Remora
Prediction fiction
The NYT reports official preliminary figures show fourth quarter growth at 0.7%. Further in the story we come to these two grafs:
Most economists had predicted a weak figure for the fourth quarter, and none interviewed yesterday said they planned to change their forecasts. Though they expect growth to improve slightly this year, it might not be enough to create jobs until the spring or summer.
Many companies hesitate even to bet on a midyear recovery, said Carl T. Camden, president and chief operating officer of Kelly Services, a leading provider of temporary workers. His clients "talk about things turning around in the third quarter," he said, "and then they realize that's the same speech they gave last year"
So, is that what "most economists" had predicted? Wow, somehow we bet those predictions were revised about two weeks ago. Long range, that isn't what most economists were predicting at all. When Business Week did its annual half year business conditions survey in July, 2002, the picture was a lot rosier:
"BusinessWeek's midyear survey of business economists shows that, on average, the forecasters expect real gross domestic product to grow at a healthy, if unspectacular, 3% annual rate during the second and third quarters, with the pace picking up to 3.5% in the first half of 2003 (table)."
Is LI nitpicking? No. The importance of this is that those messages, percolating out into the national subconscious, set the stage for Bush's push-over midterm election. After all, what is there to worry about when the forecasters are showing a pickup? That, in fact, we got a downturn is now going to be written away as, somehow, a bad call. Well, we would like to point out the ideological biases of the bad callers. The professional Pollyannas -- people like James Suriowiecki of New Yorker and the ever erroneous James Glassman of the Washington Post -- have been assuring us that the CEOs are too worried for their own good -- the recovery is just around the corner. Their reasons aren't found in the economy itself, but in a particular, libertarian philosophy -- the same one underlying Bush's Great Giveaway.
In July, while economists were not -- not is the operative word -- within ballpark range of the end of the year's GDP figures, Mr. Surioweicki published a defense of the New Economy paradigm in Wired. It is a rather funny document.. As with all defenders of discredited doctrines, the first order of business is to redefine the semantics of the doctrine to make it work. So, here is how Suriowiecki goes about it:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.07/Myth_pr.html
"Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, insists that the US can look forward only to "very subdued growth" until it works off "the bubble-induced excesses of the late 1990s."
Don't count on it. In fact, the overall shallowness of the recession and strong productivity growth during the downturn show that the skeptics are wrong. Call it the myth of the myth of the new economy. The naysayers ignore the economic fundamentals that drove the boom, emphasizing instead the over-the-top rhetorical flourishes - and outrageous stock prices - that accompanied it. Because wild-eyed optimists once said technology would change everything, it must have changed nothing. But if it's 2002 and you're still saying that things aren't fundamentally different than they were a decade ago, you're living in a dream world at least as fantastic as anything a new economy fanatic could conjure. I
n reality, 1995 marked the beginning of a long-lived shift in US economic performance. Productivity growth accelerated due to what economists call secular, rather than cyclical, factors. That is, the pace of productivity growth didn't start rising in 1995 because the business cycle had turned upward. It started rising because crucial aspects of the economy had changed. As a result, today's economy can expand much faster than previously thought possible. Between 1972 and 1995, productivity rose a paltry 1.4 percent a year. Between 1995 and 2000, it rose 2.5 percent a year - an increase of 79 percent. "There has absolutely been a sizable change in the secular growth rate of both labor productivity and total factor productivity," says Harvard economist Dale Jorgenson. Many of the truisms of the boom, it turns out, were true.
Now, what those stats aren't telling you is that they are calculated with the assumption that productivity has to be defined differently -- an assumption that kicked in during the late 90s. That assumption is being tested now. Like a lot of the accounting techniques of the 90s, it isn't looking very good.
Further, the New Economy model implied that this new boom in productivity would create a recession proof economy. That is what the New Economy was all about, in spite of Suriowiecki's smoke screen. And it wasn't just about that for bored pundits -- these were the assumptions that underlay AOL buying Time Warner. Hmm, I wonder how that worked out? And I wonder why Suriowiecki's model sorta forgets the slump in equity value that shows no sign of reversing itself right now. In fact, many of the truisms of the boom turned out to apply to the boom, and the boom only. One of the truisms of the post-boom, though, is certainly true for Suriewiecki -- bs in, bs out. Here, for instance, is the dance he does using the cooked productivity figures:
"Note that information technology's benefits increase over time. If you study the relationship of IT spending to productivity over a single year, you'll find that computers deliver benefits roughly equal to their costs."
That is a perfect New Economy sentence. The metric that you use to measure a firm's performance is no longer anything so plebian as profit and loss. Oh no. It is a 'benefit." And oh, this wonderous benefit -- this rise in productivity due to measuring productivity in a new way that i"incorporates" IT -- why, lo and behold, it equals the cost over a single year. This was the kind of thinking that boosted Yahoo stock to what was it, $300 per share? in 2000.
Behind Suriowiecki's nuttiness is one major fact about the current economy: we are being held up not by IT, but by people buying cars and houses. That's it, folks. There's no magic in the figures. The dream world inhabited by Suriowiecki's skeptics seems to be panning out as the real world, brother. Cooked productivity figures don't compare with 0% financing and the incessant barrage of mortgage offers even LI, who doesn't have a pot to piss in, gets regularly every morning in our email.
Alas, Surowiecki's kind of thinking will be used to justify the disastrous divident tax cut. The pied pipers are still out there, boys and girls.
Friday, January 31, 2003
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
Notes.
We received a nice email from a friend in NY re the previous post. Here it is:
"hi Roger - kind of a sweet post today, if I don't say so myself ....and, ah, evocative; in the sense that your introflashback brought me back to a memory of a moment in Austin in '91: I was sitting in the bar at the union (what the hell was it called?) drinking a beer and "protesting" the gulf war in the same way that all my "political" activity transpired (well, to be sure, very much as I did pretty much everything back then): sitting in a dark room on a sunny day, talking, drinking coffee, smoking, drinking beer, smoking, talking, drinking wine, talking, smoking..... when you happened in and we discussed having the same shameful, horrifying, stultifyingly humiliating realization the night before: that we agreed with Ross Perot - the war is not about oil. Well, were just about to go back to war and it still aint about oil. Trouble is, GW Dauphin and the rest of the cast of characters from '91 might think that it is (well, probably not Colin Powell, he's too focused on the exit strategy to ponder the whys and wherefores). We'll end up just as angry and sad and dumbfounded about the war as we were in '91, and the bullets will fly and the bombs will do what they do, and I will find a dark room on a sunny day and have a beer, alone and silent."
Speaking of exit strategies:
Today, of course, is the day the phone company decided to strike against Limited Inc, depriving us of phone service unless they receive some more of the ready... and of course LI isn't sure there's any ready in the bank. Not to worry, we will be posting from libraries and the like, if we have to... we will fight on the beaches, we will fight on the hills, we will fight in the divorce courts...
The latter is where we will be appearing tomorrow. A friend is divorcing a man who is convinced that LI has carnally known this friend. The man has been dragging said friend -- his ex-wife -- through the nightmare of the legal system in order to extract buckets of the ready. The man seems convinced that the courts are going to reward him for his varied virtues, in spite of the fact that the numbers say otherwise. And that the court will punish LI for our many vices. Drama, that is what we live for on this site, don't you know. Here it is. No wonder lately we are reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot.
We received a nice email from a friend in NY re the previous post. Here it is:
"hi Roger - kind of a sweet post today, if I don't say so myself ....and, ah, evocative; in the sense that your introflashback brought me back to a memory of a moment in Austin in '91: I was sitting in the bar at the union (what the hell was it called?) drinking a beer and "protesting" the gulf war in the same way that all my "political" activity transpired (well, to be sure, very much as I did pretty much everything back then): sitting in a dark room on a sunny day, talking, drinking coffee, smoking, drinking beer, smoking, talking, drinking wine, talking, smoking..... when you happened in and we discussed having the same shameful, horrifying, stultifyingly humiliating realization the night before: that we agreed with Ross Perot - the war is not about oil. Well, were just about to go back to war and it still aint about oil. Trouble is, GW Dauphin and the rest of the cast of characters from '91 might think that it is (well, probably not Colin Powell, he's too focused on the exit strategy to ponder the whys and wherefores). We'll end up just as angry and sad and dumbfounded about the war as we were in '91, and the bullets will fly and the bombs will do what they do, and I will find a dark room on a sunny day and have a beer, alone and silent."
Speaking of exit strategies:
Today, of course, is the day the phone company decided to strike against Limited Inc, depriving us of phone service unless they receive some more of the ready... and of course LI isn't sure there's any ready in the bank. Not to worry, we will be posting from libraries and the like, if we have to... we will fight on the beaches, we will fight on the hills, we will fight in the divorce courts...
The latter is where we will be appearing tomorrow. A friend is divorcing a man who is convinced that LI has carnally known this friend. The man has been dragging said friend -- his ex-wife -- through the nightmare of the legal system in order to extract buckets of the ready. The man seems convinced that the courts are going to reward him for his varied virtues, in spite of the fact that the numbers say otherwise. And that the court will punish LI for our many vices. Drama, that is what we live for on this site, don't you know. Here it is. No wonder lately we are reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot.
Dope
In 1991, I received the call, and went down to U.T., where I found about a thousand people assembled. George Bush had just launched operation Desert Storm. We were assembled to protest the war. I remember running into my friend Emrys. We didn't talk about the war -- we talked about Emrys' dissertation, which at that time occupied his entire social life. Both of us were old enough to have been demonstrating, at this point, since the seventies. I was thirty two, which was a little above the average age of the demonstrators, but not much. The eighties had been full of demonstrations -- divestment, disarmament, Nicaragua -- and almost everyone there knew the drill. Neither Emerys nor I was happy to be there -- demonstrating had long lost its appeal over, say, having a beer in a burger joint. But duty called. We rallied in the dark -- as I recall, it was around eight o'clock -- and marched to the capital. I don't recall the next couple of weeks in crystal clear detail, but I do know that I went to several rallies, one of which entered the state capital. We lay down on the floor, under the rotunda. We were not, alas, arrested.
Yesterday I went along the path by the lake to the center of town. The anti-war rally was going to be held, either cleverly or bizarrely, on Congress street bridge. The usual demonstration routine is to march to the capital steps and listen to a couple of hours of hopelessly inelegant speeches, which we punctuate with cries of encouragement or outrage. As I approached the bridge, I saw that it was jammed with people -- this caused me to smile real broadly at the women approaching me on the path. They smiled back, and then called my name. I focused -- it was S. and her friend, J. S., who never really utters a political word in my presence, surprised me when I talked to her on the telephone last week by telling me that she was going to go to the anti-war rally. She and J. handed me a sign that they'd been handed. It recommended peace as a means of lowering taxes -- perhaps a sentiment that would appeal to passing Congress street drivers, but not exactly the beatitudes. I think they were a little disappointed -- S. mentioned that the crowd didn't go anywhere. She was up for a march. J. mentioned that it was the first demonstration she had ever been to.
I proceeded with my little tax sign to the bridge. Both sides of it -- the walkways -- were covered with people -- although as I walked from one end to the other, I realized that the crowd came in lumps. There were stretches that were pretty bare. The atmosphere was midway between a serious demonstration and a summer afternoon at Barton Springs Pool. The same kids that you see at the pool -- the lanky seventeen year old boys with goatees and drums -- were assembled at the south end of the bridge, in their third world knits, drumming. There were a number of girls of around the same age. There were some middle aged people like me, there were college students, there was a man who unfurled a large black flag (nice gesture), there were bicyclers I recognized as Critical Mass, there were people in trucks and cars going back and forth across the bridge, there were signs asking drivers to honk for peace, and there was an endless amount of flashing the peace sign at drivers, many of whom flashed it back. A woman --maybe nineteen -- had painted a peace symbol on her face, and was telling her friends that maybe they should sing something by that guy, you know... Bob Dylan, or like the Beatles. Another woman, whose sign was dense with a long quote, was asked about it and gave a long explanation of how she had gotten the quote from the Egyptian book of the dead and how Bush's nephew at Fox news had gotten him in during the coup, etc.
On the whole, the rally showed two things. On the dark side, since the grassroots politics of the eighties were pretty much decimated during the nineties, the mechanics of rallying large groups of people and directing acts of civil disobedience have to be learned all over again. This group, however good hearted, was far from being the shock troops of the revolution, unless the revolution requires a lot of bongoing.
On the bright side, the rally did draw at least a thousand people. It is a start. There are, this time, no leaders, no leading organizations, to organize what will probably be a struggle this year and the next. The Democrats have disappeared into a vacuum. The Greens, after embarrassing the Dems, seem more concerned with extending the principles of the Feingold McCain bill than with the kind of politics we get AFTER we elect our politicians. Perhaps the leaders of the new anti-war movement are still in grad schools in Michigan, or working in software in San Jose -- I don't know. There are big questions ahead. If Bush does commit troops to Iraq, the big question is going to be withdrawing them. Of course, the anti-war side has to be for withdrawal. But the devil in the details is that withdrawal, at that point, will lead to chaos; while occupation will lead to a war of low level attrition as in Vietnam. A peace movement should definitely put these scenarios before the American public continually, before the war starts. When I went home, I switched on the radio, but the unctuous Southern tones of our President were more than I could take, so I switched it off, and then waited for the commentators. An hour latter, I turned it on again and listened to them. Amazingly, the Dem's house leader, Nancy Pelosi, mentioned the hazards of occupying Iraq. Wow -- a woman who actually thinks, in a position of some power!
Surely she will be attacked for that.
In 1991, I received the call, and went down to U.T., where I found about a thousand people assembled. George Bush had just launched operation Desert Storm. We were assembled to protest the war. I remember running into my friend Emrys. We didn't talk about the war -- we talked about Emrys' dissertation, which at that time occupied his entire social life. Both of us were old enough to have been demonstrating, at this point, since the seventies. I was thirty two, which was a little above the average age of the demonstrators, but not much. The eighties had been full of demonstrations -- divestment, disarmament, Nicaragua -- and almost everyone there knew the drill. Neither Emerys nor I was happy to be there -- demonstrating had long lost its appeal over, say, having a beer in a burger joint. But duty called. We rallied in the dark -- as I recall, it was around eight o'clock -- and marched to the capital. I don't recall the next couple of weeks in crystal clear detail, but I do know that I went to several rallies, one of which entered the state capital. We lay down on the floor, under the rotunda. We were not, alas, arrested.
Yesterday I went along the path by the lake to the center of town. The anti-war rally was going to be held, either cleverly or bizarrely, on Congress street bridge. The usual demonstration routine is to march to the capital steps and listen to a couple of hours of hopelessly inelegant speeches, which we punctuate with cries of encouragement or outrage. As I approached the bridge, I saw that it was jammed with people -- this caused me to smile real broadly at the women approaching me on the path. They smiled back, and then called my name. I focused -- it was S. and her friend, J. S., who never really utters a political word in my presence, surprised me when I talked to her on the telephone last week by telling me that she was going to go to the anti-war rally. She and J. handed me a sign that they'd been handed. It recommended peace as a means of lowering taxes -- perhaps a sentiment that would appeal to passing Congress street drivers, but not exactly the beatitudes. I think they were a little disappointed -- S. mentioned that the crowd didn't go anywhere. She was up for a march. J. mentioned that it was the first demonstration she had ever been to.
I proceeded with my little tax sign to the bridge. Both sides of it -- the walkways -- were covered with people -- although as I walked from one end to the other, I realized that the crowd came in lumps. There were stretches that were pretty bare. The atmosphere was midway between a serious demonstration and a summer afternoon at Barton Springs Pool. The same kids that you see at the pool -- the lanky seventeen year old boys with goatees and drums -- were assembled at the south end of the bridge, in their third world knits, drumming. There were a number of girls of around the same age. There were some middle aged people like me, there were college students, there was a man who unfurled a large black flag (nice gesture), there were bicyclers I recognized as Critical Mass, there were people in trucks and cars going back and forth across the bridge, there were signs asking drivers to honk for peace, and there was an endless amount of flashing the peace sign at drivers, many of whom flashed it back. A woman --maybe nineteen -- had painted a peace symbol on her face, and was telling her friends that maybe they should sing something by that guy, you know... Bob Dylan, or like the Beatles. Another woman, whose sign was dense with a long quote, was asked about it and gave a long explanation of how she had gotten the quote from the Egyptian book of the dead and how Bush's nephew at Fox news had gotten him in during the coup, etc.
On the whole, the rally showed two things. On the dark side, since the grassroots politics of the eighties were pretty much decimated during the nineties, the mechanics of rallying large groups of people and directing acts of civil disobedience have to be learned all over again. This group, however good hearted, was far from being the shock troops of the revolution, unless the revolution requires a lot of bongoing.
On the bright side, the rally did draw at least a thousand people. It is a start. There are, this time, no leaders, no leading organizations, to organize what will probably be a struggle this year and the next. The Democrats have disappeared into a vacuum. The Greens, after embarrassing the Dems, seem more concerned with extending the principles of the Feingold McCain bill than with the kind of politics we get AFTER we elect our politicians. Perhaps the leaders of the new anti-war movement are still in grad schools in Michigan, or working in software in San Jose -- I don't know. There are big questions ahead. If Bush does commit troops to Iraq, the big question is going to be withdrawing them. Of course, the anti-war side has to be for withdrawal. But the devil in the details is that withdrawal, at that point, will lead to chaos; while occupation will lead to a war of low level attrition as in Vietnam. A peace movement should definitely put these scenarios before the American public continually, before the war starts. When I went home, I switched on the radio, but the unctuous Southern tones of our President were more than I could take, so I switched it off, and then waited for the commentators. An hour latter, I turned it on again and listened to them. Amazingly, the Dem's house leader, Nancy Pelosi, mentioned the hazards of occupying Iraq. Wow -- a woman who actually thinks, in a position of some power!
Surely she will be attacked for that.
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
Remora
Conservatives like Mickey Kaus have been cannonading the NY Times for its leftwing bias since Howell Raines became editor in chief. Liberals like Eric Alterman have naturally retaliated by defending Raines. In LI's opinion, the NYT crusade to open the Augusta Masters to women is eminently defensable. However, we aren't golfers, we believe that gender biases in sports are much more pronounced in, say, football or basketball than in golf, and we don't really have any interest in the story.
A more serious breach of journalistic integrity has emerged about the Time's reporting from Venezuala. We wonder if Kaus or his conservative cohorts are going to report on the right wing bias of the newspaper... No we don't. We dont' think for a moment that they will report on this story, which goes like this.
Narco news is a site run by Al Giordano. In a news story about the Times' firing, or letting go, of its Venezualan stringer, Francisco Toro, Giordano revealed a systematic bias towards the upper class side in the dispute between Chavez and the national strikers. In fact, Giordiano's piece is revelatory about what it means to "strike" in this instance. It means that the owners of banks locked out their employees for a number of days -- which was reported in the Times as a bank employees strike. More, in Toro's case, the Times news reporting was being done by a man who was politically active, by his own account, on the anti-Chavez side. Toro finally resigned. Actually, Toro comes out of Giordano's story as a decent man, torn by conflicting interests. Giordiano published Toro's resignation letter to the NYT editor Lyon:
Dear Pat,
After much careful consideration, I�ve decided I can�t continue reporting for the New York Times. As I examine the problem, I realize it would take much more than just pulling down my blog to address your conflict of interests concerns. Too much of my lifestyle is bound up with opposition activism at the moment, from participating in several NGOs, to organizing events and attending protest marches. But even if I gave all of that up, I don�t think I could muster the level of emotional detachment from the story that the New York Times demands. For better or for worse, my country�s democracy is in peril now, and I can�t possibly be neutral about that.
I appreciate your understanding throughout this difficult time, and I hope in the future, conditions will allow for me to contribute with the World Business page again.
Sincerely,
Francisco Toro
What is interesting is that Giordano's generally accurate report on the NYT reporting has been attacked by the NYT in a really silly and stupid way. Giordiano printed this reply to his site from Patrick Lyon:
To: "Alberto M. Giordano"
Subject: Re: To Pat Lyons from Al Giordano
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 10:54:53 -0500
Mr. Giordano,
Requests for information or comment from The New York Times should be directed to our vice president for corporate communications, Catherine Mathis, at (212) 556-1981.
Questions about whether a defamatory screed posted on the Internet with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity is libelous should be directed to a competent lawyer.
Patrick J. Lyons
International Business Editor
The New York Times
Now, it is true that NarcoNews, like LI, like almost any media site on the web, exhibits a gleeful contrarian style that contrasts with the establishment media's tone of evenhandedness. The latter tone isn't always a bad thing. I would pity the man who got all his news and views from, say, this site. There is certainly something reactive about that gleefulness. It reeks of the back row of the classroom.
However, it is also a lively corrective to the deadening biases of the corporate media. My little experience of Timesmen is parallel to Girodano's -- Timesmen seem to regard themselves as members of an exclusive fraternity, and in their offhours take on that country club drawl, indicative of the delusion that they are the very giants of the earth.
As for Narco News publishing a defamatory screed -- that is simply silly. That said, Giordano shouldn't hug this big splat of NYT vitriol too closely to his breast -- he isn't, really, being censored by the heavy hand of government. His reply is a little too cumbersome, and involves imagining a courtroom exchange between himself and the Times. Like Tom Sawyer daydreaming of the ways in which he would be missed if he were dead, there is something queasy about the wish fullfillment involved in daydreaming about having one's day in court with the NYT. This kind of thing happens when a freelancer gets to confront a real media giant -- proportion is the first casualty of media criticism. However, the NYT does measure its language -- it is hard to imagine Lyon sending a similar message to the much more read Kaus.
Conservatives like Mickey Kaus have been cannonading the NY Times for its leftwing bias since Howell Raines became editor in chief. Liberals like Eric Alterman have naturally retaliated by defending Raines. In LI's opinion, the NYT crusade to open the Augusta Masters to women is eminently defensable. However, we aren't golfers, we believe that gender biases in sports are much more pronounced in, say, football or basketball than in golf, and we don't really have any interest in the story.
A more serious breach of journalistic integrity has emerged about the Time's reporting from Venezuala. We wonder if Kaus or his conservative cohorts are going to report on the right wing bias of the newspaper... No we don't. We dont' think for a moment that they will report on this story, which goes like this.
Narco news is a site run by Al Giordano. In a news story about the Times' firing, or letting go, of its Venezualan stringer, Francisco Toro, Giordano revealed a systematic bias towards the upper class side in the dispute between Chavez and the national strikers. In fact, Giordiano's piece is revelatory about what it means to "strike" in this instance. It means that the owners of banks locked out their employees for a number of days -- which was reported in the Times as a bank employees strike. More, in Toro's case, the Times news reporting was being done by a man who was politically active, by his own account, on the anti-Chavez side. Toro finally resigned. Actually, Toro comes out of Giordano's story as a decent man, torn by conflicting interests. Giordiano published Toro's resignation letter to the NYT editor Lyon:
Dear Pat,
After much careful consideration, I�ve decided I can�t continue reporting for the New York Times. As I examine the problem, I realize it would take much more than just pulling down my blog to address your conflict of interests concerns. Too much of my lifestyle is bound up with opposition activism at the moment, from participating in several NGOs, to organizing events and attending protest marches. But even if I gave all of that up, I don�t think I could muster the level of emotional detachment from the story that the New York Times demands. For better or for worse, my country�s democracy is in peril now, and I can�t possibly be neutral about that.
I appreciate your understanding throughout this difficult time, and I hope in the future, conditions will allow for me to contribute with the World Business page again.
Sincerely,
Francisco Toro
What is interesting is that Giordano's generally accurate report on the NYT reporting has been attacked by the NYT in a really silly and stupid way. Giordiano printed this reply to his site from Patrick Lyon:
To: "Alberto M. Giordano"
Subject: Re: To Pat Lyons from Al Giordano
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 10:54:53 -0500
Mr. Giordano,
Requests for information or comment from The New York Times should be directed to our vice president for corporate communications, Catherine Mathis, at (212) 556-1981.
Questions about whether a defamatory screed posted on the Internet with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity is libelous should be directed to a competent lawyer.
Patrick J. Lyons
International Business Editor
The New York Times
Now, it is true that NarcoNews, like LI, like almost any media site on the web, exhibits a gleeful contrarian style that contrasts with the establishment media's tone of evenhandedness. The latter tone isn't always a bad thing. I would pity the man who got all his news and views from, say, this site. There is certainly something reactive about that gleefulness. It reeks of the back row of the classroom.
However, it is also a lively corrective to the deadening biases of the corporate media. My little experience of Timesmen is parallel to Girodano's -- Timesmen seem to regard themselves as members of an exclusive fraternity, and in their offhours take on that country club drawl, indicative of the delusion that they are the very giants of the earth.
As for Narco News publishing a defamatory screed -- that is simply silly. That said, Giordano shouldn't hug this big splat of NYT vitriol too closely to his breast -- he isn't, really, being censored by the heavy hand of government. His reply is a little too cumbersome, and involves imagining a courtroom exchange between himself and the Times. Like Tom Sawyer daydreaming of the ways in which he would be missed if he were dead, there is something queasy about the wish fullfillment involved in daydreaming about having one's day in court with the NYT. This kind of thing happens when a freelancer gets to confront a real media giant -- proportion is the first casualty of media criticism. However, the NYT does measure its language -- it is hard to imagine Lyon sending a similar message to the much more read Kaus.
Monday, January 27, 2003
Dope
Hume, Huxley, and war
The importance of distance should never be under-estimated. Heidegger, whose defense of Nazi-ism is well known, is continually being rediscovered (surprise) as the rotten bug under the rug of continental philosophy; that Derrida relies so much upon his work has been discussed in the terms one would usually reserve for talking about hiring Typhoid Mary to cook the cutlets in some local dinner. Yet who cares that David Hume, the surely one of the roots of English philosophy and its rather sterile offshoot, analytic philosophy, had, shall we say, rather dim views about blacks during a period in which the trade in black flesh (and the attendant destruction of African culture) was at its height? LI was pondering this while reading, yesterday, Thomas Huxley�s excellent Victorian study of Hume. Huxley himself is rather impatient with the �nonsense� that is usually ground out about race and national character. We like Huxley for that. We like Huxley for his reasons for embracing Darwinism. And more than that � we actually like Hume. But we have to admit that Hume admitted to the inroads of prejudice on his philosophical degree zero, his wariness in the presence of generalizations. Here is what Hume has to say about race:
"I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilised nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or speculation.... Such a uniform and constant difference [between the negroes and the whites] could not happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men.... In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one Negro as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly."
This was from his essays, which Huxley justly celebrates. On the whole, Hume�s essays are under-appreciated today, except by libertarians and fans of Adam Smith. That�s because, before Adam Smith, Hume put into theoretical language a lot of what we now consider the foundations of classical political economy.
It is hard to swallow apercu like the above, however. One�s inclination is to think that such thoughts have no influence, really, on, say, Hume�s epistemology. Perhaps this says something about the success of analytic philosophy in convincing its constituency that philosophy consists of isolated areas of focus � epistemology, ontology, ethics, etc. � which are logically separated from each other. Really, though, I think it is that we are far enough away from the slave trade, as opposed to the Holocaust, not to feel it in the skin, like some old war wound. But it is an old war wound, nonetheless. A hole in the side of the world.
Analytic philosophers -- and, even more, the incompetent commentators on philosophy in the popular press -- are much more eager to discuss the influence of Heidegger�s Nazi-ism on his ontology than they are to bracket it, and discuss the ontology alone. We are being a little unfair: Hume never claimed that his epistemology was interwoven with his racism, as Heidegger claimed that his encounter with Seyn was interwoven with Hitler. Still, frankly owning up to a belief in black inferiority, especially during a time when Scottish merchants were making a pretty penny in selling blacks on the theory of that inferiority, should raise some questions about Mr. Hume. However, I doubt they ever will.
The tremendous influence of this contempt for a �lower� race has never, really, been traced to its most extreme ends in all the branches of our history. LI wouldn�t even attempt it � it is too depressing. But when we hear casual remarks about the war of civilizations, and about �reforming� the Islamic world, we have to wonder whether the speakers have any acquaintance with western civilization, besides driving in its huge cars and admiring its overpasses and malls. We live on a very thin crust of liberalism. It is about forty years old � as old as LI. That the inheritors of the most vigorous opponents of the liberal mindset � the people who opposed civil rights for blacks, women, and the working class for the better part of American history, those who defended lynch law, laws to break up unions, and opposed giving women legal equality with men � now casually claim this as their heritage and their sanction for making war on the benighted. This has to be an irony worthy of one of Hardy�s poems, or perhaps � we are enmeshed in the dark ignorance in the belly of the beast..
Hume, Huxley, and war
The importance of distance should never be under-estimated. Heidegger, whose defense of Nazi-ism is well known, is continually being rediscovered (surprise) as the rotten bug under the rug of continental philosophy; that Derrida relies so much upon his work has been discussed in the terms one would usually reserve for talking about hiring Typhoid Mary to cook the cutlets in some local dinner. Yet who cares that David Hume, the surely one of the roots of English philosophy and its rather sterile offshoot, analytic philosophy, had, shall we say, rather dim views about blacks during a period in which the trade in black flesh (and the attendant destruction of African culture) was at its height? LI was pondering this while reading, yesterday, Thomas Huxley�s excellent Victorian study of Hume. Huxley himself is rather impatient with the �nonsense� that is usually ground out about race and national character. We like Huxley for that. We like Huxley for his reasons for embracing Darwinism. And more than that � we actually like Hume. But we have to admit that Hume admitted to the inroads of prejudice on his philosophical degree zero, his wariness in the presence of generalizations. Here is what Hume has to say about race:
"I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilised nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or speculation.... Such a uniform and constant difference [between the negroes and the whites] could not happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men.... In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one Negro as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly."
This was from his essays, which Huxley justly celebrates. On the whole, Hume�s essays are under-appreciated today, except by libertarians and fans of Adam Smith. That�s because, before Adam Smith, Hume put into theoretical language a lot of what we now consider the foundations of classical political economy.
It is hard to swallow apercu like the above, however. One�s inclination is to think that such thoughts have no influence, really, on, say, Hume�s epistemology. Perhaps this says something about the success of analytic philosophy in convincing its constituency that philosophy consists of isolated areas of focus � epistemology, ontology, ethics, etc. � which are logically separated from each other. Really, though, I think it is that we are far enough away from the slave trade, as opposed to the Holocaust, not to feel it in the skin, like some old war wound. But it is an old war wound, nonetheless. A hole in the side of the world.
Analytic philosophers -- and, even more, the incompetent commentators on philosophy in the popular press -- are much more eager to discuss the influence of Heidegger�s Nazi-ism on his ontology than they are to bracket it, and discuss the ontology alone. We are being a little unfair: Hume never claimed that his epistemology was interwoven with his racism, as Heidegger claimed that his encounter with Seyn was interwoven with Hitler. Still, frankly owning up to a belief in black inferiority, especially during a time when Scottish merchants were making a pretty penny in selling blacks on the theory of that inferiority, should raise some questions about Mr. Hume. However, I doubt they ever will.
The tremendous influence of this contempt for a �lower� race has never, really, been traced to its most extreme ends in all the branches of our history. LI wouldn�t even attempt it � it is too depressing. But when we hear casual remarks about the war of civilizations, and about �reforming� the Islamic world, we have to wonder whether the speakers have any acquaintance with western civilization, besides driving in its huge cars and admiring its overpasses and malls. We live on a very thin crust of liberalism. It is about forty years old � as old as LI. That the inheritors of the most vigorous opponents of the liberal mindset � the people who opposed civil rights for blacks, women, and the working class for the better part of American history, those who defended lynch law, laws to break up unions, and opposed giving women legal equality with men � now casually claim this as their heritage and their sanction for making war on the benighted. This has to be an irony worthy of one of Hardy�s poems, or perhaps � we are enmeshed in the dark ignorance in the belly of the beast..
Remora
Tomorrow, as the President gives his State of the Union address, LI will be out with (one hopes) thousands of Austinites protesting the war.
Why? Why shouldn't the U.S, with or without a coalition of allies, invade a country that is ruled by a bloody dictator? A country that manifestly would do better without the dictator?
As we have hammered home on this site, the problem with Saddam Hussein is not his expansionist policies. These have been little in evidence since the Kuwait war. The most striking instance of the change in S.H.'s view, or more likely, ability to incurse on his neighbors is the practical division of his own country. Those attempts that he has made to take back Northern Iraq have been feeble. They've been feeble even judged by his military strength. Though Iraqi forces are probably strong enough to defeat the Kurds in Northern Iraq, those forces, as Hussein knows, would be quickly reinforced by others. Or at least so he must calculate, given his relative inaction.
LI thinks S.H. will topple internally. We also think that an invasion is no guarantee that the country would manifestly do better -- there is absolutely no guarantee that the U.S. would even dismantle the Ba'athist infrastructure; or that, if they did, they would do it in order to create democracy. The Bush administration, while making the required rhetorical genuflection to democracy, has made evident plans for post-Saddam Iraq that are anything but democratic, involving the use of Iraq's oil, and the use of the country as a platform to attack Iran. The kind of country that would allow such things would most likely be either a colony or a tyranny.
This isn't a case of blaming America first -- it is a case of reading the press. Business Week, back in November, published one of those cheerfully obscene articles that you come across in the business press about re-arming Iraq. This one sounds like it could have come from one of the war game scenarios created by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who are to the D.C. belligerent crowd what the Lake District was for the Romantic poets -- an inspiration and a home.
"Flash forward to 2003. Saddam Hussein, the despised Iraqi despot, is now in exile on the isle of Elba, once Napoleon's haunt. A new coalition government in Baghdad friendly to the U.S. is getting organized. But Iran is making ominous noises about border issues, raising fears it might exploit its neighbor's weakness. A decade of economic sanctions has seriously eroded the Iraqi military's conventional capability, and now the country is sorely in need of weapons to defend itself. So the U.S., which just finished disarming Iraq by rooting out weapons of mass destruction, now is considering how to rearm Bagdhad.
Sound farfetched? Hardly. Indeed, some U.S. Iraqi watchers already are mulling how to fortify a friendly post-Saddam regime. And some Wall Street analysts are talking about a new export market for American arms makers -- though comparisons to the bullish market for sales to Egypt and Israel after Camp David are probably overblown."
LI has often pointed out that the occupation of Iraq is almost surely going to create the kind of attrition visited upon American troops in Lebanon in 1982 and 1983, bringing forth the same choices: do I stay or do I go? But staying involves ratcheting up hostilities and taking casualties on a scale that begins to look like the first couple years of the Vietnam war. Meanwhile, at home, instead of the Great Society, Bush is pushing the Great Giveaway. We've been here before. William D. Nordhaus, of the Yale Economics Department, has a paper on his website that asks about the economic consequences of a war with Iraq. It begins with some sobering historical considerations (oh, and this is a pdf link):
"While historians have documented the many miscalculations
involved in war, little has been written on faulty economic forecasts, but a
couple of examples will suffice. Lincoln�s Secretary of the Treasury
estimated that the direct cost of the war to the North would be $240 million,
which amounted to about 7 percent of annual GDP at that time. The actual
cost to the North turned out to be $3,200 million, or about 13 times the
original estimated cost.2 The cost to the South was much greater, for most of
its capital stock was destroyed and output per worker was depressed for
nearly a century. The most prophetic economic analysis of war and peace of
all time, Keynes�s Economic Consequences of the Peace, did not foresee the
great German inflation that was virtually at hand, nor did it contain any
hints of the Great Depressions in Britain of the 1920s or of the world of the
1930s.
"In more recent times, the costs of the Vietnam War were grossly
underestimated when the buildup occurred. The original budget estimate
in early 1966 underestimated the cost for the coming fiscal year by $10
billion, or about 1� percent of GDP. By assuming that the war would end
by June 1967, the Pentagon underestimated the cost of the war by around
90 percent. The war in fact dragged on until 1973, and the total direct cost
was in the range of $110 to $150 billion.3 The indirect costs were more
difficult to gauge but comprise inflation and economic instability, civil
unrest, and, some have argued, a growing disenchantment with authority
and government in the United States."
Of course, left out of this list, and considered most pertinent by the belligerents, is the cost of the last Gulf war. However, that comparison is probably misguided. The financial contribution of the Kuwaitis and the Saudis is not going to carry the burden of this one. Alas, when the war is discussed in the mainstream press so far, the emphasis is on the defeat of S.H. That, it seems to us, is only the first stage in the war. The next stage, the occupation, will be filled with low level conflicts -- acts that will be described as terrorist. If we take the intifada in Israel as a model, we are talking about a couple of thousands of casualties -- U.S. soldiers and their collaborators in Iraq taking the hits. It is at this point that the money meter -- to say nothing of the blood meter -- starts ticking. This is why we find analyses like this of the Independent's Jeremy Warner much too optimistic.
".... The double-dip recession, so much talked about at the last WEF annual meeting in New York but widely dismissed as unlikely, may already be upon us, and that's before an Iraqi war has even begun.As one chief executive puts it: "We need a quick and successful outcome. If we don't get it, we're dead." This seems to me still by far the likely outcome, but don't bet on it. A senior Bush adviser told me: "If the war is still going after a month, then we may be in trouble."
In the less benign scenario, the war proves difficult and protracted. The price of oil rises sharply and then stays there. Developed economies are not as reliant on oil as they used to be, but the consequences would still be catastrophic, turning a weak recession of the type that followed the Gulf War into something much more serious.
As war stretched into a third and fourth month, with no end in sight, the Fed would continue to cut rates, perhaps down to zero if necessary. With the federal funds rate already at an historic low of 1.25 per cent, it can readily be seen that the US is already very low on monetary ammunition. Furthermore, higher oil prices might eventually prove inflationary, necessitating a rise in interest rates and deepening any economic downturn.
All very scary, and alarmingly, only too possible."
Tomorrow, as the President gives his State of the Union address, LI will be out with (one hopes) thousands of Austinites protesting the war.
Why? Why shouldn't the U.S, with or without a coalition of allies, invade a country that is ruled by a bloody dictator? A country that manifestly would do better without the dictator?
As we have hammered home on this site, the problem with Saddam Hussein is not his expansionist policies. These have been little in evidence since the Kuwait war. The most striking instance of the change in S.H.'s view, or more likely, ability to incurse on his neighbors is the practical division of his own country. Those attempts that he has made to take back Northern Iraq have been feeble. They've been feeble even judged by his military strength. Though Iraqi forces are probably strong enough to defeat the Kurds in Northern Iraq, those forces, as Hussein knows, would be quickly reinforced by others. Or at least so he must calculate, given his relative inaction.
LI thinks S.H. will topple internally. We also think that an invasion is no guarantee that the country would manifestly do better -- there is absolutely no guarantee that the U.S. would even dismantle the Ba'athist infrastructure; or that, if they did, they would do it in order to create democracy. The Bush administration, while making the required rhetorical genuflection to democracy, has made evident plans for post-Saddam Iraq that are anything but democratic, involving the use of Iraq's oil, and the use of the country as a platform to attack Iran. The kind of country that would allow such things would most likely be either a colony or a tyranny.
This isn't a case of blaming America first -- it is a case of reading the press. Business Week, back in November, published one of those cheerfully obscene articles that you come across in the business press about re-arming Iraq. This one sounds like it could have come from one of the war game scenarios created by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who are to the D.C. belligerent crowd what the Lake District was for the Romantic poets -- an inspiration and a home.
"Flash forward to 2003. Saddam Hussein, the despised Iraqi despot, is now in exile on the isle of Elba, once Napoleon's haunt. A new coalition government in Baghdad friendly to the U.S. is getting organized. But Iran is making ominous noises about border issues, raising fears it might exploit its neighbor's weakness. A decade of economic sanctions has seriously eroded the Iraqi military's conventional capability, and now the country is sorely in need of weapons to defend itself. So the U.S., which just finished disarming Iraq by rooting out weapons of mass destruction, now is considering how to rearm Bagdhad.
Sound farfetched? Hardly. Indeed, some U.S. Iraqi watchers already are mulling how to fortify a friendly post-Saddam regime. And some Wall Street analysts are talking about a new export market for American arms makers -- though comparisons to the bullish market for sales to Egypt and Israel after Camp David are probably overblown."
LI has often pointed out that the occupation of Iraq is almost surely going to create the kind of attrition visited upon American troops in Lebanon in 1982 and 1983, bringing forth the same choices: do I stay or do I go? But staying involves ratcheting up hostilities and taking casualties on a scale that begins to look like the first couple years of the Vietnam war. Meanwhile, at home, instead of the Great Society, Bush is pushing the Great Giveaway. We've been here before. William D. Nordhaus, of the Yale Economics Department, has a paper on his website that asks about the economic consequences of a war with Iraq. It begins with some sobering historical considerations (oh, and this is a pdf link):
"While historians have documented the many miscalculations
involved in war, little has been written on faulty economic forecasts, but a
couple of examples will suffice. Lincoln�s Secretary of the Treasury
estimated that the direct cost of the war to the North would be $240 million,
which amounted to about 7 percent of annual GDP at that time. The actual
cost to the North turned out to be $3,200 million, or about 13 times the
original estimated cost.2 The cost to the South was much greater, for most of
its capital stock was destroyed and output per worker was depressed for
nearly a century. The most prophetic economic analysis of war and peace of
all time, Keynes�s Economic Consequences of the Peace, did not foresee the
great German inflation that was virtually at hand, nor did it contain any
hints of the Great Depressions in Britain of the 1920s or of the world of the
1930s.
"In more recent times, the costs of the Vietnam War were grossly
underestimated when the buildup occurred. The original budget estimate
in early 1966 underestimated the cost for the coming fiscal year by $10
billion, or about 1� percent of GDP. By assuming that the war would end
by June 1967, the Pentagon underestimated the cost of the war by around
90 percent. The war in fact dragged on until 1973, and the total direct cost
was in the range of $110 to $150 billion.3 The indirect costs were more
difficult to gauge but comprise inflation and economic instability, civil
unrest, and, some have argued, a growing disenchantment with authority
and government in the United States."
Of course, left out of this list, and considered most pertinent by the belligerents, is the cost of the last Gulf war. However, that comparison is probably misguided. The financial contribution of the Kuwaitis and the Saudis is not going to carry the burden of this one. Alas, when the war is discussed in the mainstream press so far, the emphasis is on the defeat of S.H. That, it seems to us, is only the first stage in the war. The next stage, the occupation, will be filled with low level conflicts -- acts that will be described as terrorist. If we take the intifada in Israel as a model, we are talking about a couple of thousands of casualties -- U.S. soldiers and their collaborators in Iraq taking the hits. It is at this point that the money meter -- to say nothing of the blood meter -- starts ticking. This is why we find analyses like this of the Independent's Jeremy Warner much too optimistic.
".... The double-dip recession, so much talked about at the last WEF annual meeting in New York but widely dismissed as unlikely, may already be upon us, and that's before an Iraqi war has even begun.As one chief executive puts it: "We need a quick and successful outcome. If we don't get it, we're dead." This seems to me still by far the likely outcome, but don't bet on it. A senior Bush adviser told me: "If the war is still going after a month, then we may be in trouble."
In the less benign scenario, the war proves difficult and protracted. The price of oil rises sharply and then stays there. Developed economies are not as reliant on oil as they used to be, but the consequences would still be catastrophic, turning a weak recession of the type that followed the Gulf War into something much more serious.
As war stretched into a third and fourth month, with no end in sight, the Fed would continue to cut rates, perhaps down to zero if necessary. With the federal funds rate already at an historic low of 1.25 per cent, it can readily be seen that the US is already very low on monetary ammunition. Furthermore, higher oil prices might eventually prove inflationary, necessitating a rise in interest rates and deepening any economic downturn.
All very scary, and alarmingly, only too possible."
Friday, January 24, 2003
Remora
Well, Donald Rumsfeld's crack about "old Europe" has created some odd alliances. For instance, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung actually soliticted an opinion from Jacques Derrida, hero of this site, on the matter.
Here's the story from Liberation:
"Even the very conservative and traditionally pro-American Fr. Allgemeine Zeitung consecrated two pages of editorials to Rumsfeld's remark, with contributions from philosophers as well known as the German Jurgen Habermas and the French Jacques Derrida.
Their criticisms with regard to their European friends put them in contradiction with the great American ideals of the 18th century, estimates Habermas, making reference to the influence of the great European thinkers of the Enlightenment on the "founding fathers" of American Democracy.
Derrida, for his part, wrote in the FAZ: my reaction can be summed up in a few words. I find this declaration (of Rumsfeld's) shocking, scandalous and typical. These remarks show how important the unity of Europe is."
My friend Tom in NY sent me a link to a review of the movie Derrida on the National Review site. The review is funny. Here is a graf:
"Zeitgeist Films, distributor of the documentary Derrida, currently in limited release in select cities across the country, poses the following rhetorical question on its promotional website: What if you could watch Socrates, on film, rehearsing his Socratic dialogues? The insinuation, of course, is that Jacques Derrida, the contemporary French thinker sometimes called the "father of deconstruction" deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the ancient Greek thinker sometimes called the "father of philosophy." This is true only insofar as a firecracker and a hydrogen bomb both go pop. Otherwise, the comparison is ludicrous."
This is of course true. The comparison, however, is made not so much, we think, for the reasons that Mark Goldblatt suspects -- that is, a high reverence for Derrida -- as for the usual advertising dilemma: how many people recognize philosophers' names? Derrida could, rightly, be compared to Brentano or Meinong, for instance -- solid names, but not exactly as important as Husserl or Russell. Frege would be another apposite comparison.
Goldblatt has a good time knocking down Derrida's pretentiousness:
"The high point of the film, judging from the comments of several notable reviewers, comes halfway through and consists of Derrida's five-minute meditation on the concept of love. After a token demurral and his customary song and dance about the difficulty of the topic � including the self-contradictory howler "I'm incapable of generalities" � Derrida hones in on the dilemma of whether love consists of our being drawn to the "singularity" of another person or to a set of specific qualities possessed by the person we love. In other words, do I love you for your essential you-ness or for the sum of characteristics I associate with you? He provides no answer, naturally. But, at the screening I attended, as Derrida wound down his discourse, an audible gasp rose from the sparse crowd in the theater."
Anyone who has ever heard Derrida knows that he has a weakness for his own yarn-spinning. What begins as Mallarme often ends up sounding like second rate Derrida. A pity, but not a surprise. He requires paper -- like most philosophers, actually. The Socratic exception is not going to occur again. A philosopher speaking philosophy is much like a dog speaking dog -- you have to be a dog to catch it in the latter case, and you have to be a philosopher to interrupt it in the former case. LI can understand the attraction of the idea that you will film a philosopher thinking -- it is like the idea of filming a writer writing. The witless Adaptation, which we saw last week, falls into the trap of doing the latter, and the results are both boring and insulting, to anybody who writes. The best film that shows Philosophy (that LI knows) remains The man who envied women, with that excrutiating pas de deux at the end as a man and a woman recite almost impenetrable Foucauldian speeches at each other.
Goldblatt's trope -- of Derrida as a sort of rascal, a grifter, as he calls him, more important for what some future audience (the future, you know, is always on one's side) will make of him -- a symbol of our present decadence -- is designed to say nothing about Derrida's work. The advantage is that you don't have to read it, then. Derrida has said enough about the nature of the inability to read himself. But I don't expect the National Review's guest film critic to make it through Marges de la Philosophie. Actually, if he did, he'd find many things in it reminiscent of Hayek. Ah, but that assumes he's read Hayek -- and his review gives LI no evidence that he has that degree of literacy.
Well, Donald Rumsfeld's crack about "old Europe" has created some odd alliances. For instance, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung actually soliticted an opinion from Jacques Derrida, hero of this site, on the matter.
Here's the story from Liberation:
"Even the very conservative and traditionally pro-American Fr. Allgemeine Zeitung consecrated two pages of editorials to Rumsfeld's remark, with contributions from philosophers as well known as the German Jurgen Habermas and the French Jacques Derrida.
Their criticisms with regard to their European friends put them in contradiction with the great American ideals of the 18th century, estimates Habermas, making reference to the influence of the great European thinkers of the Enlightenment on the "founding fathers" of American Democracy.
Derrida, for his part, wrote in the FAZ: my reaction can be summed up in a few words. I find this declaration (of Rumsfeld's) shocking, scandalous and typical. These remarks show how important the unity of Europe is."
My friend Tom in NY sent me a link to a review of the movie Derrida on the National Review site. The review is funny. Here is a graf:
"Zeitgeist Films, distributor of the documentary Derrida, currently in limited release in select cities across the country, poses the following rhetorical question on its promotional website: What if you could watch Socrates, on film, rehearsing his Socratic dialogues? The insinuation, of course, is that Jacques Derrida, the contemporary French thinker sometimes called the "father of deconstruction" deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the ancient Greek thinker sometimes called the "father of philosophy." This is true only insofar as a firecracker and a hydrogen bomb both go pop. Otherwise, the comparison is ludicrous."
This is of course true. The comparison, however, is made not so much, we think, for the reasons that Mark Goldblatt suspects -- that is, a high reverence for Derrida -- as for the usual advertising dilemma: how many people recognize philosophers' names? Derrida could, rightly, be compared to Brentano or Meinong, for instance -- solid names, but not exactly as important as Husserl or Russell. Frege would be another apposite comparison.
Goldblatt has a good time knocking down Derrida's pretentiousness:
"The high point of the film, judging from the comments of several notable reviewers, comes halfway through and consists of Derrida's five-minute meditation on the concept of love. After a token demurral and his customary song and dance about the difficulty of the topic � including the self-contradictory howler "I'm incapable of generalities" � Derrida hones in on the dilemma of whether love consists of our being drawn to the "singularity" of another person or to a set of specific qualities possessed by the person we love. In other words, do I love you for your essential you-ness or for the sum of characteristics I associate with you? He provides no answer, naturally. But, at the screening I attended, as Derrida wound down his discourse, an audible gasp rose from the sparse crowd in the theater."
Anyone who has ever heard Derrida knows that he has a weakness for his own yarn-spinning. What begins as Mallarme often ends up sounding like second rate Derrida. A pity, but not a surprise. He requires paper -- like most philosophers, actually. The Socratic exception is not going to occur again. A philosopher speaking philosophy is much like a dog speaking dog -- you have to be a dog to catch it in the latter case, and you have to be a philosopher to interrupt it in the former case. LI can understand the attraction of the idea that you will film a philosopher thinking -- it is like the idea of filming a writer writing. The witless Adaptation, which we saw last week, falls into the trap of doing the latter, and the results are both boring and insulting, to anybody who writes. The best film that shows Philosophy (that LI knows) remains The man who envied women, with that excrutiating pas de deux at the end as a man and a woman recite almost impenetrable Foucauldian speeches at each other.
Goldblatt's trope -- of Derrida as a sort of rascal, a grifter, as he calls him, more important for what some future audience (the future, you know, is always on one's side) will make of him -- a symbol of our present decadence -- is designed to say nothing about Derrida's work. The advantage is that you don't have to read it, then. Derrida has said enough about the nature of the inability to read himself. But I don't expect the National Review's guest film critic to make it through Marges de la Philosophie. Actually, if he did, he'd find many things in it reminiscent of Hayek. Ah, but that assumes he's read Hayek -- and his review gives LI no evidence that he has that degree of literacy.
Thursday, January 23, 2003
Remora
The best comment on the looming war this morning comes from an Independent columnist, Mark Steel. Steel zeros in on the logic of this caper. Here are two delicious grafs:
"Blair admitted how pointless the inspections are when he justified military action by saying "The inspections can't go on forever." Which seems to miss out the point that the reason the inspectors are asking for more time is they haven't found anything. So another way for Blair to have put this would have been to say, "Saddam continues to try and hold up this war by not having weapons of mass destruction, and that is something we simply cannot allow. He consistently flouts the inspectors by not having a secret cave full of chemical warheads, with Tariq Aziz laughing loudly next to a giant map with a ring drawn round Chicago while a digital clock counts down, and that is, frankly, intolerable.
"Blair went on to say he wasn't prepared to play "hide-and-seek" with Saddam, which again assumes the only possible reason why stuff hasn't been found is Saddam must be hiding it. You could apply this to anywhere and come up with a reason for war. After Iraq, Blair could send weapons inspectors into the Blue Peter Garden, and after six weeks announce that as no nuclear devices have been found, the only way to ensure peace was a full-scale invasion. Then, when the presenters started running round the studio with rifles and shouting "We're ready to make you die," Blair could say "See, it's working because they're rattled."
The Independent is full of jewels this morning. While Steel intended to be funny, the serious news report about Iraq is even funnier. Here's the latest in the Blair government's attempt to justify its synthesis of sycophancy and belligerence:
"British sources said there was further evidence of internal opposition to Saddam's regime as the military build-up and diplomatic pressure on Iraq increased. They said graffiti, slogans and underground activity had increased sharply in recent weeks. Slogans such as "Down with Saddam" and "How long will the Iraqi people sleep?" were appearing on statues and photographs of Saddam and on the walls of public buildings. Opposition groups, including the Iraqi Communist Party and National Liberation Movement, had also stepped up activity."
There you have it, folks. Surely Rumsfeld should mention the sharp spiking of the grafitti factor in his next broadcast to the "real Europe" ... the Europe of our allies ... the Europe of Poland, Italy and Spain. (We have the finest allies, you see. Rumor has it that Slovenia itself is about to join our mighty coalition).
The best comment on the looming war this morning comes from an Independent columnist, Mark Steel. Steel zeros in on the logic of this caper. Here are two delicious grafs:
"Blair admitted how pointless the inspections are when he justified military action by saying "The inspections can't go on forever." Which seems to miss out the point that the reason the inspectors are asking for more time is they haven't found anything. So another way for Blair to have put this would have been to say, "Saddam continues to try and hold up this war by not having weapons of mass destruction, and that is something we simply cannot allow. He consistently flouts the inspectors by not having a secret cave full of chemical warheads, with Tariq Aziz laughing loudly next to a giant map with a ring drawn round Chicago while a digital clock counts down, and that is, frankly, intolerable.
"Blair went on to say he wasn't prepared to play "hide-and-seek" with Saddam, which again assumes the only possible reason why stuff hasn't been found is Saddam must be hiding it. You could apply this to anywhere and come up with a reason for war. After Iraq, Blair could send weapons inspectors into the Blue Peter Garden, and after six weeks announce that as no nuclear devices have been found, the only way to ensure peace was a full-scale invasion. Then, when the presenters started running round the studio with rifles and shouting "We're ready to make you die," Blair could say "See, it's working because they're rattled."
The Independent is full of jewels this morning. While Steel intended to be funny, the serious news report about Iraq is even funnier. Here's the latest in the Blair government's attempt to justify its synthesis of sycophancy and belligerence:
"British sources said there was further evidence of internal opposition to Saddam's regime as the military build-up and diplomatic pressure on Iraq increased. They said graffiti, slogans and underground activity had increased sharply in recent weeks. Slogans such as "Down with Saddam" and "How long will the Iraqi people sleep?" were appearing on statues and photographs of Saddam and on the walls of public buildings. Opposition groups, including the Iraqi Communist Party and National Liberation Movement, had also stepped up activity."
There you have it, folks. Surely Rumsfeld should mention the sharp spiking of the grafitti factor in his next broadcast to the "real Europe" ... the Europe of our allies ... the Europe of Poland, Italy and Spain. (We have the finest allies, you see. Rumor has it that Slovenia itself is about to join our mighty coalition).
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Remora
Yesterday, LI went downtown and witnessed the remains of the inauguration parade that heralded the enthronement of Rick Perry as Governor -- surely one of the luckiest politicians in Texas history; surely, also, one of the dumbest. Perry is at the crest of the Republican tide in this state. LI was delighted to see old men, in coonskin caps, carrying rifles, walking down Congress avenue. These had surely come from pockets of Perry's warmest supporters -- little villes in East Texas where lynching is looked back to, nostalgically. We nearly bumped into two cowgirl cheerleaders, who flashed very, very pearly smiles at us.
While one governor of Texas was whooping it up, our gift to the world -- the current commander in chief -- was pouting. Or at least for the cameras. As the war Bush has been planning on is about to take off, there are these last minute hitches. The American press has been especially kind about this. How often, in the last four months, have we been assured that, in secret, the Europeans and the Arabs are one hundred percent for us? The commentators explain this by saying that nobody wants to miss out when the U.S. occupies Iraq. However, it never seems to occur to them that France, for instance, might get more out of opposing that occupation. After all, positioning itself to oppose the U.S. might be more popular with not only the Middle East's street, but be welcomed by Middle Eastern leaders as a tool to redress the balance with the states. As has been the case since the get go, the scenarios go only one way in the U.S. press. The deluge of foreign news items that, over the past year, have assured us that Turkey, or Saudi Arabia, or France, or Germany, or Ireland, or whoever, was privately assuring the Bush administration of their undying love and devotion has started to shut off as it becomes more and more implausible that this is the case. To guage the deluge, go back to, say, July of last year. The US News published an analysis of Europe by Michael Barone that assured readers of European compliance with the Bush foreign policy. Barone points out that the chattering classes -- and oh yes, the popular majority -- is against war with Iraq. But he breezily continues:
Interviews and talks with government leaders and political insiders in London and Berlin leave a different impression. The leaders of major European governments would not have chosen on their own to require democratic reform among Palestinians before pressuring Israel to make concessions or to insist on regime change in Iraq--policies set forth by Bush and supported by large majorities of American voters. But they are going along with the first and will go along with the second--although both are opposed vociferously by articulate elites and not supported by popular majorities in their countries. America is leading and European governments, although grumbling that they have not been consulted on what will come after a war in Iraq, are following.
... Britain, as after September 11, will be on our side.That is true as well of major countries on the Continent. Italy's Defense Minister Antonio Martino, as reported here three months ago, is confident that his government can muster its majority in favor of military action in Iraq. Germany's Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping, interviewed July 4, says that his government would very likely do so too, a view that is echoed by the foreign affairs spokesman for the Christian Democratic opposition, which has been leading in polls and may take office after the September 22 elections. These European leaders are careful to say that the United States must make a convincing case that it has exhausted nonmilitary alternatives. But they argue only perfunctorily if at all that inspections can limit Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps reluctantly, they accept what their chattering classes are busy denouncing."
That was at the summer height of Bush's propaganda offensive. Now we have the frustrated Bush. Perhaps we are witnessing a charade, as the European nations fold and the coalition invades Iraq. But what if we are not? What if the advantage is in opposing the US invasion?
There's an editiorial in the Nouvelle Obs that makes a timely point about opposition to the war: it shouldn't be support for Saddam Hussein.
Un h�ros de Malraux (un anarchiste dans �l�Espoir�) finit par se demander s�il n�est pas aussi important de savoir avec qui l�on se bat que contre qui on le fait. Mais on pourrait dire aussi qu�il est important de savoir aux c�t�s de qui on renonce � se battre. Lorsque le pape, comme il vient de le faire avec force, rappelle que toute guerre est une d�faite de l�humanit�, il stimule la r�flexion. Mais lorsque, le m�me jour, nous apprenons que des �pacifistes� europ�ens, et surtout fran�ais, acclament dans Bagdad le r�gime et la personne de Saddam Hussein, alors on se sent pris d�un immense malaise. Et c�est un euph�misme. Ce que je ne pardonnerai jamais � George Bush, c�est de para�tre justifier par sa politique tous ceux qui, en se pr�tendant les champions des victimes et des faibles, confortent le pouvoir des oppresseurs et des bourreaux. Il n�en manque pas, je le sais depuis longtemps, du c�t� de ces pr�tendus amis de la cause arabe, qui ont toujours �t� plus soucieux d�obtenir les faveurs des gouvernants que de contribuer � l��mancipation des peuples.
"One of Malraux's heros (an anarchist in Man's Hope) ends by asking himself if it isn't as important to know who one is fighting with as to know who one is fighting against. It could be said that it is also important to know on the side of whom one renounces to fight. When the Pope, as he just said with force, recalls that every war is a defeat for humanity, he stimulates reflection. But when, the same day, we learn that european pacifists, mostly french, have acclaimed, in Baghdad, the regime and the person of Saddam Hussein, then we feel an immense malaise. And that's a euphemism. What I will never pardon George Bush for is to appear to justify, by his politics, all those who, pretending to be the champions of the weak, comfort the power of the oppressers and the hangmen. There are plenty of pretended friends of the Arab cause who are always more careful to obtain the favors of their governments than to contribute to the emancipation of their people -- that I know."
Yesterday, LI went downtown and witnessed the remains of the inauguration parade that heralded the enthronement of Rick Perry as Governor -- surely one of the luckiest politicians in Texas history; surely, also, one of the dumbest. Perry is at the crest of the Republican tide in this state. LI was delighted to see old men, in coonskin caps, carrying rifles, walking down Congress avenue. These had surely come from pockets of Perry's warmest supporters -- little villes in East Texas where lynching is looked back to, nostalgically. We nearly bumped into two cowgirl cheerleaders, who flashed very, very pearly smiles at us.
While one governor of Texas was whooping it up, our gift to the world -- the current commander in chief -- was pouting. Or at least for the cameras. As the war Bush has been planning on is about to take off, there are these last minute hitches. The American press has been especially kind about this. How often, in the last four months, have we been assured that, in secret, the Europeans and the Arabs are one hundred percent for us? The commentators explain this by saying that nobody wants to miss out when the U.S. occupies Iraq. However, it never seems to occur to them that France, for instance, might get more out of opposing that occupation. After all, positioning itself to oppose the U.S. might be more popular with not only the Middle East's street, but be welcomed by Middle Eastern leaders as a tool to redress the balance with the states. As has been the case since the get go, the scenarios go only one way in the U.S. press. The deluge of foreign news items that, over the past year, have assured us that Turkey, or Saudi Arabia, or France, or Germany, or Ireland, or whoever, was privately assuring the Bush administration of their undying love and devotion has started to shut off as it becomes more and more implausible that this is the case. To guage the deluge, go back to, say, July of last year. The US News published an analysis of Europe by Michael Barone that assured readers of European compliance with the Bush foreign policy. Barone points out that the chattering classes -- and oh yes, the popular majority -- is against war with Iraq. But he breezily continues:
Interviews and talks with government leaders and political insiders in London and Berlin leave a different impression. The leaders of major European governments would not have chosen on their own to require democratic reform among Palestinians before pressuring Israel to make concessions or to insist on regime change in Iraq--policies set forth by Bush and supported by large majorities of American voters. But they are going along with the first and will go along with the second--although both are opposed vociferously by articulate elites and not supported by popular majorities in their countries. America is leading and European governments, although grumbling that they have not been consulted on what will come after a war in Iraq, are following.
... Britain, as after September 11, will be on our side.That is true as well of major countries on the Continent. Italy's Defense Minister Antonio Martino, as reported here three months ago, is confident that his government can muster its majority in favor of military action in Iraq. Germany's Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping, interviewed July 4, says that his government would very likely do so too, a view that is echoed by the foreign affairs spokesman for the Christian Democratic opposition, which has been leading in polls and may take office after the September 22 elections. These European leaders are careful to say that the United States must make a convincing case that it has exhausted nonmilitary alternatives. But they argue only perfunctorily if at all that inspections can limit Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps reluctantly, they accept what their chattering classes are busy denouncing."
That was at the summer height of Bush's propaganda offensive. Now we have the frustrated Bush. Perhaps we are witnessing a charade, as the European nations fold and the coalition invades Iraq. But what if we are not? What if the advantage is in opposing the US invasion?
There's an editiorial in the Nouvelle Obs that makes a timely point about opposition to the war: it shouldn't be support for Saddam Hussein.
Un h�ros de Malraux (un anarchiste dans �l�Espoir�) finit par se demander s�il n�est pas aussi important de savoir avec qui l�on se bat que contre qui on le fait. Mais on pourrait dire aussi qu�il est important de savoir aux c�t�s de qui on renonce � se battre. Lorsque le pape, comme il vient de le faire avec force, rappelle que toute guerre est une d�faite de l�humanit�, il stimule la r�flexion. Mais lorsque, le m�me jour, nous apprenons que des �pacifistes� europ�ens, et surtout fran�ais, acclament dans Bagdad le r�gime et la personne de Saddam Hussein, alors on se sent pris d�un immense malaise. Et c�est un euph�misme. Ce que je ne pardonnerai jamais � George Bush, c�est de para�tre justifier par sa politique tous ceux qui, en se pr�tendant les champions des victimes et des faibles, confortent le pouvoir des oppresseurs et des bourreaux. Il n�en manque pas, je le sais depuis longtemps, du c�t� de ces pr�tendus amis de la cause arabe, qui ont toujours �t� plus soucieux d�obtenir les faveurs des gouvernants que de contribuer � l��mancipation des peuples.
"One of Malraux's heros (an anarchist in Man's Hope) ends by asking himself if it isn't as important to know who one is fighting with as to know who one is fighting against. It could be said that it is also important to know on the side of whom one renounces to fight. When the Pope, as he just said with force, recalls that every war is a defeat for humanity, he stimulates reflection. But when, the same day, we learn that european pacifists, mostly french, have acclaimed, in Baghdad, the regime and the person of Saddam Hussein, then we feel an immense malaise. And that's a euphemism. What I will never pardon George Bush for is to appear to justify, by his politics, all those who, pretending to be the champions of the weak, comfort the power of the oppressers and the hangmen. There are plenty of pretended friends of the Arab cause who are always more careful to obtain the favors of their governments than to contribute to the emancipation of their people -- that I know."
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Remora
The Bush administration, in pursuit of its policy of why not the worst? is pushing for tax credits for SUVs. Of course, many of you think LI is pulling your leg, but we aren't. Here's the story in the NYT:
"ETROIT, Jan. 20 � The Bush administration's economic plan would increase by 50 percent or more the deductions that small-business owners can take right away on the biggest sport utility vehicles and pickups.
The plan would mean small businesses could immediately deduct the entire price of S.U.V.'s like the Hummer H2, the Lincoln Navigator and the Toyota Land Cruiser, even if the vehicles were loaded with every available option. Or a business owner, taking full advantage, could buy a BMW X5 sport utility vehicle for a few hundred dollars more than a Pontiac Bonneville sedan, after the immediate tax deductions were factored in."
Surprisingly, this is not surprising, considering that the Bush administration is beginning to look exactly like the Enron management team, circa 2000. The same hasty looting of resources, the same arrogance, the same accounting shenanigans. This is about it for the Bush energy plan -- endless war in the Middle East to provide endless oil for the most gas guzzling of vehicles that emit endless pollution into the atmosphere. Infinite Justice, indeed.
"And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter."
The Bush administration, in pursuit of its policy of why not the worst? is pushing for tax credits for SUVs. Of course, many of you think LI is pulling your leg, but we aren't. Here's the story in the NYT:
"ETROIT, Jan. 20 � The Bush administration's economic plan would increase by 50 percent or more the deductions that small-business owners can take right away on the biggest sport utility vehicles and pickups.
The plan would mean small businesses could immediately deduct the entire price of S.U.V.'s like the Hummer H2, the Lincoln Navigator and the Toyota Land Cruiser, even if the vehicles were loaded with every available option. Or a business owner, taking full advantage, could buy a BMW X5 sport utility vehicle for a few hundred dollars more than a Pontiac Bonneville sedan, after the immediate tax deductions were factored in."
Surprisingly, this is not surprising, considering that the Bush administration is beginning to look exactly like the Enron management team, circa 2000. The same hasty looting of resources, the same arrogance, the same accounting shenanigans. This is about it for the Bush energy plan -- endless war in the Middle East to provide endless oil for the most gas guzzling of vehicles that emit endless pollution into the atmosphere. Infinite Justice, indeed.
"And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter."
Monday, January 20, 2003
Remora
Protests
Martin Luther King's holiday weekend was appropriately chosen as the time to protest by about a hundred thousand anti-belligerents in D.C. -- although the press coverage has been typical. The Washington Post quoted the police as saying that "three people and a cat" showed up; then they quoted a man, claiming to be David Bowie's Martian twin, who said a million people showed up; then they sagely opined that it might have been in the middle, say, six men and two cats. The NYT claims the number of cats was, well, chuckle, sorta exaggerated, and then respectfully quoted an unnamed Bush administration official on the problem of using nuclear tactical weapons against protesters and their cats. The Democratic leadership denounced the idea of nuclear weapons being used against the cats -- although Lieberman, saying he was a "different kind of Democrat," admitted to being fascinated by the possibilities of blasting protesters with nuclear tactical weapons, saying that more weapons and less protesters might be acceptable if the nuclear tactical weapons industry gave stock options to its workers.
Here's the Guardian:
"On Saturday, a great throng stretched from the grounds of the U.S. Capitol and along the National Mall back to the Smithsonian Institution for a rally in bitter cold. U.S. Park Police no longer gives estimates of rally attendance. In the past, crowds taking up similar space were thought to be 70,000 strong or higher, but any parallels with other events were highly inexact. A much smaller group from the rally, but still numbering over 30,000 by police estimates, marched to the Washington Navy Yard. Rally speakers offered varying estimates of the crowd size, with one telling the crowd that 500,000 had come, but even some supporters of the event thought that was wildly exaggerated."
Protests
Martin Luther King's holiday weekend was appropriately chosen as the time to protest by about a hundred thousand anti-belligerents in D.C. -- although the press coverage has been typical. The Washington Post quoted the police as saying that "three people and a cat" showed up; then they quoted a man, claiming to be David Bowie's Martian twin, who said a million people showed up; then they sagely opined that it might have been in the middle, say, six men and two cats. The NYT claims the number of cats was, well, chuckle, sorta exaggerated, and then respectfully quoted an unnamed Bush administration official on the problem of using nuclear tactical weapons against protesters and their cats. The Democratic leadership denounced the idea of nuclear weapons being used against the cats -- although Lieberman, saying he was a "different kind of Democrat," admitted to being fascinated by the possibilities of blasting protesters with nuclear tactical weapons, saying that more weapons and less protesters might be acceptable if the nuclear tactical weapons industry gave stock options to its workers.
Here's the Guardian:
"On Saturday, a great throng stretched from the grounds of the U.S. Capitol and along the National Mall back to the Smithsonian Institution for a rally in bitter cold. U.S. Park Police no longer gives estimates of rally attendance. In the past, crowds taking up similar space were thought to be 70,000 strong or higher, but any parallels with other events were highly inexact. A much smaller group from the rally, but still numbering over 30,000 by police estimates, marched to the Washington Navy Yard. Rally speakers offered varying estimates of the crowd size, with one telling the crowd that 500,000 had come, but even some supporters of the event thought that was wildly exaggerated."
Saturday, January 18, 2003
Notes
We have been researching our ever more Moby Dick like essay on James F. Stephen, which is the reason we could be seen, Thursday, in a down town coffee house reading the seemingly dry as toast political history of Great Britain, The British Revolution, 1880-1939, by Tory historian Robert Rhodes James. The book, published some time in the 70s, turns out to be quite unexpectedly readable. It is rather depressing that Rhodes, who from his author picture is the typical dried up prune of a nerdy Tory, has such ease as a writer -- it implies a whole background acquaintance with English prose that just isn't there anymore. It has disappeared in our lifetime. The environmental disaster of extinction has gotten prolonged and constant exposure in the news for the last thirty years; but the cultural disaster of the extinction of a prose capable of subtly incorporating the whole range of English literature, the repertoire, in its easy narrative of facts, is not exposed at all in the press. In fact, the press is one of the toxins that has killed this particular talent off. It is all quite startling. It is like a whole generation of piano players losing their knowledge of scales.
Anyway, James provides a number of really good quotes from Victorian and Edwardian worthies. Here's Lord Roseberry, briefly prime minister after Gladstone and a key architect of the latter phase of British imperial expansion, describing Northcote, Disraeli's successor, for a brief time, as the head of the Conservatives:
"Where he failed was in manner. His voice, his diction, his delivery, were all inadequate. With real ability, great knowledge, genial kindness, and a sympathetic nature -- all the qualities, indeed, which evoke regard and esteem -- he had not the spice of the devil which is necessary to rouse an Opposition to zeal and elation.... When Northcote warmed there was, or seemed to be, a note of apology in his voice..."
Isn't this a perfect description of Daschle? And, cutting out the sentence that begins "with real ability," isn't this Lieberman? Indeed, it is the spice of the devil that is missing from the entire Democratic leadership.
Celebrators of the imperial process
Niall Ferguson, the Tory answer to � well, to whom? To Ferdinand Braudel? Anyway, Niall Ferguson is the news in Britain this Sunday. He has a BBC series on Empire, and a book, named Empire, too, to go along with it. Now, we find Ferguson a fascinating figure. We disagree with his cases - for instance, his case against Keynes book, the Consequences of the Peace - but we think his willingness to adventure counter-factually through the conventional wisdom of historians is bracing. The Times is all about Ferguson this week. Sunday, the Times published a number of reviews of the book and the series. Andrew Roberts, who compares Ferguson, rather nonsensically, to Errol Flynn, states Ferguson's case like this:
"AS THE subtitle of this book suggests, Niall Ferguson makes big claims for the British Empire. Not only did these small rainy offshore islands turn the world capitalist, he argues, but they also made huge tracts of it speak English, play team sports and adopt our land-tenure system and common law. Moreover, what he calls "Anglobalizsation" was a Good Thing, and was achieved with far less blood being shed than would have been done by our Spanish, French, Dutch, Russian or - God forbid- German competitors."
The benignity of Empire is the theme of the season. We think it is a deeply pernicious and misleading theme. Another review of the book, this time by FELIPE FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO, strikes a discordant note - in fact, seems to be about another book entirely:
"In Niall Ferguson�s view, one of his well-selected pictures seems fairly to sum up the British Empire: a German caricature of 1904, in which Britons cheerfully torture a black man. A capitalist forces whisky down the victim�s throat, while the rack, manipulated by a soldier, extrudes gold from his rectum. Nearby, a churchman sermonises myopically. The empire, Ferguson explains in his book written to accompany the Channel 4 series which started last Thursday, originated in piracy, unrolled in slavery, practised outrages and atrocities and struggled to �play the role of world policeman with a straight face�. The �civilising mission� was a sham: empire induced savagery in its servants. The British came to India, for example, as predatory conquistadors � barbaric exploiters of a society more prosperous and, by many standards, more impressive than their own.
All this candour is surprising after an introduction that promises a robust defence of the morality of empire. Eventually, the author wrenches his rabbit from the hat. The British Empire may have been bad in some respects; but for the world of the late 19th century and much of the 20th, the alternatives were worse: German or Russian or Japanese hegemony. The balance of investment and exploitation favoured the exploiters only a little. By espousing free trade and repudiating slavery the British enriched the world and enhanced humanity. Their legacy includes liberal capitalism, parliamentary democracy, and �finally, there is the English language itself�.
As a case for the defence, it is disappointingly predictable: the vaunted legacy surely owes more, in any case, to America�s empire than to Britain�s."
Well, which version of Ferguson's version of Empire is right? And what kind of justification is it that, in the event, the Brits were better than the Spanish or the Germans?
It seems to us that the question is being posed in such a manner as to skew the issue. The question of the British effect on India is not a matter of whether the Portugese would have been better for India, but whether the Moghuls would have. Also, there is a problem with the penchant for historical battles, and turning points, etc. The turning point in India, to use the great British colony once again, was not decided at the end of the seven years war. It was decided every year after the seven years war. It was decided, with bloodshed and mythology, at the end of the Sepoy mutiny, in 1859. Whether India, like Russia, could have governed itself, imported technology, created a framework within which to palliate the great famines of the latter half of the 19th century is something we will never know. But it definitely loads the dice to make this question turn on the alternative between the Brits and the Germans, or the Japanese, or the French.
The European edition of Time magazine casts a surprisingly skeptical eye on Ferguson's empire nostalgia. This graf seems to make the case, although with an example that seems, really, to trivialize the record, disparate as it is, concentrated in thousands of separate records, of atrocity:
"But Ferguson's Empire balance sheets show some creative accounting. Though he dutifully frowns on the horrors of slavery or, say, the Battle of Omdurman, Sudan, in 1898 (in which 10,000 Muslims were annihilated in five hours by Lord Kitchener's Maxim guns), few such moments make it into the debit column. "The question is not whether British imperialism was without blemish," Ferguson writes. "It was not. The question is whether there could have been a less bloody path to modernity." There might have been, he admits, but he clearly doubts it."
Finally, this is Peter Conrad weighing in in the Guardian on one of Ferguson's nuttier claims:
"Ferguson presents the loss of Empire as an act of supreme altruism, 'authentically noble'. Britain bankrupted itself in a war against alternative Empires - German, Japanese, Italian - whose treatment of their subject populations was manifestly less humane. 'Did not that sacrifice,' he asks, 'alone expunge all the Empire's other sins?' I am not sure that he establishes the moral superiority of the home team. Of course, Christianity put a hypocritical, cozening gloss on imperial venality by claiming that the Empire had a redemptive, civilising mission.But despite this piety, British colonies depended on slavery; no wonder the nabobs were offended when the Japanese, after the fall of Singapore, enslaved British soldiers and put them to work building a railway through the jungle. Hitler admired the Empire and offered to let the British keep it if they smiled on his own imperial ambitions in eastern Europe."
We have been researching our ever more Moby Dick like essay on James F. Stephen, which is the reason we could be seen, Thursday, in a down town coffee house reading the seemingly dry as toast political history of Great Britain, The British Revolution, 1880-1939, by Tory historian Robert Rhodes James. The book, published some time in the 70s, turns out to be quite unexpectedly readable. It is rather depressing that Rhodes, who from his author picture is the typical dried up prune of a nerdy Tory, has such ease as a writer -- it implies a whole background acquaintance with English prose that just isn't there anymore. It has disappeared in our lifetime. The environmental disaster of extinction has gotten prolonged and constant exposure in the news for the last thirty years; but the cultural disaster of the extinction of a prose capable of subtly incorporating the whole range of English literature, the repertoire, in its easy narrative of facts, is not exposed at all in the press. In fact, the press is one of the toxins that has killed this particular talent off. It is all quite startling. It is like a whole generation of piano players losing their knowledge of scales.
Anyway, James provides a number of really good quotes from Victorian and Edwardian worthies. Here's Lord Roseberry, briefly prime minister after Gladstone and a key architect of the latter phase of British imperial expansion, describing Northcote, Disraeli's successor, for a brief time, as the head of the Conservatives:
"Where he failed was in manner. His voice, his diction, his delivery, were all inadequate. With real ability, great knowledge, genial kindness, and a sympathetic nature -- all the qualities, indeed, which evoke regard and esteem -- he had not the spice of the devil which is necessary to rouse an Opposition to zeal and elation.... When Northcote warmed there was, or seemed to be, a note of apology in his voice..."
Isn't this a perfect description of Daschle? And, cutting out the sentence that begins "with real ability," isn't this Lieberman? Indeed, it is the spice of the devil that is missing from the entire Democratic leadership.
Celebrators of the imperial process
Niall Ferguson, the Tory answer to � well, to whom? To Ferdinand Braudel? Anyway, Niall Ferguson is the news in Britain this Sunday. He has a BBC series on Empire, and a book, named Empire, too, to go along with it. Now, we find Ferguson a fascinating figure. We disagree with his cases - for instance, his case against Keynes book, the Consequences of the Peace - but we think his willingness to adventure counter-factually through the conventional wisdom of historians is bracing. The Times is all about Ferguson this week. Sunday, the Times published a number of reviews of the book and the series. Andrew Roberts, who compares Ferguson, rather nonsensically, to Errol Flynn, states Ferguson's case like this:
"AS THE subtitle of this book suggests, Niall Ferguson makes big claims for the British Empire. Not only did these small rainy offshore islands turn the world capitalist, he argues, but they also made huge tracts of it speak English, play team sports and adopt our land-tenure system and common law. Moreover, what he calls "Anglobalizsation" was a Good Thing, and was achieved with far less blood being shed than would have been done by our Spanish, French, Dutch, Russian or - God forbid- German competitors."
The benignity of Empire is the theme of the season. We think it is a deeply pernicious and misleading theme. Another review of the book, this time by FELIPE FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO, strikes a discordant note - in fact, seems to be about another book entirely:
"In Niall Ferguson�s view, one of his well-selected pictures seems fairly to sum up the British Empire: a German caricature of 1904, in which Britons cheerfully torture a black man. A capitalist forces whisky down the victim�s throat, while the rack, manipulated by a soldier, extrudes gold from his rectum. Nearby, a churchman sermonises myopically. The empire, Ferguson explains in his book written to accompany the Channel 4 series which started last Thursday, originated in piracy, unrolled in slavery, practised outrages and atrocities and struggled to �play the role of world policeman with a straight face�. The �civilising mission� was a sham: empire induced savagery in its servants. The British came to India, for example, as predatory conquistadors � barbaric exploiters of a society more prosperous and, by many standards, more impressive than their own.
All this candour is surprising after an introduction that promises a robust defence of the morality of empire. Eventually, the author wrenches his rabbit from the hat. The British Empire may have been bad in some respects; but for the world of the late 19th century and much of the 20th, the alternatives were worse: German or Russian or Japanese hegemony. The balance of investment and exploitation favoured the exploiters only a little. By espousing free trade and repudiating slavery the British enriched the world and enhanced humanity. Their legacy includes liberal capitalism, parliamentary democracy, and �finally, there is the English language itself�.
As a case for the defence, it is disappointingly predictable: the vaunted legacy surely owes more, in any case, to America�s empire than to Britain�s."
Well, which version of Ferguson's version of Empire is right? And what kind of justification is it that, in the event, the Brits were better than the Spanish or the Germans?
It seems to us that the question is being posed in such a manner as to skew the issue. The question of the British effect on India is not a matter of whether the Portugese would have been better for India, but whether the Moghuls would have. Also, there is a problem with the penchant for historical battles, and turning points, etc. The turning point in India, to use the great British colony once again, was not decided at the end of the seven years war. It was decided every year after the seven years war. It was decided, with bloodshed and mythology, at the end of the Sepoy mutiny, in 1859. Whether India, like Russia, could have governed itself, imported technology, created a framework within which to palliate the great famines of the latter half of the 19th century is something we will never know. But it definitely loads the dice to make this question turn on the alternative between the Brits and the Germans, or the Japanese, or the French.
The European edition of Time magazine casts a surprisingly skeptical eye on Ferguson's empire nostalgia. This graf seems to make the case, although with an example that seems, really, to trivialize the record, disparate as it is, concentrated in thousands of separate records, of atrocity:
"But Ferguson's Empire balance sheets show some creative accounting. Though he dutifully frowns on the horrors of slavery or, say, the Battle of Omdurman, Sudan, in 1898 (in which 10,000 Muslims were annihilated in five hours by Lord Kitchener's Maxim guns), few such moments make it into the debit column. "The question is not whether British imperialism was without blemish," Ferguson writes. "It was not. The question is whether there could have been a less bloody path to modernity." There might have been, he admits, but he clearly doubts it."
Finally, this is Peter Conrad weighing in in the Guardian on one of Ferguson's nuttier claims:
"Ferguson presents the loss of Empire as an act of supreme altruism, 'authentically noble'. Britain bankrupted itself in a war against alternative Empires - German, Japanese, Italian - whose treatment of their subject populations was manifestly less humane. 'Did not that sacrifice,' he asks, 'alone expunge all the Empire's other sins?' I am not sure that he establishes the moral superiority of the home team. Of course, Christianity put a hypocritical, cozening gloss on imperial venality by claiming that the Empire had a redemptive, civilising mission.But despite this piety, British colonies depended on slavery; no wonder the nabobs were offended when the Japanese, after the fall of Singapore, enslaved British soldiers and put them to work building a railway through the jungle. Hitler admired the Empire and offered to let the British keep it if they smiled on his own imperial ambitions in eastern Europe."
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Remora
LI hopes the last post wasn't too obscure. We were simply speculating, in our dillantantish way, about what a cut in dividend taxes would mean in terms of changing the landscape of investment. The NYT carries a column on just that subject today, by Hal Varian. Varian starts out poorly, with the wrong set of figures:
"First, we really have become a nation of shareholders. According to "The Rise of the Equity Culture," a paper by the M.I.T. economist James Poterba, the number of individuals owning corporate stock has increased by nearly 60 percent in a decade, with about half of American households now owning stock, either directly or indirectly."
Well, if half of American households own some stock "directly or indirectly" -- indirect ownership, presumably, means that somebody bought it for them and is waiting until a major holiday to give it to them -- or maybe it means that the stock was bought whilst the homeowner was in a somnabulistic fugue -- in any case, these are not the important figures for the potential change to be wrought by the tax cut. While it is possible that small individual portfolios will shift towards stocks that pay dividends, the key stimulus to change for these individuals will continue to be stock price. The gain accrued by the increase of equity value will far exceed any gain from a dividend benefit. The question is, will the two coincide. And that question is not going to be answered by finding out whether Martha and George X , secretary and shoe salesman, are going to shift their one hundred shares of Home Depot stock to fifty of Sears for the nice dividend. No, the real question is whether those who hold a significant amount of stock -- that much smaller percent of stockholders who hold the gross majority of equity -- will also shift from non-dividend paying stocks to dividend paying stocks.
One way of understanding the difference in the figures is to use the difference in the payout from the dividend tax cut to map the concentrations of stockholding. The Brookings Institute has a nice little pdf paper up on the tax cut. Here's a quote from it, concerning ways of measuring the effect of the cut across income percentiles:
"A second measure is the distribution of the tax cut
across income classes. Table 1 shows that households
with income above $200,000 receive more than one third
of the entire tax cut in 2003. A third measure
reports the tax cuts in dollar terms, and is often the
most striking. Returns with income above $1 million
would receive an average tax cut of almost $89,000.
Those with income below $40,000 would receive an
average tax cut of $125 and those with income between
$40,000 and $75,000 receive an average tax cut of $703.
As the program becomes permanent, middle-class households would
lose much of their share of the tax cut with the resources
transferred to high-income groups."
Now, we admit that this is not a roadmap to market-maker heaven. To break up the stockholders into income percentile ignores the aggregation of stockholding effected by mutual funds. It ignores institutional investors. Etc. All those things that make up "indirect" holding. Still, we get better numbers by understanding that most of the holders of equity can be safely ignored. They are merely numerous. This isn't a one man, one vote proposition.
Varian is more up to speed when he considers the effect of the dividend cut on the total financial market. He points out that the cut would undercut the rationale for holding tax exempt government bonds:
"What about municipal bonds? Odds are we would see their prices fall, since dividend-paying stocks would be pretty close substitutes under the Bush proposal. This means the cost of borrowing for state and local governments will be driven up � particularly bad news given their precarious economic position.
"One way to estimate the likelihood of the Bush plan's passing is to watch the prices of municipal bonds over the next few months: the more likely the plan is to pass, the lower those prices are likely to go."
Great. LI hasn't gone into this at any length yet -- oh, the meat and texture of the Bush fiasco! -- but the spending part of the potential Bush budget -- especially the lack of any plan to help states coping with huge budget shortfalls -- is going to bite him in the ass, to use the vernacular.
But we want to concentrate on dividends themselves, right now. In the next post, let's talk about why companies pay out dividends at all.
LI hopes the last post wasn't too obscure. We were simply speculating, in our dillantantish way, about what a cut in dividend taxes would mean in terms of changing the landscape of investment. The NYT carries a column on just that subject today, by Hal Varian. Varian starts out poorly, with the wrong set of figures:
"First, we really have become a nation of shareholders. According to "The Rise of the Equity Culture," a paper by the M.I.T. economist James Poterba, the number of individuals owning corporate stock has increased by nearly 60 percent in a decade, with about half of American households now owning stock, either directly or indirectly."
Well, if half of American households own some stock "directly or indirectly" -- indirect ownership, presumably, means that somebody bought it for them and is waiting until a major holiday to give it to them -- or maybe it means that the stock was bought whilst the homeowner was in a somnabulistic fugue -- in any case, these are not the important figures for the potential change to be wrought by the tax cut. While it is possible that small individual portfolios will shift towards stocks that pay dividends, the key stimulus to change for these individuals will continue to be stock price. The gain accrued by the increase of equity value will far exceed any gain from a dividend benefit. The question is, will the two coincide. And that question is not going to be answered by finding out whether Martha and George X , secretary and shoe salesman, are going to shift their one hundred shares of Home Depot stock to fifty of Sears for the nice dividend. No, the real question is whether those who hold a significant amount of stock -- that much smaller percent of stockholders who hold the gross majority of equity -- will also shift from non-dividend paying stocks to dividend paying stocks.
One way of understanding the difference in the figures is to use the difference in the payout from the dividend tax cut to map the concentrations of stockholding. The Brookings Institute has a nice little pdf paper up on the tax cut. Here's a quote from it, concerning ways of measuring the effect of the cut across income percentiles:
"A second measure is the distribution of the tax cut
across income classes. Table 1 shows that households
with income above $200,000 receive more than one third
of the entire tax cut in 2003. A third measure
reports the tax cuts in dollar terms, and is often the
most striking. Returns with income above $1 million
would receive an average tax cut of almost $89,000.
Those with income below $40,000 would receive an
average tax cut of $125 and those with income between
$40,000 and $75,000 receive an average tax cut of $703.
As the program becomes permanent, middle-class households would
lose much of their share of the tax cut with the resources
transferred to high-income groups."
Now, we admit that this is not a roadmap to market-maker heaven. To break up the stockholders into income percentile ignores the aggregation of stockholding effected by mutual funds. It ignores institutional investors. Etc. All those things that make up "indirect" holding. Still, we get better numbers by understanding that most of the holders of equity can be safely ignored. They are merely numerous. This isn't a one man, one vote proposition.
Varian is more up to speed when he considers the effect of the dividend cut on the total financial market. He points out that the cut would undercut the rationale for holding tax exempt government bonds:
"What about municipal bonds? Odds are we would see their prices fall, since dividend-paying stocks would be pretty close substitutes under the Bush proposal. This means the cost of borrowing for state and local governments will be driven up � particularly bad news given their precarious economic position.
"One way to estimate the likelihood of the Bush plan's passing is to watch the prices of municipal bonds over the next few months: the more likely the plan is to pass, the lower those prices are likely to go."
Great. LI hasn't gone into this at any length yet -- oh, the meat and texture of the Bush fiasco! -- but the spending part of the potential Bush budget -- especially the lack of any plan to help states coping with huge budget shortfalls -- is going to bite him in the ass, to use the vernacular.
But we want to concentrate on dividends themselves, right now. In the next post, let's talk about why companies pay out dividends at all.
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Remora
Drumbeat of war (on the bottom 60 percentile of incomes)
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has a nice little skewering of the new Bush tax giveaway. Andrew Lee and Isaac Shapiro begin with Bush's defense of the giveback:
In response to criticism that his tax cut plan is skewed towards upper-income taxpayers, President Bush noted in a speech on January 9 that, under his proposal, a family of four making $40,000 would see its taxes fall 96 percent in 2003, from $1,178 to $45. This represents a tax cut of $1,133
Lee and Shapiro point out that
"the tax cuts that would benefit this family constitute less than one-quarter of the overall cost of the bill. In other words, more than three-quarters of the package could be jettisoned and the $40,000 family mentioned by President Bush � as well as most other middle-class families � would receive just as much help."
We were reading Peter Bernstein's wonderful Against the Gods: The story of risk yesterday. We were struck by Bernstein's description of "regret theory." This theory stems from work in behaviorial economics which was summarized in an influential article by Loomes and Sugden in 1982 -- hey, LI is in a scholarly mood this morning. L and S discovered that people have a tendency to over-react to disappointing outcomes of investment decisions. This goes along with a consistent finding among behavior economists, which is that negative factors have a stronger impact on determining the weighting of probabilities than gain. We've talked about Kahneman and Tversky before on this site, who are the most prominent economists associated with studies that buttress this statement. What this means is that the content of the options available to a decisionmaker are so framed by recent patterns that there is a tendency to ignore regression to the mean, in favor of compensating for past mistakes by a retrospective "punishment" of bad decisions. For instance, you invest in a company that makes some innovative x product, and the company goes bankrupt. So you take the rest of your money out of the sector which is concerned with the species of innovative products that the bankrupt company was affiliated with and you invest it in something safe. Well, this decision sounds rational, but it actually overweights the signal given by the bankruptcy, spreading it over the whole sector.
This is the kind of thing signified by the popular wisdom that generals in the current war are always fighting the last war. This theory helps explain a puzzling feature of Bush's dividend tax. The precipitous decline in equity value over the last three years has had little to do with dividends. Studies have even shown -- often shown -- that dividends are an irrational form of outlay -- companies that give dividends often borrow money for the costs of operation and expansion that are equal to the dividend outlay. Now, there is a countercurrent that claims that, just as leveraged buyouts, by burdening a firm with debt, encourage more efficient management, so, too, dispensing dividends takes tempting money out of the hands of a management group that would otherwise invest it unwisely in unprofitable acquisitions. There might be something to this -- but still, the fact remains that the Bush plan seems to pander to the disappointment of investors in the bursting of the tech sector bubble, in a classic bit of regret behavior that has nothing to do with rational scenarios for future economic growth. In fact, it will encourage disinvestment by corporations -- corporations will be advantaged by producing dividends instead of investing in new plant or R & D. The idea that this effect will be countered by the return of investors to the market is doubtful -- investors return to markets, fundamentally, when earnings are good. That is completely unaddressed by the dividend giveaway.
Not, of course, that any of this is going to get in the way of the Bush bulldozer.
Drumbeat of war (on the bottom 60 percentile of incomes)
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has a nice little skewering of the new Bush tax giveaway. Andrew Lee and Isaac Shapiro begin with Bush's defense of the giveback:
In response to criticism that his tax cut plan is skewed towards upper-income taxpayers, President Bush noted in a speech on January 9 that, under his proposal, a family of four making $40,000 would see its taxes fall 96 percent in 2003, from $1,178 to $45. This represents a tax cut of $1,133
Lee and Shapiro point out that
"the tax cuts that would benefit this family constitute less than one-quarter of the overall cost of the bill. In other words, more than three-quarters of the package could be jettisoned and the $40,000 family mentioned by President Bush � as well as most other middle-class families � would receive just as much help."
We were reading Peter Bernstein's wonderful Against the Gods: The story of risk yesterday. We were struck by Bernstein's description of "regret theory." This theory stems from work in behaviorial economics which was summarized in an influential article by Loomes and Sugden in 1982 -- hey, LI is in a scholarly mood this morning. L and S discovered that people have a tendency to over-react to disappointing outcomes of investment decisions. This goes along with a consistent finding among behavior economists, which is that negative factors have a stronger impact on determining the weighting of probabilities than gain. We've talked about Kahneman and Tversky before on this site, who are the most prominent economists associated with studies that buttress this statement. What this means is that the content of the options available to a decisionmaker are so framed by recent patterns that there is a tendency to ignore regression to the mean, in favor of compensating for past mistakes by a retrospective "punishment" of bad decisions. For instance, you invest in a company that makes some innovative x product, and the company goes bankrupt. So you take the rest of your money out of the sector which is concerned with the species of innovative products that the bankrupt company was affiliated with and you invest it in something safe. Well, this decision sounds rational, but it actually overweights the signal given by the bankruptcy, spreading it over the whole sector.
This is the kind of thing signified by the popular wisdom that generals in the current war are always fighting the last war. This theory helps explain a puzzling feature of Bush's dividend tax. The precipitous decline in equity value over the last three years has had little to do with dividends. Studies have even shown -- often shown -- that dividends are an irrational form of outlay -- companies that give dividends often borrow money for the costs of operation and expansion that are equal to the dividend outlay. Now, there is a countercurrent that claims that, just as leveraged buyouts, by burdening a firm with debt, encourage more efficient management, so, too, dispensing dividends takes tempting money out of the hands of a management group that would otherwise invest it unwisely in unprofitable acquisitions. There might be something to this -- but still, the fact remains that the Bush plan seems to pander to the disappointment of investors in the bursting of the tech sector bubble, in a classic bit of regret behavior that has nothing to do with rational scenarios for future economic growth. In fact, it will encourage disinvestment by corporations -- corporations will be advantaged by producing dividends instead of investing in new plant or R & D. The idea that this effect will be countered by the return of investors to the market is doubtful -- investors return to markets, fundamentally, when earnings are good. That is completely unaddressed by the dividend giveaway.
Not, of course, that any of this is going to get in the way of the Bush bulldozer.
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Remora
Back in the bad old days of the last election, LI opposed Al Gore for a number of reasons. One of them was purely political. The line of descent from Clinton to Gore pointed to one thing: by electing a rightwing Democrat, the party would naturally go even more to the right, thus ensuring the nomination of an even more rightwing Democrat after Gore. Once the bridge starts falling in the river, you can't hold it up from one side -- to put it as enigmatically as possible.
Well, Gore was elected -- although, as we know, the election was stolen from him. And, showing how much we know, the unelected Prez swung to the left. Gore's statements for the last year have been music to our ears.
However, our fundamental claim still stands -- and Lieberman is proof of it. The editor of Tom Paine, Robert Bosage, takes an acidic look at the man he calls Bush-lite -- although Bush himself could more appropriately be labeled Bush-lite. Perhaps we should label Lieberman Bush-ultra-lite. There isn't an issue on which Lieberman is any good. Oh, except of course his staunch support for the one thing rightwing Dems still stand for -- the right for middle class women on the East and West coast to abort. In the stretches of America where there is nary a doctor to perform the abortion, this right is a mockery. Never mind that. Never mind that there may just be other medical care issues out there -- how about the right of a woman to get decent health care subvented by the state? and the right of a man to get the same thing? No, that isn't going to play in this script.
The long list of Lieberman's idiocies is covered by Bosage. We have a particular dislike for Lieberman based on his longterm defense of the Ceo-accounting biz complex. After all, Lieberman was the guy who threatened to punish the SEC if they made a stink about accounting practices during the boom years in the 90s. In the hullabaloo about corporate looting last year, Lieberman contributed an editorial to the NYT defending the eccentric status of stock options -- that is, defending that accounting procedure which allows not expensing them. His defense of encouraging stock options was pretty comic -- it was that they were a crucial incentive and spur to the average worker. Oh yeah. Bosage does a nice number on Lieberman's general economic policy positions:
"Similarly, Bush�s economic policy -- tax cuts for the wealthy, favors for the Fortune 500 crowd, cutbacks in domestic public investment and corporate-centered trade accords -- is undermining America�s economic prospects. His initiatives are simply out of step with what the country needs as it struggles with global stagnation, growing inequality, an unprecendented corporate crime wave, an unsustainable trade deficit and massive foreign debt.
Lieberman won�t pose a fundamental challenge here, either. As leader of the pro-business DLC, he has championed capital gains tax cuts, corporate trade and domestic austerity. As chair of the committee investigating Enron and the corporate scandals, he won notoriety mostly for defending off-the books stock options while warning Democrats not to engage in �economic class conflict.� In the mid-'90s, Lieberman helped fend off Clinton regulators who wanted companies to account for stock options that gave executives enormous incentives to cook the books, boost short-term stock prices and plunder their own companies. Yet when it became apparent that many were doing just that, Lieberman continued to argue that stock option plans were a way of sharing corporate growth with workers. He did a slight retraction when admitted that it was "disappointing" to learn that the vast bulk were lavished on the top floor, not on the shop floor. His long-standing staunch defense of privilege may have cemented his fund-raising appeal with the $1000-a-plate dinner crowd but it did nothing to help the country deal with the corporate crime wave."
With schools overcrowded, vital public services like sewers, water systems and highways aging and in disrepair, health care costs soaring, and basic public health capacities ailing, Bush�s cuts in vital public investments must be opposed. But Lieberman is a Coolidge Democrat who champions domestic austerity. He would roll back Bush�s tax cuts not to invest in vital needs, but to return the budget to surplus. This leaves Bush arguing for tax cuts and growth and Lieberman arguing for austerity. That�s both bad policy and bad politics.
Back in the bad old days of the last election, LI opposed Al Gore for a number of reasons. One of them was purely political. The line of descent from Clinton to Gore pointed to one thing: by electing a rightwing Democrat, the party would naturally go even more to the right, thus ensuring the nomination of an even more rightwing Democrat after Gore. Once the bridge starts falling in the river, you can't hold it up from one side -- to put it as enigmatically as possible.
Well, Gore was elected -- although, as we know, the election was stolen from him. And, showing how much we know, the unelected Prez swung to the left. Gore's statements for the last year have been music to our ears.
However, our fundamental claim still stands -- and Lieberman is proof of it. The editor of Tom Paine, Robert Bosage, takes an acidic look at the man he calls Bush-lite -- although Bush himself could more appropriately be labeled Bush-lite. Perhaps we should label Lieberman Bush-ultra-lite. There isn't an issue on which Lieberman is any good. Oh, except of course his staunch support for the one thing rightwing Dems still stand for -- the right for middle class women on the East and West coast to abort. In the stretches of America where there is nary a doctor to perform the abortion, this right is a mockery. Never mind that. Never mind that there may just be other medical care issues out there -- how about the right of a woman to get decent health care subvented by the state? and the right of a man to get the same thing? No, that isn't going to play in this script.
The long list of Lieberman's idiocies is covered by Bosage. We have a particular dislike for Lieberman based on his longterm defense of the Ceo-accounting biz complex. After all, Lieberman was the guy who threatened to punish the SEC if they made a stink about accounting practices during the boom years in the 90s. In the hullabaloo about corporate looting last year, Lieberman contributed an editorial to the NYT defending the eccentric status of stock options -- that is, defending that accounting procedure which allows not expensing them. His defense of encouraging stock options was pretty comic -- it was that they were a crucial incentive and spur to the average worker. Oh yeah. Bosage does a nice number on Lieberman's general economic policy positions:
"Similarly, Bush�s economic policy -- tax cuts for the wealthy, favors for the Fortune 500 crowd, cutbacks in domestic public investment and corporate-centered trade accords -- is undermining America�s economic prospects. His initiatives are simply out of step with what the country needs as it struggles with global stagnation, growing inequality, an unprecendented corporate crime wave, an unsustainable trade deficit and massive foreign debt.
Lieberman won�t pose a fundamental challenge here, either. As leader of the pro-business DLC, he has championed capital gains tax cuts, corporate trade and domestic austerity. As chair of the committee investigating Enron and the corporate scandals, he won notoriety mostly for defending off-the books stock options while warning Democrats not to engage in �economic class conflict.� In the mid-'90s, Lieberman helped fend off Clinton regulators who wanted companies to account for stock options that gave executives enormous incentives to cook the books, boost short-term stock prices and plunder their own companies. Yet when it became apparent that many were doing just that, Lieberman continued to argue that stock option plans were a way of sharing corporate growth with workers. He did a slight retraction when admitted that it was "disappointing" to learn that the vast bulk were lavished on the top floor, not on the shop floor. His long-standing staunch defense of privilege may have cemented his fund-raising appeal with the $1000-a-plate dinner crowd but it did nothing to help the country deal with the corporate crime wave."
With schools overcrowded, vital public services like sewers, water systems and highways aging and in disrepair, health care costs soaring, and basic public health capacities ailing, Bush�s cuts in vital public investments must be opposed. But Lieberman is a Coolidge Democrat who champions domestic austerity. He would roll back Bush�s tax cuts not to invest in vital needs, but to return the budget to surplus. This leaves Bush arguing for tax cuts and growth and Lieberman arguing for austerity. That�s both bad policy and bad politics.
Monday, January 13, 2003
Remora
Envy and Greed
Let's begin with a little Adam Smith, shall we?
Upon this disposition of mankind, to go along with all the passions of the rich and the powerful, is founded the distinction of ranks, and the order of society. Our obsequiousness to our superiors more frequently arises from our admiration for the advantages of their situation, than from any private expectations of benefit from their good-will. Their benefits can extend but to a few, but their fortunes interest almost every body. We are eager to assist them in completing a system of happiness that approaches so near to perfection; and we desire to serve them for their own sake, without any other recompense but the vanity or the honour of obliging them. Neither is our deference to their inclinations founded chiefly, or altogether, upon a regard to the utility of such submission, and to the order of society, which is best supported by it. Even when the order of society seems to require that we should oppose them, we can hardly bring ourselves to do it. -- The theory of moral sentiments
The proto-capitalist writers, from Bernard Mandeville to Adam Smith, are famed, in part, for showing that individual vices can contribute to social virtues. In particular, self-interest, in the guise of avarice, can spur the us to those enterprises which produce a social good larger than could be predicted from the mere viciousness of its original motives. Smith, most people who read him are agreed, was a more sophisticated thinker than Mandeville, and realized that the sublimation of greed in social action could operate upon the original motive to soften it. We've seen that this is no necessary statement of the case -- and we've seen this long before Ken Lay came along. One has only to look at the great English nabobs, looting India during Smith's lifetime, to find evidence that avarice can produce wholly negative results, far outbalancing the goods distributed in the course of the lifestyles of those for whom avarice was successfully assuaged by wealth and grandeur. Still, Mandeville's paradox retains a kernel of truth. In his Fable of the Bees, Mandeville imagines, under the figure of a hive of bees, a society much like that of eighteenth century England. After cataloging the acts of the robber, the gross habits of the vain, etc., etc., Mandeville writes:
Their Crimes conspired to make 'em Great;
And Vertue, who from Politicks
Had learn'd a Thousand cunning Tricks,
Was, by their happy Influence,
Made Friends with Vice: And ever since
The worst of all the Multitude
Did something for the common Good.
The praise of greed, or the more moderate praise of enlightened self interest, is paralleled, among the capitalist writers of the nineteenth century, by the dispraise of another vice: envy. James Fitzjames Stephen, in his essay on equality in Liberty Equality Fraternity, sounds the usual conservative commonplace; the desire for a more equal distribution of wealth is "nothing more than a vague expression of envy on the part of those who have not against those who have." There have been infinite recyclings of this theme. See, for instance, this article, entitled Envy, on the Acton website, Religion and Liberty, by John Williams. Williams compresses the insights of Joseph Schumpeter in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy into a mini-dissertation on the undermining of the fruits of capitalism by the envy of the new class. Intellectuals, who can see their peers, in business, getting rich, are filled with envy, and propose anti-capitalist measures in order to bring businessmen down.
Alas, while greed has its heroes, envy has none. Envy is Thersites, beaten by Ajax, mocking Achilles; Greed is J.P. Morgan creating U.S. Steel. So the mythology goes. The usual response to this moral analysis is to deny it. This makes sense: the actual motivation, here, is usually a heightened moral sensibility that baulks at injustice. Such sensibilities are not Nietzschian, and so averse to arguments that defend private vices as the unconscious assistants of public good. Thus, the argument is lost from the beginning. However, using the logic of the capitalist apology, it is unclear why we are to envy, in itself, disqualifies distributive justice -- unless, of course, the social good is invariably aligned with the investment portfolios of the wealthiest. We'd guess that envy, simply by fixing the attention of the embittered intellectuals -- among whom we'd include the average working class reader of newspapers and hearer of tv news -- upon disparities in wealth and the system that preserves and promotes them, is doing us all a service. This is especially true of the Bush dividend tax cut. Here is how conservative ideologues are framing the defense of that cut. This is a news release from Club for Growth:
"Let the class warfare Democrats embrace small and impotent
policy changes-changes that increasingly sophisticated investor
class voters will immediately identify as fraudulent. The
obstructionist Democrats have announced that they intend to fight
against President Bush's genuine GOP growth package and to wage all
out class envy warfare. President Bush has 90 million investor
class Americans on his side who realize that tax rate cuts mean
higher stock values and greater retirement security. "Republicans must not shrink from the battle. Bring on the fight," said Moore.
The Club for Growth, founded by investment banker Richard
Gilder, National Review Publisher Thomas L. "Dusty" Rhodes and
economist Stephen Moore, is a political organization dedicated to
pro-growth economic policies such as cutting taxes, eliminating
wasteful government spending and supporting personal accounts for
Social Security."
LI realizes that the official opposition to Bush -- the Democrats -- are an intellectually crippled bunch. They are paralyzed by rhetoric about envy, and reply with boilerplate about greed. This is a losing strategy, and has lost for them consistently over the last twenty years. What should they do? They should robustly defend the self -- interest -- propounded by envy -- of the have-nots. The have nots, in this case, are being told that 300 billion dollars can be taken out of the system and given, largely, to the wealthiest ten percent. They are not told what this 300 billion dollars -- potentially twice this much, really -- buys. The Democratic reply to the Bush proposal is, pathetically, about the deficit that will ensue if this Saturnalia for the investor takes hold. What the Democrats should do is emphasize that taking money out of the system takes it from somewhere. And they should emphasize that it creates a dead loss, in services, for the have-nots, in a world created by the investment opportunities of the haves -- a world that is not friendly to the working class. There are two options, here: either create the infrastructure to support the social goods necessary to support a prosperous lifestyle for the have-nots -- an infrastructure that would nourish education, health, and income support -- or let the have-nots tough it out in a world increasingly inimical to their interests. The Democrats think that they can take money from people whose agenda is the latter in order to support the former. Well, a house divided will not stand, as the great opponent of the Democratic compromise of 1850 once said.
Envy and Greed
Let's begin with a little Adam Smith, shall we?
Upon this disposition of mankind, to go along with all the passions of the rich and the powerful, is founded the distinction of ranks, and the order of society. Our obsequiousness to our superiors more frequently arises from our admiration for the advantages of their situation, than from any private expectations of benefit from their good-will. Their benefits can extend but to a few, but their fortunes interest almost every body. We are eager to assist them in completing a system of happiness that approaches so near to perfection; and we desire to serve them for their own sake, without any other recompense but the vanity or the honour of obliging them. Neither is our deference to their inclinations founded chiefly, or altogether, upon a regard to the utility of such submission, and to the order of society, which is best supported by it. Even when the order of society seems to require that we should oppose them, we can hardly bring ourselves to do it. -- The theory of moral sentiments
The proto-capitalist writers, from Bernard Mandeville to Adam Smith, are famed, in part, for showing that individual vices can contribute to social virtues. In particular, self-interest, in the guise of avarice, can spur the us to those enterprises which produce a social good larger than could be predicted from the mere viciousness of its original motives. Smith, most people who read him are agreed, was a more sophisticated thinker than Mandeville, and realized that the sublimation of greed in social action could operate upon the original motive to soften it. We've seen that this is no necessary statement of the case -- and we've seen this long before Ken Lay came along. One has only to look at the great English nabobs, looting India during Smith's lifetime, to find evidence that avarice can produce wholly negative results, far outbalancing the goods distributed in the course of the lifestyles of those for whom avarice was successfully assuaged by wealth and grandeur. Still, Mandeville's paradox retains a kernel of truth. In his Fable of the Bees, Mandeville imagines, under the figure of a hive of bees, a society much like that of eighteenth century England. After cataloging the acts of the robber, the gross habits of the vain, etc., etc., Mandeville writes:
Their Crimes conspired to make 'em Great;
And Vertue, who from Politicks
Had learn'd a Thousand cunning Tricks,
Was, by their happy Influence,
Made Friends with Vice: And ever since
The worst of all the Multitude
Did something for the common Good.
The praise of greed, or the more moderate praise of enlightened self interest, is paralleled, among the capitalist writers of the nineteenth century, by the dispraise of another vice: envy. James Fitzjames Stephen, in his essay on equality in Liberty Equality Fraternity, sounds the usual conservative commonplace; the desire for a more equal distribution of wealth is "nothing more than a vague expression of envy on the part of those who have not against those who have." There have been infinite recyclings of this theme. See, for instance, this article, entitled Envy, on the Acton website, Religion and Liberty, by John Williams. Williams compresses the insights of Joseph Schumpeter in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy into a mini-dissertation on the undermining of the fruits of capitalism by the envy of the new class. Intellectuals, who can see their peers, in business, getting rich, are filled with envy, and propose anti-capitalist measures in order to bring businessmen down.
Alas, while greed has its heroes, envy has none. Envy is Thersites, beaten by Ajax, mocking Achilles; Greed is J.P. Morgan creating U.S. Steel. So the mythology goes. The usual response to this moral analysis is to deny it. This makes sense: the actual motivation, here, is usually a heightened moral sensibility that baulks at injustice. Such sensibilities are not Nietzschian, and so averse to arguments that defend private vices as the unconscious assistants of public good. Thus, the argument is lost from the beginning. However, using the logic of the capitalist apology, it is unclear why we are to envy, in itself, disqualifies distributive justice -- unless, of course, the social good is invariably aligned with the investment portfolios of the wealthiest. We'd guess that envy, simply by fixing the attention of the embittered intellectuals -- among whom we'd include the average working class reader of newspapers and hearer of tv news -- upon disparities in wealth and the system that preserves and promotes them, is doing us all a service. This is especially true of the Bush dividend tax cut. Here is how conservative ideologues are framing the defense of that cut. This is a news release from Club for Growth:
"Let the class warfare Democrats embrace small and impotent
policy changes-changes that increasingly sophisticated investor
class voters will immediately identify as fraudulent. The
obstructionist Democrats have announced that they intend to fight
against President Bush's genuine GOP growth package and to wage all
out class envy warfare. President Bush has 90 million investor
class Americans on his side who realize that tax rate cuts mean
higher stock values and greater retirement security. "Republicans must not shrink from the battle. Bring on the fight," said Moore.
The Club for Growth, founded by investment banker Richard
Gilder, National Review Publisher Thomas L. "Dusty" Rhodes and
economist Stephen Moore, is a political organization dedicated to
pro-growth economic policies such as cutting taxes, eliminating
wasteful government spending and supporting personal accounts for
Social Security."
LI realizes that the official opposition to Bush -- the Democrats -- are an intellectually crippled bunch. They are paralyzed by rhetoric about envy, and reply with boilerplate about greed. This is a losing strategy, and has lost for them consistently over the last twenty years. What should they do? They should robustly defend the self -- interest -- propounded by envy -- of the have-nots. The have nots, in this case, are being told that 300 billion dollars can be taken out of the system and given, largely, to the wealthiest ten percent. They are not told what this 300 billion dollars -- potentially twice this much, really -- buys. The Democratic reply to the Bush proposal is, pathetically, about the deficit that will ensue if this Saturnalia for the investor takes hold. What the Democrats should do is emphasize that taking money out of the system takes it from somewhere. And they should emphasize that it creates a dead loss, in services, for the have-nots, in a world created by the investment opportunities of the haves -- a world that is not friendly to the working class. There are two options, here: either create the infrastructure to support the social goods necessary to support a prosperous lifestyle for the have-nots -- an infrastructure that would nourish education, health, and income support -- or let the have-nots tough it out in a world increasingly inimical to their interests. The Democrats think that they can take money from people whose agenda is the latter in order to support the former. Well, a house divided will not stand, as the great opponent of the Democratic compromise of 1850 once said.
Friday, January 10, 2003
Remora
From DeQuincey's Miscellaneous Essays, just posted in the Gutenberg Library -- although they still don't have the inimitable essay on The Fine Art of Murder:
Yet in the lowest deep there still yawns a lower deep; and in the vast
halls of man's frailty, there are separate and more gloomy chambers of
a frailty more exquisite and consummate. We account it frailty that
threescore years and ten make the upshot of man's pleasurable
existence, and that, far before that time is reached, his beauty and
his power have fallen among weeds and forgetfulness. But there is a
frailty, by comparison with which this ordinary flux of the human race
seems to have a vast duration. Cases there are, and those not rare, in
which a single week, a day, an hour sweeps away all vestiges and
landmarks of a memorable felicity; in which the ruin travels faster
than the flying showers upon the mountain-side, faster 'than a musician
scatters sounds;' in which 'it was' and 'it is not' are words of the
self-same tongue, in the self-same minute; in which the sun that at
noon beheld all sound and prosperous, long before its setting hour
looks out upon a total wreck, and sometimes upon the total abolition of
any fugitive memorial that there ever had been a vessel to be wrecked,
or a wreck to be obliterated. --
After we posted about industrial accidents, yesterday, we turned to the NYT, and lo and behold: there is an excellent article (part of a three part series) about the vicious record of shop floor mutilation, semi-blackmail, pollution and other malfeasances accrued by a privately held, Birmingham, Alabama based pipe corporation, McWane Inc. See, LI is as in tune to the Zeitgeist as a blind piano tuner is in tune with the note C.
The NYT is publishing this expose in conjunction with a Frontline investigation. We are of two minds about the project. On the one hand, this is exactly what we should be reading on the NYT business page. There is, as any amateur Marx-man could tell you, something depressingly expected about the fact that every big newspaper in America has a business page, and no big newspaper in America has a labor page. To point this out subjects one to the reproach of being one of those nuts who promote class warfare -- this is how Bush, predictably, warded off the complaint that his tax cuts inordinately benefit the rich yesterday. In the meantime, class warfare, like racism and sexism and all the other dreadful isms, goes marching silently on. Which gets us to our other hand -- our other hand is that there is something suspicious and smug in the media every once in a while, with eyes on some journalistic prize, birthing the stray muckraking article -- we suspect this is a salve for their conscience. Once upon a time, of course, such articles were common place.
Enough bitching. LI urges readers to go back to yesterday's article about the McWane company. Today, the second, or is it third, part of the series details the politics of regulatory enforcement -- a politics that works against punishing a big industry for its crimes, and even works against monitoring it when the company repeatedly violates elementary canons of safety.
"Nine workers have been killed in McWane plants since 1995. OSHA investigators concluded that three of those deaths resulted directly from McWane's deliberate violations of federal safety standards, records show. Safety lapses at least contributed to five other deaths, investigators found.
"Yet those deaths rarely received more than cursory attention from state and local law enforcement authorities. The police often did little more than photograph the body and call the coroner. Local district attorneys, if they were informed, generally deferred to OSHA."
As for the comedy of justice, the Laurel and Hardy show that opens when some wretch is hurt, or killed, in one of McWane's plants, the article is pretty rich. We especially liked the nailing of one Mr. Vacco, the Republican attorney general in NY State. Confronted with incontrovertible evidence that a McWane owned factory engaged in the unlawful disposal of hazardous waste, leading to the death of an employee, Mr. Vacco hesitated while the McWane company put the screws to him. He responded to the Times inquiry by claiming that the prosecutors under him were doing the hesitating. But the NYT found a mass of suspicious connections between Vacco and McWane, and a memo suggesting that the McWane's might close the plant if Vacco prosecuted. At first, Vacco used the stonewall line of defense:
"In a recent interview, Mr. Vacco acknowledged contacts between Mr. O'Mara (a McWane operative) and his office but denied having been improperly influenced. He said he had taken a personal interest in the case "to make sure that we did everything by the book." Any lack of action, he added, was not because of political interference but because of "foot dragging" by indecisive career prosecutors. "What happened here is that my assistants couldn't make a decision," he said."
Well, that began to sound a little silly as the NYT dug further. So Vacco revised himself:
"Today, he acknowledges that he could have obtained an indictment for criminally negligent homicide. But he says he was not persuaded by what he called a "tenuous" prosecution theory. "Would there have been a conviction? I don't know," he said. "It would have been a titanic battle."
As for McWane's economic threats, he said, "I don't think that a prosecutor should put his or her head in the sand when making these judgments."
Putting your head in the sand? Just as in the past, when an accident happens and the causes can be traced back to a big company -- whether it is Union Carbide, or Monsanto, or whoever -- the prosecutor's head always comes eagerly out of the sand, and looks around for exculpatory evidence. And usually finds it.
From DeQuincey's Miscellaneous Essays, just posted in the Gutenberg Library -- although they still don't have the inimitable essay on The Fine Art of Murder:
Yet in the lowest deep there still yawns a lower deep; and in the vast
halls of man's frailty, there are separate and more gloomy chambers of
a frailty more exquisite and consummate. We account it frailty that
threescore years and ten make the upshot of man's pleasurable
existence, and that, far before that time is reached, his beauty and
his power have fallen among weeds and forgetfulness. But there is a
frailty, by comparison with which this ordinary flux of the human race
seems to have a vast duration. Cases there are, and those not rare, in
which a single week, a day, an hour sweeps away all vestiges and
landmarks of a memorable felicity; in which the ruin travels faster
than the flying showers upon the mountain-side, faster 'than a musician
scatters sounds;' in which 'it was' and 'it is not' are words of the
self-same tongue, in the self-same minute; in which the sun that at
noon beheld all sound and prosperous, long before its setting hour
looks out upon a total wreck, and sometimes upon the total abolition of
any fugitive memorial that there ever had been a vessel to be wrecked,
or a wreck to be obliterated. --
After we posted about industrial accidents, yesterday, we turned to the NYT, and lo and behold: there is an excellent article (part of a three part series) about the vicious record of shop floor mutilation, semi-blackmail, pollution and other malfeasances accrued by a privately held, Birmingham, Alabama based pipe corporation, McWane Inc. See, LI is as in tune to the Zeitgeist as a blind piano tuner is in tune with the note C.
The NYT is publishing this expose in conjunction with a Frontline investigation. We are of two minds about the project. On the one hand, this is exactly what we should be reading on the NYT business page. There is, as any amateur Marx-man could tell you, something depressingly expected about the fact that every big newspaper in America has a business page, and no big newspaper in America has a labor page. To point this out subjects one to the reproach of being one of those nuts who promote class warfare -- this is how Bush, predictably, warded off the complaint that his tax cuts inordinately benefit the rich yesterday. In the meantime, class warfare, like racism and sexism and all the other dreadful isms, goes marching silently on. Which gets us to our other hand -- our other hand is that there is something suspicious and smug in the media every once in a while, with eyes on some journalistic prize, birthing the stray muckraking article -- we suspect this is a salve for their conscience. Once upon a time, of course, such articles were common place.
Enough bitching. LI urges readers to go back to yesterday's article about the McWane company. Today, the second, or is it third, part of the series details the politics of regulatory enforcement -- a politics that works against punishing a big industry for its crimes, and even works against monitoring it when the company repeatedly violates elementary canons of safety.
"Nine workers have been killed in McWane plants since 1995. OSHA investigators concluded that three of those deaths resulted directly from McWane's deliberate violations of federal safety standards, records show. Safety lapses at least contributed to five other deaths, investigators found.
"Yet those deaths rarely received more than cursory attention from state and local law enforcement authorities. The police often did little more than photograph the body and call the coroner. Local district attorneys, if they were informed, generally deferred to OSHA."
As for the comedy of justice, the Laurel and Hardy show that opens when some wretch is hurt, or killed, in one of McWane's plants, the article is pretty rich. We especially liked the nailing of one Mr. Vacco, the Republican attorney general in NY State. Confronted with incontrovertible evidence that a McWane owned factory engaged in the unlawful disposal of hazardous waste, leading to the death of an employee, Mr. Vacco hesitated while the McWane company put the screws to him. He responded to the Times inquiry by claiming that the prosecutors under him were doing the hesitating. But the NYT found a mass of suspicious connections between Vacco and McWane, and a memo suggesting that the McWane's might close the plant if Vacco prosecuted. At first, Vacco used the stonewall line of defense:
"In a recent interview, Mr. Vacco acknowledged contacts between Mr. O'Mara (a McWane operative) and his office but denied having been improperly influenced. He said he had taken a personal interest in the case "to make sure that we did everything by the book." Any lack of action, he added, was not because of political interference but because of "foot dragging" by indecisive career prosecutors. "What happened here is that my assistants couldn't make a decision," he said."
Well, that began to sound a little silly as the NYT dug further. So Vacco revised himself:
"Today, he acknowledges that he could have obtained an indictment for criminally negligent homicide. But he says he was not persuaded by what he called a "tenuous" prosecution theory. "Would there have been a conviction? I don't know," he said. "It would have been a titanic battle."
As for McWane's economic threats, he said, "I don't think that a prosecutor should put his or her head in the sand when making these judgments."
Putting your head in the sand? Just as in the past, when an accident happens and the causes can be traced back to a big company -- whether it is Union Carbide, or Monsanto, or whoever -- the prosecutor's head always comes eagerly out of the sand, and looks around for exculpatory evidence. And usually finds it.
Thursday, January 9, 2003
Dope
LI has a review of Bill Minutaglio's City on Fire, (which is about the Texas City, Texas disaster) in this week's Austin Chronicle -- we think. That disaster was caused by the explosion of a monstrous amount of ammonia nitrate, which was being loaded into a French freighter, the Grandchamp, one April morning in 1947. The first paragraph of the first draft of the review was lopped off -- as we expected it would be. But we liked it as a "dope" intro. It goes:
I've been a fan of disaster stories ever since I became so engrossed, at the age of ten, in a history of the Johnstown flood that I suffered a minor panic attack during which I was convinced that the shallow pond at the end of our street was going to rise up and kill us all. The fascinations of disaster are metaphysical. It is in the belly of disaster that accident turns into fate, and in that interminably winding darkness the trivial metamorphoses into the monumental. The stray, tossed match, the hairline fracture in the concrete dam, the inordinate heat of a ship's dark hold on a spring day -- or this: a tiny gray pellet, coated with Carbowax, tinged brown from the addition of clay. A pellet of fertilizer. These, we know too late, too late, are the aberrant, urgent shapes of our death. And so the day, which is marked by events that would otherwise leave no more record than a snail's trail -- drinking coffee, answering the phone, packing the kids off to school -- events that would, as we said, ordinarily leave not a scratch on the tabula rasa of our remembered experience -- are suddenly backlit by a flash of the one fire -- the fire that extends from creation to the last judgement. The fire upon which all structures are built, and into which all structures will fall. The day of judgement blows up in our face. In that eerie light, we find that there is no scale upon which to measure events -- or at least that the scale we ordinarily use, that we have been bamboozled, all our lives, into using, makes no sense."
Well, LI likes to pull out the rhetorical stops every once in a while.
Reading Minutaglio's book, we became curious about the coincidence that the Texas City disaster involved, albeit peripherally, Union Carbide. Union Carbide was at the center of the biggest industrial accident of the century, in Bhopal. This is a continuing story. Briefly, the plant in Bhopal was a pesticide factory. A pesticide, Sevin, was manufactured there. According to Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro's book, Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, the original planning for the plant was flawed by a grossly optimistic forecast for the market for Sevin. When the gas cloud emerged from the plant on December 3, 1984, it did so because the plant was being run by a skeleton crew, and the safety features of the plant had been pretty much disabled. The facts in the case are still in dispute, partly because Union Carbide (which was bought by Dow) has a tremendous interest in limiting its liability. This article quotes the New Scientist article that lays out the fundamental flaws that lead to the disaster. Bhopal net is a site dedicated to the survivors of the disaster, and it is full of grotesque but compelling data -- all going to show that a company can get away with murder if it is large enough. They have a page entitled the Dow watch which has this very interesting intro:
"This page started out as a collection of stories about Dow-Carbide's implementation of its famous "Zero Harm" policy. But the harder we looked the more stories we found of people who have been killed, or had their health ruined, by the greed and irresponsibility of these two companies, Union Carbide and Dow Chemical, which have now perhaps fittingly become one and the same.
"So many stories, yet they almost all follow the same pattern. A dangerous process, an untested chemical, a carelessly run plant. People die, or have their lives ruined. The company attempts to cover up the disaster, denies responsibility, stalls and impedes legal processes, lobbies against changes in the law which would limit its activities or force it to spend more on safety. Innumerable are their lies, their cold-hearted attempts to bury evidence which could have saved the lives of their victims. From the Hawks Tunnel silicosis disaster of 1930 to the Vinyl Chloride cover-up that began in 1954 and lasted fifty years, taking in along the way Hiroshima, napalm, dioxin and Bhopal."
The site has a very interesting bit about a disaster I, at least, had never heard of: the Hawk Tunnel disaster. Here's a bit of American history to mull over. This testimony is given on a website devoted to Muriel Rukeyser, who wrote a book about the incident. The majority of the killed were African Americans. Many of them, dead, were thrown into a river or piled into a mass grave, so that estimates of the numbers of deaths are imprecise. For similar reasons, nobody really knows how many were killed in the Texas City, Texas disaster, since the Bottoms, the black section, was wiped out. Black lives, in Senator Lott's Golden era, were a dime a dozen. This comes from the testimony of PHILIPPA ALLEN before a Congressional committee in 1936:
I have spent the last four summers in West Virginia; and during the summer of 1934, when I was doing social work down there, I first heard of what we were pleased to call the Gauley tunnel tragedy, which involves about 2,000 men.
According to the estimates of contractors, 2,000 men were employed there over a period of about 2 years in drilling 3.75 miles of tunnel to divert water from New River to a hydroelectric plant at Gauley Junction. The rock through which the workmen were boring was of a high silica content. In tunnel no. 1 it ran from 97 to 99 percent pure silica, and the contractors neglected to provide the workmen with any sort of safety device.None of the workmen, who have lived around Gauley Bridge all of their lives, were aware of the risk they were running, despite the fact that sandstone outcroppings can be seen all over the roads. These were robust, hard-muscled workmen, and yet many of them began dying almost as soon as the work on the tunnel started. With every breath they were breathing a massive dose of silica dust. That was the true explanation of it.
It usually takes from 10 to 20 years to develop fully in a man's lungs this condition, but the medical men said that these men were working under extremely dusty conditions and the doses they received were massive indeed.Silica dust is deadly in large doses. Every worker examined by a physician after working in the tunnel any length of time has been found to have this dreadful disease. It is a lung disease that cannot be arrested, once it is started. Ultimately, the victim strangles to death.
When I tried to tabulate the number of workmen who had died as a result of this condition, I found it impossible to do so for several reasons: First, because before it was generally known what was really killing these men company doctors had diagnosed the numerous deaths as pneumonia, to which silicosis-infected lungs are susceptible; second, the undertaker who handled many of the burials testified in court that his records had been destroyed; third, after suits were started and everybody knew that rock dust was causing this dreadful state of things and killing the men on the tunnel job, workmen left their jobs there and scattered all over the country.This tunnel is part of a huge water-power project which began in the latter part of 1929 under the direction of the New Kanawha Power Co., a subsidiary of the Union Carbide & Carbon Co. That company was licensed by the State of West Virginia Power Commission to develop power for public sale, and ostensibly it was to do that; but, in reality, it was formed to sell all the power to the Electro-Metallurgical Co., a Subsidiary of the Union Carbide & Carbon Co., which was by an act of the State legislature allowed to buy up the New Kanawha Power Co. in 1933.
I should like to state that I am now making a very general statement as a beginning. There are many points that I should like to develop later, but I shall try to give you a general history of this condition first.I found when I went to Gauley Bridge that men were still dying like flies in 1934. These were men who characterized themselves as generally following the mines as a trade. Mining in West Virginia is unsteady, and these men went into this tunnel work because they thought it offered opportunity for steady work at better wages, and that it was work which did not posses the hazards they had met in mining coal, such hazards being poisonous gases and falling rocks.Of the 2,000 men employed there over a period of nearly 3 years, many have been examined by private doctors. Men began to succumb to the bad condition within 1, 2, or 3 years after they started to engage in the work. It seems that but few of the 2,000 men affected will escape."
The Land was ours before we were the Land's.
LI has a review of Bill Minutaglio's City on Fire, (which is about the Texas City, Texas disaster) in this week's Austin Chronicle -- we think. That disaster was caused by the explosion of a monstrous amount of ammonia nitrate, which was being loaded into a French freighter, the Grandchamp, one April morning in 1947. The first paragraph of the first draft of the review was lopped off -- as we expected it would be. But we liked it as a "dope" intro. It goes:
I've been a fan of disaster stories ever since I became so engrossed, at the age of ten, in a history of the Johnstown flood that I suffered a minor panic attack during which I was convinced that the shallow pond at the end of our street was going to rise up and kill us all. The fascinations of disaster are metaphysical. It is in the belly of disaster that accident turns into fate, and in that interminably winding darkness the trivial metamorphoses into the monumental. The stray, tossed match, the hairline fracture in the concrete dam, the inordinate heat of a ship's dark hold on a spring day -- or this: a tiny gray pellet, coated with Carbowax, tinged brown from the addition of clay. A pellet of fertilizer. These, we know too late, too late, are the aberrant, urgent shapes of our death. And so the day, which is marked by events that would otherwise leave no more record than a snail's trail -- drinking coffee, answering the phone, packing the kids off to school -- events that would, as we said, ordinarily leave not a scratch on the tabula rasa of our remembered experience -- are suddenly backlit by a flash of the one fire -- the fire that extends from creation to the last judgement. The fire upon which all structures are built, and into which all structures will fall. The day of judgement blows up in our face. In that eerie light, we find that there is no scale upon which to measure events -- or at least that the scale we ordinarily use, that we have been bamboozled, all our lives, into using, makes no sense."
Well, LI likes to pull out the rhetorical stops every once in a while.
Reading Minutaglio's book, we became curious about the coincidence that the Texas City disaster involved, albeit peripherally, Union Carbide. Union Carbide was at the center of the biggest industrial accident of the century, in Bhopal. This is a continuing story. Briefly, the plant in Bhopal was a pesticide factory. A pesticide, Sevin, was manufactured there. According to Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro's book, Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, the original planning for the plant was flawed by a grossly optimistic forecast for the market for Sevin. When the gas cloud emerged from the plant on December 3, 1984, it did so because the plant was being run by a skeleton crew, and the safety features of the plant had been pretty much disabled. The facts in the case are still in dispute, partly because Union Carbide (which was bought by Dow) has a tremendous interest in limiting its liability. This article quotes the New Scientist article that lays out the fundamental flaws that lead to the disaster. Bhopal net is a site dedicated to the survivors of the disaster, and it is full of grotesque but compelling data -- all going to show that a company can get away with murder if it is large enough. They have a page entitled the Dow watch which has this very interesting intro:
"This page started out as a collection of stories about Dow-Carbide's implementation of its famous "Zero Harm" policy. But the harder we looked the more stories we found of people who have been killed, or had their health ruined, by the greed and irresponsibility of these two companies, Union Carbide and Dow Chemical, which have now perhaps fittingly become one and the same.
"So many stories, yet they almost all follow the same pattern. A dangerous process, an untested chemical, a carelessly run plant. People die, or have their lives ruined. The company attempts to cover up the disaster, denies responsibility, stalls and impedes legal processes, lobbies against changes in the law which would limit its activities or force it to spend more on safety. Innumerable are their lies, their cold-hearted attempts to bury evidence which could have saved the lives of their victims. From the Hawks Tunnel silicosis disaster of 1930 to the Vinyl Chloride cover-up that began in 1954 and lasted fifty years, taking in along the way Hiroshima, napalm, dioxin and Bhopal."
The site has a very interesting bit about a disaster I, at least, had never heard of: the Hawk Tunnel disaster. Here's a bit of American history to mull over. This testimony is given on a website devoted to Muriel Rukeyser, who wrote a book about the incident. The majority of the killed were African Americans. Many of them, dead, were thrown into a river or piled into a mass grave, so that estimates of the numbers of deaths are imprecise. For similar reasons, nobody really knows how many were killed in the Texas City, Texas disaster, since the Bottoms, the black section, was wiped out. Black lives, in Senator Lott's Golden era, were a dime a dozen. This comes from the testimony of PHILIPPA ALLEN before a Congressional committee in 1936:
I have spent the last four summers in West Virginia; and during the summer of 1934, when I was doing social work down there, I first heard of what we were pleased to call the Gauley tunnel tragedy, which involves about 2,000 men.
According to the estimates of contractors, 2,000 men were employed there over a period of about 2 years in drilling 3.75 miles of tunnel to divert water from New River to a hydroelectric plant at Gauley Junction. The rock through which the workmen were boring was of a high silica content. In tunnel no. 1 it ran from 97 to 99 percent pure silica, and the contractors neglected to provide the workmen with any sort of safety device.None of the workmen, who have lived around Gauley Bridge all of their lives, were aware of the risk they were running, despite the fact that sandstone outcroppings can be seen all over the roads. These were robust, hard-muscled workmen, and yet many of them began dying almost as soon as the work on the tunnel started. With every breath they were breathing a massive dose of silica dust. That was the true explanation of it.
It usually takes from 10 to 20 years to develop fully in a man's lungs this condition, but the medical men said that these men were working under extremely dusty conditions and the doses they received were massive indeed.Silica dust is deadly in large doses. Every worker examined by a physician after working in the tunnel any length of time has been found to have this dreadful disease. It is a lung disease that cannot be arrested, once it is started. Ultimately, the victim strangles to death.
When I tried to tabulate the number of workmen who had died as a result of this condition, I found it impossible to do so for several reasons: First, because before it was generally known what was really killing these men company doctors had diagnosed the numerous deaths as pneumonia, to which silicosis-infected lungs are susceptible; second, the undertaker who handled many of the burials testified in court that his records had been destroyed; third, after suits were started and everybody knew that rock dust was causing this dreadful state of things and killing the men on the tunnel job, workmen left their jobs there and scattered all over the country.This tunnel is part of a huge water-power project which began in the latter part of 1929 under the direction of the New Kanawha Power Co., a subsidiary of the Union Carbide & Carbon Co. That company was licensed by the State of West Virginia Power Commission to develop power for public sale, and ostensibly it was to do that; but, in reality, it was formed to sell all the power to the Electro-Metallurgical Co., a Subsidiary of the Union Carbide & Carbon Co., which was by an act of the State legislature allowed to buy up the New Kanawha Power Co. in 1933.
I should like to state that I am now making a very general statement as a beginning. There are many points that I should like to develop later, but I shall try to give you a general history of this condition first.I found when I went to Gauley Bridge that men were still dying like flies in 1934. These were men who characterized themselves as generally following the mines as a trade. Mining in West Virginia is unsteady, and these men went into this tunnel work because they thought it offered opportunity for steady work at better wages, and that it was work which did not posses the hazards they had met in mining coal, such hazards being poisonous gases and falling rocks.Of the 2,000 men employed there over a period of nearly 3 years, many have been examined by private doctors. Men began to succumb to the bad condition within 1, 2, or 3 years after they started to engage in the work. It seems that but few of the 2,000 men affected will escape."
The Land was ours before we were the Land's.
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