Gladys's Blog

The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria

2008-09-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

Want to feel good about the world and about yourself? Even empowered? Reading The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria, might do it. It accomplishes this by being a remarkably fine book. It is very carefully analyzed, it has a large scope, and it rings true. That it is optimistic is a nice plus. Fareed Zakaria comes across as an optimist and a realist at the same time. It is indeed a pleasure to read him.

There have been three tectonic power shifts in the last 500 years, says Zakaria: the rise of the West, the rise of the U.S., and the rise of the rest, which we are living through now. In 2006 and 2007 there have been 124 countries that grew at a rate of 4 percent or more, including more than 30 countries in Africa, two-thirds of the continent. The tallest building in the world is in Taipei, and it will soon be overtaken by one being built in Dubai. The biggest shopping mall is in Beijing, the biggest plane is built in Russia and Ukraine, the largest factories are all in China, the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, and the world's richest man is Mexican.

The number living on less than a dollar a day has fallen from 40 percent in 1981 to 18 percent in 2004. China has lifted more than 400 million out of poverty. And for the first time in history, we are witnessing global growth. It is the birth of a truly global order. Power is shifting from the nation-state up, down, and sideways. At the political/military level we are living in a one-power world. But in every other dimension--industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural--power is moving away from American dominance. What will a post-American world mean?

It feels like a very dangerous world. But, says Zakaria, it isn't. There is a trend away from major wars. Islam terror is a large and persistent problem, but it involves a small number of fanatics and is no as threatening as Hitler and Stalin were, or even China, in the 20th century. Since 2001, governments have been aggressively breaking up terrorist networks. Since 9/11, Al Qaeda has been unable to launch a major attack anywhere.

Today's relative calm has a deep structural basis: economics is trumping politics. We are living through the far largest increase ever in the world's economy. Between 1990 and 2007, the global economy grew from $22.8 trillion to $53.3 trillion. The financial force that has powered the new era is the free movement of capital. Currency traders swap about $2 trillion a day. Once a threat, the war on hyperinflation has been won. There are only 12 countries in the world today where inflation exceeds 15 percent, and most of them are failed states, such as Haiti.

Focusing on the gloom, says Zakaria, has left us unprepared to see that many of the problems we face are the problems of success. One way to see India and China is as two great global deflation machines, pumping out goods (China) and services (India) for a fraction of what they would cost to produce in the West. Urban India is bursting with enthusiasm--boisterous, colorful, open, vibrant, and ready for change. One of the poorest countries in the world, India nonetheless looks strikingly similar to the richest, America. Its democracy, 50 years old, is truly extraordinary. It is poised to become a great power at last. The nuclear agreement proposed between India and the U.S. is a big deal. It puts India on a par with U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China.

But Zakaria advises the U.S. to reduce nuclear weapons; build broad rules, not narrow interests; recommit to the mechanics and institutions for problem-solving and adjudication; and engage with other countries.

The U.S. must stop cowering in fear and regain its confidence. By almost all objective measures, the U.S. is in a blessed position today. But somehow we have managed to spook ourselves in a time of worldwide peace and prosperity. Since 9/11 the terrorist alert has never fallen below yellow. The U.S. spent $1 trillion on military responses to Islam extremism. But only two or three extremely minor terrorist plots have been uncovered in the entire country. Diplomacy would be more efficient and cheaper, less than $10 billion. In the event of a terrorist attack, Stephen Flynn of the Council of Human Relations says we should first ensure that it causes as little disruption as possible--economic, social, and political. What we're doing now is likely to produce the opposite effect. At the end of the day, openness is America's greatest strength.

"Historically, America has succeeded not because of the ingenuity of its government programs but because of the vigor of its society. It has thrived because it has kept itself open to the world--to goods and services, to ideas and inventions, and, above all, to people and cultures. This openness has allowed us to respond quickly and flexibly to new economic times, to manage change and diversity with remarkable ease, and to push forward the boundaries of individual freedom and autonomy. It has allowed America to create the first universal nation, a place where people from all over the world can work, mingle, mix, and share in a common dream and a common destiny."

Where's the Money Coming From, Part II

2008-07-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

So we've established that money really will be forthcoming if we understand how to get it, that is, how it is created. This is a bit more difficult, indeed much too difficult and complex for a blog post. So what follows is a mere beginning or brief summary.

Money is usually defined as a medium of exchange, which we all know about and deal with every day. That's fine. But the main point about money is that it is all about borrowing, about debt. We'll get to that.

Money is a complex phenomenon that has evolved over millennia and continues to evolve. It has come to be described as an institution, that is, an accepted pattern of human behavior. Although at one time money was simply a commodity, such as cattle or, following that, gold or silver, the age of commodity money has given way to the age of paper money and other instruments. So money now is comprised of coins, paper money (usually Federal Reserve notes), demand deposits (checking accounts) and other closely related deposits, depending on how broadly economists choose to define money (M1, M2, etc.), and, more recently, credit cards.

An individual gets money at his/her bank, usually in the form of demand deposits, either from prior deposits from paychecks or from borrowing. A business enterprise gets money the same way. Demand deposits are the largest form of money in the United States. The banks that create demand deposits are part of the Federal Reserve System. The so-called Fed is the central bank of the United States, which, among other things, provides money to banks and others according to the tools at its disposal.

The Federal Reserve also provides money to the Congress and to the various other government agencies that demand it. This involves constitutions and other laws and rules and regulations. Most state governments and other governments such as cities and counties and others such as school districts are required to balance their budgets each year. But when we come to the U.S. Congress, we see that it does not have to balance its annual budget. It passes a budget each year, now in the trillions of dollars, which may be balanced but usually projects a deficit, usually of some hundreds of billions of dollars. Earlier we were talking monetary policy, which mostly involves the rate of interest and strongly affects the level of economic activity, that is Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Now we're talking fiscal policy, which may have an even greater effect on GDP. Here's where we see that nation-states can borrow the huge sums. Here's where we see where the real money is coming from, that is, from borrowing from the taxpayers, from you and me when we pay our federal income taxes.

Not surprisingly, there are arguments about how the process or the system works. I accept the theory of the endogeneity of money, which is that money is created in response to demand for money. In other words, money doesn't appear--that is, it isn't created-- unless someone demands it. The alternative to the endogeneity idea is the idea of the exogeneity of money, meaning that it is created by the issuer, which of course it is, but without mention of demand.

So it looks like we could afford universal health care, seeing we're spending twice as much per capita now as, say, Canada, with less coverage and not-as-good outcomes. But now we're getting into macroeconomics, not to mention political philosophy and a theory of human nature. And what about the skills and education of the labor force, and what about natural resources like water power and minerals? And aren't we reading about consumer confidence? The list goes on about things we have to understand.

Where's the Money Coming From? again

2008-07-22T19:06:00.001-07:00

Sixty-five years ago Stuart Chase wrote a book entitled, Where's the Money Coming From, in which he offered five examples of instances in which a country, when faced with an urgent need for money, said that it did not have and could not acquire any, but which actually found the money, plenty of it, when it needed it for war. The partial exception to this is that Russia needed it not for war but for its five-year plan, while the others needed it for war. In any case, the point made by Stuart Chase was that finance actually is available and can be provided when a country needs it.

A perfect example of this was the United States finding the money to fight World War II beginning in 1941, when Japan invaded Pearl Harbor, although this occurred at about the worst possible time: during the Great Depression, when the country actually was poor and very short of money. Well, the money was found, billions and billions of it, to defeat Japan and Germany.

And yet only yesterday Al Gore expressed the fear that the money was not available to deal with global warming, which he feels is the most urgent problem in the world. This assessment is not at all surprising; almost everyone would agree with Mr. Gore that we can't afford to do much about global warming.

Why is this so? Not only do we have the examples in which the money is found when needed, but also we have the explanation provided by John Maynard Keynes in The General Theory of Unemployment, Interest and Money in 1936. This is indeed a puzzlement.

Election 2008; A Comparison

2008-06-14T11:39:00.000-07:00

As the national elections of 2008 approach, less than five months away, it's interesting, and a bit puzzling, to reflect on the presidential election that took place in 1968. Interesting because both elections will come to be, I think, pretty important and exciting as elections go. And too there are such similarities. We'll learn later about the differences.

In 1968 the Democratic convention was held in Chicago, and riots resulted in the form of protests against the Vietnam War. Lyndon Baines Johnson was president following the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963. Johnson had accomplished some remarkable things, notably civil rights legislation and a war on poverty that cut the level of poverty almost in half, to around 12 percent, about the same as now. (Yeah.) And he was the last president up to Bill Clinton to balance the budget. But the war was still going on and it was very unpopular, even though the invasion of South Vietnam by North Vietnam appeared to be pretty scary and something to defeat if possible, inasmuch as the Communists appeared to be still going strong internationally. The Communists did in fact take over South Vietnam, and Laos and Cambodia too, as I remember.

Anyway Johnson had decided not to run for reelection, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey was the Democratic nominee. Richard Milhous Nixon was the Republican nominee, and, as everyone knows, he won the presidency, taking office in 1969. The riots in Chicago could well have been a deciding factor in that vote. Now in the news we're reading about some of the protests being planned for the Democratic convention to be held in Denver in August of 2008. Could they have similar consequences?

What is puzzling to some of us is why the protests now over the Iraq War, during a very unpopular presidency, and with the war very unpopular, are so muted compared with the uproar in 1968. Indeed casualties were much higher then: more than 58,000 Americans lost their lives, while the figure in the Iraq War is now only a little over 4000. The numbers reflect no doubt the existence of a draft in 1968, contrasted with an all-volunteer military force in Iraq today. One might suspect that were there a draft now the protests would be much louder. As for the outcome of the Obama-McCain election campaign now going on, that remains to be seen.

Evolution to a New Paradigm

2008-05-14T19:15:00.000-07:00

It's time for a revolution. No, make that an evolution--an evolution to a new world order, a new paradigm. It's not the end of history; it could turn out to be the beginning, or at least a turning point. In any case, it seems to me it's time to stop thinking in isms. As J. Fagg Foster used to say, it will be better when all isms are wasms. (Pronunciation: say "was" and then add "ms" like at the end of "isms." But never mind; the important thing is not the pronunciation but the idea.)

That is to say, we should not be using capitalism, or socialism, or communism, or any other ism, as a criterion of judgment. Of course we can use them as useful patterns for organization, but not as our one and only model as we have tended to do in the past. Instead we should be planning a new model, not one patterned after a particular institutional structure but one guided by a judgment of how an economy should organize itself the better to serve people. And not just a national economy, but a global economy, divided up as much as desirable into political subdivisions. And one with the Internet as a tool, maybe the greatest thing that's come along in centuries.

Then what should be the guideposts if not isms? We don't know the answer to that question, but we do have a pretty good sense of changes needed, of the kinds of problems that need to be solved. We know we should be doing better about poverty. That's a huge, and obvious, problem. We need to organize our economy, or economies, to produce enough goods and services for everyone, and most of all, to distribute them to everyone. We actually have the technology to do that. The huge inequities in income at the present time, I submit, are the major reason we're in something like a recession, or a slump in the economy. And of course we know about other things we need to do, or to provide, such as education, health care, war and peace--we could go on. In other words, we need to provide for human welfare. It's that simple. As Elizabeth Kubler-Ross said, what could be simpler, and yet what could be more difficult.

But to go on, it might be apparent that one thing we need to get us going right is an Adam Smith, or a Karl Marx, or an Alfred Marshall, or a John Maynard Keynes, or a Milton Friedman. As far as I can tell, we don't have that.

So where should I go with this? Yeah, right now I'll go political. We need to choose the candidate for the presidency of the United States who can take us into a new paradigm. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John McCain. I'll leave it at that for today.

Democrats and Republicans Fix the Economy

2008-05-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

Time to compare how Democrats and Republicans fix the economy? Let's do it. Let's start by comparing the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush economic performances.

When Bill Clinton took office as President in 1993, the GDP was at $7,451 billion (at the end of 1992). By the end of 1993 GDP had reached $7,952 b, and it continued to advance every year of his presidency, reaching $9,888 b by the end of 2000, which was an increase of $2,437 b, the longest advance of GDP in American history. During George W. Bush's presidency, the first year, in 2001, the GDP fell initially to $9,876 b, which can be assumed to be a result of Clinton's policies, but by the end of 2001 it had rebounded to $9,910 b, after which it advanced continuously to $11,676 b at the end of 2007, the latest figure available. This represents an increase of $1,788 b during the seven years of his presidency. Were we to compare this figure with that of Clinton at the end of seven years, we find an increase of $2,221 b for Clinton. That is: the gain under Clinton for seven years was $2,221 b; under Bush, $1,788 b. Now, to continue to the present date of April 3, 2008, the economy is reported to be heading towar a recession. About that, we'll have to wait and see. In any case, the economic growth under Bush has been the slowest of any postwar expansion, averaging just 2.8 percent a year, far below the 4.8 percent average posted by earlier postwar business cycles of similar length.

Now to look at the rate of unemployment. Following the same timetable as above, unemployment during the first seven years of Clinton's presidency dropped from 6.9 percent in 1993 to 4.0 percent in 2000, a drop of 2.9 percentage points. During the first seven years of Bush's presidency, unemployment rose from 4.7 percent in 2001 to 5.3 percent in 2008, an increase of 0.6 percentage points.

What about those budget deficits Democrats are so often accused of? Clinton's presidency ended with a surplus of $5.6 trillion. Bush spent all of that and had accumulated a deficit of $8.5 trillion by July, 2006. It continues to grow.

How did they do this? There are two major tools available: monetary policy and fiscal policy. As for monetary policy, both parties generally favor lowering the rate of interest to stimulate the economy and both have had occasion to do this during their tenure. Although this can be done only by the Federal Reserve, the Fed has during these two presidencies been quite cooperative, lowering rates when indicated.

This leaves fiscal policy, the other major tool. The Democratic philosophy is to pursue a progressive tax structure and to use government spending as a stimulus as needed. Clinton as soon as he assumed the presidency raised taxes on the top brackets from 35 percent to 39 percent and lowered taxes on the lowest brackets by increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit. These actions bore fruit with eight years of increasing GDP, as noted above, and even a budget in surplus (the last budget surplus prior to Clinton's had been achieved by Lyndon Johnson in 1969.) The Republicans, on the other hand, tend to favor lowering taxes on the rich to stimulate the economy through increased investment. This policy has been pursued by Bush, with the results noted above--less growth and more unemployment than under Clinton, plus something we haven't yet noted here, huge budget deficits. The $3 trillion budget proposed by Bush for Fiscal Year 2009 has a proposed deficit of $400 billion, along with cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, health and human services, and education--cuts that will fall more heavily on lower income recipients. The Bush budget deficits, I would suggest, have been a major factor in keeping the economy going during most of the Bush presidency, although now, even with huge deficits, we appear to be going toward recession.

One extraneous point, if I may: I would fault Clinton for not using some of his surplus for needed social programs and/or such useful national projects as improving Amtrak.

The President of the University of Colorado

2008-02-26T13:42:00.000-08:00

Bruce Benson has been named by the Board of Regents of the University of Colorado to be the new president of that institution, frequently, and appropriately, referred to as the flagship institution in the state of Colorado. I feel that the selection falls short for the following reasons.

One, such a selection suggests that the people of Colorado are willing to give at least the appearance of valuing low taxes over providing excellence in higher education. Surely our citizens do not wish to continue to provide almost the lowest (that is, 49th) level of support for higher education of any state in the nation. We are a relatively wealthy state, one that can afford to educate its citizenry, and this is indeed important. Accordingly, we should embrace a commitment to quality, and this should be apparent to the community, to the faculty, and, most of all, to the students. The selection of someone with superior competence in fundraising but no academic background in higher education does not indicate such a commitment.

Second, the president is the most important employee of the University, and as such he/she should qualify as likely to be one who can best guide the university in the pursuit of higher education and can best speak to the community about it. He should embody a passion for learning, for the quest for ideas, for the search for truth. While it is possible that Mr. Benson may prove to be such a choice, his resume does not suggest that degree of excellence or that kind of life experience. The Regents have not succeeded in persuading the community of the superiority of his qualifications.

How to Stimulate the Economy #2

2008-01-24T14:33:00.000-08:00

How to avoid a recession? After more than sixty years of study and observation of U.S. income, I too have a proposal.

The Fed has already reduced the interest rate, which can be expected to be somewhat helpful in a matter of months. Fiscal policy, however, is the better tool for the state we're in. Our question is how best to increase employment and GDP. The Congress can choose its own programs or choose to affect private spending; it should do both. We should be looking at both speed and strength of stimulus. And while we're at it, we should be cognizant of the effect of what we do on current problems and goals.

The most predictable and the fastest and most powerful tool is government spending. Recall that when the U.S. entered World War II we went from 14% unemployment to a low of around 2% in a matter of months. At that time we started spending on munitions; we don't want more of that now. At the present time we should activate programs that would best fit goals for America, say, e.g., health care for low income children, or universal health care, or providing education for all pre-school children. Or the first steps in addressing the problem of global warming. Or rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges. Any of these programs or a combination of them could be pursued until full employment is achieved.

Private spending could be a supplement to this. The best way to increase it would be to provide income to the poorest among us. The richest country in the history of the world has a population of around 13% living in poverty. This could and should be alleviated. The IRS could implement a negative income tax, i.e., send checks to those whose income is well below the poverty level. This would be similar to the Earned Income Tax Credit and could be simply an expansion of that to anyone, working or not, having an income below a certain level. These people would be likely to spend all that they receive--an immediate and sizable stimulus.

How to Stimulate the Economy

2008-01-23T14:50:00.000-08:00

Everybody but me is talking about how to avoid a recession, ASAP. Here is my plan:

The Congress should look at the social service proposals offered but not adopted during the last two years, e.g., health care for low income children in the US. Programs that seem most feasible, say, those most needed and those that could be implemented most quickly, should be selected for immediate passage, up to full employment. This would constitute an immediate increase in GDP. If those are not sufficient to achieve full employment, other programs such as universal pre-school could be added. An alternative would be not social services but work on infrastructure, e.g., roads and bridges.

The other kind of program that would be most stimulating would be a negative income tax, i.e., payments from the IRS to Americans who have no income or income only below a specified figure. This would be similar to the Earned Income Tax Credit except that it would be only for those not employed.

Immediate staff work would be required to determine as well as possible how much of any such program would be adequate to avoid or reverse recession. Also under consideration from the start should be which of these programs and/or how much of each should be made permanent.

There would be many fortunate by-products of such measures--to be considered at another time.

Ken Burns' The War

2007-10-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

There's no way I can find the right words to say what I want to say. So I'll just say it.This Ken Burns TV presentation of WWII is the best thing I've ever seen on television. I was so moved that at the end I just sat and cried, didn't move.

One reason I found it so moving, and so important too, is that a lot of people today don't know that the US wasn't always militarily strong and mighty as we are now. We had a military the size of that of Romania. We could have lost WWII and almost did at least a couple of times. Another thing that's so great about the film is that it reminds us that at that time we were all together; we were probably as united as it's possible to be. And America comes out looking awfully good; excuse me for feeling proud. Another thing is that I was there, in a way, even though there's no way I or anyone not in it will ever understand what the infantry went through. I was 21 when I joined the WAVES. I remember how we felt at VJ Day. We sort of stood around together and smiled at each other, and beamed, and cried too. Another thing is that my boyfriend was killed when his B17 was shot down over Belgium. Another thing is that both of my husbands were in the Pacific. Fagg was a private in the infantry. The Japanese really were as depicted in the film. I'm also remembering seeing German prisoners of war on the base where I was stationed, the Naval Air Station outside of Memphis, TN. They looked healthy and marched right along.

And on top of all this we are now in the stupidest war imaginable and we're not getting out of it as we should, NOW. I opposed it before we invaded Iraq, along with Kucinich and Obama and Gravel too I think. And along with them I say we can and should get out now, in orderly fashion as George McGovern outlined it. What kind of a country are we? We've never been like this before, not in my memory or understanding of history. We know what's brought us to this, or who has, I should say: the worst president in our history.

Klein and Greenspan

2007-09-25T09:55:00.000-07:00

This is a response to the Democracy Now piece featuring Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine) and Alan Greenspan (The Age of Turbulence) September 24, 2007.

Greenspan said that capitalism is the only or best option for the world now that communism/socialism have demonstrably failed. My take on this is that we should not look to ideologies as an institutional framework but rather to mixed economies in which democratic societies select various institutional arrangements, which will vary according to technological dictates, and change them as needed. Capitalist institutions can do some things very well but are not appropriate as models to serve as a criterion of judgment; the same could be said of socialistic institutions.

Greenspan blamed income disparities on the failure of American schools to prepare citizens for information technology work, causing a shortage of skilled workers in the computer field. To me such disparities as these can hardly be called a problem, not to mention the fact that worldwide there is probably not a shortage of such workers. The problem actually is very different from this, involving largely the current practice of corporations to set exorbitant salaries for management.

Greenspan said he had approved the Bush administration's budget deficits on the ground that the economy should preserve deficits so that investors will have the option of buying Treasury bonds. Also that Social Security as presently arranged will be the problem and should be privatized and/or cut. As for the deficits, my memory is that he continued to support the Bush budget deficits long after they became much larger than necessary and desirable. As for Social Security, the best estimates at this time, as well as when Greenspan made these comments during his tenure as Fed chairman, is that the Social Security so-called trust fund will be sufficient to fund retirees' pensions until 2042 or 2052, or even until about 2075.

Greenspan's data on how successful the current global system has been in lessening world poverty need another look.

That's all for now. If other comments occur to me I'll be back with more.

I'M BACK

2007-09-22T13:23:00.001-07:00

Hello! I'm back, after a long absence following a Google update followed by a Google refusal to let me back on. I finally got help from my daughter.

I'm not sure just where I'm going right now with my blogs, maybe mostly books I'm reading and what I'm thinking. Latest book to mention, just from reviews and interviews, is Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Can't wait to get it.

As to where I am in my life, I'm still happy at Holly Creek, which was definitely the right move for me, loving living independently. This is one of the best times in my life, although I'm sort of embarrassed to say it, inasmuch as having kids takes the top in many ways. The trouble with that was that I was too busy and too exhausted to enjoy it as much as would have been the case otherwise, and should have been the case, darn it. That doesn't seem quite fair. Just today I heard it said that having kids lets you see life all over again through a child's eyes. That sure hit me as true. And wonderful. I'm very happy to have been born female so that I was able to experience that. Men really do miss out in that department, and it shows.

Lets see. What I'm trying to do in my life right now is to read all of my husband Fagg's stuff that is available, both writings and lectures, to get ready to be a discussant on an AFEE (Association for Evolutionary Economics) panel meeting in New Orleans in January. I'm also thinking about a new endeavor, a new framework or paradigm for where we are in this world--which may well take me the rest of my life, and which, of course, I may never get together. But what could be more fun than working on it. That's what I love most about my life: I have the rest of my life to keep on learning. Again: what could be more fun! How lucky I am!

I'M BACK

2007-09-22T13:23:00.000-07:00

McGovern/Polk Out of Iraq

2007-02-25T14:39:00.000-08:00

George McGovern and William R. Polk

Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now

Simon and Schuster. 2006

Reviewed by Gladys Foster, February 27, 2007

This book outlines the best plan I have seen for getting out of Iraq, best in part because it advises getting out now, beginning in 2006, that is (unfortunately, we're already past that date), and finishing by the end of June 2007, in part because it gives explicit advice about how to help Iraq, and also because the authors tell us a lot about the history of Iraq that we should understand and about what the U.S. is planning.

George McGovern served in the U.S. House of Representatives four years and the Senate eighteen years and then was a candidate for President. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Distinguished Flying Cross for service as a bomber pilot in World War II. He holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and has been a visiting professor at fifteen American and European Universities and has spoken at nearly two thousand college campuses all over the world.

William R. Polk studied at Harvard and Oxford and taught at Harvard until he was appointed to be a member of the State Department Planning Council for the Middle East in 1961. He has been professor of history at the University of Chicago and founded its Middle East Studies Center. He has also been president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs and has authored a number of books on international relations.

The following is what they have to tell us:

The U.S. is building at least four large remote bases in Iraq, which suggests a permanent occupation, and is making the Green Zone in Baghdad into a small city with 300 houses, barracks, etc., and its own electrical, water, and sewage systems. Eight out of ten Iraqis regard us as occupiers, and 88 percent of the Sunni Muslim Arabs favor violent attacks on American troops.

Both the British and the Americans have believed that native troops would be less unpopular than foreign troops, which is dubious when natives are perceived to be puppets, with the result that the insurgents often regard them as quislings, and Iraqi troops refuse to fight, or join the insurgents. Almost certainly the troops have attitudes that no training is likely to alter while foreigners remain in Iraq.

From the British control of Iraq to the present, Iraq has lurched from one military dictatorship to another without a chance to form coherent institutions or even the accustomed habits of civil society. Iraq became independent by treaty with Britain in 1922, then by recognition of the League of Nations in 1932. Britain reoccupied Iraq in WWII and ruled until 1958. After assurance that the U.S. would not object to an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. did indeed invade in 1991, and again in 2003, and Iraq was burdened by severe sanctions, which resulted in many children being stunted. Many Iraqis would probably say today they would like to return to Saddam's 1970s and 198s policy of modernization.

Oil for more than a century has been both a blessing and a curse for Iraq, with complex arrangements with Britain, France, Turkey, and America. Oil production now has fallen from 2.5 million barrels a day to around 1.1 million. The American answer was to bring in British and American oil companies, suggesting that the Iraq invasion was about oil.

As for getting out, the U.S. cannot impose its will on Iraq, however badly they resume their lives. We have to let them do it their way. Self-determination is a fundamental right. Reconstituting our good name will require blending political, moral, and financial remedies. We won't be able to prevent turmoil, but withdrawal will remove a major cause of insurgency. The phased withdrawal we outline below is not "cut and run."

Steps for Withdrawal:

The first way the U.S. can be helpful is to contribute to a “bridging” effort between the occupation and complete independence. The Iraqi government would be wise to request the short-term services of an international force to police the country during and immediately after the period of withdrawal, with a firm date fixed for withdrawal--about two years. The insurgency will thus lose support and power. Iraq could use the UN and/or the Arab League, and get Arabs as much as possible, say, 3000 each from Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt, or maybe Jordan and Syria, or Pakistan, Malaysia, and/or Indonesia. The U.S. should pay for this--about $6 billion, or about 2 percent of what continued war would cost. This should be paid to the Iraqi government, which would then ”hire” the services of the forces on a government-to-government basis. The U.S. should also turn over equipment that is suitable, particularly transport, communications, and light arms.
During the period of withdrawal the U.S. should provide assistance in every way possible to train a permanent national police force comprised of Iraqi citizens to replace the international force. The Iraqi government is unlikely to want to continue supporting insurgents, so the level of combat is almost certain to be reduced. Creating a national police force is proving very difficult, however, because of the bitterness caused by the occupation, so this may take from 4 to 5 years. The U.S. should provide about $1 billion to help the Iraqi government to create, train, and equip such a force. This is roughly the cost of about 4 days of the American occupation.
America should immediately release all prisoners of war and close its detention centers.
The U.S. should not encourage the Iraqis to maintain an army but instead might encourage transferring the military to a national police force or to a national reconstruction corps modeled on the U.S. Corps of Engineers, to undertake the rebuilding of infrastructure damaged by the war. The U.S. could allocate $5 million to this, or roughly the cost of 2 days of the occupation.
The U.S. should stop immediately work on the 4 bases we’re building there and turn them over to Iraq. We are told that 14 “enduring bases,” amounting to virtual cities for American troops are also under construction; they should be closed.
Americans should withdraw from the Green Zone and turn it over to Iraq no later than December 31, 2007.
Before the turnover the U.S should buy, rent, or build a “normal” embassy, not in the Green Zone, with a much reduced complement of U.S. officials.
The U.S. should stop paying the at least 25,000 mercenaries (known euphemistically as Personal Security Detail)--literally the “loose cannons” of the Iraq war.
The U.S. must dig up and destroy land mines and unexploded ordinance and clean up depleted uranium in artillery shells and their targets. As much as possible of this work should be turned over to Iranian contractors and labor. Unemployment in Iraq is very high, in the millions. This might cost $250 million--roughly one day’s wartime expenditure.
Property damage from the invasion and occupation is estimated at between $100 billion and $200 billion. The U.S. should employ grants and loans and employ Iraqis, especially the “grassroots,” as much as possible, for reconstruction. We suggest that the U.S. allocate $1 billion for surveys, planning, and organization before trying to determine how much to provide for reconstruction. We urge generosity.
Work should be undertaken to dismantle and dispose of the miles of concrete blast walls and wire barriers, at, say $500 m.
Some American facilities have done enormous damage to Iraqi cultural sites, e.g., the Babylon World Heritage archeological site and the 5000-year-old site of Kish. America should set up a fund of, say, $250 million to be administered by a committee drawn from the Iraqi Museum of Antiquities, the British Museum, the Smithsonian Institute, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and other organizations to assist in the restoration of damaged sites.
Independent accounting of Iraqi funds is urgently required. The UN handed over billions of dollars generated by the sale of Iraq petroleum to the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority), on the understanding that the monies would be used for the benefit of the Iraqi people, and this has gone unaccounted for. An independent audit should be undertaken immediately, for, say, $100 million. The U.S. is morally obligated to repay any misused or misappropriated funds. Perhaps the most damaging is the $2.4 billion for a project allocated to Halliburton’s subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root. During 2004 the U.S. Army paid the company or its subsidiaries more than $7 billion and is expected to pay out $4-5 billion in 2006.
The U.S. should make reparations to Iraqi civilians for loss of lives and property it caused. Individual military units are authorized to make “condolence payments” of up to $2,500. The numbers of civilians killed or wounded is unknown, but present estimates suggest a cost of $200 million.
To assist in the growth of civic institutions the U.S. should offer, through suitable international, multinational, or nongovernmental organizations, a number of financial inducements and supports. These should include fellowships for the training of lawyers, judges, journalists, social workers and other civic affairs workers, at Iraq, European, Asian, or American educational institutions, at a cost of, say, $500 million to promote it.
Assistance to grassroots organizations and professional societies could help to encourage the return to Iraq of the thousands of skilled men and women who left the country in the years following the 1991 Gulf War, for a total cost of $500 million.
Payments should be made to those tortured, as defined by the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, and to those who have suffered long-term imprisonment. We have not been able to assess the cost.
The U.S. should not object to the Iraqi government voiding all oil contracts for petroleum exploration, development, and marketing made during the American occupation, so that these can be renegotiated. Iraqi oil has been sold at a discount to Americans. We expect no cost for this.
The U.S. should encourage with large-scale assistance various UN agencies as well as nongovernmental organizations to help reconstitute the Iraqi public health system through the rebuilding of hospitals and clinics and the purchase of diagnostic and therapeutic equipment, plus training for health workers at a cost of $500 million for the first year, $400 million for the second, $300 million for the third, $200 million for the fourth, and $100 million for the final year of the program, for a final total of about $1.7 billion, which is less than the cost of about 8 days of occupation.
Finally, America should express its condolences for the large number of Iraqis killed, incapacitated, incarcerated, and/or tortured. No monetary cost.

The total cost of the programs outlined above is about $7.75 billion for the basic program, plus about $5.5 billion for the second tier. They would save us at least $350 billion and more likely $400-$500 billion (2 years of occupation). Even if our estimates are low, we believe it would be one of the best investments we ever made.

The U.S. veterans of the Iraq war deserve a comprehensive rehabilitation--physically, mentally, educationally, and economically, including the highly successful offerings of the WWII GI Bill of Rights. We need to bind up the nation’s wounds.

What about the war on terrorism? Two facts to put this in perspective: Since the late 1960s, the number of Americans killed by international terrorists is about the same as that killed by lightning. And the U.S. occupation in Iraq helps to recruit terrorists.

Washington is planning new Vietnams and Iraqs and the construction of scores of bases in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, from which to launch new campaigns. Reading the National Security Policy suggests not the beacon of hope but the knell of doom. Neocons in Washington are planning perpetual war. Thus other countries want nuclear weapons to deter the U.S. Real security cannot be secured in this direction. Only mutual restraint is the answer.

McGovern/Polk Out of Iraq

2007-02-25T13:08:00.000-08:00

George McGovern

Freakonomics

2006-12-12T12:02:00.000-08:00

Although it didn't quite live up to its billing, I found Freakonomics well worth reading. What pleased me was the frank and disarming nature of the authors. No name-dropping, no showing off, no calling attention to their own abilities (although they are noteworthy), just an effort to connect with the reader, even to comfort anyone who might be discomfited by some of their correlations. A remarkably sensitive book.

The topics I found worthwhile were the story about the Chicago South Side drug gang and the findings about the correlation between the availability of abortions and crime. Those were really significant.

David C. Korten and the Corporation

2006-12-10T11:52:00.000-08:00

I've just finished two books well worth reporting on, both by David C. Korten: The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism (1999) and When Corporations Rule the World (first appearance in 1995, most recent revision in 2001).

Given my current interest in the corporation as the villain in world affairs, notably in globalization, I'm surprised I didn't see these books sooner.

In the first, on the post-corporate world, the central thesis is that capitalism is the order of the world and that its goal is money. Period. Korten proposes instead that we design our world into one centered on life, or the organism. In response to insights from the new biology, science is going from the machine metaphor to the organism metaphor. We now have the knowledge and the communications technology to function with a global species intelligence--to make a conscious collective choice to act differently, to accept responsibility for our impact on the continuing evolution of life and consciousness on our planet. Capitalism is to a healthy market economy what cancer is to a healthy body. Curing the capitalist cancer will require ending the legal fiction that corporations are entitled to the rights of persons and excluding corporations from political participation. This message is very powerful, and Korten develops it well. His presentation is weakened, however, by definitions that seem to be peculiar to himself, e.g., that separate capitalism from the free market.

The second book, on corporations ruling the world, is a practical and persuasive description of the present situation and what can be done about it. The global financial system has become a predator that lives off the flesh of the productive economy. Korten's recommendations include globalizing consciousness, localizing agriculture, recycling, organizing our living spaces to reduce dependence on the auto, shortening the work-week to 20 or 30 hours, letting people rather than corporations make political decisions, levying a tax on financial transactions and increasing taxes on the wealthy and on luxuries, one hundred percent reserve requirements for banks, anti-trust enforcement, getting corporations off the welfare rolls, pay equity (that is, reducing the disparity in pay between the worker and the CEO from, say, 500, to around 10), choosing the UN over the Bretton Woods organizations for corporate accountability, a guaranteed annual income for everyone, including children, thus ending Social Security and pensions and "welfare." And more. In short, joining The Living Democracy Movement to make a civil society. "...[W]e are each learners in an unfolding process that requires us to look with a critical eye and an open mind for the spark of goodness in each person and the kernel of truth in each idea."

The Democratic Victory of 2oo6: What Now?

2006-11-12T15:55:00.000-08:00

This is it: Worshipping the Myths of World War II, by Edward W. Wood, Jr.--the book that can point the way to where we should be going in the 21st century. It's not that there have been no peace movements, especially among American youth. And Europe is following a path that is less war-oriented than that of the U.S. But this book contains some important truths that can help to remove our blinders to make us ready for a powerful peace movement.

As for me, without knowing what might come next, I concluded the series of blogs I was writing in an effort to strengthen the Democrats' platform in the election of November 7, 2006. And goodness knows the Democrats will need all the wisdom they/we can get in order to know how to deal with the horrendous problems facing the country now. Nonetheless, and still without knowing exactly where I am going next, the book by Wood does tell me what I want to do today.
Wood argues that, in order to clarify our struggle with terrorism, Americans need to understand what has been wrong with our thinking about the role of wars, notably World War II. We need to rid ourselves of four myths about WWII: (1) war is good; (2) World War II was fought by the Greatest Generation; (3) we won World War II largely on our own; and (4) when evil lies in others, war is the only means to justice.

I think he's right. Just a couple of comments. It's okay for those of who lived through the Great Depression and were victorious in WWII to feel good about it as we reach the end of our lives.
But that's enough. And we really should understand that other countries did much more to win that war than the U.S. did. But surely what is most important is that we be quite clear that war is neither the best nor the only way to resolve disputes.

Just one sidenote from the message of the book. One reason no doubt that we feel good about WWII is that it ended the Great Depression. Now if we would only understand that there is a better way to end depressions. The spending for the war showed us how, but we seem not ready to learn that lesson.

Now back to the message of Worshipping the Myths of World War II. It can help us to see how obvious it is that the world must get serious about the peace movement. And I hope that included in that will be a better analysis of how to deal with terrorism. We have been so intent on using war to fight terrorism that we have been unaware of how a focus on peace can help to indicate more realistic policies.

Final Political Blog in the Series

2006-10-31T19:10:00.000-08:00

In this short final blog in the series of political blogs before the election of November 7, 2006, I'll just identify a number of issues the Democrats should be trying to address. And I have comments on a couple of them.

Electronic voting. This is emerging as an issue of critical importance. Tampering with voting machines can destroy our democracy all by itself. In the elections of 2000 and 2004, there is evidence of tampering to the extent that the outcome on the presidential level was changed. And now there are reports of plans to do more tampering in the elections next week.

The Middle East. I'll simply add to the blogs I've written earlier on this question. I've now come up with a recommendation: go back to square one, that is, to 1948 when Israel became a state. Israeli borders should be restored to where they were at that time, and Palestine should agree to accept the existence of Israel as a state. Palestine could become a state if it so desired.
And both Israel and Palestine would have to pledge not to attack each other.

Other issues for Democrats, both before and after the election, that is, if any Democrats are elected: global warming and environmental protection, increase in the minimum wage to the level of the so-called living wage, preservation of Social Security as presently constituted, stopping Congressional corruption, an energy policy, universal health insurance for Americans, including prescription drug coverage, tuition help for students in higher education, better pay for teachers, full employment, ending poverty, legalizing marijuana, civil rights for same-sex couples, legalization of helping patients to die according to their wishes, regulation of airlines to the extent necessary to assist in the avoidance of bankruptcy, strengthening fire and police departments, better inspection of cargo coming into this country, stopping construction of that fence on the Mexican border and working on the immigration issue if we can ever think of any way to make it better rather than worse, easing the trade deficit, making taxes more progressive, reform of the electoral college, setting up a department of peace in the president's cabinet, restoring civil liberties including the right of habeas corpus, mass transit and more funding for Amtrak, public financing of elections, ratification of the Kyoto Prootocol, equal rights for women, including equal pay for equal work, day care, elder care, and parental leave for families, and making computers available to everyone, along with guaranteeing Net Neutrality. I'm sure there are lots more, but these should keep us out of mischief for awhile.

Globalization and International Trade

2006-10-29T20:48:00.000-08:00

What a topic! Both exciting and too big to handle. Also in a state of flux. All I can do here is mention some items that Americans ought to be dealing with in order to survive in this super-competitive global environment. And we can indeed survive.

Let's start with globalization. One way to view this huge and fascinating phenomenon is as the integration of technology, commerce, culture, and knowledge across national boundaries, something potentially enriching and enlightening. We're all connected! But as we have seen, globalization has also energized protesters by the millions all over the world because of its apparent role in defiling the environment, taking away workers' rights, making impoverished countries still more impoverished, and more. Globalization seems to be governed by multinational corporations (MNCs). These two perspectives have been ingeniously described as globalization from below, as from the Internet, versus globalization from above, as from the establishment.

It is not that globalization is bad per se, as I see it, but that policies being pursued in recent decades have been unfortunate. This could be reversed.

What could a Democratic candidate say about globalization? A big problem is that there is no agency in existence for overseeing the incorporation and/or the behavior of MNCs, and as a result one can play off one nation against another for environmental favors or lower taxes and the like. We could seek counsel and action from international organizations such as the United Nations or the Group of Eight. But inasmuch as they are not set up for such a role, this doesn't seem very promising. (Structural reform of the United Nations would be a worthy endeavor, if and when success appears possible.) We could, nonetheless, work through other international organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, on such issues as corporate taxes, environmental regulations, workers' safety, debt forgiveness, foreign aid, and so on. We should insist on the particiption of environmentalists and workers in the deliberations of international agencies.

It gets a little easier when we look at international trade. The term "free trade" is now more descriptive of what corporations do: write the rules as they see fit. So let's talk about "fair trade" as something Democrats should favor. Trade does indeed increase GDP, and lowering tariffs and quotas is in fact good for the economy. Protectionism is usually a step backward and should be avoided when at all possible. There are better directions to take, but changes must get under way immediately in two (related) areas: (1) labor and (2) competitiveness.

(1) The American worker has been taking a beating in recent decades, and this is grossly unfair and also unnecessary. While productivity is high, wages stagnate, the workweek is too long, and unemployment is too high. Historically there have been two ways to help the cause of labor, unions and legislation. The weakening of labor unions should be reversed. But here we'll focus on what the federal government can do for labor.

In no way should workers have to bear the burden of the so-called unfavorable balance of trade, a situation in which imports exceed exports. We know how to reach full employment through the use of progressive fiscal and monetary policies. Let's insist on full employment. At the same time let's see that, when workers are laid off, unemployment compensation (and/or wage insurance) is adequate and continuing as long as needed. Add to this programs for retraining and relocation. All of this can help workers while they seek new employment. Legislation is also urgently needed for raising the minimum wage up to the level of a living wage. Arguments about this are treated in an earlier blog.

Pensions must also be guaranteed through legislation, and Social Security should be assured as a guaranteed monthly payment (not privatized). Universal health insurance should be provided; this would cost much less than the present chaotic "system." Programs that benefit families, such as day care, elder care, and parental leave, should be put in place.

We should be made aware, however, that layoffs from jobs sent overseas are usually visible, while the gains from trade are spread out over the entire economy and are not so readily apparent.

One more thing in the area of trade: the huge excess of imports over exports may not be sustainable and should not be ignored. The nations financing this debt could decide to dump dollars in favor of other currencies, and this could mean the end of the use of the dollar as the world currency. We must put resources into studying this issue and making recommendations.

As for the second item, competitiveness, there is a question about whether Americans are being "dumbed down." However serious that is, the remedies required, although not small, are fairly obvious. Simply, competitiveness can be assured by investing in people and infrastructure. American workers and employees must be made more creative, more motivated, more efficient, more productive. Americans have a history of being innovative and entrepreneuial; this can continue.

Investment in education is essential. Let's consider free tuition for higher education. Can we afford it? Here I can only advocate a serious look at the costs of this relative to the costs of preemptive warfare we are now engaged in, along with a look at the heavy weaponry we are now financing when the response to worldwide terrorism requires quite a different, and actually less expensive, approach. We financed education for veterans of World War II, when American GDP was much lower than it is now. And the payoff from the increased investment in education was then, and would be now, enormous.

Education at all levels should focus not only on science and engineering but on the arts as well. Instead of cutting down on the arts as something less than essential, we should recognize the arts as productive of creativity.

An item of great importance all by itself is the question of Net Neutrality. Surely the Internet is the most amazing and, yes, wonderful thing that has happened in this age of great happenings. We must keep it accessible to all.

If the measures suggested above were in place, then we could expect that globalization and increased trade would be not only acceptable but exciting and welcome, even a great adventure. Let's bring on more globalization from below.

Let's Have Some Wage Rage

2006-10-28T16:50:00.000-07:00

The US Congress recently failed to pass a bill that would have raised the minimum wage, presently at $5.15 an hour, which is about $10,500 a year for a full-time worker. The value of the minimum wage has dropped 20 percent since its last increase in 1997. It's at its lowest value in 50 years.

Jim Hightower reports that there are 7.3 million Americans working for a minimum wage. And 72 percent of them are adults. The average worker brings home more than half the family's weekly income, and a third bring home 100 percent of their family's earnings. Sixty percent of these workers are women, and 760,000 are single mothers.

This is happening in the US, the richest country in the history of the world. Per capita GDP is $41,800, while per capita personal income is almost $33,000, or, for a family of four, $132,000. There are several million millionaires in the US, by various estimates, and Forbes says there are 374 billionaires. Increasing disparities in income have been widely noted. All of this would suggest the possibility, and the desirability, of realizing not only increases in the minimum wage but in the so-called living wage as well. Here we consider both.

Let's look at the reasoning. The usual argument in opposition to an increase in wages is that it would cause a loss of jobs. Yet in the states that have raised the minimum wage, employment has increased. The problem is that the job-loss argument is based on a microeconomic model: if an employer has to pay higher wages he will have to lay off workers. If he is the only employer who is affected, that result indeed would seem plausible. But if a higher wage is mandated for everyone, we must go to a macroeconomic model. That would mean that the increased purchasing power would increase demand and thus employment. The workers affected, by definition, are in the low income brackets and thus would spend every dime of an increase. Obviously, then, a federally mandated increase, rather than a local one, would be the wiser choice.

Interestingly, however, there are some examples of success on a local level. Santa Fe, NM
mandated a living wage in 2004. The sky did not fall in as predicted. With the city's $9.50 an hour wage floor, slated to rise to $10.50 in 2008, Target and Sam's Club are thriving and Wal-Mart is building a superstore. Las Vegas, NV, another example, is also thriving, although it has raised wages through a labor union--the Culinary Workers Local 226 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union. In January 1, 2004, housekeepers were making $11.40 an hour and tipped hotel employees a $9.60-an-hour base wage. People are buying homes and the economy is booming. It helps that these jobs can't be outsourced.

More examples: Chicago recently mandated a living wage of $10.00 an hour plus benefits of $3.00, but it was vetoed by Mayor Daley because big-box stores were threatening to locate in the suburbs. This illustrates the problem of doing it locally instead of over an entire area. Six states are proposing minimum-wage laws to be voted on in the upcoming election November 7, 2006. In Colorado, where most businesses are located on the front range rather than on the state's boundaries, it well might work. But the issue on the ballot in the state of Missouri might run into problems because of the fact that large cities in that state are on its borders and thus might face competition from businesses in neighboring states. In any case, these and other state and local ballot issues on wage increases will be something to watch, along with those in the 130 or so localities that have already mandated a living wage.

Hundreds of economists, including five Nobel laureates, have gone on record as recommending an increase in the minimum wage. And a great many governments, on various levels, have put in place either a minimum-wage increase or a living wage.

Clearly, low wages and extreme disparities in incomes are issues on the march. What's more, they are issues just made for Democratic candidates.

Poverty in the United States

2006-10-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

The question of poverty in the US is closely related to other issues, notably the level of unemployment, the level of wages, and the extreme disparities in income. But today I'll focus on poverty.

Having seen the poverty level cut in half in the 1960s under President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, ending the decade at 11.1 percent of the population--had I pushed the fast-forward button and landed in the US in 2004 and found that the poverty rate was at 12.7 percent (and had fluctuated between 11 and 15 percent during the last 35 years) , I would have been in shocked disbelief. What happened? Johnson showed us how to cut the level of poverty. Are we in a recession? No, would be the answer, the economy is strong and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has broken a record in each of the last few days.

Poverty does not even appear as one of the most important issues the country is facing today. Although there was a flurry of attention after Hurricane Katrina made us aware that 28 percent of the population in New Orleans was living in poverty and that that had been the reason that those trapped in the water had been unable to leave the city, the issue has again disappeared from the national dialogue.

And what is perhaps the saddest of all, around 20 percent of children under the age of six are living in poverty. What is happening to their ability to learn in those crucial first years when basic services are being denied them? Children are our future.

It is a national disgrace that, in the richest country in the history of the world, some 12 percent of the people are living in poverty, and, worse, it is a national tragedy. Following are some of the things I think we might look at to help to reduce the poverty level.

Fiscal policy. This refers to the level and structure of federal taxes and expenditures. During World War II it was demonstrated that these factors could drop the level of unemployment to less than 2 percent, and following the war fiscal policy was used deliberately to keep the level of income reasonably high. Now, however, fiscal policy seems to have fallen out of favor. Both the level and the structure of taxing and spending are seriously amiss. Taxes for the highest brackets of income are being continuously reduced, while taxes for the poor and middle incomes are being increased, mostly at the state and local levels because federal money for mandated programs is being cut. What should we do about this? We should make the structure of federal taxation progressive and spend enough on lower income people to stimulate the economy to full employment, say, less than 4 percent. This did happen during the Clinton administration.
Monetary policy. This determines the rate of interest and the quantity of money and is the other major tool traditionally used to keep the economy operating more or less acceptably. The law requires monetary policy to be employed to fight inflation and to keep the economy at full employment. For some years the Federal Reserve has used its tools, fairly successfully, to control inflation. But it seems to pay no mind to the level of unemloyment. The Fed should return to concern about both inflation and unemployment.
Wages. The minimum wage, now at $5.15 an hour at the national level, has not been increased since 1997, and this has become a major cause of workers falling below the poverty level.
Health care. Lack of health insurance has become a major factor causing families to fall below the poverty level.
Pensions. The loss of pensionsl has become a second cause of poverty, particularly as major corporations reward CEOs excessively even while falling into bankruptcy and/or problems with the law and thus depriving workers of jobs and pensions.
Help for families. The poverty rate for both women and children is higher than for the rest of the population. The provision of day care for young children, elder care, maternity and paternity leaves, and other help for families would help to alleviate poverty.
Education. Lowering tuition, lowering the rate of interest on student loans, more income-related grants for students, and the like would help students to attain the highest possible level of education. In fact, why not extend tuition help to all, as was done with the so-called G.I. Bill after World War II? That provided a major boost to the economy. The US is falling behind other developed countries in providing education to its citizens.
Help for workers. As union membership has fallen sharply and as it is made less available by governments and businesses, both low wages and a longer workweek have caused the level of poverty to increase. As jobs are being allowed to go overseas, the least that could be done for workers would be to provide retraining, relocation, and unemployment compensation and/or wage insurance for those whose jobs have disappeared, not to mention pursuing policies of full employment.

More on Corporate Behavior

2006-10-22T15:29:00.000-07:00

In my last blog, on corporate behavior, I made a coupld of remarks that could stand a little clarification if not revision.

First, I asserted that corporate behavior is most in need of watching and checking today, in contrast to the behavior of government and the church. Actually, there could hardly be a bigger offender than the government in the present administration. But we'll hope this is a matter of temporary politial insanity rather than habitual misbehavior or structural breakdown. The coming election of November 7, 2006 will tell us a lot about whether we still have a democracy, in the wake of Congressional corruption, the Patriot Act, presidential signing statements, and the like. And, now that I think of it, even the church shows some signs of departure from its usually more appropriate behavior in a democracy. Again, one hopes, a matter of temporary misbehavior.

My other comment is about myths, aka BIG LIES, gaining acceptance in recent times. The one I called "voter fraud" might send a different message than I intended. I was thinking of the phenomenon of illegals voting and the purported necessity, therefore, of requiring voter identification in the form of photos and evidences of citizenship. This kind of voter fraud is virtually non-existent, but stamping it out, of course, would tend to wreak hardship on lower-income and more disadvantaged persons (read Democrats). So let's pass laws to stop it, right? More recently, however, the practice of hacking election machines has been in the news--and here really is a major problem. In case this might be thought of as voter fraud, the caption is misleading. I guess we'll just have to see how the language describing these practices develops.

Corporate Behavior

2006-10-19T08:58:00.000-07:00

As I continue to write blogs, it occurs to me that it might be in order to review my credentials. I've been a student of economics and politics since 1946, in seven institutions of higher education, and have an MA with a minor in political science from the University of Denver and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder, with an emphasis in macroeconomic theory. I'll mention two handicaps: I have no staff, and I'm visually impaired.

Today I'm focusing on the corporation and its role in the modern world. This is so important I don't know why I haven't tackled it sooner. I'll just barely scratch the surface today--no, even that is an overstatement. I'll just barely start, and hope to continue as time permits. Notable scholars have written about the corporation before. I'll just comment on a few examples of corporate misbehavior today.

At times in history, tyrannical governments have been the chief offenders in human affairs; at other times it has been the church. I submit that today it is the corporation that most of all needs to be watched. And checked. Following are some noteworthy items, some small, some major.

Corruption in Congress. This issue is huge. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that corruption is so great that we scarcely have a democracy. The administration of George W. Bush has governed by accepting large political contributions from corporations and then inviting those corporations to craft legislation in Congress. A well-known example is Vice President Cheney closeting himself with Halliburton to write legislation on energy. Notable also is similar behavior on the part of other corporations in the oil and gas industry.

Corporations controlling the media. Another issue of huge importance. For a democracy to function, there has to be access to information. (I think Jefferson said something to this effect.) Networks in TV newscasting are owned by large corporations. Radio is also controlled by corporations. The same is true of newspapers. And only last night--somehow this seems the saddes story of all--Bill Moyers reported on the Net Neutrality issue: the fight over whether ordinary individuals will continue to have as much access to the Internet as corporations have. Already the US is way behind on this. Residents of Japan and countries in Europe have better access than we have. Ironically, those in charge of this country have perpetrated the myth--actually, the BIG LIE--that in America the media are largely liberal. Exactly the opposite is the truth. What is especially outrageous is that even in public TV and public radio the great majority of those interviewed and covered come from the right--in government, in industry, in academia, and so on. No matter what the category--men versus women, minorities, corporations, whatever--those who appear on the news represent the right far more than the left. This was true even in 1993, although less so, when both the presidency and the Congress were in the control of the Democrats. It does indeed seem to be the case, as has been noted, that if you keep telling the BIG LIE long enough, people will begin to believe it. Clearly that has happened in the liberal-media question. Also on the question of fiscal responsibility. And not to mention weapons of mass destruction. And--they're working on this--the prevalence of fraud in voting.
The war in Iraq. Obviously here is another phenomenon of overriding importance. Here, however, I'll only point out that corporations have been reaping egregious profits. Many of what in the past have been considered government responsibilities have been privatized, allowing outrageous war profiteering by corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel, and, what is more important, with unfortunate consequences for the troops and for the country. And the mess in Baghdad scarcely needs comment. It has been reported (I read this in Antonia Juhasz) that Paul Bremer privatized 192 services, by fiat, before the present government was in place, and virtually no useful oversight exists. After all, aren't governments supposed to be incompetent anyway?
Globalization. Yes, although globalization is in many ways, and could be enormously so, a beneficent development, multinational corporations have assumed enough control to see that treaties and whatever are written as they wish rather than for the benefit of workers and poor countries, as well as with insufficient regard for the environment. The world lacks institutions with sufficient power to exert control over multinationals. But also, even where remedies could be undertaken with present institutional arrangements, corporations have managed to see that things go pretty much their way.
Global warming. I just can't take time, yours and mine, to go into this. I hope you've seen Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. I'll only say that, as usual, the Bush administration has seemed more heedful of the counsel of his corporate friends than the fate of the planet.
Health care in US. The US spends about twice as much per capita on health care as do other industrialized nations, with less desirable health outcomes. But when somebody brings it up as a problem, corporations in the insurance industry and in pharmaceuticals jump in and see that anything like a plan for universal health coverage is nipped in the bud.
Prescription drugs for the elderly. The same corporate powers from insurance and pharmaceuticals inserted the famous "donut hole" to require citizens to pay them for coverage at cerrtain levels.
The labor force. Through several decades, real wages for the American worker have been stagnant while corporate profits have ballooned. The minimum wage, already unconscionably low, has not been increased since 1997. But never mind that, why are workers not receiving a so-called "living wage"? Quite a number of lower-level governments, especially states and municipalities, have enacted such measures. And another thing, the workweek has become unconscionably long. One institution that has worked in the past to raise wages and lower the workweek, the labor union, has been rendered largely nonexistent or impotent. The corporation is at work again. Need I mention a corporation called Wal-Mart? The largest retail corporation in the world has initiated processes of great efficiency, with very handsome profits: members of the family are listed among the ten richest billionaires in the world. Yet Wal-Mart refuses to pay a living wage and denies health care and other benefits to a large portion of its workers. Not to mention gaining tax benefits and other favors from local governments where it locates.

I end here, obviously far short of decent coverage of the corporate phenomenon in the 21st century. I hope to do more later.

Easy Lesson in Federal Budgets

2006-10-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

The chief difficulty with understanding federal budget deficits and surpluses is the political hype that comes with them. Another difficulty is that they don't occur in a vacuum; they're part of the whole economic picture.

But it's really pretty simple.

One more note, in case anyone wonders: the federal deficit measures the excess of government spending over its revenues for one year; for example the federal budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2006 was around $250 billion. A debt is the total of all deficits; for example, the total national debt is $8.837 trillion.

Let's look at the record. Since 1929 the US budget has been in surplus only twelve times: four during theTruman presidency, three under Eisenhower, once under Johnson, and four under Clinton--in other words more often when a Democrat was president. The biggest deficits since World War II have been realized during the administrations of Republicans: Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and the two Bushes.

Yet fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets have long been a staple of Republican political philosophy, and Democratic presidents are constantly under attack for presumably being fiscally irresponsible. The facts show exactly the opposite. The trouble is a lack of understanding of how the economy works.

A modern monetary economy requires some debt creation somewhere to finance new investment, because spending all of the income realized in a year is necessary to clear the market of what has been produced during that year. Debt formation may occur in the business sector, in the consumer sector, or in government. If business does not finance investment sufficiently, and consumers can't afford to (consumer debt is at a rather scary level now), it is left to the federal government to see that it happens or the economy will go into recession. Thus most of the time some government deficit financing is needed. If it is not forthcoming, the resulting recession will send the budget into deficit anyway. Thus is explained the budget deficits that regularly occur during Republican presidencies. In their efforts to balance the budget they siphon purchasing power out of the economy and cause recessions and therefore deficits.

Democratic candidates, correctly anticipating attacks, are fearful of allowing a deficit. The fiscally responsible policy, however, would be to allow a deficit if needed to keep the economy going at full employment. It would indeed be instructive to compare Clinton's fiscal policies with those of George W. Bush: Clinton shifted the tax structure upward by increasing taxes in the top brackets and restoring the Earned Income Tax Credit for the lowest brackets. Bush shifted taxes downward by cutting taxes for the rich and trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor by cutting social services. The result? Clinton stimulated the economy and realized budget surpluses. Bush has achieved nothing but budget deficits.

The problem is in explaining this in this age of ferocious and mendacious attacks from the right.

Social Security--We've Still Gotta Save It~

2006-10-09T19:46:00.000-07:00

Didn't we save Social Security last year? Yes, but reportedly the Bush administration has simply moved privatization of Social Security to the back burner until times look more propitious for it. And with the baby boomers about to retire, the present might look like a good time to put it out there again.

So what's wrong with privatization? First, it would put the risk on every worker instead of spreading it out to all of us, and the world of investments is notably risky. Ordinary citizens do not have the expertise to gain good returns consistently. (Of course Wall Street would love it--having all that extra business.) Second, there would be no provision for dependents and the disabled. Third, it would tap existing revenues scheduled to go to current retirees. So where is the extra money to come from to finance it? In sum, are we to expect these uncertainties to yield an adequate replacement for the current guaranteed lifetime monthly checks retirees have been receiving for more than seventy years? Clearly privatization is not a satisfactory replacement for Social Security as we know it--apparently the most popular and successful government program ever, with administration costs around 1 percent.

Plans to get rid of Social Security go back to the Republican platform of 1936 and have never stopped. Current demographics make the present look like a good time to do that by declaring it in crisis. Suggesting that illegal immigrants collect benefits is a good arguing point too, even though it is doubtful that they collect as much as they pay in.

So let's look at the facts. Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, with revenues coming from a tax on wages up to $94,200, with a current tax rate of 7.65 percent being levied on both employers and employees for a total of 15.30 percent. Revenues have exceeded benefits for a number of years, with the result that there exists a "trust fund" of $1.993 trillion. Yes, that's trillion. Now we come to the real argument, about the nature of the trust fund. Is it simply an accounting device? Of course, as are almost all monetary assets, including your bank balance. And has the government been using it to cover other programs? Of course. It's not sitting in a box somewhere. In fact, present law requires that the US Treasury borrow from the trust fund. The Social Security trust fund, then, consists of special non-marketable Treasury securities that bear a maturity date and earn a market rate of interest, which is now more than 5 percent.

How do we know they will be paid back? Well, I'll grant that the US in recent years has been incurring record budget deficits, and as a consequence the current federal debt is over $8.8 trillion, about half of it owed to foreigners. Things could get difficult if holders of US securities should start dumping dollars and holding euros. But the US, through wars and natural disasters and savings-and-loan bailouts and all the rest, has never defaulted on its obligations. In fact, US Treasury securities are (correctly) regarded as the safest assets in the world. But how can the Treasury honor so much debt when it comes due? Just as it always has, through other borrowing or out of taxes, as, for example, after World War II when it paid back much, much larger obligations relative to GDP, without any hardship to the economy. In short, we can be certain that the US Treasury will not default. And we can be sure someone has been paying attention to the maturity dates of those special trust-fund borrowings. It isn't as if it will be a surprise.

To continue: Let's look at the anticipated future health of Social Security. Around 2018 the fund's benefits will begin to exceed receipts but will continue to increase until 2025 because of interest receipts. And the trust fund will be exhausted by 2042, according to the Social Security Administration, or by 2052 according to the Congressional Budget Office, both of which used excessively pessimistic estimates of GDP. Or, it will last indefinitely if realistic GDP assumptions are used. Of course, GDP growth rates are very unpredictable so no one knows just exactly when the trust fund will play out. In any case, however, it can easily be fixed if and when there is a shortfall. The easiest and most logical recourse, it seems to me and to lots of others, would be to raise the cap on the level of wages that are subject to the Social Security payroll tax.

This is a crisis? Is there any other government program that is expected to run surpluses for decades and then to require only tweaking to produce surpluses? No, Social Security is not in crisis. However, one well might wonder how the projections can be so positive, given the dependency ratio (the ratio of workers to dependents) expected as the population becomes older, as it is expected to do. The projections come out as they do mostly because of estimates of productivity increases. More women entering the labor force help too. Expectations of fewer child dependents should make it larger still.

It should be pointed out, additionally, that concerns about the financial aspects of Social Security seem obsessive. Excessive payroll taxes can hurt effective demand and therefore real income. Also, the trust fund simply transfers purchasing power, not real income, from the present to the future. In other words, the trust fund is not about the level of real income but only about the share of real income the elderly will get. American financial institutions are very sophisticated. Should the focus on real output be less so? How is it that no one seems concerned about the production of real goods and services? In other words, instead of putting so many resources into manipulating the financial aspects of Social Security, it would seem more productive to invest more in human beings, in education and health care, for example, and in infrastructure, such as mass transit, Amtrak, roads and bridges, computers, and so on. Future workers will have to produce real income for everyone, not just to satisfy financial assets for seniors.

Universal Health Care for Americans

2006-09-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

The health care system in the US is so broken and there are so many examples of successful systems in other countries that it's one of the easiest problems for which to find solutions.

At the outset I'll suggest a single-payer plan, in which the federal government would provide the insurance function instead of private insurance companies. What I am suggesting is not socialized medicine, in which the federal government would hire the doctors and run the hospitals and so on. Our health care is of the highest quality; it is the insurance function that is broken. Insurance costs in the US are reported to run at 25 to 30 percent of total costs.
Are there alternatives? A single-payer plan need not be the only possible approach. A look at systems in other countries could indicate attractive features from which the US could choose in formulating a system.

First, let's do a quick overview of the problem: The US spends more than twice as much per capita on health care as does the average developed country, and its outcomes in the usual categories such as longevity and infant mortality are not as good as in other developed countries. The main reason for this is that more than 46 million Americans have no health insurance and millions more are underinsured. Significant categories are not covered in US plans, while Canada, for example, covers long-term care, mental health care, and dental care. Firms in the US find it difficult to compete with firms in other countries because of the cost of health care for employees: General Motors has reported that this adds an expense of $1,500 per automobile. Additionally, the prescription drug program just adopted in the US, with its donut hole and high prices, is a fiasco. All in all, dissatisfaction with the US system is higher than in other developed countries.

Let's recognize, at the same time, that opponents can offer some relevant arguments. Pharmaceutical firms in the US finance most of the R&D for drugs, and as a result other countries can sell those drugs at reduced prices. The US Department of Commerce reports that 8 out 0f 10 of the top-selling drugs are produced by companies headquartered in the US. Also, there can be long waits in other countries for surgery and other treatment; health care is rationed by design, rather than by affordability as in the US. Those who can pay may find medical treatment in the US a preferred option. Medical technology in the US may be the best in the world, and care should be taken not to jeopardize that. And finally, lifestyle decisions that Americans make, along with longer working hours and shorter vacations, may add to medical expenses.

Well then, how would one go about planning a system for the US? It need not be hopelessly difficult. Medicare could be extended to all rather than just the elderly. Its administration costs are less than 2 percent. The Veterans Administration, with similar costs of administration, also could serve as a model upon which to build. As for drug costs, Medicare should be empowered to negotiate with pharmaceuticals.

The usual argument that the US cannot afford universal health care is the easiest of all to refute. We can do it, no, we can do it better, for half the price.

What Democrats Should Do

2006-09-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

Democrats have to try harder than Republicans. Not that we've exactly been doing it. And Republicans have been trying pretty hard, at least leading up to and following 1994 when they took over Congress. They choose language to color our thinking (like "death tax"), they're all on the same page, and they usually raise more money. But a lot of what they do is just plain nasty, and wrong. They impeach, they recall, they redistrict when it's not legal. And much more, but I'll try to get on with my message.

My point is that the Democrats' thing is to build, to create--to devise a universal health-care system, for example--to improve human welfare, to contribute to the common good. And the Republicans' thing is, sometimes anyway, to get government out of the way so individuals can do what they want, and they have the money and the power to do this. Except that they use government for themselves when they want, like for huge weapons systems and pre-emptive invasions. In any case, it's (usually) harder to build than to destroy. And an awful lot of what they want to do is to tear down. We Democrats just have to live with this, and try harder.

The first thing Democrats must do is get our message out. Be positive. And don't be wimps. We're for universal single-payer health care, for example, not just enough for children. And we're for stopping our military aggression in Iraq now and focusing instead on supporting rebuilding infrastructure and so on. And we're for full employment. And better wages. In other words, we're interested in attacking the real issues, things people care about. Not burning the flag, defining what marriage is, prayer in public schools, and other so-called wedge issues designed to divert attention from the real issues. Ane we have to say what we're for.

Another thing is the tone of compaigning. It seems the case that dirty campaigning works. Lies often work, as the Swift Boat thing did in attacking Kerry. And stealing votes works, as with tampering with voting machines. Nonetheless, we Democrats must take the high road. In the long run it will pay off--I really believe this--to be the party that talks about the issues and favors voting machines that work and leave a paper trail, and sees that there are enough for people in all the districts, not just the rich ones. Let's make politics a good thing, not one everyone thinks is rotten. I've noticed that some of my Republican friends will say, when Democrats do something bad, yeah, that's awful, but when Republicans do something bad, they say, well, that's politics, that's why they don't want to get involved. But politics is so important that it's almost impossible to exaggerate this. It affects almost everything in our lives, large and small. We've all got to get into it and make politics better. It wouldn't hurt for Democratic candidates to point out that they're not attacking their opponents but that they will respond immediately if they are attacked.

I want to address particular questions as I go on with these political blogs. I'm thinking especially about things the Democrats, not to mention everyone else, seem to be a bit mixed up on. I hope people will bear with me. So let's get on with it for an energy plan, for jobs, for working with the rest of the world for peace, as with the PeaceJam kids meeting in Denver now with Nobel Peace Laureates.

We can make the world better. For the common good.

Reviewing My Position on Israel

2006-08-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

Now that we are a few days past the "acceptance" of the cease-fire in the Middle East involving Israel and Hezbollah and have had time for some commentary, I am reminded that many of my friends and others whom I respect seem to be more sympathetic to the Arab/Muslim cause than to that of Israel. I decided I should review my position--as briefly as possible.

When the UK gave up its mandate over Palestine, the UN voted to partition Palestine into two states, Jewish and Arab. The Jewish population opted to become Israel. The Palestinian population chose not to become a state. As far as I can determine, this is not an issue. Both Israel and the US favor statehood for Palestine but of course do not insist on it. The creation of Israel, however, obviously seemed unreasonable to Arabs/Muslims, and war broke out. There had been waves of Zionism and there was ongoing fighting prior to 1948 as well. I don't know what would have been more fair. The Jews did have a considerable history in the area and, as everyone knows, had suffered mightily in the Holocaust of WWII and had been pushed out almost everywhere. Thus the partition seemed to many to hold out promise of providing a reasonable homeland for the Jews. Should there have been a better arrangement? That could well be, but I am not aware of any more reasonable suggestions.

Palestinians and other Muslims, however, vowed to drive Israel into the sea, and following the establishment of the state of Israel, there have been several wars, usually initiated by the Muslims. The military successes of Israel in earlier years came to appear as less than successful, at least the last two times, when they were fighting Hezbollah. In 2000, as I understand it, Israel withdrew from Lebanon and had the withdrawal inspected and approved as complete by the UN. Hezbollah, however, at that time declared victory and began to rearm, with the resulting capture in 2006 of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of three. Israel responded with a strong attack, said by many to be an over-reaction, which may well be true, but which nonetheless was not successful in stopping Hezbollah despite terrible devastation and heavy casualties. Would a milder response, or none at all, have led to peace? That seems most unlikely.

The US, as everyone knows, has been supplying Israel with arms and other aid, while apparently Hezbollah has been armed by Iran and Syria. Hezbollah itself, however, has been lauded for being forthcoming with all kinds of services to its population. It seems to have gained approval from much of the Arab world even though at least at first the attack was frowned upon by some. In any case, Hezbollah has again declared victory, as perhaps it might inasmuch as it has withstood the might of an Israeli attack. In any case, what is Israel to do now? Simply arm in anticipation of another attack?

One might well say that the Israeli military offensives are not working. One would have to add, however, that its peaceful posture never has worked either. Not the Oslo accords, not the Carter or the Clinton negotiations, nothing has worked. Only an intifadah has resulted. Probably the proposed partitions have been unreasonable. In any case, the situation of the Palestinians--the unemployment, the restrictions on movement, and so on--is clearly intolerable and is no doubt creating more anger on their part and more support for suicide attacks. The situation of Israel, however, is also unaccaptable. For them there is apparently no road to peace. It even appears that offers of negotiation may be viewed as a sign of weakness.

Should Israel, even so, take the initiative by offering to change its borders back to where they were in 1948 and by proposing that the US and the UN and others offer aid to the Palestinians in an effort to offer hope for the establishment of a viable community? Would the Palestinians then agree to let Israel exist? To me this would be worth a try. It is regrettable that the Bush administration and the US Congress have declared support for Israel in the present conflict. They should have remained neutral, as Carter and Clinton did, so that they could be a broker. Should Israel, then, appeal to the UN to try to negotiate a boundary change?

I'll just add this. I have admired and continue to admire Israel because it has established a democracy, accepting Arab residents as citizens, educated its population, and developed the arts and sciences and the technology to "make the desert bloom like a rose." It would be much easier to favor the Palestinian cause if they exhibited such values. I can accredit, of course, the sympathy for the underdog and for those who are living in intolerable conditions. But I retain my support for the state of Israel. They too have certainly suffered enough and have put forth an amazing effort to establish a community, with considerable success.

Three Book Reviews

2006-08-05T15:24:00.000-07:00

Dakota, by Kathleen Norris, is a sensitive, insightful description of the experiences and impressions of a New York City poet who moves to Lemmon, SD, which is right on the North Dakota border. A large part of it chromicles her search for a spiritual geography, in which she is quite successful. Of considerable interest to me is her impression that the western part of the Dakotas is in economic decline. Clearly that is the case as she writes in the 1990s. One wonders, however, if Information- Age technology, which permits workers to live anywhere, might change that. Of interest also is her assessment of the residents' being so different from mainstream Americans. Yes, they are different, especially from a New York poet, but perhaps not as different from most Americans as she seems to think. In any case, this is a wonderful book.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins is a must-read for any one who wants to understand what is going on in America in this age of corporate globalization, or the Corporatocracy, as he terms it. Perkins is one who knows, having been a part of it at a rather high level. It all fits what I know about the corporation and about the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, about how they make big loans to underdeveloped countries and then impoverish them in trying to force repayment, which totally chokes off development while enriching the corporation. After his conscience got to bothering him so much he couldn't stand it, he resigned his position, and, finally, was able to write about it. It is a shocking story, one that is, unfortunately, quite believable. One wonders how, if ever, Americans will be able to get back on track. It's clearly not what we're doing now, which is my assessment as well as his.

The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time, by Antonia Juhasz, is another believable and shocking description and assessment of what is going on, from someone well qualified and positioned to know. Beautifully researched and fact-filled. Should there be any doubt, now we know why Bush invaded Iraq: for corporate profit. After the invasion, Bremer privatized most of the economy by fiat (192 state-owned companies), including such functions as electricity and city services, before the elections put in place a sort of Iraqi government. Little or no effort has been made to make anything work, just an effort to siphon off appropriations to particular corporations, which she identifies and describes. After a devastating description of this, Juhasz describes the incipient Middle East Free Trade Area agreement, designed to siphon off the profits, again, for multinationals. It is extremely important that Americans understand this.

Minimum-Wage Increases: Help or Hurt the Economy?

2006-08-05T13:57:00.000-07:00

Defeat of a minimum-wage package in Congress, passage of a "living wage" of $10.00 an hour in Chicago, and a proposal in Colorado to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.85--these measures raise questions anew about the effect of wage increases on the level of employment.

Typical is the argument that raising wages increases the level of unemployment. It seems obvious that an employer required to raise wages ordinarily would have to lay off workers. But this is looking at a "micro" model, whereas what is required is a look at the "macro" economy. The argument here is that raising wages increases demand, which in turn raises the level of employment. This is the stronger argument; what is required is a look not at only one firm but at the economy as a whole.

The relevant questions here are the rate of unemployment and the structure of income as a whole. Would the market support an increase in wages? At the present time unemployment is sufficiently high--at 4.8 percent-- and disparities in income are so great that a lessening of the disparities would be expected to raise demand. Wages are clearly too low for maximum economic performance.

Data from previous wage increases indicate a positive effect of wage increases on the level of employment. Rarely if ever are wages in the U.S. too high for optimal economic performance.

Thoughts on the Middle East - continued

2006-07-26T18:40:00.000-07:00

Some updating is required on the Middle East situation, given events since yesterday. A meeting of key Middle East players has taken place in Rome. Participants included Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United States, the European Union, Russia, and others. Fine. But it remains unclear just who all must be included to get resolution. Hezbollah and Hamas, of course, and Israel. And Lebanon. Also Syria? And Iran?
Then to go beyond this, why would anyone think that any agreement can be reached, and, were it to be reached, that it would be honored? The past suggests that it would not be. But it could be noted that, arguably, the populations affected might want peace and live-and-let-live, while it is those in power who are more likely to want war, for various reasons, most having to do with power and legacy questions. And money. Anyone who has been watching might have observed that in the war in Bosnia, for example, and in Jerusalem, ordinary people were/are trying to get on with their daily affairs, and it's noteworthy to an observer like myself that they seem to do pretty well. In the US too, people are coming out for peace. We have to keep looking for ways to communicate this to the leaders and to make it important to them.
I admit to a great deal of naivete here. In all of this. But to continue, doing the best I can, I think a theory of human nature is involved here. I think humans are born with an urge to construct, to build, to achieve. Sure, humans find a certain satisfaction too in tearing things down. It can be fun, for a little while anyway. But I think the former urge is stronger. It's also harder. And it demonstrably leads to a better life. This notion is not what prevails in some circles. But I think we have to keep demonstrating it, whenever and wherever possible.
This philosophy is what has made me approve of what the Israelis have tried to do: to make the desert bloom like a rose, to set up schools, and all the rest. The Palestinians have not demonstrated such a mindset, at least in recent years. But they once had a powerful civilization, their days of glory. I would venture that the same human nature is there, it just hasn't had a chance to flourish for quite some time.
The immediate question seems to be whether an immediate cease-fire should be mandated, and how it would be achieved. We don't know the answer.
Moral: we just have to keep trying, by both deed and example. And to keep trying to understand more.

The Current Middle East Crisis

2006-07-25T11:04:00.000-07:00

In this time of polarization in the US, when discussion seems to have diasppeared in favor of just choosing up sides, I offer my thoughts on the current Middle East crisis in the interest of keeping dialogue alive on the part of ordinary citizens.
Although it is impossible to consider here the millennia of strife in the region, we do have to look at a bit of history. Just looking at events since 1948, when the UN suggested that Israel and Palestime could become states in that area, it becomes clear that just getting Israel to stop attacking or being more restrained will accomplish nothing. Israel, as we know, decided to become a state, while Palestine decided not to become a state but to drive Israel into the sea, in other words to see that Israel did not survive. This goal remains unchanged, apparently for all of the Arab countries except Egypt. Accordingly, starting with 1948, the Arabs have attacked again and again, even after Israel has made concessions and drawn back from lands it had won in battle. Although I can't presume to know their rationale, it may be that Arabs see concessions as suggesting weakness rather than an effort to solve the problem, and therefore this may encourage further attacks.
In any case, it seems clear that conditions for Palestinians in the area have become scarcely short of intolerable, with lack of jobs and water, restrictions on movement, and what might be racism or discrimination against Arabs, even though Israel has been generous in offering democracy in many ways. Conditions are such that Palestinians cannot be expected to continue to live this way. Nor should they.
It appears that nothing will do short of another major effort to come to some kind of agreement, unlikely as that may seem. It just seems essential to try. What else is there?
Then what entity could take on such a task? The US would be the obvious choice except that it has earned such contempt in the world. It might be possible anyway for the US to take the lead in negotiations, given a credible statement about what course it might take. Or perhaps the United Nations? Or NATO or the Group of Eight?
Once some convener agrees to try to broker an agreement, it remains to find individuals who could engender enough trust to carry on negotiations. Some names come to mind. Someone from Egypt. Also George Mitchell, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Madeleine Albright would be good candidates. Also Hannah Ashrawi. Of course there are others.
Beyond this, something might be said about what could be offered to the aggrieved parties, Israel and Palestine. The security of Israel must be assured; this must be made clear. And reasonable boundaries for Palestine must be arrived at, irrespective of past arrangements. A buffer zone between Israel and Palestine would seem necessary, as would a buffer zone between Lebanon and Israel, both fortified as needed. Additionally, Palestine could be offered aid--from the UN, the World Bank, the US, other Arab nations--in the form of creation of infrastructure, prehaps irrigation systems, perhaps help for education.
This is enough dialogue for one day.

More on Richard Parker's bio of JKG

2006-07-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

I want to correct a wrong turn I took, or one I took too soon, in my first message about the book on Galbraith. Toward the end I was suggesting that Parker could write the book on current economics that the discipline lacks--be a new Adam Smith, so to speak. What I intended to do first was to say that I had long wished that Galbraith would undertake such a task. He was gifted, original, insightful, extremely well informed, and diligent about what was going on in the US during the 20th century, and that was just great. But we are yearning for something more--something that puts forth the big picture of what economics is really about. Robert Gordon is referred to by Parker as having said something like what I have in mind. Economics needs a totally new agenda, including the study of workers, firms, institutional arrangements, power, the distribution of wealth, tax structure, government regs. Anyway, I thought for years that Galbraith should sit down and rewrite economics. I still think he could have done it.
Now I think Richard Parker might be capable of such a task.
But againI must add, having just read what Parker says about him, that Nobel laureate Amartya Sen might be the one who should tackle it. Sen clearly has a very different vision of what economics is about than do those currently in charge of the discipline. He talks about "social choice" as an issue not just for economics but also one with which the the public must engage to secure the enlargement of "positive human freedom" and the capacity to enjoy it. The intrinsic capacity, he goes on, may be there, but without the right set of skills, individually and collectively, to negotiate its acquisition, maintenance, and expansion, they will never achieve it. Sen insists on making larger moral and cultural concerns preconditions for answering economic questions. This is what I feel the discipline of economics should do.
Clearly I'm not ready to write about this, and an apology from me is due. But maybe I can use this digression to say that Parker's book about Galbraith was such a formidable achievement, such an inspiration, that I'm just bursting with ideas about the promise of economics, should some gifted practitioners sit down to write about it realistically.

Richard Parker's bio of JKG

2006-06-30T15:51:00.000-07:00

I'm in awe of this book. It's a formidable accomplishment. I don't know why I haven't been reading reviews of it or hearing them on NPR. Where has Richard Parker been??? He's not an unknown: degree from Oxford, lives in Cambridge, MA. I'll try to find out more about him on www. fsgbooks.com. I'm even ordering the book, and in my old age I've been avoiding buying any more books for a long time.
I've been reading and admiring John Kenneth Galbraith for a very long time. Of course it is a joy to find out more about his life and so on. And I should just say now that one reason I relate so strongly to his economics is the resemblance between him and my late husband. I won't go very far with this comparison because JKG , I think, has sold more books than all other economists combined. Is that possible? Anyhow, a LOT OF BOOKS. Also, he was acquainted with, and often friends with, all the notable economists and politicians, including presidents, of his day (not to mention other notables), until his recent death at age 99. My husband, on the other hand, published almost not at all--his legacy is an oral one, and it is a remarkable one--and he didn't move in such circles or live in Cambridge or New York or Washington, DC. But what is amazing is that he, J. Fagg Foster, Professor of Economics at the University of Denver from 1946 to 1976, and JKG came to the same economic and political philosophy almost independently. They were almost the same age. JKF became acquainted with the works of Thorstein Veblen at Berkeley, Fagg at the Univ. of Texas. Veblen's thinking was the foundation of the economics of both. Both also came to the same interpretation of John Maynard Keynes apparently on their own, which was pretty hard to do; nobody else around them, or anywhere else for that matter, seemed to "be there" until Keynes was explained and more widely understood much later.
I'll never forget when Fagg and I "discovered" JKG, early in the 1950s, sitting at our kitchen table and coming across something he had recently written. We were astonished. Their economics is the same!!
But back to the book. Author Richard Parker tells you all you need to know to understand macroeconomic theory and what various economists thought and wrote about it, along with the related events in the US (mostly). His brief descriptions of the meanings and the theories and their authors is beyond imagination. Include in that what economics is really about. Parker would be the one who could write the book we've all been waiting for since Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes.
I guess I better quit there. I'll be back with more later.

Here's my picture

2006-06-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I can do this or not. Rachel helped me put on my photograph but I didn't know if I could write then. So here I am later. I'll do a new one soon.

Diane Wilson, an Unreasonable Woman

2006-05-29T15:41:00.000-07:00

This book. This woman, Diane Wilson. How can I write about her without gushing? Anyway, I'll try. She's a fourth generation shrimper from Seadrift, Texas, with five children and only a high school education--she says she read a lot--who took on some of the biggest polluters in the world and actually got a pretty big result considering the odds. In fact, you might say she's accomplished a miracle. Her mission came to be to get "zero discharge," and Formosa Plastics actually agreed that it was doable and then everyone started asking about it, and then she wrote a book about her experience: An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas.
When Calhoun County on the Texas Gulf Coast was pronounced the most polluted county in the country, Diane Wilson recalled the things happening in shrimping and the environment generally, called a lawyer and then called a meeting. But she was getting nowhere against the regulators, corporations, politicians, judges, and all the rest, until she decided to resort to nonviolent disobedience, direct action, and hunger strikes. This unreasonable, unstoppable, outrageous, courageous, crazy woman went to India to support the victims of the United Carbide (now Dow Chemical) disaster, went to Taiwan to see what Formosa Plastics had done to get forced out of the country to find refuge in Texas, climbed to the tower of the Dow plant and threw a sign over the fence, started giving speeches all over the country, and hasn't stopped.
It turns out her writing is so good you'd think she'd been born to it. She's just got to continue writing.
You can look on the Internet to see what she said to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now and learn more about her. I think it was October 11, 2005.
Want to add one thing: Diane Wilson helped to found CODE-PINK, Women for Peace. Maybe it's time we were pursuing this.

More Thoughts on Immigration

2006-05-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

Since I wrote last I had a couple more thoughts on immigration.
What if the immigrants smuggle in a dirty bomb? This is serious. It's major. But it can happen on any border, or it can be made within a country. It's really a matter for Homeland Security. They should have thought about it, and they should involve rules on immigration if and when indicated.
America is often called a nation of immigrants. At the time of the Haymaker Riots, it is reported that more than half the population of Chicago were immigrants. There were more Germans than any other nationality, and they were hated. Like the Irish, and the Italians. Immigrants seem always to have been looked down on.
As for enforcing the laws on entry, if there are more than 11 million illegal immigrants now, and the law isn't being enforced, shouldn't lawmakers ask themselves if they really want such a law? If the answer is yes, should a wall be built along that 2000 mile border? A Berlin Wall? Does that sound like America? It sounds more like the Middle Ages, or the Communists.
I like the message on the Statue of Liberty better:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed. to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Immigration

2006-04-29T13:23:00.000-07:00

The politics of the immigration issue are a litttle different, and more interesting, than most. When it began to loom up a few months ago I thought, okay, apparently something's going on here, I guess I better get with it. So I started paying more attention. Two intriguing things struck me: the size of the protesting groups and the lack of press coverage. One morning on Democracy Now, Amy Goodman said that some hundreds of thousands were protesting in Chicago and that nobody seemed to know anything about it. I checked the news and found nothing. I also called my son who lives in Chicago, and he said, yeah, he left work to go home and here were all these people and he hadn't heard a thing about it. And then some 50,000 protested in Denver, and again there was virtually no coverage. Turns out, as we now know, that the protests were a response mostly to the bill in the House of Representatives that would, among other things, make all illegal immigrants felons and make them all go back to Mexico, and spell out an onerous passage to citizenship. And apparently the protesters were both Mexican immigrants and American sympathizers.
It took me awhile to figure out what I thought about it. Yeah, maybe mandatory ID cards for all citizens would be a good idea. And yeah, those hiring illegals should be prosecuted. But as I followed all the proposals, in Congress and out, it finally dawned on me that everything proposed, except maybe the ID cards, would be worse than leaving things alone. Yes, there are some 11 million who have entered this country illegally. This is a very big deal, especially to those who have borne children here (who by law are American citizens) and would thus either be separated from their kids or would have to take the kids back to Mexico with them.
At this point it also occurred to me that this is far from the major issue in this country (think homelessness, think 17 percent of children in Colorado living in poverty; think the Iraq war; think Congressional corruption). So I came up with only a couple possibilities: talk seriously to Vicente Fox about improving conditions in Mexico, and do something ourselves about bringing Mexico up to developed-country standards. Give more foreign aid. Come up with a plan to educate all children in Mexico. Maybe Bill Gates would be an interested donor. Sure, this takes time. But all the better to start NOW. Otherwise nothing will improve ever.
Then the other day I saw a poll on TV. It said about 50 or 55 percent of Republicans think immigration is the most important issue facing the country, while only 3 percent of Democrats think it is. I had no idea. I had thought maybe a considerable number of Dems would oppose immigration because it depresses wages and takes jobs from American citizens. Apparently not so. So I'm agreeing more or less with my fellow Democrats.

Globalization

2006-04-14T16:17:00.000-07:00

"Is globalization reversible?" asked Michael Moore, Director-General of the World Trade Organization. "Yes, if we go mad," responded Martin Wolf, former senior economist at the World Bank's division for international trade.
Reversible or not--and I don't think it is in a world of computers--it can be a marvelous thing, but there is something wrong with the way it's going. The trouble is that what we have is corporate globalization. The multinational corporations are in charge, and they have an agenda: maximize profit, deregulate, and privatize. This is making a lot of people miserable. What we should have is what might be called, for want of a better term, "globalization from below." What we want is a worldwide movement for peace and for the welfare of ordinary people.
Young (mostly) people all over the world are on the Internet, and this can be an amazing tool to remake the world. Its potential is mind-boggling. But we'll have to see that it remains free and accessible. Just today I heard a report that the U.S. Congress is trying to find a way to control it. And of course other political leaders have been trying as hard as they can to do that.
So we must get on the Internet and make globalization go the way we want. And we need a name for it that fits our goals.

The Iraq War

2006-04-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

It's not my strong suit: the military. But I feel it's important for ordinary citizens to speak out on the war in Iraq.
My feeling is that we should withdraw now. Rep. John Murtha said it for me; I agree with his statement. My reasoning is that our military presence there is doing more harm than good. The insurgency there is stronger because of our presence. And surely Iraq is more of a breeding ground for terrorists as long as we're there; actually, not just Iraq but everywhere. I don't know what will happen if we leave now, but I feel it likely there will be less warfare than if we stay. Also, our leaving will give the Iraqis more incentive to start governing themselves. And I certainly want to end the killing of both Americans and Iraqis.
What does departing "now" mean? To me it means informing the world that we are getting out and then doing it in an orderly fashion, starting immediately. I don't know how long that should take. I remember that when the Japanese surrendered in August of 1945, ending WW II, I was discharged from the WAVES in almost 4 months. Two differencces: (1) I was stationed in the States; (2) there were millions to discharge then. All in all, then, I think it should take only a few months.
The main thing in withdrawing, however, to my mind, is that we should declare that we will rebuild the infrastructure, at least in Baghdad, as much as seems reasonably possible. Also, we should keep some contingent force over there somewhere, say in Kuwait.

It;s hard being a consumer

2006-04-03T11:25:00.000-07:00

Hey, I'm back, after writing a paper and doing income tax and stuff. Thanks for waiting, all you loyal readers (Ha). :-) (Is that the way to make a smiley face? I think I have more to learn.)
Just heard on NPR that Lucent is being bought out or something by a French company, and that General Motors is selling its GMAC component, trying to avoid bankruptcy, and that they're both laying off tens of thousands of workers.
This brings two thoughts to mind. The worst is that so many workers are being laid off all the time. Is there anybody out there doing real work, I mean besides thinking up new marketing gimmicks and technology stuff like iPods to confuse us old codgers? But the real message here is that it's a bad time to be in the labor force, with collective bargaining and pensions and stuff having been pretty well dispensed with, and the minimum wage in the pits. And those who are working are overworked, working 60-80 hours a week.
My second thought--sorry I'm so disconnected today--is that the consumers are doing most of the work these days because they (the MNCs) have laid off all the workers. So they shrink wrap and otherwise make everything hard to open. (It took me 4 days to open a bottle of pills that had a white band wrapped around a white bottle, and these are pills for someone with limited vision.) And when you go into a store you walk half a mile before you even see a clerk. And when you try to phone someone you punch buttons for half an hour and still don't get a real person. And heaven help you if you get a package that says, "Some assembly required," the three scariest words in the English language, someone has said. My point is, consumers are doing all the work. The workers who could be helpful have all been laid off. And those who are working are just thinking up ways to catch you, the consumer.
Can anything be done about this? My solution is to elect Democrats and try to get policies in place to honor workers' rights and watchdog the MNCs so they're not making all the rules. After all, we can still vote. Let's think of ways to help workers and consumers.

More on Al Jazeera Interview

2006-02-05T15:02:00.000-08:00

Someone--surely not you, dear computer--doesn't want me to do this. I wrote a good careful one yesterday and was told to republish it 10 minutes later, then more ten minutes later, etc.etc. until I gave up. So it's gone.
What I was doing was correcting and adding to the one from the day before. The name of the Managing Director of Al Jazeera is Waddah Hanfar. The correct title of what I called the Security Secrecy Act is the Official Secrets Act; it's a UK document.
Waddah Hanfar was, as noted before, very impressive--knowledgeable, very fair, very professional. He said a former reporter for Al Jazeera has been held at Guantanamo for more than 3 years, without charge, and another reporter was convicted in Spain and sentenced to 7 years. All of the reporters speak English. And they have no hatred of the US, as alleged. The media could bridge the gaps.
He also said that Al Jazeera had reported live from Fallujah, and that made Bush very angry. They were the only news media there. Rumsfeld said repeatedly that they were telling lies.
We'll see if I can publish this. All for now.

More on Al Jazeera Interview

2006-02-04T13:59:00.000-08:00

I listened again to Amy Goodman's Democracy Now broadcast from Al Jazeera's Hq (Feb. 3, 2006) and can add some info. Waddah Khanfar is the name of the managing director. The name of the Act that Bush wanted to use to get back at whoever leaked or printed the Downing St. Memo (April 1, 2004) is the "Official Secrets Act" of the UK. It was either the Guardian or the Daly Mirror that printed the story initially; I heard reference to each at different times. No one in the US would carry it, but, as I mentioned yesterday, bloggers did on the Internet.
One thing that made the president so angry was that Al Jazeera was reporting live from Fallujah, the only news medium that did so. Rumsfeld repeatedly said that Al Jazeera repeated lies about the US and called the story about the Downing St. Memo outlandish but didn't deny it. Waddah Khanfar said that Al Jazeera has never compromised its independent reporting. All of its reporters speak English. They have no hatred for the US. But they are constantly attacked and are classified as enemies. One has been held at Guantanamo for more than three years without being charged. (His name sounded like Sommi Ohage.) Another has been convicted in Spain and sentenced to seven years.
Again, Waddah Khanfar impressed me as being progessional, very able, and very fair.
There must be much more info on the Internet but I haven't tried to access it.

Al Jazeera Interview

2006-02-03T14:08:00.000-08:00

This morning (Feb 3, 2006) Amy Goodman on Democracy Now broadcast her third program from Al Jazeera Hq in Doha, Qatar. It consisted mostly of an interview with the Managing Director of Al Jazeera, and that consisted largely of a report on the Downing St Memo--which, you will remember, was about Bush and Tony Blair manipulating CIA info to let them invade Iraq. But what they focused on this morning was Bush wanting to bomb Al Jazeera Hq because he didn't like their reporting, and Colin Powell and Blair talking him out of it. There was a lot more, much about a newspaper in London reporting this, the way I understood it, and then a whole lot of bloggers getting it on the Internet. Bush wanted to sue for violation of the Security Secrecy Act (I'm not sure this title is right) but not doing it because then the whole story would come out. I didn't get the name of the Managing Director of Al Jazeera, nor could I understand all he said although his English is excellent. He was very persuasive, very professional.
In any case, I heartily recommend that one and all listen to this broadcast/telecast. It can be heard/seen on both radio and TV, depending on where you are. I get it on KGNU Radio, 1390FM in Denver. I intend to listen to it again this afternoon when it's repeated, at 4:30pm.
All three of Amy Goodman's programs from Al Jazeera have been just outstanding. You should catch all of them. Al Jazeera came off sounding quite professional and believable. They spend, they said, at least 5 hours broadcasting Bush's stuff compared with Osama bin Laden's.

Confirmation Hearings for Judge Alito

2006-01-12T13:07:00.000-08:00

Curious thing. Judge Samuel Alito's "paper trail," which is extensive, and the comments and questions of members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also extensive, indicate that both Alito and Republican members of the committee tend to be on the side of government and business against the individual--even going so far as to defend strip searching a 10-year-old girl. Curious because Republicans have for decades railed against the size of government and government being "on your back" and government regulation of business, even saying government should be shrunk until it could be drowned in the bathtub.
When Republicans are in charge, however, it's okay for the president to wire-tap Americans' phone conversations, compile secret lists of war protesters, and send individuals off to Guantanamo or some remote country for "interrogation" without charge. And now we've been introduced to yet more executive privileges, referred to as "unitary executive theory" and "signing statements," of which the president is reported to have resorted to more than 500 times, notably recently when he signed the defense appropriation bill with an anti-torture amendment attached. Seems he wants to preserve his right to continue abuse of prisoners "when necessary."
Something we've been exposed to for some time, of course, is the government's in intrusiveness when it comes to contraception, the behavior of gays and lesbians, and prayer in schools and so on.
The fact is that the Republican philosophy favors government intervention in the areas just mentioned but government keeping out of business regulation. Democrats, on the other hand, want to keep the government out of our bedrooms and schools and religion but favor government regulation of public utilities, environmental pollution, and mine safety.
As for Judge Alito, the likelihood is that he will be confirmed--although I'm not at all certain of this. And if he is confirmed, it will be more difficult for individuals to get protection against violations in the mines and other hazardous venues and agaomst wire-tapping and other intrusions into private life. This is a very serious matter.
Another curious reversal is the Republican shift from fiscal restraint to enabling the biggest federal budget deficits in history. But that's a story for another time.

A Democratic Agenda

2006-01-01T14:00:00.001-08:00

People say Democrats do a lot of criticizing but don't offer programs of their own, and there's some truth to this. My suggestion, therefore, is that when we offer a criticism we follow it up, if possible, with our own recommendation. And a propos of that, I ran across a suggestion that would be an excellent addition to our agenda, in an article Dec. 25 in The Denver Post by Neal Peirce: "a national infrastructure plan not only robust enough to make a real impact, but based on clear, performance-based targets that give us confidence that the billions we invest will be well spent and not frittered away for political expediency.
"The new idea comes from Felix Rohatyn, a New York investment banker with decades of experience in government finance reform, and Warren Rudman, former Republican senator from New Hampshire and a founder of the Concord Coalition....
"They are co-chairing a newly-formed Commission on Public Infrastructure that has an ingenious idea for a federally funded National Investment Corporation (NIC). Through it, states and local governments could obtain federal financing for a broad array of potential projects, in ground and air transportation, water systems and school buildings."

The execution of Stanley Tookie Williams

2005-12-13T21:19:00.000-08:00

This isn't the way a civilized society should behave. But civilized or not, it doesn't make any sense. I don't have to recount the arguments. The death penalty just doesn't do what it's supposed to do.
Worse yet, from the little bit I know about the Stanley Williams case, including hearing the Amy Goodman interview, I think he's probably innocent. And on top of that, he's completely turned his life around (how many of us could do that starting from where he started? and on death row?) and was doing something good for society. What kind of a people are we? I mourn for us.

An Oversupply of Bad News

2005-12-12T18:36:00.000-08:00

I know what's printed as news can be expected to be bad because the world is supposed to be going on more or less okay and that kind of stuff doesn't need to be reported. But reading the paper tonight it hit me that really things are just AWFUL. Deaths from Katrina (which occurred 3 1/2 months ago) are at 1,323 and bodies are still being found and nothing is being done about rebuilding or anything, even though Bush promised to restore New Orleans to its former grandeur, with the result that nobody can take a chance on restoring a business or a home because nobody has any assurances that anyone else will.... It's the same story in Iraq: a promise to rebuild and then - - - nothing.... Forty-three percent of the homeless in the Denver area are women and children. Nobody notices.... The Chinese government opened fire on villagers protesting land seizures, the biggest killing since Tiananmen....Senate Majority Leader Frist says he is prepared to strip Democrats of their ability to filibuster if they try to stall Judge Alito's Supreme Court nomination.... Pilots are accepting wage cuts to try to keep Delta Airlines from bankruptcy. ... Female inmates are soaring in Colorado; a third of them are in prison for drugs.... There are limited supplies of antitoxin for bird flu.
I guess that's enough.

Common Sense

2005-12-05T18:35:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid I thought the world was basically a fairly decent, civilized, orderly place. My parents were outstanding, and actually I think my neighborhood was pretty good too. And my school too--of usually about 13 kids in as many of the eight grades they comprised, and, yes, we walked 1 1/2 miles in the snow.
And what do I think now? I don't have the words to describe my feelings. Yeah, I'm okay, more than okay personally, but the country isn't. I can scarcely believe what we're going through; I must be making it up. But our president says he will veto a bill if an anit-torture amendment is attached to it, while at the same time he is saying America does not torture people, and he appointed an Attorney General who found it okay for America to torture prisoners, and he is sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Europe to tell people that we don't torture or do rendition, even though it was all over the news a while back that we took a Canadian citizen off a plane in NY and sent him to--was it Syria?--where he says he was tortured. And there are camps all over the world where we send people to be tortured.
Just one more thing: what I was initially going to write about. People are mad if we wish anyone a Merry Christmas and other people are mad if we wish anyone Happy Holidays. But for a change I haven't heard an argument about a manger scene in front of the City and County Building, which is beautifully decorated for Christmas. Yeah, they say it's corny, and others say it's too Christian, but I like it. There's lots more, but I'll just say, get a life. And some common sense.

The War on Terror

2005-11-29T10:09:00.000-08:00

It's very handy to have a few wars going on--great for assuming extra powers and for one's legacy. But as regards terrorism, the caption is part of the problem. Terrorist attacks are criminal acts, not acts of war, and the appropriate response is to mobilize international law, not military violence. Justice, not vengeance. And for that we need friends all over the world.

Thanksgiving Day and War

2005-11-24T14:56:00.000-08:00

On Thanksgiving Day, after two days of houseguests, I'm ba-a-a-ck. My first message for the day is that I'm tremendously thankful!!!!
My second message doesn't fit very well, but it's on my mind. It's about the Iraq War. A story in the Rocky Mountain News headlined "Why we must get out" (by H.H.S. Greemway), says" The Iraq state is a Humpty Dumpty that that is beyond the ability of the United States to put together again. Only Iraqis can do that, and the presence of American forces might actually be a disincentive to ethnic and sectarian compromise." My gosh! My sentiments exactly. I'm so happy that the media and opinion-makers are beginning to reflect that view. Sure took a long time. Why??? Even before the US invaded I wrote Sen. Tom Daschle, Sen. minority leader, (and others) urging him to oppose invasion. Such an easy call. I find it hard to believe that so many Democrats voted for it. Even, and especially, John Kerry. He certainly should have known better.
In any case, the media are beginning to print a little more than the administration line. After 5 years of sadness and depression about the state of our country, I'm beginning to feel some hope.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir

2005-11-20T10:57:00.000-08:00

Just a brief review today of seeing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir last night at the Pepsi Center, neither of which I'd seen before in person. They are indeed remarkable. There are 360 singers, and they serve as volunteers, without pay. They perform so much that this presumably means that they must have independent means because it is unlikely that they would have time to have a job. Their first performance in Denver was in 1893--which was also their first performance outside of Utah--on their way to a performance at the Chicago World's Fair.
I found the Pepsi Center worthy of comment too. If I heard it right, it holds about 30,000 and it was sold out, with proceeds going to the National Sports Center for the Disabled. On the screen we were treated to seeing disabled contestants doing such feats as ice skating on one leg and riding a bicycle, pedaling with one leg.

Gary Hart and Church and State`

2005-11-18T11:04:00.000-08:00

In yesterday's blog I mentioned a news item about Nixon. Today I'd like to quote him exactly (from the documents just released): "Publicly, we say one thing," he told aides, "Actually, we do another."
Today I have just one comment. Gary Hart has written a book called God and Caesar in America. Sounds like a must-read.

Today

2005-11-17T09:57:00.001-08:00

Hello. It's snowing (I love it seeing I don't have to drive anywhere) and NPR is talking to someone about Naropa University and Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg, and I'm contemplating finishing my Eventide book today (what a luxury to be able to read if I want to and decide to just ignore my to-do list), while always in the back of my mind I'm wondering how this country is going to survive more than 3 more years of Dubya. A story in the morning paper about the release of 50,000 pages of Nixon's papers quotes him (Nixon) as instructing his staff that he was going to say one thing and do the opposite, like from now on--this brought to mind Dubya talking about how the Democrats are distorting his reasons for the Iraq invasion. I think he grew up thinking that lying was normal. I've always presumed he could pass a lie detector test because that's the way he thinks and operates and has probably done all his life.

2005-11-17T09:57:00.000-08:00

Novels

2005-11-16T09:30:00.000-08:00

I'm now reading Eventide, by Kent Haruf, our book club selection, and finding it worthwhile. (Although I'm wondering if no fiction can have a happy ending anymore, or even anything good happening. So far there's been nothing but disaster.) I'm finding very little fiction these days that says anything to me, which makes me greatly prefer non-fiction, where there are a million things I just can't wait to read. I did, however, think The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown was an all-time great. And Cold Country (author?) was also excellent.

Clyde Prestowitz books again

2005-11-15T18:56:00.000-08:00

Prestowitz's Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions (2003) is a strong attack on the direction America is taking, all the more remarkable because Prestowitz was a counselor to the Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration. He is extremely knowledgeable. His most recent book (2005), Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East, is a comprehensive statement of what ought to be done now in the world. The "new capitalists" of wh0m he speaks are 1.3 billion Chinese, about 1.1 billion Indians, and about 600 million from the former Soviet Union. His analyses of each country is impressive, reflecting as it does his remarkable ability to stand back and look at a nation seemingly without prejudice or ideological predilection.

Books I'm reading

2005-11-15T09:57:00.000-08:00

I've just finished a couple of books by Clyde Prestowitz that I've found pretty impressive. He's an expert in international trade and is not at all happy about what's going on even though he was an official in the Reagan administration.

Introducing Myself

2005-11-14T15:40:00.000-08:00

I’m almost 84, a widow living in Denver and still excited about life. My macular degeneration rules out driving but I can still read.

My background includes voting for Roosevelt in 1944, teaching Link Trainer in the WAVES in World War II, marriage to an Economics Professor at the University of Denver, raising three children, studying everywhere I could, including at the Sorbonne and the Institute of Political Studies at the University of Paris, at the University of Texas at Austin, and at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where I finally earned a Ph.D. at age 64. Also teaching part-time at various colleges.

In my retirement I write about economics and politics and cause as much trouble as I can. My goal in life? To learn as much as possible about the human condition before I die, and to have fun writing and talking about it along the way.

My Introduction

2005-11-14T15:33:00.000-08:00

I'm a poor old half blind widow. :)