to my readers (both of them). I had hoped to keep this blog free of any references to current events in Iraq. After all, there are so many other good sites out there about Iraq. Why should I write about it? I want to write about work and economics and political power – that’s what interests me, not Iraq. I had hoped my blog would be an “Iraq-free Zone”, as it were. But, alas, it was not to be.

Naomi Klein reports in The Nation how the Iraqis, in their recent election, have decisively rejected the free market policies which the US imposed on them after the invasion. The platform of the victorious United Iraqi Alliance includes "adopting a social security system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit Iraqi...and offers facilities to citizens to build homes" and pledges “to write off Iraq's debts, cancel reparations and use the oil wealth for economic development projects." The US, of course, will have none of this and is currently championing Finance Minister Adel Abd al-Mahdi as the leader of the new Iraq government. About al-Mahdi, Klein writes:

In October he told a gathering of the American Enterprise Institute that he planned to "restructure and privatize [Iraq's] state-owned enterprises," and in December he made another trip to Washington to unveil plans for a new oil law "very promising to the American investors." It was al-Mahdi himself who oversaw the signing of a flurry of deals with Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco in the weeks before the elections, and it is he who negotiated the recent austerity deal with the IMF.

So much for the spread of democracy.

Duh

More proof of the advantages of unionized jobs over non-unionized jobs - see here and here.

The Penultimate Bailout

According to Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, General Motor’s CEO Rick Wagoner was going to give a speech at The Economic Club of Chicago on Thursday in which he would focus on fixing the nation’s health-care system. Wagoner’s favored solution is “a consumer-driven, competitive marketplace, with better health-care information systems, better research on the clinical effectiveness of different drugs and therapies, and better information on the quality of care available to consumers.” In other words, the same fucked-up system we’ve got now. What he doesn’t want, not surprisingly, is “the ultimate bailout, a government run national health-care system.” However, he doesn’t mind the $500 million prescription drug subsidy which GM received under the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003.

Medicare Modernization Act. It looks like I’m going to have to add “modernization” to my list of “Words That Mean I’m Getting Screwed.” It’ll come after “empower” and before “reform.”

Mon Dieu!

It seems the French government is about to change the rules regarding the country’s 35-hour work-week. Currently, if you work longer than 35 hours in the week you get extra vacation days. French employers find this a burden (do businessmen ever stop complaining?) and, apparently, so, too, do some French workers who “complain that they cannot afford the surfeit of free time, which can total more than three months a year.” Oh, the humanity! Under the changes being proposed, though, if you work more than 35 hours you can sell the excess vacation time back to the employer for compensation. Still, hundreds of thousand of French citizens have taken to the streets to protest the changes, feeling that it would move the country away from its comfy “Gallic model” and towards what The New York Times calls “the notorious rat race of American society.” I disagree with that characterization of American society. It’s not a “notorious rat race”, it’s a “miserable, inhuman, evil, soul-destroying rat race.”

Die At Your Desk, John Wayne

There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times about retirees who are being forced back into work because of cuts to, or even the elimination of, their pensions and/or health benefits. Most interestingly, the people who the Times interviewed are incredibly docile. It’s unbelievable. One man who lost most of his life savings said, “I just have to forget about that and move ahead.” OK. Another person who saw their retirement disappear said, “I will work until the day I die.” She didn’t seem very angry about it, though. Another person has joined a lawsuit against his former employer (that’s something, at least) but that’s doomed since access to the legal system is also being shut down (a.k.a. “tort reform”). Although the Times would never run articles quoting angry workers, I think the people they interviewed are representative of most Americans. They’re meek and they’re getting screwed. Hmmm…maybe there’s a connection. Let's face it, the only time workers in this country did well was when the powers that be were scared shitless of us. We had unions, government agencies, and even a political party on our side. And it was the greatest period of American prosperity, ever (1950-1975). But once workers began adopting sheepish attitudes like those I’ve cited above it was very easy to rob them of their money and their rights. Americans like to think that they’re big, tough, individualists who don’t “take crap” from anyone. That’s nonsense. It may have been true in the past, but it’s dead wrong regarding the current crop. They can be robbed blind and they’ll do nothing to stop it.

Into Africa

Here is an article about the African country of Liberia which appeared in today’s New York Times. It tells about how they’re going to have an election in that war-torn country in nine months. Here, though, is a different article about Liberia that the Times didn’t feel was worth reporting. It’s about how the US announced on February 3rd that it would “restructure, train and upgrade” the Liberian Army with the goal of creating a “modern, reactive, responsive” military. Now that UN troops will be leaving the country, the US, with the support of the Liberian government, is going to take over the military for the next three years. The head of the effort, Andy Michael, said the restructuring of the army, which will cost about $200 million, is the "beginning of lasting and meaningful engagements with the people of Liberia." Another piece of US-Africa news that went largely unnoticed was an article from Reuters on January 26th that the US had sent a large warship into Africa’s oil rich Gulf of Guinea for about a month to help train local navies and boost security. The US currently imports 14% of its oil from West Africa but is hoping to increase that amount to 25% over the next few years. The US is also considering building a deep-water port in Sao Tome and Principe, two island nations located right in the heart of the gulf. On February 1st, Sao Tome and Principe signed a $123 million deal with Chevron Texaco and Exxon Mobil for the rights to drill for oil in the gulf. That same day Nigeria signed a $1.5 billion gas-to-liquid conversion project with Chevron Nigeria Ltd. Even the Africans involved in the petroleum business are becoming concerned. One of them recently said at an oil and gas conference in Nigeria, "with United States current Africa's oil policy and deployment of US military might to the Gulf of Guinea to police economic activities in that region no reasonable African leader should go to bed with his two eyes closed."

In a new report, a United Nations commission investigating the violence in Sudan’s Darfur region has recommended that charges be brought in the International Criminal Court against various Sudanese officials for “crimes against humanity and war crimes.” This is opposed by the US because, as the US ambassador at large for war crimes, Pierre-Richard Prosper put it, “We don’t want to be party to legitimizing the ICC.” To get an idea about how insane the US opposition to the ICC is you must remember that the UN Security Council plays a major role in authorizing or prohibiting any prosecution. The US can, in effect, veto any attempts to prosecute it (Article 16 of the Rome Treaty). So, even “legitimized” the ICC presents no threat to the US.

The New York Times Magazine had a very good article about Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union (a union to which I belong, by the way). The article was very positive about unions in general and Stern in particular. This is a welcome departure from most coverage of union affairs. Now that white-collar workers (a.k.a., the NYT's readers) are seeing their jobs outsourced, the Times is adopting a more sympathetic tone towards unions. When it was the blue-collar jobs being lost the Times didn’t mind at all. Unions don’t look so bad, though, when you and your buddies are getting their jobs slashed.

In another sign that it’s not only the working and middle classes getting squeezed on the job, Business Week reported that the number of companies with COOs has declined from 316 in 2000 to 249 in 2004, according to a study of 600 large US companies done by executive search firm Crist Associates. CFOs and CEOs are now taking over many of the COO’s responsibilities. Apparently, “sweating the assets” goes all the way to the top.