Larry Summers And Another Luddite Analogy

Posted: February 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , | 10 Comments

A hattip to United Republic, their new site Republic Report and for this ‘most’ enlightening tidbit on Larry Summers.

This Larry Summers.

The Larry Summers that President Obama chose to head the White House National Economic Council, even after the blowback from Summers receiving beaucoup speaking fees in 2008 at banking meetings, as in JP Morgan dishing out $67, 500 for a February engagement.  This, after JP Morgan reaped $25 billion in Government bailouts.  Or Citigroup, another happy camper after receiving $50 billion in taxpayer monies, found enough spare change to pay Summers on two occasions, once for $45,000 and two months later for $54,000.  Or everyone’s favorite, Goldman Sachs. Sachs was really generous after receiving $10 million in bailout funds but managed a double decker of $135,000 for one appearance and another for $67,500 eight weeks later.

Oh, and Summers also had managed another $5.2 million, an easy-peasy salary from D.E. Shaw, which just happens to be a major hedge fund.

Who says government doesn’t work?

When Summers exited his WH duties, he hit the lecture circuit once again. His love of giving speeches seems to have slipped under the radar.  Until it didn’t.  Interest appears to have shredded the text of his presentation at a particular business forum.  Mysteriously, the stirring words disappeared and no one could retrieve then.  Poof!  But here’s what we know: this time Summer’s concluding keynote speech celebrated the wonders of outsourcing and off-shoring jobs.  Here’s a brief statement from the catalog introduction of the 2011 World BPO/ITO Forum:

Resisting the prospect of offshoring withholds a major totem of competitive parity from the most profitable producers of economic progress, Dr. Summers said. “It is to deny the US and American businesses an opportunity to participate in this revolution in emerging markets, which is the most important economic story of our time.” He added that increasing trade in tasks makes businesses more efficient and competitive, and allows them to exploit different skills, capacities and labor costs anywhere in the world. Critics who automatically label outsourcing or offshoring a threat to prosperity “resemble luddites who took axes to machinery early in England’s industrial revolution,” he said. Instead of killing jobs, as luddites feared, machines spawned millions of jobs and better standards of living.

Oh yes, I’m sure the majority of Americans now collecting unemployment or those working two, three jobs to pay the electric bill, buy the Kraft mac and cheese dinners in bulk, while hoping to God no one in the family gets sick could appreciate this finely-tuned statement.  But this statement [though applicable to many workers] was specifically directed to business process [as in payroll, tax and benefits] and IT workers—you know, all those geeky kids that were told ‘Go for the computer degree.  You can’t go wrong.’

Oops.

Because those innocent initials in the forum’s title?  That would stand for ‘business process outsourcing/information technology outsourcing.’

And people wonder why there are so many college grads with gargantuan school loans associated with the Occupy Wall St. Movement.  These grads are mad as hell and not getting over it.

But notice the analogy that Summers uses for describing critics of massive outsourcing of jobs, jobs, jobs.  Critics are Luddites, Summers says, no better than the extremists who smashed machinery during the early days of the Industrial Revolution.  I suspect there are ‘things’ citizens would enjoy smashing right now.  And it’s not the machines.

But here’s the word that flew out at me: exploit, as in exploitation:

an act or instance of exploiting<exploitation of natural resources> <exploitation of immigrant laborers> <clever exploitation of the system>

Ding, ding, ding!  We exploit our natural resources, our fellow citizens.  We exploit immigrant workers, every chance we get.  And we exploit the system by having people like Larry Summers, whirling through the revolving door of government/business, and then pretending the damage left behind is a good thing, the most important economic story of our time.

How about the biggest heist of all time!

But it gets better.  We get to exploit workers in other countries, too, making their lives so miserable they threaten to commit suicide en masse.

What’s not to love?

If this sort of thing wasn’t so sickening, it would be laughable.

I am not laughing.

Btw, the Republic Report site will be tapping none other than Jack Abramoff for an insider’s view of  DC corruption and influence peddling.  Super-lobbyist Abramoff, released from jail last year, will be a regular contributor to RR because if you want to catch a bunch of rats what better strategy than employ a King Rat?

Could get very interesting!

Margaret Sanger: A Rebel With A Mighty Cause

Posted: February 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: birth control, black women's reproductive health, children, Civil Liberties, education, Feminists, health, Hillary Clinton, Human Rights, just because, Planned Parenthood, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , | 11 Comments

A Book Review; Review of a Life

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of catching Jean Baker, history professor at Goucher College, featured on BookTV.  Baker discussed her book ‘Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion,’ but more importantly connected the dots between the Right Wing’s attack on Sanger and the Pro-Choice, Family Planning movement.

A couple years ago while Glenn Beck hurled his diatribes, chalk boarding his twisted worldview on an unsuspecting public, he took Margaret Sanger to task.  Beck described Sanger as one of his ‘evil’ progressives, a woman dedicated to racism and the application of eugenics in America.

The attack startled me.  Why Sanger?  I knew she had spearheaded the whole idea of inexpensive, reliable contraception and that her family clinics and her own reputation had come under constant assault.  Anything and everything having to do with sexual behavior was taboo when Sanger began her work in the early, heady days of the 20th century. I also knew that Hillary Clinton had specifically mentioned Sanger as a personal hero.  At the time, I thought that was Beck’s aim—discredit Sanger, discredit Clinton.

Au contraire!

Though Hillary Clinton did, in fact, make it on the list of evil progressives [along with Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, even Lindsey Graham and John McCain], the attack on Margaret Sanger had and continues to have far broader implications.  This is particularly true in any discussion of birth control, abortion and/or family planning and in the midst of a concerted effort to push a fetal personhood amendment to the fore.

The recent dustup between the Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood is a case in point.  Women’s healthcare has become politicized.  We as women are discussed in a myriad of parts—our uteruses, our vaginas, our breasts, our reproductive capabilities.  Too often, our autonomy as full-fledged human beings, adults capable of thought and decision-making about our own destiny is dismissed, made secondary to the considerations of others.  Sadly, today’s opposition to female self-determination is the same that Sanger faced throughout her lifetime: men, who were convinced they had the right to an opinion and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and other religious institutions that felt and continue to feel perfectly justified to chime in, making moral declarations, complete with Biblical arguments and opinions.

Young 'Maggie'

Professor Baker claims [and makes a very good argument] that the attack on Sanger’s work is also directly related to the attacks now being waged—female autonomy, the ability for women to direct their own reproductive lives.  But Sanger had an especially hard road to travel, introducing her radical vision on the heels of the Victorian era.

Whatever’s old is new again!

While reading Baker’s new biography, I was startled by the similarity of the arguments, the pitfalls, the myriad of excuses to block any and all reasonable discussion when it comes to reproductive freedom.  That being said, it’s hard to contemplate a time when the very discussion of or writing about birth control was considered perverse, pornographic and could end in jail time.  Such was the case in the early 20th century.

Sanger’s efforts were so reviled by the status quo and Catholic Church that she was forced to leave the country for a brief stay in the UK or face arrest. She faced continuous harassment and was eventually arrested for her public, relentless stands. But ironically, this woman who had a spotty formal education, no training in public speaking would become by age fifty, one of the most influential women in the world.

Why?  Because she would not stop.  Because she was totally gripped by a single, burning idea–women were entitled to information [sexual or otherwise] and had a right to be empowered when it came to their own bodies.

Her background was fertile for dissent, her family a template for radical reaction.  Born Margaret [Maggie] Higgins in 1879 in Corning, NY., she was the sixth child of 11 surviving children.  Her mother, a devout Catholic, died at the age of 48, suffering with tuberculosis, the scourge of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

But here’s a factoid that Sanger’s critics rarely mention: her mother had eighteen pregnancies during her short life.

Eighteen!

Sanger’s father, a stone carver who royally ticked off the Church with his firebrand criticisms of Rome’s dictates, found it difficult to provide for his huge, ever-growing family.  The family was poor, shanty Irish poor, with too many mouths to feed and an increasingly sick mother, made all the worse by cramped, squalid surroundings.

Though her impossible dream had been medical school, Sanger went to New York City following her mother’s death.  There she trained as a nurse and midwife and spent several years attending patients on the Lower East Side.  The living conditions in the tenements were appalling—cramped, rat-infested, devoid of anything approaching basic hygiene.  She watched scores of young immigrant women die of pregnancy-related complications and botched abortions [many self-performed].  And she listened to scores of these women beg attending physicians [when available], pleading for help to prevent back-to-back pregnancies, birthing more children than they were able to feed or care for.  To no avail.   From that experience, that massive wave of human suffering, the idea of birth control and family planning was born.

Sanger took the remedy upon herself.  Because no one else dared.

A prolific self-taught writer, Sanger traveled across America and was invited around the world to speak to the issue of contraception, sex education and reproductive services.  Her work became the basis for health clinics dedicated to the health and education of women.  She was, in fact, the mother of Planned Parenthood.

Ahhhh.  No wonder she’s on the enemies’ list.

So what are the arguments against Sanger? Read the rest of this entry »

Zombies and Vultures and Pipelines, Oh My

Posted: February 5, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic Policy, Environment, Environmental Protection, ethics, Gulf Oil Spill, health hazard, K street, legislation, lobbyists, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Republican politics, science, toxic waste, Water | Tags: , , | 6 Comments

The zombies seem to be winning the war against the living.  We have zombie banks, zombie politicians [think Rick Perry], zombie policy—free market fundamentalism preached as an untried economic theory.

And now zombie pipelines.

Just when you thought the Keystone XL controversy had been put to rest [at least temporarily], its zombie presence lunges forward, reanimated for all to see.  Although I suspect supporters of this very bad idea are hoping the American public is not watching or if they are watching they will buy the swill on the non-existent benefits of a 1700-mile tar sands pipeline.

What am I talking about?

I found a disturbing inquiry [hattip to OEN] by Representative Henry Waxman to a Deborah Hohlt, who received $50,500 from the Great State of Indiana [that would be paid in state taxpayer monies] to lobby in DC on behalf of the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline.  Indiana’s Governor Mitch Daniels provided the rebuttal to the President’s SOTU address, in which he referred to the Administration’s decision to ‘postpone’ the pipeline’s construction as an ‘extremist’ policy.

As you might remember the Republican chorus on this subject has been jobs, jobs, jobs.  House Speaker Boehner has quoted 100,000 jobs at stake.  TransCanada has been all over the map with job estimates, the last, most creative quote coming in at 250,000 jobs.  Unfortunately, the numbers are at odds with the single independent analysis from Cornell Global Labor Institute, estimating the number at between 4000-6000 temporary jobs.  The steel for the pipeline?  Would be coming from India.  The cry that the pipeline would reduce our reliance on foreign oil?  The refined tar sands oil is contracted for export [80%] to South America and Europe.

The upsides are slim to none, considering the toxic, corrosive nature of tar sand oil, the sludge-like quality that requires pressure and heat to make a pipeline flow possible.  That also increases the risk of a leak and an environmental disaster.  Anyone who may question the heightened risk should check out the total mess in Michigan when over 800,000 gallons of tar sand oil spilled and contaminated 40 miles of the Kalamazoo River and surrounding properties.

And the reclamation?  These corporations should hang their heads in utter shame. If you want to be thoroughly disgusted check out the You Tube clip I provided in an earlier post.

But here’s the really curious thing.  The pipeline won’t be running through Indiana.  The pipeline will not be running close to Indiana’s borders. No Indiana facilitities will have access to the pipeline. In fact, it appears that Indiana does not stand to be impacted in anyway by the Keystone pipeline and yet Governor Daniels felt compelled to call President Obama an extremist for postponing the pipeline’s construction.  He was also willing to pay a $50,000+ [in state taxpayer money] to lobby for the Great State of Indiana in defense of the pipeline.

More curious still?  TransCanada has stated that the pipeline will ‘increase’ oil prices for Indiana and other Midwestern residents because the area is ‘oversupplied.’  Keystone’s successful construction [this is stated in TransCanada’s application] will ensure higher prices for Canadian crude.  By independent analysis costs will increase $6.55 per barrel in the Midwest and $3 per barrel everywhere else.   The Indiana Petroleum Council thinks this is a swell idea.

Which begs the question: Who does Governor Daniels work for?  His constituents or the oil companies?

So, it should not be any great surprise that a Senate group–laughably-called bi-partisan because it includes 1 Democrat, Joe Manchin from W. Va.–is reintroducing the Keystone proposal, pushing for immediate construction with or without the Administration’s approval.  The Senate committee is invoking the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which says Congress should have the power:

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.

I love it when the Republicans start waving the Constitution. It’s a clear signal they’re up to no good. Did I mention that Koch Industries stands to make a killing on this project?

While reading Representative Waxman’s letter, I recalled something I’d read in Greg Palast’s book Vultures’ Picnic and found an accompanying and equally disturbing text online here and here.  To quote Palast:

Reserves are the measure of oil recoverable at a certain price. Raise the price, raise the reserve. Cut the price and the amount of oil in the ground drops. In other words, it’s a fool’s errand to measure the “amount of oil we have left.” It depends on the price.

Specifically, oil companies and oil-related financiers are not interested in expanding oil supplies to the world, particularly cheap oil supplies [because the days of cheap oil are over]. They’re interested in feeding the hunger for oil and controlling the price around the world with an iron fist.  The higher, the better.  The environment—air, water, soil–is not the concern.  Our health or that of our children is not the concern.  The bottom line—profit and power—is all that matters.  If nations collapse?  The Vultures are waiting to feast on the bones.

Sound harsh?  It shouldn’t.  Zombies and vultures are kissing cousins.  They’re coming ‘round for a friendly visit.  Again.

The Problem With Peace Treaties [Of the Political Kind]

Posted: February 2, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 primaries, Democratic Politics, Elections, Elizabeth Warren Campaign, Republican politics, Scott Brown | Tags: , , | 7 Comments

It was sweet while it lasted, a lean across the Great Divide by two political opponents, namely Elizabeth Warren running for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts and Scott Brown, hoping to keep that seat planted firmly under his fanny.

The agreement was sensible after an early barrage of negative political ads. Karl Rove’s group first claimed Warren was a secret socialist, her blood line running straight to Stalin [the Matriarch of Mayhem], which evolved into an accusation that she was somehow a sympathetic friend to Wall St. financial institutions.  No doubt the banks did a double take.  Conversely, Warren’s admirers claimed that Brown was financed by those same financial institutions [which happens to be true].  He also claimed that the press was giving Elizabeth Warren a free ride, not hitting her with the really ‘hard’ questions.

Whining appears to be a Republican strategy for 2012.

Nonetheless, both parties agreed to reject the outside, 3rd party organizations funding these less than complimentary videos, ads and press releases.  But as history tells us, ceasefires and negotiations are dicey at best.  Even signed treaties can have gaping loopholes.

Such is the case in this wobbly agreement [hattip to TPM].  The Boston Globe reported earlier this week that Warren’s people were breaking the pledge by allowing an unflattering website, Rethink Brown.com, to surface in an expanded form.  The site displays several of Scott Brown’s quotes.

What are these quotes?  So, glad you asked.

The first statement is: “I go to Washington representing no faction, no special interest . . . ”

The quote is from Brown’s victory speech the night he won the Massachusett’s Senate seat in 2010.  Full quote:

I go to Washington as the representative of no faction or interest, answering only to my conscience and to the people. I’ve got a lot to learn in the Senate, but I know who I am and I know who I serve. I’m Scott Brown. I’m from Wrentham. I drive a truck, and I’m nobody’s senator but yours.

The comment is dated January 19, 2010 and fits nicely into Brown’s debate performance, where he corrected a moderator, regarding the former Senate seat:

With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedys’ seat and it’s not the Democrats’ seat.  It’s the People’s Seat.

That single comment literally turned Brown and his handsome mug into household familiars.  It was a star moment.

The dirty trick is that Elizabeth Warren jumped into the 2012 race and turned things upside down.  The recent complaint, the way this rabble-rousing, pro-Warren website is smearing Scott Brown, thereby breaking the peace accord and the public’s love affair?   The website places Scott Brown’s own words against facts, then properly cites and corroborates them.

For instance, the unfortunate fact that Scott Brown has accepted $1.1 million from Wall St. contributions, ferreted out by Center for Responsive Politics.  Or that Brown used his swing vote to water down Wall St. regulations, a story reported by the Boston Globe.  Or that Forbes magazine cited Scott Brown as one of Wall St’s favorite congressmen, with the article provided for reading pleasure.

Not only that but the Rethink Brown site manages to wiggle around the deal’s agreement because it’s not paid advertising, simply a group making a rather pointed statement on its own site.

Dastardly!

Color me suspicious when Brown claims these revelations break the spirit of the agreement, that this is just a way of peddling lies and misinformation.  Where are the lies?  What is the misinformation?

There’s a vast difference in pointing out a candidate’s contradictions to bold-face fiction and prevarication.  I would consider the latter approach the sort of thing Karl Rove’s GPS Crossroads’ group relies on consistently.

As for my suspicions?  No sooner did the Globe article come out ‘exposing’ Rethink Brown.com than the Massachusetts GOP launched an anti-Warren ad [also not covered under the agreement].

Okay.  That’s true.  Warren has done very well for herself. I can’t confirm the numbers but Elizabeth Warren is certainly no longer struggling financially. The comment on the Lawrence O’Donnell show?  What sort of wealthy was she speaking of—the top 1%, the top 5, 10, 20?  We don’t know from this video because we don’t have the entire clip.   But here’s the complete quote:

You know, I’m with you on this. Either don’t own it or put it in a blind trust, you know, where someone else manages it and you literally can’t see what’s in there. I realize there are some wealthy individuals — I’m not one of them — but some wealthy individuals who have a lot of stock portfolios. But you’re exactly right. I don’t understand how people can be out there in the House, in the Senate, they get inside information and they’re making critical decisions. We need to feel like they’re making those decisions on our behalf, not as an investor who would do better if the law goes this way instead of that way. I agree.

How clever.  They chopped off the ‘qualifier.’  Warren is not a wealthy individual of the sort who has a lot of stock portfolios, which would cloud her legislative judgment.  This was a discussion about insider trading and conflict of interest.  But look how easy it is to draw an inference—Warren lied about her wealth. She’s a wealthy woman. Oooooo.

And this is a Republican attack?

In fairness to Scott Brown he has a 2-year record he needs to support—things he said, things he did.  As for Elizabeth Warren?  She too has a record in Washington where she stood for protecting consumers against unfair business practices and how she developed then midwifed a Financial Protection Bureau into being, one to protect consumers in those same deals and contracts.  She’s also said quite bluntly that the American people got a raw deal in the economic debacle of 2008.  I don’t recall her ever saying Americans shouldn’t strive for success or eschew all monetary reward.  What I remember Warren stating unequivocally is that successful individuals are obligated to pay their fair share to the system that made their success uniquely possible.  Including the 1%.  Why?  Because it’s equitable.

Mr. Brown, I have nothing against you personally.  You seem like a perfectly nice man.  But tell your ad-meisters to use the truth-o-meter next time out.

And do yourself a personal favor—stop the whining.  It’s extremely unattractive.

New Jersey Blues and The Big Guy

Posted: February 1, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, double-speak, fetus fetishists, GLBT Rights, just because, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, Republican politics | Tags: , , , | 11 Comments

Though I now live in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, I’m a native of the Great State of New Jersey.  With friends and family scattered across the Garden State [something of a misnomer], I still keep half an eye on NJ happenings.

As we all know, Chris Christie now fills the Governor’s seat [with abundance].  Yes, that was a cheap shot.  Christie has become a Republican darling for his blunt, shoot from the hip style.  In Tony Soprano fashion, Christie badmouths teachers, unions and anyone who gets in the way.  What a guy!

But the man is not without Sin.

Christie believes in limited gun control.  Eeek!  He has stated that in urban situations, limiting the number of guns makes sense.  The ‘makes sense’ is obviously a big issue with the current crop of Republicans.  Christie also expressed a belief in ‘Climate Change,” stating that human activity is undoubtedly involved and that he would defer to the experts.

OMG.  A science guy!  How did this man squeeze his considerable girth under the GOP tent?

The proposed mosque site in NYC?  Christie refused to take a stand.  He withheld comment, while the flames of controversy were fanned with heady delight by crank pundits, 24/7 shock jocks, faux celebrities and Fox News [ahem] reporters. [In full disclosure, I believed the mosque plans were unwise and badly timed—too soon, too close to the proximity of Ground Zero, which I’d visited two years before the story broke].

But worse, when appointing a judge to NJ’s Superior Court last year, Chris Christie appointed a . . . Muslim!  Can you believe it?  Shades of Sharia Law rained across Tea Party brows.  The horror!  The betrayal!

Christie’s response?  He was sick of dealing with the ‘crazies.’

But it’s clear now, indisputable, that Governor Chris Christie has learned nothing—nada, zip–from his past misdeeds.  The National Organization for Marriage [NOM] is up in arms over Christie’s appalling nomination of Bruce Harris for the State Supreme Court.

Why? you may ask.

According to NOM, Harris is an extremist of the worst kind.  He would be the first openly gay, third African American to serve the High Court and has publicly admitted support of and work in behalf of gay marriage legislation.  Though Harris has agreed to recuse himself on any legislation involving same sex marriage, he’d sent an unfortunate email [emails can get you in a whole lot of trouble] to State Senator Joseph Pennacchio.  NOM, in a mailing to supporters dated 30 January, with a header reading, Tell Christie to Withdraw Nomination of Pro-SSM Judge For Extremist Views Equating Christianity and Slavery, reproduced said email:

When I hear someone say that they believe marriage is only between a man and a woman because that’s the way it’s always been, I think of the many “traditions” that deprived people of their civil rights for centuries: prohibitions on interracial marriage, slavery, (which is even provided for in the Bible), segregation, the subservience of women, to name just a few of these “traditions.”

I hope that you consider my request that you re-evaluate your position and, if after viewing the videos, reading Governor Whitman’s letter and thinking again about this issue of civil rights you still oppose same-sex marriage on grounds other than religion I would appreciate it if you you’d explain your position to me. And, if the basis of your opposition is religious, then I suggest that you do what the US Constitution mandates—and that is to maintain a separation between the state and religion.

Here’s the rub, according to NOM and their screeching advocates:

. . . a man who cannot tell the difference between supporting our traditional understanding of marriage and wanting to enslave a people lacks common sense and judicial temperament.

And to suggest that legislators should ignore the views of religious constituents, that moral views grounded in the Bible are somehow illegitimate in the public square, seriously compounds the offense.

These are not the words of a judicial conservative, a man who believes in common sense, strict construction of the state constitution—the kind of judge Gov. Christie promised to appoint to the court.

Over the weekend, it was suggested I lacked a sense of humor when referring to NC Congressman Larry Pittman’s email, sent ‘inadvertently’ to the NC General Assembly, in which Pittman suggested ‘abortionists’ [they would be physicians who perform legal and safe abortions] should be first in line for a public hanging.  Public hangings, Congressman Pittman added, should be reintroduced to deter crime and set a firm, if not ghastly example.

He was making a funny, I was informed.

Those who would expect me to laugh off the Pittman email would no doubt expect me to consider the Harris email a source of outrage and NOM’s response as perfectly reasonable.

They would be wrong.

The Bible is illegitimate in the public square when it’s stuffed down out throats as a wearisome and pathetic excuse to continue spewing ancient, ugly bigotry and discrimination; control the reproductive lives of women; and persist in the ludicrous, absurd proposition that a fertilized egg is a ‘person.’

And sorry, Harris is absolutely correct—you cannot erase or rewrite Biblical history.  It is not pretty. It is not even civilized. It is also not relevant, beyond the Beatitudes, which are rarely quoted and sadly ignored.

To be clear, I am not a fan of Governor Christie; I do not support the majority of his economic principles.  But when it comes to taking a stand against the ‘crazies,’ I give the man major props.  He’s standing firm for Harris.  He’s doing the right thing.

The National Organization for Marriage claims that Bruce Harris is an extremist.  My suggestion?

Take a look in the mirror, folks.  Take a long, hard look.

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