Cynicism Redux

I've been following the debt ceiling debate with growing--and now matured--cynicism. Today, House Minority Leader Harry Reid has evidently offered the Republicans a debt plan that includes $2.7 million in spending cuts, with no new taxes, with the stipulation that the debt ceiling be raised through 2012. (h/t Brian Beutler at TPM). As Matt Yglesias points out, however, the House Republicans don't want to accept this plan that nominally meets their publicly stated requirements because it doesn't repeal Medicare and it doesn't take future tax increases off the table. The Bush tax cuts are supposed to expire in 2012:

In particular, the plan doesn’t cut Medicare, which means that Democratic party candidates for office in November 2012 and 2014 can accurately remind voters of the content of the Republican budget plan. In case you forgot, this plans repeals Medicare. Having repealed Medicare, it then gives seniors vouchers to purchase more expensive private health insurance. And having replaced Medicare with a voucher system, it then ensures that the vouchers will grow steadily stingier over time. It was only after voting for this plan that Republicans seem to have realized that repealing Medicare is unpopular. Since that time, they’ve been trying to entrap Democrats into reaching some kind of Medicare détente with them, which would immunize them from criticism. Reid’s plan doesn’t do that. "Harry Reid Calls House Republicans' Bluff"

Politicians hope that people won't REALLY understand what they're up to: Repealing Medicare is unpopular with the American people, so Republicans have tried to sell their voucher plan. Yet the Republican voucher plan for Medicare will increase costs for old folks and thus result in denial of services. Republicans hope that no one will notice the switcheroo in their plan. (Ca-ching--another coin in the cynicism bank)

And, dang it, those tax cuts are SUPPOSED to expire. Not only that, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "middle-income Americans are now paying federal taxes at or near historically low levels, according to the latest available data. That’s true whether it comes to their federal income taxes or their total federal taxes." "Federal Income Taxes on Middle-Income Families at Historically Low Levels."

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also points out just what is responsible for our current debt crisis:

If not for the Bush tax cuts, the deficit-financed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression (including the cost of policymakers’ actions to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term. By themselves, in fact, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will account for almost half of the $20 trillion in debt that, under current policies, the nation will owe by 2019. The stimulus law and financial rescues will account for less than 10 percent of the debt at that time. "Economic Downturn and Bush Policies Continue to Drive Large Projected Deficits"

And a graph in the New York Times handily compares the results of new budget policies under Bush and Obama, based on data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "Policy Changes Under Two Presidents"--A $5.07 trillion increase under Bush and a $1.44 trillion increase under Obama.

As Steve Benen points out: "And now these same Republicans [who helped turn a large surplus into a massive deficit] claim the high ground on fiscal issues, and demand that President Obama clean up their mess immediately. Worse, they demand he do so in a way they find pleasing, or next week, they’ll crash the economy on purpose." "Blame Where Blame is Due"

Kevin Drum describes the Republican narrative that too many people are buying into:

Up until very recently, Republicans were mostly taking a hard line on the deficit and weren't shy about making sure everyone knew it. The hard line itself hasn't changed since then, but over the past few weeks they've come to realize that it doesn't make for very good PR. So now their enablers in the media are furiously pushing the story that it's really Obama who's completely intransigent and insincere, rejecting deal after deal no matter how much Republicans try to accomodate his crazed desire to punish the rich. This narrative, as near as I can tell, is now virtually unanimous among conservative commenters.

So the question is, will anyone buy this? It's so self-evidently preposterous that it doesn't seem possible, but then, I wouldn't have figured that they could successfully make the world so quickly forget that they were responsible for the deficit in the first place, nor that they were also responsible for the most epic financial meltdown since the Great Depression. But they have. Their ability to shape popular narratives can hardly be underestimated. "Republicans and the Deficit Narrative"

It's amazing to me that anyone still takes these Republicans seriously. Oh, I know that there are conservatives who are speaking out against the rash policies of these radicals, but those folks aren't in power.

It's like a bunch of whiny kids who trashed a house at a party. Another group of kids come in to clean up and have to buy supplies to do so. The ones responsible for the mess then scream about the costs of the clean-up and convince bystanders that the clean-up crew is responsible for all the costs and damages. Unbelievable.

Cynicism

My children tell me that I am very cynical, so when they confront some evidence of a younger me--in my writing or the writing of friends--who comes across as naive and trusting, they seem surprised. Of course, our children never really know us, do they? They weren't witness to many of the events (our own failings as well as the failings of others) that transformed us over time--either because they were not present or because they were too young to understand what was going on. I'll admit that a little bit of faith in humanity remains in me, but in the last several years, that bit of faith has received a beating.

The Republicans taking hostage of the debt ceiling is a big disappointment; I mean, they didn't have difficulties with debt ceilings under President Bush. Why so recalcitrant now? (That's a rhetorical question). But the treatment of Elizabeth Warren by Republican Congressmen is in a category by itself, I think. Or maybe not. Given some thought, I could probably come up with other similar examples. Here is a very smart woman who speaks plainly and who has worked to help make financial matters more transparent to consumers, that is, people such as I.

Here is Elizabeth Warren speaking on those credit card contracts that none of us can understand:
"Elizabeth Warren on Credit Card 'Tricks and Traps'," at Now, online, 2 January 2009.

Here she is talking about bankruptcy caused by medical bills and "aggressive hospital collections":
Interview 1
Interview 2

Here she is talking about subprime mortgages in 2004--raising the alarm before subprime mortgages, bundled up as toxic assets, helped to almost blow up our economy:
on "Books of our Time"

People with this kind of sense, with this kind of concern for ordinary families, evidently have no place in our government, according to the Republicans who refused to accept her as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Their condescending questioning and unrelenting demonization of this woman is a travesty of public service.

In The New York Times, Joe Nocera reviews Elizabeth Warren's travails with Republican 'leadership,' in this, her last week with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: "The Travails of Ms. Warren," posted on Friday, 22 July 2011.

Here is an example of Warren's own lack of cynicism. She thought that if she could make clear to Congress what the mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be, the accusations and demonization would stop:

“I’ve never been an ideologue,” she told me. “And I thought the best way to deal with that perception was to put our vision out there. The vision is clear. Consumers should be able to tell the price and risk of any credit product before they buy it. We want to mow down the fine print. I thought once that was on the table, and it was clear that we were executing on it, the accusations would go away.” Nocera, "The Travails of Ms. Warren"

But: " House Republicans regularly brought her before their committees and acted as if this were the second coming of Joe McCarthy....Republicans would cut off her answers and speak to her in tones ranging from contempt to condescension. The treatment wasn’t just disrespectful. It was ugly. And it never stopped."

As I have stated in a previous post, I would have loved having an Elizabeth Warren looking out for my interests. Unfortunately, bankers and financial institutions have far more money than I have and far more influence over those Republicans who made sure that Elizabeth Warren would never direct the agency she was responsible for helping to create.

It's a real shame. Add another coin to my cynicism bank.

Let's Remember This...

As the investigation of the phone hacking of News of the World reporters and private investigators continues, let's remember, as Christopher Hitchens reminds us, that it was a newspaper that investigated and brought to light the misdeeds of News of the World:

The prime minister's office showed itself incapable of conducting an investigation; the courts and the prosecutors appeared to have no idea of the state of the law, and the police were too busy collecting their tip-off fees. Admittedly, it isn't usually the job of these institutions to keep the press honest. (Indeed, I could swear that I read somewhere that the whole concept was the other way about.) Still, it's encouraging to record that when the press needed a housecleaning, there was a paper [the Guardian] ready to take on the job.

Other Views: Media Moguls, Rupert Murdoch

For what it's worth, here are some links to articles with a little more positive attitude toward Rupert Murdoch and British tabloids:

• Nicholas Lemann, "Paper Tigers," The New Yorker, 13 April 2009.
  
• Toby Young, "Three Cheers for Murdoch," Salon, 8 July 2011.

Darker and Deeper: Murdoch and the Phone Hacking Investigation

The investigation into how reporters for Rupert Murdoch's News of the World hacked into voicemail of murder victims and their families, members of the royal family, celebrities, and, perhaps even dead soldiers and victims of the London Underground bombing continue. Why should we care here in our bright "city on a hill"? Well, Murdoch is a media mogul whose print and cable media stretch from Australia to Great Britain to the United States (Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post) to Asia. The woman who managed the newspaper charged with these illegal acts, Rebekah Brooks, is very close to Murdoch. He treats her almost as his own daughter. But even more importantly, as print, cable, television, and online media become more and more consolidated, under the control of one corporation or one multi-billionaire, the news we receive is all the more susceptible to being manipulated by people with immense power. I think we have to be vigilant and to fight against misuse of that kind of power.

First, a little bit of background about the despicable practices of Rupert Murdoch's reporters, from the epicenter of the scandal  [h/t to Jack Shafer for most of these links]:

• A timeline of the scandal: "Phone hacking: timeline of scandal," The Telegraph, 5 April 2011.
  
• Nick Davies and Amelia Hill, "Missing Milly Dowler's voicemail was hacked by News of the World," Guardian, 4 July 2011.
  
• Sandra Laville and Vikram Dodd, "News of the World Paid bribes worth L100,000 to up to five Met officers," Guardian 7 July 2011.
  
• A British reporter deconstructs Rupert Murdoch's statement about the investigation: Roy Greenslade, "Phone hacking: reading between the lines of Murdoch's statement," Guardian 6 July 2011.
  
• Andy McSmith, "Behind Rupert Murdoch's Throne: The story of Rebekah Brooks," The Independent Press, 6 July 2011.
  
• On Murdoch's decision to allow Rebekah Brooks to lead an internal investigation on the phone hacking: Helene Mulholland, "Letting Rebekah Brooks lead enquiry is 'extraordinary,' says PCC chair," Guardian, 7 July 2011.
  
• On News of the World journalists spying for murder suspects: Nick Davies, "News of the World surveillance of detective: what Rebekah Brooks knew," Guardian, 6 July 2011.  

Another connection between our shores and the shores of the white cliffs of Dover:

Peter Hutchison, "Phone hacking: Rupert Murdoch brings in Joel Klein to oversee investigation," The Telegraph 7 July 2011.

Today's headlines at The New York Times online:

• Sarah Lyall and Jo Becker, ""Woman Rises to the Top in Male Tabloid Culture," The New York Times, 7 July 2011.
  
• Sarah Lyall and Alan Cowell, "Murdoch to Close Tabloid Amid Fury over Hacking,", The New York Times, 7 July 2011.
  
• Jeremy W. Peters and Brian Stelter, "The Murdoch Style, Under Pressure," The New York Times, 6 July 2011.

Today, Jack Shafer turns the investigation into film noir on Slate: "Rupert Murdock: Film Noir Villain"

And, for background on Rupert Murdoch, The Atlantic provides a link to an article in their archives by James Fallows: "The Age of Murdoch," first published in 2003.

We Know Who has the Real Power

Well, here are two seemingly contradictory quotes in an article by Jodie Ginsberg, writing for Reuters, posted on Talking Points Memo website:

British politicians have said in the past they feared criticizing any of the Murdoch papers because they feared their own private lives might be exposed.

The [British] government has maintained that the hacking scandal should not influence its decision [on allowing Rupert Murdoch "to secure the 61 percent of broadcaster BSkyB he does not already control in a deal expected to be worth at least $14 billion"], which will be based on whether the takeover will give Murdoch too much power over the British media and politics -- a view Cameron's ministers reject.

Worth Reading

Frank Rich lets loose: "Obama's Original Sin," in New York Magazine's "News and Features," 3 July 2011.

This article would be great to use in a communications class in which one is discussing the art of rhetoric (ethos, logos, and pathos) and the emotional appeal of language (buried metaphors such as "paw print," alliteration, understatement, hyperbole, aphorisms, etc.)

A few excerpts:

• "As the indefatigable Matt Taibbi has tabulated, law enforcement on Obama’s watch rounded up 393,000 illegal immigrants last year and zero bankers."

• "It's as if the Watergate investigation were halted after the cops nabbed the nudniks who did the break-in."

• "What some call a settlement others may find a cover-up."

• "Those in executive suites at the top of that chain have long since fled the scene with the proceeds, while bleeding shareholders, investors, homeowners, and ­cashiered employees were left with the bills. The weak Dodd-Frank financial-reform law that rose from the ruins remains largely inoperative, since the actual rule-writing was delegated to understaffed agencies now under siege by banking lobbyists and their well-greased congressional overlords." (my emphasis--Just listen to the hard "R's" rolling through the first part of that last sentence, only to be let out like air from a tire, with the emphasis on "S's" at the end of the sentence.)

• And--ouch!: "But the president has no one to blame but himself for the caricature. While he has never lusted after money—he’d rather get his hands on the latest novel by Morrison or Franzen—he is an elitist of a certain sort. For all the lurid fantasies of the birthers, the dirty secret of Obama’s background is that the values of Harvard, not of Kenya or Indonesia or Bill Ayers, have most colored his governing style. He falls hard for the best and the brightest white guys."

And the final two paragraphs that one hopes the President (or someone who can influence him) reads and heeds:

“A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous,” Obama declared at his inauguration. What he said on that bright January morning is no less true or stirring now. For all his failings since, he is the only one who can make this case. There’s nothing but his own passivity to stop him from doing so—and from shaking up the administration team that, well beyond the halfway-out-the-door Geithner and his Treasury Department, has showered too many favors on the prosperous. This will mean turning on his own cadre of the liberal elite. But it’s essential if he is to call the bluff of a fake man-of-the-people like Romney. To differentiate himself from the discredited Establishment, he will have to mount the fight he has ducked for the past three years.

The alternative is a failure of historic proportions. Those who gamed the economy to near devastation—so much so that the nation turned to an untried young leader in desperation and in hope—would once again inherit the Earth. Unless and until there’s a purging of the crimes that brought our president to his unlikely Inauguration Day, much more in America than the second term of his administration will be at stake.

Where's the Outrage?

Since moving to Louisiana, I decided not to connect my television to cable, which means that I won't have access to any television channels beyond what I can access online. In Atlanta, we cut our cable, too, but my husband had to install an antenna on our house to access "free" television channels, and anytime we had a change in weather, the reception pixelated and stalled even though we were just a few miles from major transmitting stations. But here in south Louisiana, we've chosen a television-and-cable-silent zone (except for the Internet), and thus I have no access to the 24/7 chatter of cable news, and we no longer even watch the News Hour on PBS every evening as we did previously. Thus, I've missed all the intensity surrounding the trial of Casey Anthony, who was charged with killing her young daughter.

I have read the occasional news story about the trial, and today I've read several articles about the results of the trial and the public reaction, but I didn't keep up with all the details.  Yes, I sympathize with families who are victims of terrible injustices--kidnapped children, murdered family members, incest, etc.--but those stories, to me, are local stories, unless they represent something significant in the wider culture. I will read an in-depth news story describing such a local tragedy, but I don't get swept up in the minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day inundation of images and analysis though I understand the attraction to such stories. Color me conservative in that I recoil from the emotionalism and voyeurism exhibited in cable coverage of sensational news.

What bothers me is that these sensational stories get all the media attention while stories that have wider significance are relegated to print media that do not capture the attention that cable does--or get overlooked altogether on the back pages of newspapers. Or those stories that should capture our attention are reported by news organizations or bloggers that do not have a national audience.

For example, finally gaining some attention in international media is the story that British tabloids consistently use criminal means to gather information, including hacking the voicemail of celebrities and royals. Rupert Murdoch's News of the World has been caught in extensive hacking of voicemail not only of public figures but of every day citizens experiencing the kind of horror that little Calee Anthony's family has experienced. Private investigators for News of the World hacked the voicemail of Milly Dowler, a young teenager who was kidnapped and murdered. For months the police looked for Dowler, and for a while, the family had some hope that their loved one was still alive, for messages from Dowler's cell phone were deleted as if someone were still using the phone. It turns out that a private investigator working for News of the World had hacked into Milly Dowler's full voicemail and deleted messages so that more messages could be recorded. The reporters were monitoring the calls. Then the reporters interviewed the parents who had regained hope that their daughter was still alive since her voicemail was showing activity.

This kind of reprehensible behavior on the part of reporters is not limited to the shores of Great Britain. We see similar behavior, I think, in the likes of Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart might not be hacking the voicemails of murder victims, but he publishes cleverly edited video that conveys inaccurate information that he passes off as real journalism.

More troubling, however, is Rupert Murdoch's connection to this imbroglio.  Murdoch, of course, owns News of the World, the Times and Sunday Times in England. He also created the Fox Broadcasting Company  in the USA, purchased The New York Post, worked with MCI Communications to create The Weekly Standard, got into USA cable news with Fox News, and recently bought The Wall Street Journal. Is anyone so naive as to think that what happens in the news rooms of News of the World has no impact in the news rooms of Fox or The Wall Street Journal? As Jack Shafer writes in Slate, Rupert Murdoch has:

swept away every scandal--major and minor--he has ever faced because of his special skill at normalizing his malfactions. [my emphasis] He sacked Times of London editor Harold Evans after guaranteeing the paper 'independence.' He deployed his reporters to unearth dirt on business rivals. He purchased the forged Hitler diaries. He repeatedly and cravenly kowtowed to the Chinese. He approved the acquisition of O.J. Simpson's book, If I Did It, and more...We expect the worst from Murdoch, and he lives up to our expectations.

"Normalizing...malfactions" is a real threat to journalism. People mistrust the media already. Sometimes that mistrust is deserved, but often it isn't. If we cannot trust journalists to gather and report to the best of their abilities, we lose an important--necessary--means for evaluating and understanding our world and people in power. 

That trust continues to be eroded. 

The British Daily Mail's website presence, Mail Online, recently published an article that describes how Roger Ailes, president of Fox News and chairman of the Fox Television Stations, had planned as early as 1970 to create a pro-Republican news station to promote then-president Nixon, for whom Ailes worked as executive producer of TV.  Mark Duell reports that "a memo called 'A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News' was discovered by a Gawker journalist inside the Richard Nixon Presidential Library." Evidently, Ailes hoped that the White House could pay for the station. Ummm...that's called propaganda in reality world.

Melissa Bell includes in an article in the Washington Post a very revealing quote from that early Ailes memo:

Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to the radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: People are lazy. With television you just sit--watch--listen. The thinking is done for you.

 So there you have it: Roger Ailes has finally achieved his goal in Fox News.

And, of course, manipulating a passive public is not limited to Roger Ailes.

These stories should create an outrage, too, for the consequences are far-reaching. Without access to excellent journalism, we cannot act as informed citizens in a democracy.


See the original Gawker article on Roger Ailes' early plans for a GOP-news station here: John Cook, Roger Ailes' Secret Nixon-Era Blueprint for Fox News," 30 June 2011.

See more articles about The News of the World controversy here:
Sarah Ellison, "The Never-Ending Story: News of the World's Andy Coulson Condoned Police Payoffs," in Vanity Fair, 5 July 2011.

"News of the World Phone Hacking Live", The Telegraph 6 July 2011.

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.

What We Eat and Who Suffers for it

Illegal immigration has been in the news lately as states pass stricter laws to police undocumented immigrants. In Georgia, the law requires that employers verify the legal status of their employees, using E-Verify. In Arizona, immigrants must carry their alien registration papers at all times, and anyone whom law enforcement suspects is in this country illegally can be stopped, questioned, and asked to show such papers. (One can imagine how this part of the illegal-immigrant laws can cause all kinds of problems: racial profiling, harassing people who can't produce papers because they are American citizens with, perhaps, only a driver's license on them when stopped, etc.) As these laws get passed in more and more states, the public's attitude toward those who work in our fields, our houses, and our meat-processing plants become more intolerant, too. Or maybe, the intolerance came first, and then the laws. But the two go hand-in-hand.

Illegal immigration is a difficult problem, but every time the federal government tries to reform immigration, voices speak up loudly to prevent any kind of amnesty for those illegal immigrants who have been living within our borders, working hard, paying taxes on the goods they buy, and raising children in better circumstances than those they left behind.

A few articles that I have read recently have illustrated to me how our country depends upon the work of those who are here illegally and thus have influenced me to believe that we need laws that allow those who are working illegally to work legally. Employers take advantage of people who are scared that they will be deported or arrested and jailed. And those who say that illegal workers are taking away jobs that unemployed Americans could have in this terrible economy need to look at the kinds of jobs that illegal immigrants are doing--jobs that require little or no education. Does anyone really think that a recently layed-off manager of a retail store or a fifty-year-old tax accountant is going to take a job digging out pig brains?

An article in Mother Jones--"The Spam Factory's Dirty Secret," by Ted Genoways--describes how foreign workers, many of them undocumented, toil away in meat-processing factories, juicing pig brains for a thickener used in stir fry. Austin, Minnesota, is very proud of Hormel's location in their city of 24,718 residents. Novelist Tim O'Brien was born there. The contracting company that does the meat-processing for Hormel, Quality Pork Processors, Inc. (whose web site is also in Spanish) is also located in Austin, within the 15-foot privacy wall of the Hormel compound. Within those walls, people kill pigs, cut up pigs, turn pig head meat into sausage, and juice pig brains for that thickener which is exported to Asia. "More than 19,000 hogs" can be processed in a single day.

The work is not easy, and the effects can be life-threatening:

Since 1989, the line speed at QPP had been steadily increasing—from 750 heads per hour when the plant opened to 1,350 per hour in 2006, though the workforce barely increased. To speed production, the company installed a conveyor system and humming automatic knives throughout the plant, reducing skilled tasks to single motions. Workers say nearly everyone suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome or some repetitive stress injury, but by October 2007, there were signs of something else. Workers from QPP's kill floor were coming to Carole Bower, the plant's occupational health nurse, with increasingly familiar complaints: numbness and tingling in their extremities, chronic fatigue, searing skin pain. Bower started noticing workers so tender that they struggled with the stairs to the top-floor locker rooms, high above the roar of the factory line.

Workers at the "head" line, that is, those who dig the meat out of the pigs' heads and pull out the spinal cords, and juice the brains into a frothy mix that looks, according to some, like strawberry milkshake or Pepto Bismol, began exhibiting neurological damage. The article describes the terrible effects of that damage on some of the workers. Interestingly, Customs and Immigration started investigating the documentation of those workers who were ill, illustrating, once again, how we take advantage of undocumented workers. We want them to work in our factories, do the dirty work many Americans won't do (and work for which companies want to pay as little as possible), yet we don't want to pay when those workers are hurt in the process. The CEO of QPP negotiated settlements with "up to a dozen of employees who had filed workers' comp claims": "After attorneys' fees, each received $12,500, a half-year's pay." One man who had been permanently injured received $38, 600.

Two other articles about food production in this country also reminded me of how much we depend upon immigrants. This first one is actually a post by Mark Bittman, on his New York Times blog, about Immokalee, Florida, "the source of almost all the winter tomatoes grown in the United States": "Immokalee, America's Tomato Capital," posted 12 May 2011. The second is a follow-up post written by Jennifer Mascia: "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Immokalee, Florida", posted 15 June 2011. Bittman's post is a description of his tour of the town where:

tomato workers have gone from enduring slavery, beatings, wage theft (and sub-minimum wage pay) and 12-hour days in the blazing heat with no shade, to a victory that, that, while not quite complete, is possibly the most successful labor action in the United States in 20 years...

In her post, Mascia provides more details of the town and the workers who make sure that tomatoes are available in the produce section of grocery stores. She describes the work that the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has done to prevent slavery and to raise wages and living standards of the people who toil in the fields. Big chain stores fight to get lower prices to pass on to consumers--and the people who suffer are the workers in the field. For after paying for automotive machinery and diesel, where else do farmers have to turn to cut back on costs? Wages.

The production of tomatoes in Immokalee also can be an ecological disaster, as the soil is not rich enough in nutrients to grow crops: "Because of this, the land is bombarded with fertilizers, fungicides and pesticides" (Mascia, "Everything You ever Wanted to Know about Immokalee, Florida"). Also, the tomatoes are picked green and then gassed with ethylene to "ripen" them. Vine-ripened tomatoes, that is, tomatoes too ripe to be gathered and transported, are left on the vines to rot and are ploughed under with the plants after picking, which is done by hand.

Mark Bittman also has a post titled "The True Cost of Tomatoes" (posted 14 June 2011) with more information about the lives of tomato pickers, and Barry Estabrook has written a book detailing the production of tomatoes in Florida and the people who work to get them to the supermarket, Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed our Most Alluring Fruit. Here's an excerpt from his book: "Slavery in the Tomato Fields," published 8 June 2011, in The Atlantic. One can listen to an interview with Estabrook here: "The Tasteless Modern Tomato", posted by Justin Megahan, 21 June 2011, on the website of Creative Loafing, Tampa.

These articles remind me not only to care about the people who put the food on my table but also to be more aware of the food choices that I make. We owe a lot to immigrants in this country. Grappling the problem of illegal immigration requires some humility and mercy, along with justice.

[The photo at the top of the post is one of our own tomatoes, gathered from our first garden since moving in March to south Louisiana.]


Additional comment: Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama says he's willing to do anything short of shooting illegal immigrants to get rid of them. He says that:

they have no right to be here. They are clogging up our emergency rooms, and making our education system more expensive. If you go to the Madison County Jail, there are far too many illegal aliens there because they have victimized Americans...[He adds that they] need to quit taking jobs from American citizens.

Maybe he will take their places in the tomato fields of Florida or the pig-brain-sucking head table of Hormel in Austin, Minnesota: "Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks Makes Strong Comments on Illegal Immigration Law," WHNT-19 News, Huntsville, Alabama, 29 June 2011.

More about the meat industry here:
Tom Philpott, "How the Meat Industry Turned Abuse into a Business Model," Mother Jones, 29 June 2011.

And on how House Republicans' refusal to fully fund the Department of Agriculture's appropriations bill for next year will hurt small farmers: Monica Potts, "GOP's Tiny Cuts Wound Small Farmers," Grist 23 June 2011.

See also: Monica Potts' "The Serfs of Arkansas," American Prospect, 9 March 2011.

Protecting the Rich and Powerful

This morning, I read on Salon's website an article titled "The Rich Aren't Like You and Me," by Michael Winship. Winship describes how the rich are getting richer and richer and the poor, poorer and poorer. CEO pay and compensation continues to grow while workers' salaries stagnate. Of 438 companies analyzed:

[a]t 158 of the companies, more was paid to those in charge than was shelled out for outside audit fees. And 32 of them paid more in top salaries than they paid in corporate income taxes. The pay of 2591 executives was up 13.9 percent in 2010. Total, before taxes: $14.3 billion, almost equal to the GDP of Tajikistan, population: more than seven million.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (See also, here) was passed in 2010, in response to the financial crisis, but interested parties have been chipping away at its regulatory power. One of the requirements of the Dodd-Frank would have made transparent the difference between CEO compensation and worker compensation of publicly traded companies: "The Dodd-Frank Act requires publicly traded companies to disclose the median annual total compensation of all employees of the company, the annual total compensation of the CEO, and the ratio comparing those two numbers."

Some folks, however, think that gathering this information is just "too burdensome" for companies and that the money spent gathering that information would best be spent on hiring workers. (Really, how difficult would it be for a company to publish that information in its annual report?) So Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) has sponsored a bill--which has passed in the Committee on Financial Services--to do away with this "burdensome" requirement. Companies, of course, have a vested interest in not making this kind of information easily available to the public--and their own workers. Nan Hayworth also has a vested interest. As Michael Winship points out, Nan Hayworth's official biography

cites 'reducing regulatory burdens on businesses' as one of her top priorities. Among her leading 2010 campaign contributors: leveraged buyout specialists Vestar Capital Partners, distressed debt investors Elliott Management and financial services giant Credit Suisse. Not to mention the anti-taxation Club for Growth.

Businesses, of course, are making profits once again in our stressed economy; workers, however, are not seeing their pay rise accordingly.

So I was curious to see who co-sponsored this bill to lift such a "burdensome" requirement, as outlined in H.R. 1062: Burdensome Data Collection Relief Act. Here are the names: Judy Biggert (R-IL), Francisco Canseco (R-TX), Bob Dold (R-IL), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Michael Grimm (R-NY), Peter King (R-NY), Bill Posey (R-FL).

As Peter Whoriskey reports in his article in the Washington Post, "Business Group: Public Companies Shouldn't have to Compare CEO and Worker Pay":

The committee vote was largely along partisan lines: Twenty-nine Republicans and four Democrats supported repeal; 21 Democrats opposed it.

As income disparity grows in this country, it's interesting to see just who forms alliances to hide that disparity and to protect the rich.

And so it goes.

Additional information:
members of the Committee on Financial Services

Register opposition or support: popvox

The Hellscape

Yesterday I did a bad thing and a good thing. The bad thing I did was to withdraw the money from my defined contribution plan that covered the last three years I worked part-time in Georgia. No, it wasn't that much money, but the advice my husband had given me was to roll it over into an IRA. Instead, I withdrew the money, deposited most of it in a newly-opened savings account and some of it in a newly-opened checking account in a bank near my new home. Then I went shopping. 

I really don't like to shop, especially in the kind of shopping centers that plaster the area where I have moved and that plaster most of America's cities and suburban areas, what my husband calls "The Hellscape," acres of parking lot in front of big-box buildings. 

What I loved about the place from which we moved is that the local community (one of the densest populated in Georgia) had made a conscious effort to recreate a real downtown, with businesses lined up along sidewalks and parking available in designated areas behind businesses or in parking garages.  Trees lined the streets. Tables were set out in front of restaurants.  An art gallery was located next to an import shop which was located next to a coffee shop where local kids read their poetry on Friday nights. Several good restaurants were within walking distance of my house, a mile from downtown. I could walk the shady sidewalks of my neighborhood and within fifteen minutes arrive at a bookstore or at my hairdresser's or at a restaurant where I could order an excellent margarita.

Not so in The Hellscape. You are damned to arrive only by car--everyone in his or her own car, all the cars stacked up at the three-eyed (or four-eyed if there's a left-turn lane) traffic light that guards the way into The Hellscape. And once you've arrived, and parked, and walked the steaming hot pavement (for this IS south Louisiana) to the somewhat shady portico of the building you're headed for, there are few surprises left to anticipate. All the stores are all the stores you will find in any other Hellscape, and the products sold are products you would find in any other Hellscape store. Maybe you'll find something on sale. 

To shop, I drove to a larger Hellscape from a smaller, labyrinthine Hellscape. The labyrinth had been designed, evidently, to test the orienting skills of the newly-damned. I failed--even with a printed Google map and a satellite photo of the shopping center where the Louisiana Division of Motor Vehicles was located. I had to make a phone call to my husband, who had earlier navigated this labyrinth of Chinese restaurants, pawn shops, and car title stores. 

Once I escaped the Division of Motor Vehicles (where I had to pay a very hefty amount of money to make my car Hellscape legal), I headed to the Big Box Hellscape. Here, at least, there was a bookstore, a Big Box bookstore, but one where I was able to find the books on my reading list even though I had forgotten the titles of those books and the names of the authors. I remembered enough to be able to scan the shelves to find what I needed--and even to pick up a book that was not on my list but which captured my attention as one I might like to read.

And that was the good thing I did: I went shopping for books. Well, I think, probably, the better thing I could have done was to go to a library and check out those books, but I can't be TOO good.

 

(Click on the photo above to see the books I'm anticipating reading. My son immediately snatched up David Eagleman's Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain and is almost midway through it.)

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

The Awl has an interesting post on how Michele Bachman's supporters will use negative criticism to inflame her base--those nasty lefty bloggers, you know--much as Sarah Palin has used negative criticism to make the case that her critics are mean and unfair. But what really caught my attention was the discussion of how local Minnesotans who have been following Bachman's career and catching her out on lies and craziness don't get the credit for their work. Instead, big-name writers such as Matt Taibbi, of Rolling Stone, grab information from those local sites and often don't credit the source. Shame on Rolling Stone! A second criticism of writers of large media publications  is the tendency to condescend to folks who live in those towns from which Bachman and Palin hail: Stillwater, Minnesota; Wasilla, Alaska. It's easy to jet into a place, sniff out some local color, and draw quick conclusions that don't stand up in the light of real analysis--or conclusions that, while not untrue, are simplistic. This is another reason folks hate the media.

Anyway, giving credit where credit is due:  Karl Bremer of Stillwater, Minnesota, has been following Michele Bachman's career from a front-row seat. So check out his blog: Ripple in Stillwater. Also, check out these other sources that did not receive credit for information used by Matt Taibbi in writing for Rolling Stone: Minneapolis City Pages and The Dump Bachman Blog.

Politics Vs. Substantive Discussion of Issues

"... [R]elentless emphasis on the cynical game of politics threatens public life itself, by implying day after day that the political sphere is nothing more than an arena in which ambitious politicians struggle for dominance, rather than a structure in which citizens can deal with worrisome collective problems." --James Fallows, in "Why Americans Hate the Media," Atlantic Magazine,  February 1996.

I am re-reading this article from The Atlantic's archives. Fifteen years later, it seems to me that the media focus is even more on politics rather than on substance, substance such as how our country should deal with the very real problems of unemployment, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and now Libya and maybe even Yemen), the financial crisis, and climate change.  Republicans have just about abandoned any real attempt to create jobs for the millions of unemployed Americans, and they are threatening to blow up our country economically by holding the debt limit hostage to their budget-cutting demands, despite contrary advice from economists within their own party. I'm beginning to think that Republicans are willing to sacrifice American livelihoods to win the presidency--They just rejected a suggestion to cut payroll taxes, a move that would stimulate the economy and a tax cut they very much favored in the past. It's all about politics. All about how a poor economy will hurt President Obama's prospects--and the Democrats'--in 2012. And the media focuses on the politics--on how not embracing Paul Ryan's budget plan will affect Republican nominees' chance at the presidency, not on how adopting Ryan's plan will affect ordinary Americans. It's not about us, the people, and how these policies will affect our everyday lives.

Update (Thursday, 23 June, 2011):
The point that James Fallows makes in the quote I've excerpted above has been demonstrated once again in the discussion of climate change. Al Gore has published a very well-written, insightful article in Rolling Stone on climate change. Does the media then discuss climate change, the overwhelming evidence of climate change, the tremendous push-back from vested interests, the consequences of climate change, the ways to confront climate change? No, of course not. Because Al Gore included some criticism of President Obama in his article, the media immediately focuses on politics: Al Gore vs. Barack Obama--as if the whole issue boils down to a boxing match.

Yet Gore's criticism of Obama is muted and is only a small piece of the long article. Once again, the media turns a serious topic into political entertainment.

It's disheartening.

Read the article: "Climate of Denial," Al Gore, Rolling Stone, 22 June 2011.

Typically, television media frames  Gore's discussion of climate change as a political spat, "Gore vs. Obama." On Hardball, Chris Matthews begins his show using that very frame, though he does give a little push back in the lead-in, as do Joan Walsh and Eric Bates: "Drop the Gore vs. Obama Script," Joan Walsh, Salon, 22 June 2011.

Gotcha!

Ever since Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin what newspapers she read to keep informed, Palin has complained that the "lame-stream" media is always trying to trip up politicians with such "gotcha" questions. For my part, Couric's question seemed quite straight-forward. How difficult could it be to name a newspaper or journal or two? Surely Palin read The Weekly Standard, the conservative magazine founded by one of her most ardent supporters at the time, William Kristol. Maybe she occasionally read Foreign Affairs or Foreign Policy? I mean, she was the running mate of a man who wanted to lead the most powerful country in the nation.  Were he to become president, she would be, as they say,  a heart-beat away from the presidency. Or, really, how difficult would it be to pucker one's lips to say The New York Times or Washington Post? She could have started locally, with the Anchorage Daily News or the Wasilla Frontiersman. I mean, she was governor of Alaska then, and it would make sense to us voters that she kept up with state news and politics. In short, there was nothing "gotcha" in that question that Sarah Palin herself didn't provide in her answer.

Ever since the Couric interview, Palin has again and again accused the media of focusing on "gotcha" questions. Certainly, there are people and organizations who long for and aggressively look for that "gotcha" moment. The group following Congressman Anthony Weiner's Tweets is an example. Andrew Breitbart is an example.  Writers for The Enquirer may be further examples. But these aren't--usually, I guess I should add here--providers of news for mainstream and authoritative news organizations.

Now Dan Amira, with New York magazine, has put together a slide show of Palin's complaints about these "gotcha" questions--all of which seem quite legitimate questions to me posed to people who were or are running for the highest offices in the land.

Judge for yourself: "A History of Sarah Palin Complaining about 'Gotcha' Questions," Dan Amira, New York Magazine, News and Features, 8 June 2011.

Please go back to your real job, Paul Broun (R-GA)

I am getting really, really tired of hearing U.S. Congressmen and Senators excoriate other public employees. For some reason, Republicans don't seem to think that federal employees are citizens; they certainly don't care if their budget cuts and threats not to raise the debt ceiling deprive hundreds of thousands of citizens of their jobs. And now Paul Broun, Republican Congressman from Georgia, flippantly states on conservative radio host Martha Zoller's show that not raising the debt limit would only put 250,000 or so people out of work. And who cares about those people, anyway? They're just federal employees:

Well, [Paul Broun said] those are gonna be government employees that are put out of work. There are a lot of government employees that need to go find a real job. [Hear these words here:"Paul Broun Fine with 250,000 Public Employees Being Laid Off..."]

Just what is a real job, Congressman Broun? Is taking care of the payroll with the Department of Defense not a real job? Is running the veterans' hospital system not a real job? Is collecting federal income taxes not a real job? How about managing federal lands and national parks? How about the crews who do the cleaning up after tourists at national monuments, national parks, national museums? How about the folks who provide summer informational tours and activities for children at those national museums and national parks? How about those folks at NOAA who chart hurricane activity in the summer and fall? How about the people who make sure (to the best of their ability even when stymied by budget cuts and ideological demagoguery) we have clean air and water?

I admit, Paul Broun, I have a dog in this fight. My husband works for the federal government; he was fortunate to get this job, one which he not only enjoys but for which he is eminently qualified, during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We have been married for thirty-three years, have seen hard times and good times, and are putting two kids through college. Well-educated, neither of us has ever received a paycheck that truly compensated us for our skills and education, but, also, neither of us has ever been motivated primarily by money. We've had jobs that enabled us to give back to society in some way, through education, conservation, or scientific research. And now we have reached the age when it becomes increasingly difficult to find appropriate employment if we lose our jobs. I know. I've been either under-employed or un-employed for the past several years, despite an excellent employment history (though being a woman who changed jobs to fit the needs of her family certainly did not help me in the long-term). There are hundreds of thousands--millions--of Americans like us, people who paid their taxes, took responsibilities for their families, contributed to their communities, and looked forward to, if not a comfortable retirement, at least a livable retirement.

Those hundreds of thousands of Americans include federal employees who have helped people like you steer the ship of state. And now, in a time of great distress, you are all for abandoning them and for taking an economic path that would not just put more Americans out of work when the current national unemployment rate is 9.1%, but that would also have additional serious consequences for millions of people around the world. Not raising the debt limit could--according to economists that include those from your own political party--cause another financial crisis, and we're not even out of the current crisis yet. Some are even predicting that the current crisis could escalate into another Great Depression. And you're just itching, evidently, to add fuel to the fire.

So please go back to your real job, Congressman Broun. As a federal employee.....you suck.

Traveling with Hate from One Century to the Next

This afternoon I read an article on Slate titled "The Persistence of Hate," by Ray Fisman. The author describes a study done by Nico Voigtländer of UCLA and Joachim Voth of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain. The two academics set out to answer this question by looking at the roots of anti-semitism in Germany: "How persistent are cultural traits?" By comparing historical records, the authors discovered a correlation between the treatment of Jews in certain locales during the Black Plague with anti-semitism in the same locales in Nazi Germany:

When the Black Death arrived in Europe in 1348-50, it was often blamed on Jews poisoning wells. Many towns and cities (but not all) murdered their Jewish populations. Almost six hundred years later, after defeat in World War I, Germany saw a country-wide rise in anti-Semitism. This led to a wave of persecution, even before the Nazi Party seized power in 1933. We demonstrate that localities with a medieval history of pogroms showed markedly higher levels of anti-Semitism in the interwar period. Attacks on Jews were six times more likely in the 1920s in towns and cities where Jews had been burned in 1348-50; the Nazi Party’s share of the vote in 1928 – when it had a strong anti-Semitic focus – was 1.5 times higher than elsewhere.

The authors conclude that hatred was transmitted over centuries, toward a group of people who basically disappeared from Germany in the 1500s (after all the burning and torturing) and who did not return in numbers until the 1700s. You can evaluate the authors' methodology yourself at the following link and download the published paper: Persecution Perpetuated: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany," Nico Voigtländer and Joachim Voth, Social Science Research Network: Tomorrow's Research Today, May 27, 2011.

I have scanned the article but have not read it thoroughly, but the findings do not seem out of the realm of possibility to me. Hatred is transmitted from one generation to another, even when the receiving generation has had no personal contact with the persons against whom the hatred is directed.

Just hours after I read the discussion of the study on Slate, my son returned from the tutoring center where he is working part-time this summer. "Guess what question a fourth-grader asked me today," he said to me. "He asked me which side I was on in the Civil War."

A regular student at the tutoring center, this child evidently often tries to engage the tutors with off-the-wall questions not related to the subject in which he is being tutored. He had asked the same question of the woman who was tutoring him, and, not liking her answer--"on the side of the North"--he turned for vindication to my son, who was tutoring other students. When my son said that he was glad that the Union had won, the fourth grader asked him why. "Because slavery is evil," my son replied, trying to keep his answer short and to the point before getting the student back on track.

"But the Civil War wasn't about slavery; it was about state's rights," the kid replied. "Abraham Lincoln made it about slavery to stick it to the South." Then he added that he hated Abraham Lincoln and that it was a good thing that John Wilkes Booth shot him. And he asked my son why he didn't live in the North since he wasn't "for" the South--still fighting the Civil War in his little head.

Later, as my son and I were describing to my husband these two interlinking experiences--my reading the article on Slate and my son's experience with the young student--we discussed a myriad of responses, some a little smart-alecky:

• "You're right: it was about state's rights--about the rights of states to establish or to maintain slavery as an institution."
  
• "Which side was I on? I wasn't alive during that war. Surely I don't look that old."

But it really wasn't a funny story. Hate never is. .......

Update: This must be hate-Abraham-Lincoln week. I just read Andrew Leonard's post on Salon: "Was Abraham Lincoln a Jewish Pawn of the Rothschilds?" Only in this story, hatred of Abraham Lincoln is directly connected to hatred of Jews. It seems that there are conspiracists who believe that Abraham Lincoln started the Civil War because the Rothschilds thought it would be good for banking. It's true that after the Civil War--and in order to help pay for that horrible war--Lincoln reformed the banking system, establishing a national currency--and thus stabilizing banking. As Leonard points out, a similar narrative is being tossed around today toward another president who initiated major banking reform. Is there no exit from these stupid conspiracy cycles and hate transfusions?

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.

Depressing if True

William Greider, writing for The Nation, seems to think that while Republicans have certainly done their best to demonize Elizabeth Warren, there are folks surrounding President Barack Obama who also don't want this candid woman to chair the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Greider's information relies on a Very Reliable Source, unnamed, so who can really tell how accurate this is. But based on what I've read about the financial industry and how all those finance guys seem to end up in positions of power around the presidency (including Obama's), I wouldn't be surprised. Here's a quote from Greider:

Tim Geithner, said my Very Reliable Source, really, really doesn’t want Elizabeth Warren in the position where she is sure to be a tough-minded and independent voice on major financial-policy issues. As CFPB director, Warren would also sit on the new “systemic risk” council of regulators who decide very large questions like “too big to fail.” The other regulators can outvote her easily enough, but Warren has an alarming history of personal candor. She says what she thinks, out loud and in public. That naturally disturbs the club members, all of whom have a rank history of making life easier for the big boys of banking.

Warren made her integrity clear when she served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel digging into the financial crisis and bailouts. Her investigations turned up alarming facts the bankers and bank regulators wished to avoid. Furthermore, Warren was often dissenting on legislative issues Geithner and team were pushing in the congressional debates on financial reform. Geithner doesn’t tolerate contrary thinkers in his midst; witness the galaxy of Wall Streeters he recruited to run the Treasury department. Geithner is a favorite of the president’s, perhaps because he is absolutely faithful to the financial establishment’s best interests. [William Greider, "Why is Obama Dragging his Heels on Appointing Elizabeth Warren to head CPFB?," The Nation, 27 May 2011.]

I don't know the answer to the question in the title of Greider's article, and I'm no expert. But I've read enough about the economic crisis to know that we can't blame just one political party for all the deregulation that eventually led to the risks that the financial industry took and the financial crisis that ensued. Those at the top seem to cover each other's backs very well. Just sayin'.

David Corn, an editor for Mother Jones and a former editor of The Nation, described the distance between Timothy Geithner and Elizabeth Warren in this article on HuffPost's "Politics Daily," in 2010. Here is a quote from Corn's article: "Elizabeth Warren Vs. Timothy Geithner: A Big Decision for Obama."

As head of the bailout oversight panel, Warren has fiercely called out Geithner and Treasury on a number of fronts: for providing a backdoor bailout to AIG, for botching homeowner relief programs, for failing to get mega-banks to resume lending. Moreover, she's an articulate and thoughtful populist, who applies a Main Street-first perspective toward financial matters and who has been a scourge of credit card companies and banks. Geithner is a member of the Big Finance establishment; he's no crusader.

It would be nice to have an "articulate and thoughtful populist" on one's side.

No Consequences for Bad Behavior; Little Regulation to Prevent It

For a long time I have been thinking--almost brooding--over the global financial crisis. Before 2007, I hadn't thought much about Wall Street though I had read my share of news articles over the years about the power of Wall Street and was passingly concerned about the influence of that power over our elected officials. With the financial meltdown in 2008, however, I began paying much more attention to financial and economic news. Nothing in my background--poet, teacher of literature and writing, gardener, art car enthusiast--prepared me for such an interest. I certainly knew nothing about derivatives. But the financial meltdown has enough sturm und drang for any engaging narrative of greed and corruption, tragedy and despair. And when the narrative touches one's own life, well, it does make one sit up and pay attention, doesn't it?

After reading numerous articles and blog posts about the crisis, after watching PBS Frontline specials and Charles Ferguson's documentary Inside Job (now available through Netflix), I think I can say with some confidence that the rats who almost blew up the world as we know it are still on the ship. Nor have they been caught and brought to trial and punished for their bad behavior. Nope. Some are at the helm of the ship. Others are cocooned on islands of privilege and are enjoying their millions.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans have been laid off, are out of work, can't find work, have lost their homes, are in danger of losing their homes, can't afford a college education or to pursue their dreams of owning a business. Ordinary Americans have bailed out the banks and the bastards who brought us to the brink--yet our elected leaders are trying to cut the very benefits that would prevent many Americans from suffering an impoverished and miserable old age. We can afford to save Goldman Sachs and Fannie Mae but not Medicare or Medicaid. We can regulate a woman's uterus but not the financial market.

Today, in The Washington Post, Ezra Klein points out that "though the financial crisis remains lodged in our minds, and in our jobless rates," our elected officials are not confirming leaders to help regulate the financial institutions that caused the crisis:

... [T]he Federal Reserve lacks a vice chairman for banking supervision. There’s no one officially in charge of the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research. The seat marked “insurance” on Financial Stability Oversight Council is empty. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a leader but not a director. No one has been confirmed to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. And Republicans are still saying Nobel Prize-winning economist Peter Diamond is underqualified to serve on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors." "If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. And it'll be our fault," The Washington Post, 24 May 2011.

And, in their over-the-cliff plans to cut the deficit, "the House GOP is fighting to starve financial regulators of the resources they need to do their work." As Klein points out, we have a deficit because of the financial crisis, and we have a financial crisis because of a lack of regulation, and we're not funding regulation because we have a deficit. See some circular reasoning on the part of our leaders?

How to respond to such idiocy? With cynicism, says Kevin Drum (well, actually, he says the situation overwhelms his own cynicism):

It's this, more than anything else, that has convinced me over the past couple of years that America's wealthy class is simply morally bankrupt and that the leadership of the Republican Party is politically bankrupt. Five years ago I would have been embarrassed to write a blog post suggesting that this might be the reaction of the moneyed class to an economic collapse. Then we had one and this was the reaction. Once again, events have outrun my best efforts to be cynical.

It's certainly with cynicism that I listened to Dave Davies interview Gretchen Morgenson on NPR's Fresh Air today. Morgenson, who writes about finance for The New York Times, has just published a book she co-wrote with Joshua Rosner: Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. In this book, Morgenson "focuses on the managers of Fannie Mae, the government supported mortgage giant." Like the later financial players of Wall Street--Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, et alia--the managers of Fannie Mae pursued deals that enriched them and that weakened regulatory oversight. But lest listeners think these details support the Republican narrative that the financial crisis was all due to mortgage defaults, to the government's "meddling in the market" in its determination to "push home ownership" to people who couldn't afford it, Morgenson adds that "Wall Street was not a passive player." Had regulators done their due diligence, had there been rigorous oversight, we would not be in the economic situation that we're in now.

And it's certainly with cynicism that I read today that the Tea-Party backed candidates who were elected because of the anger people felt toward the bailouts and Wall Street shenanigans "are now pushing pro-Wall Street legislation" and that "[t]he 10 Republican freshmen on the House Financial Services Committee have taken in nearly $600,000 from the financial industry since Election Day, according to the Sunlight Foundation." ["Tea-Partiers Swept in on Anti-Wall Street Wave Now Pushing Deregulation," Ryan J. Reilly, TPMMuckraker, 24 May 2011.]

To maintain that realistic and appropriate level of cynicism, I am creating here a list of articles to read (or re-read) and documentaries to view (or re-view) on the financial crisis, on who took us there (a bipartisan ride), who abandoned us, who profited, who suffered, and why it's probably gonna happen again. (in no particular order except that I'm working backward from today and jumping around locating articles I remember reading and identifying others I haven't read but which look promising)

• Marian Wang, "Cheat Sheet on Bank Investigations and the Probes that have Petered Out," ProPublica: Journalism in the Public Interest, 24 May 2011.
• Matt Taibbi, "The People versus Goldman Sachs," Rolling Stone, 11 May 2011.
• Matt Taibbi, "The Great American Bubble Machine," Rolling Stone 5 April 2010.
• Brian Beutler, "One-Time Warren Foe Now Pressuring Obama to Give Her Recess Appointment to Head Consumer Bureau," TPMDC 23 May 2011.
• Ben Protess, "Warren and Republicans Spar Over Bureau's Power," DealBook, in The New York Times, 24 May 2011.
• Katrina vanden Heuvel, "Why Obama Should Appoint Elizabeth Warren,", in The Washington Post, 24 May 2011.
• The Reckoning--a series of articles published in The New York Times that "explored the causes of the financial crisis of 2008." The series includes these articles, among others: Peter S. Goodman and Gretchen Morgenson, "Saying Yes, WaMu Built Empire on Shaky Loans," 28 December 2008; Jo Becker, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and Stephen Labaton, "White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire," 21 December 2008; Louise Story, "On Wall Street, Bonuses, not Profits, were Real," 18 December 2008; Eric Lipton and Raymond Hernandez, "A Champion of Wall Street Reaps Benefits," 14 December 2008; Peter S. Goodman, "Taking a Hard New Look at Greenspan Legacy," 9 October 2008.
• Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein, "The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Housing Bubble Going," ProPublica, 9 April 2010.
• Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger, "The 'Subsidy': How Merrill Lynch Traders Helped Blow up Their Own Firm," ProPublica 22 December 2010.--Or read the series of ProPublica's investigative articles on the financial crisis here: "The Wall Street Money Machine."
• Oh, and this little post is sort of funny: Did Porn Cause the Financial Crisis?", posted 23 April 2010, by Daniel Indiviglio, associate editor at The Atlantic.
• Jack Dolan, Rob Barry, Matthew Haggman, "Borrowers Betrayed," Miami Herald, 2009--series on the Florida mortgage industry and the lack of regulation oversight that led to criminals being granted state licenses.
• Dean Starkman, of Columbia Journalism Review provides a list of worthy articles on the financial crisis: "No Pulitzers, But Here's an Audie", posted 21 April 2009.
• "The Warning," a Frontline report on Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during the Clinton administration, who tried to warn the economic power-brokers of the potential for economic meltdown if the derivatives market was not regulated. As of this writing, the full video can be watched online. DVDs are also available for purchase from PBS.(air date, 20 October 2009)
• Frontline's "Inside the Meltdown," first aired on 17 February 2009, at this writing, can be viewed entirely online on the PBS website. Or just go to the webpage that includes links to all the Frontline videos that are available online: "Watch Frontline Online".
• Michael Lewis, "Wall Street on the Tundra," Vanity Fair, April 2009--Unfortunately, this article is no longer fully available on Vanity Fair's website, but I found a .pdf version elsewhere, "Wall Street on the Tundra", that might still be accessible. This is the article that really got me interested in the details of the financial crisis. I remember reading it shortly after it was published online.
• Kevin Hall, "Mortgage Crisis Shows Why Financial Regulation is Needed", McClatchy, 1 November 2009. And you can see all the stories and videos that resulted from McClatchy's five-month investigation into Goldman Sachs here: McClatchy Newspapers, investigation into Goldman Sach's contributions to the economic crisis.
• Paul Solman interviews Charles Ferguson, director of Inside Job. In the interview, Ferguson talks about undisclosed ties and conflicts of interest in the financial relationships between academics in economics departments and the financial sector.

This is a short list of all one can find on the economic crisis online. I didn't include articles from The Wall Street Journal because I'm not a subscriber and am therefore unable to access them. Most of the sources on this list are not locked behind a subscription wall--except for, perhaps, The New York Times articles--because I do subscribe to the online version of The New York Times.

--so little time, so many opportunities for corruption.....

The Proliferation of Dubious Information

I guess that I was lucky in that when the Internet began to blossom, I was teaching at a university. Those born in the Internet Age won't understand this, but when one of my students described in a senior research paper in the late 1980s the possibilities of hyper-links, I was amazed. In 1994, my husband and I noted that when we searched the World Wide Web, we often found links that led to nowhere, to internet parking spaces for future development. By 1997, when I was teaching at a university in Georgia, those parking spaces had become shopping malls. I spent the summer finding information on the web that I could incorporate in my freshman English classes, as part of the university's mandate to help our students become Internet savvy. Every semester, I designed a workshop to demonstrate to my students the need to view their internet sources with a critical eye. We looked at websites that were parodies of official government web sites. We looked at websites with a political agenda; we looked at websites that seemed authoritative yet which provided no proof to support their authority. In educating my students, I was educating myself.

And so I look with a jaundiced eye at what I read online. When I write, I try to support any facts or figures or quotes with a trusted source. This morning, I experienced another lesson in the importance of this practice. I was looking for statements that politicians had said publicly about the unemployed. I remembered reading in the news some rather negative statements that Speaker of the House John Boehner had made about the unemployed in the government battle to extend or not to extend unemployment benefits during the worst economic slump since the 1930s. To find those quotes, I used Google's search engine, and I came across a blog with a very disturbing quote attributed to Boehner--but the language of the quote made me pause. Can this be for real? I wondered.

And so I "Googled" a selection from the quote, and lots of links to blogs appeared in which the quote was reproduced. The writer of one blog, however, did mention that the quote was from an interview Matt Taibbi, of Rolling Stone, did with John Boehner, but the author of the blog did not include a link to the interview. Now all the warning sirens were going off in my head. Blogs are often useful sources of information, but accurate blog writers are going to include references or links to news sources to back up their facts and figures.

Of course, some blog authors are journalists who do their own research and who interview their sources. And sometimes, news worthy information may be overlooked by national news outlets, for any number of reasons. And perhaps they've just buried the information in the inside pages. But this is my rule of thumb:

• If a search brings up a long list of blog sources, and particularly blog sources with a political bent or agenda, then, whether or not I agree with that political agenda, I look for additional information from news sources. (If the blogs provide links to such a source, then those blogs have made my search easier and have helped establish their own credibility.)

In this case, I went looking for the purported interview that Matt Taibbi did with John Boehner, and I came across Taibbi's own blog post about this purported interview: It never happened. In a blog post titled "I Did Not Interview John Boehner,", Taibbi writes:

There is a story flying around the internet that purports to contain an excerpt from an interview that I did with John Boehner. This interview is a hoax, and neither I nor Rolling Stone had anything to do with it. There are some seriously bored people out there... if people are going to make up a fantasy activity for me in the future, please, make it a foot massage from Jessica Gomes, not face time with John Boehner.

And, no, I won't reproduce the dubious quote here. But if you want to read what Matt Taibbi actually did write about John Boehner, you can read his article here: "The Crying Shame of John Boehner," in Rolling Stone, 5 January 2011.

It takes a lot of time to make sure that what one is reading can be trusted. Most people don't have that time. But, hey, I'm unemployed and over fifty. What better use can I find for my time? Now I'm going to go plant a garden.