Historical Image of the Day

Anti-gambling comic featuring Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry. Not sure of the date, but I'm guessing early 1970s.

That fine line between talking and not talking about race

This article in the Washington Post aptly sums up the dilemma with finding that elusive middle between discussing relevant issues of race that still divide this country, and running into the danger of belaboring it – a point we discussed in our earlier posts about race relations in America here and specifically, Erik's post on the importance of Black History Month here.

Writing about Michelle Obama’s education of middle-schoolers about African American heritage at the White House, and Eric Holder’s controversial speech to the Justice Department, among other things, Krissah Thompson says that this sort of focus on race is getting mixed reviews from people on the left and right alike.

Thomas Mann, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution had an interesting point: "They definitely have to be careful. Better to have the president and his top African American aides serve as role models and achieve the broader objective by indirection."

He is not alone in thinking that top back officials in the Obama administration may be treading on dangerous territory by expanding the conversation on race, as many have voiced these concerns, including Maureen Dowd. I’ve often believed that talking too much about race may have a very real danger of diluting the issue, and have the effect of cloaking the real problems –such as economic classes as we discussed in previous posts - but I’m not sure if putting things in context, so that generation Y could get a better perspective about the history – and hence, the very real racial scars that have been left as a result - is such a bad idea.

Also, these incidents were part of the celebration of Black History Month, and not some out-of-the-blue forays into the subject. I would think it would be an important part of the commemoration to not only celebrate the milestones, but also to take the opportunity to allow those who have come this far to share their experiences and thoughts.

As Shawnta Walcott, a pollster quoted in the article put it:

“Holder, [Lisa] Jackson and Obama are the first African Americans in their positions, and it should come as no surprise that their celebration of black history is different from their predecessors.”

That is an important point. Even the Bush administration had several minorities in its cabinet, but mere appointment to high office is not going to solve the race problem if you don’t use their presence to actually address the issues, and worse still, simply use it as a talking point to prove that you’re not divisive. In that case, you not only don't deal with the subject, but also sidestep it by proclaiming that it is a non-issue.

Class Warfare, 2009 Budget Style

In the car a few minutes ago, I caught the tail end of an NPR story about Obama's budget and the plan to raise taxes on the top earners.

Publius already mentioned that the brilliance of Obama's tax plan is that it separates tax cuts for most of America--those of us earning under $200,000 a year--from tax cuts for the rich. By proposing to cut taxes for most of America while raising taxes on the rich, Obama is splitting Reagan's coalition.

Publius referenced this excellent NYT Magazine piece, and I'll requote:

Dating back to Reagan, Republicans have packaged tax cuts on high earners with more modest middle-class tax cuts and then maneuvered the Democrats into an unwinnable choice: are you for tax cuts or against them? Obama, however, argues that this is the moment when the politics of taxes can be changed.

To do this, he is proposing tax cuts for most families that are significantly larger than those McCain is offering, along with major tax increases for families making more than $250,000 a year. “That’s essentially a major part of our economic plan,” Obama said. “But it’s also a political message.” Economically, he is trying to use the tax code to spread the bounty from the market-based American economy to a far wider group of families. Politically, he is trying to drive a wedge through the great Reagan tax gambit.

Anyway, the mainstream media--even the publicly funded mainstream media--is used to treating every political move as one part of a binary. Obama debuts a budget, automatically the Republicans get to respond. This, I'm used to. It's not quite the Fairness Doctrine, but it's what passes for "balance," which is the closest we can get to "objectivity." (Never mind verifying the facts, that's way too hard).

But this story crossed a line. In addition to noting that the Republicans plan to "torpedo" the budget, NPR followed up by saying that nonprofits are concerned with Obama's tax increase because it will impact, and this is a quote, "high net-worth individuals," who are the ones who donate to nonprofits.

See, we shouldn't raise taxes on those "high net-worth individuals" because they'll donate money to the nonprofits that are going to take care of the soup lines we'll be having in the not-too-distant future.

The kicker, of course, is that they then have to admit that donations are already down just now when they're needed the most. Because even though those "high net-worth individuals" still have plenty of cash around (it's the economy! Really! it's sooo hard to buy less caviar!) they're not donating as much. With the Bush tax cuts in place.

The answer to all this is fairly bloody obvious, really. You cannot rely on rich people--even "progressive" rich people--to take care of poor people in an economic downturn (or any other time). When it's panic time, everyone takes care of herself first. The only entity that doesn't is the government.

But you know, even NPR has to recycle Reagan-era arguments that have long been disproved.

Sharpening the pitchforks, indeed.

Historical Image of the Day

Anti-gambling cartoon, "You Shall Not Press Down Upon the Brow of Labor This Crown," a play on William Jennings Bryan's Cross of Gold speech, 1896

Historical Image of the Day

Native Americans engaging in traditional gambling games, Celilo Village, Oregon, 1954.

Assault weapons ban? Meh.

Or so it seems-- even as Attorney General Holder causes gun-nut panties to twist is all sorts of hitherto unknown shapes, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi seems to be playing coy with respect to plans of reinstating the assualt weapons ban. Or maybe she's serious?

The assualt weapons ban was a fairly popular measure in its day. Even as the ban expired in 2004, polls consistently showed that the majority of Americans were in favor of the ban.

If the ban was popular in 1994 and 2004, why not now? Shouldn't reinstating it be easy? It could be that something is in the works and Pelosi isn't tipping her hand; consider for a moment, however, the possibility that the Democratic muckety-mucks have decided that the reinstatement of the assualt weapons ban (or other gun control legislation) is off the table.

Could it be considered an unnecassry distraction? Is this a strategic move? Or could it be that the Democrats have really just ceded the gun issue?

It will be interesting to see what happens with this (even if nothing happens; that will in itself be pretty instructive). I'm not a big gun control guy. I'm certainly not a gun guy-- I ascribe to the Al Franken school of thought with respect to guns (something to the effect of not wanting something in my house that is statistically more likely to kill someone unintentionally than intentionally). But gun control? Let's just say, after eight years of Bush, I understand the Montana militia point of view a little better. I'd be in full support of the assualt weapons ban, but not too excited about much more than that. I'd hate to see the Democrats lose seats in Congress because of gun control (and you know the NRA is just salivating at the chance for a showdown with Pelosi, Reid, and Obama).

How History Has Ruined Everything

The introduction paragraph to Lynn Foster's A Brief History of Mexico, Revised Edition states 

"The democratic reforms in 2000 that ended 70 years of party domination in Mexican politics by the Partido Revolutionario Institutional (PRI) have swept in a new era in Mexican history..... The corrupt party leadership that so long ruled Mexico has ended, and everything from labor relations to indigenous rights has been affected.  Moreover, these momentous changes, unlike so many others in Mexican history, were accomplished peacefully.  The political confidence of Mexico today could not contrast more sharply with the ominous foreboding described in the earlier edition of this book."

Yeah, it's true that some things have changed now that there is a new party in power, but there is certainly no more "political confidence" now than when the PRI was in power, and the Mexican distrust of their government is not going to change any time soon.  If you ask any indigenous person, nothing has changed.  They are still discriminated by almost every government policy and regarded as backward people who don't want to "develop."  

We visited with some members of the indigenous community of Amatlán in the state of Morelos.  They told us that not long ago, some people from the government wanted to come visit the community to offer a proposal for a development plan, and the community welcomed them.  But when they proposed a program for developing fish farms in their town, the community members just laughed.  Every year, there is a period of 5 months where water is so scarce that they barely have enough for their basic needs!  How are they ever going to develop fish farms?  Of course they refused the proposal, and no doubt the government reps when back to their people and told everyone that those damn indians don't even want to develop...  So clearly, there are still problems with the Mexican government.

This is the problem capital-H History and history books in particular: they always portray history as a past struggle that has resolved itself already.  In elementary school, we learned (a little bit) about the struggle for women's rights, which basically went like this: "Women used to not have the right to vote.  Can you imagine?! But now they do!  Yay!  Thanks to the women of the past, women don't have to fight for their rights anymore!"  Similarly, the history of race relations in the US goes like this:  "Black people used to be slaves, but then they weren't!  Then they were segregated, but not anymore!  Yay!  Everything is perfect!"  History books teach us not to recognize current systemic problems because it only shows us how they have already been fixed.  No different than a fairy tale, history books only feed our need for a happy ending.

So basically, history teaches us to be complacent and to accept the status quo - Thanks!

Historical Image of the Day

Playing the slots, Atlantic City, 2008

Shorter English Parents - We Want Our Children to Be As Bigoted Towards the Physically Challenged As We Are!

Dear parents in England,

Instead of trying to pass on your own prejudices towards and fears of people with physical differences, why don't you use Ms. Burnell's television show as one more way to help your children learn that people are different, but that doesn't make some better than others. In a world where people still mock individuals with special needs to reinforce unfair stereotypes and create fear, rather than educate and unite, the BBC's hiring of Ms. Burnell is admirable.

Get over yourselves and let your children grow up to be more decent, respectful, and understanding people than you are.

Cheers,
Mr. Trend

Why Nationalizing the Banks is the Capitalist Thing To Do

I get the giggles every time I hear the term "Zombie Banks," which Krugman in particular likes to use. I've been pissed off about the bank bailout from the beginning, though I figured there wasn't much to do about it.

I've never been anything close to an economist--my studies were always more in political science and critical theory--but I've sure had a crash course since September. So now, I feel qualified to say that nationalizing the banks isn't only the best course, it's actually the proper capitalist thing to do.

Oh yes, I'll explain my thoughts here.

Krugman writes:

Lately the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has been seizing banks it deems insolvent at the rate of about two a week. When the F.D.I.C. seizes a bank, it takes over the bank’s bad assets, pays off some of its debt, and resells the cleaned-up institution to private investors. And that’s exactly what advocates of temporary nationalization want to see happen, not just to the small banks the F.D.I.C. has been seizing, but to major banks that are similarly insolvent...

And once again, long-term government ownership isn’t the goal: like the small banks seized by the F.D.I.C. every week, major banks would be returned to private control as soon as possible. The finance blog Calculated Risk suggests that instead of calling the process nationalization, we should call it “preprivatization.”

Handing out wads of cash to Citibank (how about some student loan forgiveness?) and the rest is exactly the type of socialism of which the GOP would've liked to accuse Obama. Those campaign claims sound pretty hollow when money-for-nothing isn't being handed out to poor citizens of color but to massive corporations.

Propping up institutions like these banks isn't the socialism I'd like to see--I'd much prefer health care for all, a public school system that works, public transit that is both greener and more efficient, oh, the list can just keep going. But instead of making tone-deaf arguments that government is always the problem like, er, Governor Bobby Jindal (disparaged in better detail below), I note that the government in this case has a perfectly legitimate rationale for taking over the banks.

Steve Waldman wrote:

But if we are dumb enough to force-feed credit into the economy, let's not hide that behind a bunch of puppet banks. And let's keep it very clear that we are not confiscating private firms in order to make them tools of the state. We nationalize reluctantly, when we have had no choice but to inject public money (or guarantee assets, which amounts to the same thing) in banks that otherwise would have failed. We nationalize because, in a capitalist economy, investors get to keep the profits they endow, even when the investors happen to be taxpayers.

In other words, in a capitalist society, when you shell out money, you get something for it. You don't just give handouts.

Republican opposition to this idea gives us the perfect opportunity to call them what they really are: less free-market idealist and more classist and racist. They don't oppose government handouts; they simply oppose government handouts to the poor.

The Random Good One Can Do in the World

My dislike for the environmentalist writer Edward Abbey is well-documented. Not only do I think he is bad for the environmental movement, he was a racist bastard.

Turns out my collection of racist Abbey quotes linked to above are on Abbey's wikipedia page. I'm surprised I haven't been hounded by his followers for attacking their hero. But if I turn one good environmentally-minded person from this anti-humanist than I've made the world a slightly better place. Abbey played a major role in turning the environmental movement away from connecting with large numbers of Americans over issues of pollution and the body and toward focusing on keeping humans out of "wilderness," whatever that actually is.

Wipe Yourself, Kill a Spotted Owl

We race through natural resources in ways that are so second nature to us that we don't even think about it. Take toilet paper. You are cutting down trees for this. Where do those trees come from? What is the effect on the Earth every time you (or I!) go for the extra soft double ply?

The environmental damage from toilet paper is massive.

Some of the paper comes from tree farms. But way too much comes from virgin or second-growth forest that we need for many other reasons--fighting climate change first and foremost.

What options do we have? Recycled toilet paper is a great idea. 19th century Americans used corn cobs, supposedly the origin of the term "corn hole." Maybe we don't want to go that old timey. But the great boreal forests of Canada are coming down every time you wipe yourself. We need to think hard about just how we impact nature and do what we can do mitigate the damage our existence causes. This is certainly one area where we can sacrifice a little bit of comfort, if that is indeed the right word for two-ply, super soft toilet paper, to take a significant step in saving the planet from destruction.

Conservation and Economic Collapse

The core of my pessimism about long-term economic recovery is summed up by this Times article, blaming conservation in Japan for that nation's continued stagnation.

Today, years after the recovery, even well-off Japanese households use old bath water to do laundry, a popular way to save on utility bills. Sales of whiskey, the favorite drink among moneyed Tokyoites in the booming ’80s, have fallen to a fifth of their peak. And the nation is losing interest in cars; sales have fallen by half since 1990.

So conservation kills economies. If this is true, we have two choices:

A. Consume to the end of time, use up all our resources, have a relatively brief period of economic growth, and then experience a complete collapse of our economy and civilization.

B. Conserve our resources and end up in a long-term recession like Japan.

Are these really our only two options? While I'm rarely comfortable with such stark choices, in this case, it may be true. People talk of the profits we can make on a green economy. No doubt there's a lot of truth to that, but only so long as those projects promote "green consumption." We still have to use lots of energy so those companies make money. We still have to buy new cars. We still have to buy shade-grown coffee and organic vegetables and free range beef. Cutting consumption, i.e., the real way to be green, is the worst thing we can do if we want the economy to expand.

Capitalism is predicated on unrestricted use of resources. We might conserve timber in this nation, but without a slackening of demand, it just leads to trees being cut in some other country's forest. We benefit locally, but globally the resource consumption has to grow if the economy is to flourish. We now face a situation where we simply don't have the resources to continue on this path. We are at peak oil, peak coal, peak rare minerals that go into computer, peak timber, peak everything. Commodity prices have fallen in the face of the recession. Theoretically, this should spur consumption, but if consumption reached the levels of 2 years ago, prices would again skyrocket.

So what do we do? How do we escape these twin disasters? How do we not destroy the Earth and also not live in poverty? Is there a way out?

I don't know. But if there we want to save the planet and live a decent life, we need to make major changes.

The first step has to be reorienting our economic standards. We need to rethink what a healthy economy means. This is hard and painful, as we are finding out during this recession. We need to find new ways of thinking about economic success that are separate from unrestrained resource use, personal consumption, and raw profit.

Take housing. Housing is at the core of our economic crisis--bad loans, inflated prices, etc. But even when the housing market was at its peak, many were crying out over the massive problems this causes--uncontrolled suburbanization, air pollution, use of oil, climate change, the paving over of America. These are terrible things. Yet our society privileges housing starts as the gold standard of success. Measuring economic growth through housing starts is a terrible idea--it encourages single family units, unsustainable sprawl, and climate change. Moreover, what do housing starts mean in terms of satisfaction in life? Wouldn't other measurements do a much better job of measuring people's satisfaction and the overall health of society? Instead, we need to promote multifamily housing, small spaces with community gardens, parks, and green space, and vibrant urban centers and then find a way to take their measurements to judge how we are doing.

The Japanese people interviewed in the story don't seem unhappy, though unemployment problems persist that cannot be ignored. If people want to conserve, regardless of the reasons why, shouldn't society promote that instead of calling it a problem that threatens to undermine the future?

That our addiction to unrestrained consumption means constant growth of unsustainable products to survive makes me extraordinarly pessimistic about our future. If the Japanese doing crazy things like not buying new cars every 3 years and reusing water is a disaster, then I just don't know where we are headed as a society. People need jobs and we as a society need to conserve. I feel the only way out is to completely reconsider our values as people and work to make people happy in local communities, working together to ensure a decent standard of living, good health care, safe food, and strong communities for all.

To choose otherwise means complete disaster for civilization within a century at the outside.

Since we can all agree that Jindal sucks...

Thought I'd post this response to Jindal's response. James Perry, candidate for mayor of New Orleans, tells Bobby where to stick it. I like this guy.

My New Favorite Photographer Must Really Like to Count...

My friend just showed me this artist: Chris Jordan.  His collection called "Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait" looks at contemporary US culture through statistics.  And the numbers are staggering (3.6 million SUV sales in one year and 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries every month), but they really don't mean anything until you can see them.  His giant photographs are composed of thousands or millions of smaller photographs to correspond with the statistics.  I would post some of the pictures, but you really have to go to the website so you can see the zoomed-in versions to really get an idea of what they are showing.  They are clearly not meant to be seen on the computer instead of in person, but sometimes you have to work with what you have...

Because a lot of his pieces have to do with consumption and over consumption, Jordan has been labeled an environmentalist - which I'm sure he is.  But it interesting to me that pictures of oil barrels and junk yards inspire more of an environmental ethic than landscapes.  Landscapes are mass-produced and sold in stores like Hobby Lobby so people can hang them above their couches, but they certainly do nothing to inspire an environmental consciousness.  And landscape painters have certainly never been called environmentalists.  Why is it that images of the thing we are supposed to be protecting (nature) do not affect us, but pictures of our trash can be so profound?

Also, here is a link to a video of Chris Jordan speaking.

My own take on the Slumdog win (and backlash)!

Slumdog Millionaire was the best movie I saw all year until I got to The Wrestler, which was far better (and Mickey Rourke was robbed, but that's another post).

Anyway, I've read lots of criticisms of the film, and a lot of the backlash seems to me to miss some of the point. I certainly find it problematic that it's a movie written and directed by white men telling an Indian story, but more than that, I disagree with a lot of the critiques.

M. Leblanc at Bitch, Ph.D. had a good post up about it yesterday.

On the one hand, the film is so clearly a fantasy story, that I don't know that it's trying to convey a "message," about social justice or anything else. It's unrealistic. It does not attempt authenticity. It employs flashbacks and shifts in time to create a wonderland-effect which is at odds with the gritty realism of some of the images (not, mind you, the cinematography, which is very polished and cinematic). I think people make the mistake of assuming it's trying to present something "real" because movies don't usually feature or address poverty, especially third-world poverty, unless they're trying to convey something "real" and convey a "message."

I totally agree. She also references Samhita's post at Feministing.

I guess I have more questions than I have answers. And the questions I ask were certainly not the ones considered by the Academy in choosing this film. To be clear, I loved this movie and I saw it twice. The second time I brought my family, and my father a staunch Indian nationalist, hated it. He didn't like the way it portrayed India. I do not hold the same politics as my father and I felt that it actually held more truth about poverty and corruption in India than we would like to admit. But once you sift through the amazing imagery, adorable kids and soundtrack you are left with a coming of age story, only the story is not really for Indian audiences.

But the question that occurred to me when reading all of this was:

Is it colonialist of us to expect Slumdog Millionaire to be a social commentary because it's set in a slum?

I watched it and wrote a review of it in which I pretty much gushed all over it. I haven't watched it again, and I'm fully aware that I'm watching it through white American eyes.

Although I did take a certain message from the film, I don't think it was the one that people expected. I read it as a parable about how random success is. Jamal is not a “Christ-figure” as much as he is the Holy Fool, someone who screws up again and again and haplessly stumbles through the world by being good. It's still a Western character archetype placed in India, which is probably colonialist in itself. And Leblanc and Samhita point out the problems with the Latika character so I'm not going to here.

But the story is NOT a 'pulling-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps' fable. In fact, the character who does pull himself up, Salim, pulls himself up by falling into crime. Jamal, on the other hand, stumbles into things and manages to get rich. Perhaps it shows my own bias, but I read this as a comment on the nature of modern capitalist society, that those who are on top often did not get there through their own work or the fairy tale of pulling oneself up by those damned bootstraps.

Also, the story was told through Jamal's eyes and so is tinged with his own views. The riot from which Jamal, Salim and Latika flee as children? It isn't presented with context because that's how it would look to the kids running away. They weren't running for their lives thinking, “Gee, the Hindus are really taking out this geopolitical strife on us!” They just ran.

And so I come to the question that I always run smack into: does everything have to be social commentary? Does one film set in India have to portray the whole of Indian experience, because it's the rare Western film set in India, or should we instead be arguing that we should see more films set in India (insert other commonly Othered country here)?

Sylvia critiqued it as well, here, and I can see her point, as I can see many of these points. I just don't know if I agree.

This, however, does indeed bother me. Even though stories came out later that noted it wasn't as bad as that story made it sound.

Historical Image of the Day

"Betting a Negro in the Southern States," from William Wells Brown's slave narrative Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States, 1853.

The newer and scarier (?!) face of GOP

We all know that’s always possible.

Rachel Maddow made an important point last night about the familiar theme among the “new faces” that the GOP has chosen to project the last few months, one of them of course being Bobby Jindal.

Jindal, son of Indian immigrants, raised a Hindu, and a teenage convert to Catholicism, infamously – or famously, depending on your perspective – wrote about his experiences participating in an exorcism in 1994. In 2003, he declared in the Time Picayune,“I am 100 percent anti-abortion with no exceptions. I believe all life is precious.” This would mean that Jindal does not make an exception even if the woman were raped or if her life were at risk.

This would also mean that he actually makes Sarah Palin look reasonable, with her exceptional ability to consider exceptions for life-threatening situations.

Then there’s Michael Steele who has declared in no uncertain terms that he believes that embryonic stem cells are “life” and is absolutely opposed to embryonic stem cell research. He is staunchly pro-life including in cases of rape and incest.

Of course, we are all used to Republicans that espouse these views, but what makes this scarier is that like Maddow and Ana Marie Cox said last night, this new face is changing in terms of color of skin and gender, but the viewpoints are still the same.

For instance, Jindal opposes hate-crime legislation - a brown-skinned son of immigrants who grew up in Louisiana - wants to repeal laws that would mandate penalties on crimes inspired by hatred toward certain groups or races. These younger, fresher, "more diverse" faces are probably going to inspire younger Republicans from all backgrounds to follow suit, and think it's OK to have ideologies that make no pragmatic sense. That's why it's scarier.

Student Loans

Higher Ed Watch reports that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is leading a fight to prosecute people who have defaulted on student loans as a way to bring money into the government.

Should this really be a top priority? I totally agree that people should not default on their loans. But most of these people want to pay them back. They just are poor. Shouldn't the government be working with them rather than prosecuting them?

Moreover, in a time when we are giving bailouts and stimuli right and left, it seems that one might consider a bit of relief on student loans. If you wanted to raise my consumption, you'd take that $450 a month off my plate. That would raise my consumption in some serious ways. Now, I'm not saying that would be good government policy. But I'm not sure it would be worse than many other ideas.

Moreover, I'm not sure that coming after the poor, regardless of their education level, is the best policy in times of hardship. Hopefully the Obama administration rethinks this idea.

For those who actually can pay the loans back and are not for some reason, that's a different story.

What Populism Isn't

When I have more time and brain space I plan to take populism back up. But tonight, NPR's Mara Liasson was discussing "populist anger" with bailouts and such, and referenced that damn Santelli rant.

"if we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages or would we like to, at least, buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road. And reward people that can carry the water instead of drink the water."

Santelli, a former futures trader, made his now-famous rant from a Chicago commodities trading floor. Bastion of Real America, that. But he had the stones to declare, "This is America!" because he was cheered. Because we know from the McCain campaign that the Real America is whichever part agrees with you.

But Michael Hiltzik at the LA Times schools Santelli with two sentences:

Well, no. America is a place where 8 million families are threatened with losing their homes, not a futures pit filled with braying traders.

Populism: Hiltzik doin' it right.