Outrage Fatigue

Reading the news online these days gives me outrage fatigue. Today I got out of bed at 4 a.m. because I couldn't sleep. Now, four hours later, I'm exhausted and would like to stay in bed all day to recover. Here is my day's quota of outrage:

• First up, a list of banking crises and bailouts in Paul Krugman's and Robin Wells' article in The New York Review of Books has me wondering why we can't learn from our mistake of not regulating the banking industry (and larger financial industry) more vigorously: The Busts Keep Getting Bigger. Why?". Clearly, some people have been getting very, very rich through insufficiently regulated speculation and trading, but millions of Americans have suffered because of the greed of a few:

  what we have experienced is, in a very real sense, the triumph of Wall Street and the decline of America...[T]the vast sums of money channeled through Wall Street did not improve America’s productive capacity by “efficiently allocating capital to its best use.” Instead, it diminished the country’s productivity by directing capital on the basis of financial chicanery, outrageous compensation packages, and bubble-infected stock price valuations....And what has happened in the aftermath of the 2008–2009 crisis is still worse: all the evidence suggests that the United States is on track to spending the better part of a decade experiencing high unemployment and sub-par growth blighting millions of lives—particularly the old, the young, and the economically vulnerable.

• Next up, an article about how a law to protect pregnant women from domestic violence is being used to criminalize women who have miscarriages: Ed Pilkington's "Outcry in America as Pregnant Women Who Lose Babies Face Murder Charges," The Guardian, 24 June 2011. Women whose addictions may or may not have caused them to abort are being arrested and charged with murder. And this is in a country where abortion is still--theoretically, at least--legal. Now, I believe in a woman's right to have a legal, safe, medically-arranged abortion, a right that is becoming increasingly difficult to attain in states that are throwing up more and more legal barriers. Personally, I don't think abortion is the right way to practice birth control; I would prefer that women and teenagers have cheap and easy access to birth control. However, the same folks who would refuse abortions to women who seek them (or women who require them for medical reasons) also fight to prevent easy access to birth control. I believe that women have the right to make their own decisions about reproduction, and I'm not really sympathetic to the idea that a bunch of cells can have "rights" from the moment of conception. Yet that seems to be where our current anti-abortion groups are leading us--to a place where women's bodies become their prisons, their fetuses--at whatever stage--their jailors. It's difficult for me not to see misogyny in how this law is being pursued:

  At least 38 of the 50 states across America have introduced foetal homicide laws that were intended to protect pregnant women and their unborn children from violent attacks by third parties – usually abusive male partners – but are increasingly being turned by renegade prosecutors against the women themselves.
  
  South Carolina was one of the first states to introduce such a foetal homicide law. National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found only one case of a South Carolina man who assaulted a pregnant woman having been charged under its terms, and his conviction was eventually overturned. Yet the group estimates there have been up to 300 women arrested for their actions during pregnancy. (my emphasis)

  Once again, we have a law whose consequences folks just weren't far-sighted enough to imagine.

• Even David Brooks is calling out the Republicans for obstinancy: "The Mother of All No-Brainers," The New York Times, 4 July 2011. Brooks describes the fanatic movement that has taken over the Republican party as unwilling to compromise, "no matter how sweet the terms," as lacking "moral decency," as deniers of facts (refusing to believe scholars and impartial experts), and as unfit to govern. This is DAVID BROOKS, not some lefty. What I don't get is why so many citizens are influenced by these same fanatics. And I found Michael Lind's article "The Three Fundamentalisms of the American Right" useful, too, in understanding my own outrage at today's conservatism--because today's conservatism isn't the conservatism that I grew up with: it's fundamentalism, not Burkean conservatism. And just as I grew more and more outraged as the Southern Baptist Church, the church in which I was born and reared, became more and more fundamentalist, I have become more and more outraged as conservatism has become fundamentalist. And that makes sense. For, as Lind points out, one cannot have a civil discussion with people who think they are always right--and therefore Good--and anyone who disagrees with them is always wrong--and therefore Evil:

  The rise of triple fundamentalism [Protestant fundamentalism, constitutional fundamentalism, and market fundamentalism] on the American right creates a crisis of political discourse in the United States. Back when conservatism was orthodox and traditional, rather than fundamentalist and counter-revolutionary, conservatives could engage in friendly debates with liberals, and minds on both sides could now and then be changed. But if your sect alone understands the True Religion and the True Constitution and the Laws of the Market, then there is no point in debate. All those who disagree with you are heretics, to be defeated, whether or not they are converted.

Enough outrage for the day. It's mid-morning; I can still salvage the day.

Back at the Farm

I left Georgia two months ago to relocate to Louisiana, but I still keep up with news there through the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's website. So I read with interest Governor Nathan Deal's recent signing into law House Bill 87, described as an Arizona-styled immigration law. An article published in early May in the AJC states that:

Deal and other supporters of HB 87 have hailed it as a victory for taxpayers who have borne the cost of illegal immigration in Georgia. A recent estimate by the Pew Hispanic Center puts the number of illegal immigrants in Georgia at 425,000, the seventh-highest among the states. Those illegal immigrants, supporters of HB 87 say, are taking jobs from state residents and burdening Georgia’s public schools, hospitals and jails. [Jeremy Redmon, "Governor signs Arizona-style immigration bill into law," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 13 May 2011.]

Supporters of the bill re-affirm that Georgia is a "business-friendly" state, but that HB 87 "represents [the state's] responsibility to watch the taxpayers' bottom line just as the business community vigilantly guards their bottom line." As the farming season gears up, however, one of the consequences to the bill has not been so "business-friendly." Evidently, Hispanic workers "are bypassing Georgia to work in other states." [Jeremy Redman, "Governor asks state to probe farm labor shortages," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 27 May 2011]

That Hispanic labor shortage has caused farmers to lose money, to let some of their produce remain uncollected in the field. One blue berry farmer estimates that he has lost 10% of his crop due to the labor shortage. An owner of a 4,500 acre vegetable farm near Tifton, GA, says that "between 75 and 100 Hispanic workers he depends on didn't show up for work this year....causing him to lose some of his vegetable harvests" [Redman, 27 May 2011]. Some farmers are talking about cutting back on production in order to adjust to the loss in labor; others have tried enticements, such as extra monetary bonuses, to get Hispanic laborers to overcome their fear of the restrictive law. According to the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association "the labor shortages afflicting South Georgia counties could put as much as $300 million in crops at risk" [Redman, 27 May 2011].

Now I know what some folks are going to say: with Georgia's unemployment rate still near 10%, that maybe those unemployed should seek work on Georgian farms. Well, we all know the history of farm labor in the South, don't we? Also, it's back-breaking, hot, tough 8-hours-a-day work. The typical wage, evidently, is $12.50 an hour, on average. And "experienced workers can earn as much as $200 a day" [Bill Chappell, "Georgia Farmers Say Immigration Law Keeps Workers Away," GPB News, 27 May 2011]. However, the work is temporary and seasonal. And it takes practice to become "experienced" in picking vegetables quickly and efficiently. Hey, I know. I used to pick peas every summer when I stayed with my grandmother Ruby Benton in Gum Grove, Texas. I hoed long rows of vegetables in our own family garden, and I helped harvest many Irish potatoes. But that work was brief, not five 8-hour days a week for five months. Evidently, Mexican and Guatemalan laborers weren't "taking jobs from state residents," as proponents of the bill claimed. Some farmers have described their lack of success in trying to get local people to do the work of the immigrant laborers.

Working as a laborer on a vegetable or fruit farm might put groceries on the table for a while, but it isn't going to offer any health benefits for the ensuing back pain.

I am always amazed--not!--at how the unintended consequences of punitive laws can be as problematic, if not more so, than the original situation the laws were meant to ameliorate.

Later Comment: I've been told that the guys who work on those farms don't work eight hours a day but work "can to can't"--from can see to can't see.