Worst Deep Throat Ever!

What a disappointment! It turns out that Deep Throat was just the number 2 guy at the FBI. All these years I kept hoping it would be someone interesting and edgy. Like Henry Kissinger. Or Al Haig. Or even William Rehnquist. Or I imagined he’d be some sort of James Bond kind of figure. Or like he stepped out of a Graham Greene novel. But no. Instead, it’s just some old paper pusher, Bartleby the freakin’ Scrivner. What’s worse is that he couldn’t even maintain his anonymity. If he had died without giving away his identity (and at 91 years old, how long did he have really?) I could at least have some respect for him. But instead he tells some schmedrick who writes it up for Vanity Fair, like he's some attention craving media whore. Sheesh! It’s like this guy is Paris Hilton! No, this is not the kind of Deep Throat I imagined. My Deep Throat would’ve eaten a cyanide pill before giving away his identity. Or he would’ve been chasing some guy through the rain swept streets of post-war Prague. He would have been much cooler. He would have had some dignity. Bottom line: on a scale of one to ten, I give this Deep Throat a 2.5.

A Moment Of Clarity (Sort Of)

Tom Friedman (the densest of the dense) calls for the destruction of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. It should be noted, though, that he objects to Gitmo only on practical grounds, not moral ones. All that torturing and killing is giving us a bad rap throughout the world and creating new enemies. That’s what he objects to. That such practices are evil and morally abhorrent never enters the picture. The torture and killing isn’t a problem for him per se; only other people knowing about it is. In fact, if no one knew about it, if that knowledge was totally suppressed, I don’t believe that he would object to Gitmo at all.

What's The Azerbaijani Word For "Quagmire?"

Wednesday saw the opening of a new oil pipeline going from Azerbaijan through Georgia and to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliev put it well: "The union of Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia and the United States ... made this a reality." Ultimately, the pipeline (known as the BTC pipeline) will be expanded to the oilfields of Kazakhstan as well. The Guardian observes:

The Bush administration first recognised the pipeline's potential in May 2001, when an energy policy review spearheaded by the vice-president, Dick Cheney, said the Kashagan oilfield in Kazakhstan was capable of exporting 2.6m barrels a day if pipelines like the BTC were operational.

The report recommended Mr. Bush to order the departments of state and energy to "establish the commercial conditions" to facilitate Kazakh exports via the BTC. Since then the US has increased its military assistance to the authoritarian Mr Aliev, while at the same time supporting a pro-western revolution in Georgia.

The Financial Times also notes:

[President Aliev] also vowed to restore Azeri sovereignty to the disputed enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, currently occupied by Armenia. Some diplomats read this as a hint that some of Azerbaijan's new-found oil wealth might be spent on the country's military.

Our Pudgy Mayor

An article in today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer was entitled “Nickels’ Plan Calls For Taller, Slimmer Buildings.” What we really need, though, is a taller, slimmer Nickels.

Wal-Mart and History

Yesterday’s New York Times had a good article about efforts by union leaders, lawmakers and community groups to pressure Wal-Mart to increase the wages and benefits it pays its 1.3 million employees. Wal-Mart’s average hourly wage is $9.68 an hour. To put that in perspective, for all retail workers the average hourly pay is $12.28; for workers at Costco, it’s $16.00. In addition, Costco provides 82% of its employees with health insurance whereas Wal-Mart only provides it for 48% of its workforce.

The article, though, contained this little piece of historical revisionism:

Wal-Mart critics often note that corporations like Ford and GM led a race to the top, providing high wages and generous benefits that other companies emulated.

“Henry Ford made sure he paid his workers enough so that they could afford to buy his cars,” said William McDonough, executive vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. “Wal-Mart is doing the polar opposite of Henry Ford.”

What nonsense. The only reason that Ford and GM paid good wages was because the workers at their factories formed unions and demanded them. Here. Ford and GM didn’t “lead” a race to the top; they were dragged there kicking and screaming by the UAW. And an executive vice president of a labor union should know that. The NYT article makes it sound as if the companies acted out of the goodness of their hearts. They didn’t. And they still don’t today. Companies don’t have hearts. In fact, according to George Whalin, president of Retail Management Consultants, here’s what companies do (and don’t) have:

“Wal-Mart has a responsibility to serve their customers – to give them a good product – and to their shareholders. They don’t have a responsibility to society to pay a higher wage than the law says you have to pay.”

Well said. Whalin, though, is not entirely right. Companies have no responsibility to serve customers, let alone give them a good product. Their only responsibility is to their shareholders – shareholders who, frankly, would rather have bad products with high returns than good products with low ones.

It’s very important for working people not to be seduced by the kind of paternalistic garbage expressed by some of the quotes above. There never was a golden age of employers guided by enlightened self-interest. We working people have had to fight for every benefit and advantage we now possess (insurance, pensions, weekends, etc.) And the Henry Fords of the world have fought against us every step of the way. Not surprisingly, this history (so violent, yet so instructive) has been assiduously left out of the textbooks. Instead, we were told that yeah, sure, there were some problems, but they were solved when Big Benevolent Daddy (Henry Ford, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, etc.) came on the scene and set things right. Left out of the story is the fact that it was the collective action of millions of common people (the Populist movement, labor unions, suffragettes, etc.) that forced change on a reluctant society.

And it’s the same in this case. Earnest appeals to their better nature will never persuade Wal-Mart to pay their employees more. Only through legislation, unionization or some combination of both will they do so. Going hat in hand to an employer and hoping for benevolence (“Please, sir, can I have some more?”) is a doomed strategy.

Troubles For Cafta

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Costa Rica is hesitating to ratify the Central American Free Trade Agreement (Cafta). In fact, the Costa Rican Parliament may not even vote on the agreement until after February of 2006. This reluctance on Costa Rica’s part may undermine the already slim support for Cafta in the US Congress. And the reason for Costa Rica’s hesitation: “mounting opposition by trade unions, some farm groups and even some business leaders.” In addition:

Some Costa Ricans worry that Cafta may lead to the privatization of the country's free universal health-care system, which puts the poor country on par with industrialized nations in many important health indexes. Just 38% of Costa Ricans polled in February who had heard of the deal thought it would benefit the country, compared with 56% in January of last year, according to a study by the CID/Gallup polling firm.

The only Central American countries to ratify the pact so far are Honduras, El Salvador and Guatamala – basically, death-squad countries. In any country where the population hasn’t been terrorized into silence, public opposition is strong.

Also, it says a lot about the decline of American power when a little crap-ass country like Costa Rica can undermine our trade treaties. We Americans like to imagine that we’re a colossus straddling the globe, an empire, a hegemon. In reality, every year we become more marginalized and more powerless to control events. The world is quite determined to dispense with "the indispensible power."

Popes, Porn and Politics!

Chris T. and I discuss all that and more on the most recent Communication Breakdown podcast.