Pete Lit

"In Flanders Fields"

Despite being a pacifist, I still find myself moved by this verse...

In Flanders Fields
by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD, Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Today is Veterans Day, so please give some remembrance to all of the soldiers who have fought for our country. But also recall that this day was originally called Armistice Day ("a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace"), which marked the peaceful end of World War I, and remember that striving for peace means more soldiers come home safely or never go to war in the first place.

Quote

"Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took it all from them."
- Edward Filene, as quoted in Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940, by William Leuchtenberg

I didn't know anything about Filene (other than his department store chain) before reading this quote, but he seems to have been an interesting individual. He was a highly successful merchant, of course, but also was instrumental in the creation of both credit unions and workers compensation insurance.

Yes We Can

U.S. GDP rises 3.5% as stimulus kicks in. Well done, Mr. President.

Progressivism Then (As Now)

Edmund Wilson, from "Meditations of a Progressive", circa 1930-31 (collected in The American Jitters: A Year of the Slump):

...Still, one who like to see them come out and say, "Capitalism has got to go. It's just a question of time, so we're trying to make the transition easy." If they're going in for scaring the manufacturers, they might as well scare them good and proper. I suppose they're afraid of scaring their constituents, too. But why do the American progressives have to be tongue-tied with inhibitions? - they're shy of the whole language of real political thought. The surest way to shake an American reformer and make him back down has always been to accuse him of socialism - that's what they did with Bryan, and we ought to be beyond the Bryan stage. I suppose that we still have a lingering feeling that God is going to strike us dead if we admit that our old-fashioned republic isn't the last word in political science. A few high words would do no one any harm.

Clearly things have changed little since Wilson's day. We're still not "beyond the Bryan stage" - any proposal for genuine political reform, for wresting power away from the plutocracy, is met with charges of socialism (as if socialism is really that bad - it's done quite well for the standard of living in many countries in Europe), from which progressive reformers nearly always shrink in fear, weakly retreating from their positions and leaving the status quo intact.

Joe Hill

Time to honor a great American (or great American immigrant), the organized labor hero Joe Hill, who was born 130 years ago today. Or more accurately, as Mobylives points out, Joel Emmanuel Hägglund, Hill's given name. I had no idea he was Swedish. And check out the Wikipedia section on the remarkable fate of his remains - Billy Bragg, you're a braver man than I.

Cold-blooded inhumanity is a pre-existing condition, too...

At least for the titans of the health insurance industry. Three more examples of the venality of health insurers...

+ Being the victim of domestic abuse is a pre-existing condition, and thus is used as the basis for denying medical coverage. (Most of the top health insurers)
+ "Having a child is a matter of choice," and thus elective, and thus maternity care is subject to denial of coverage. (Anthem Blue Cross)
+ Delivering a child by Caesarean section increases the likelihood that a Caesarean will be needed for future births, and thus the first Caesarean creates a pre-existing condition which is the basis for denying coverage of future Caesareans. (Golden Rule Insurance)

But remember, things would be so much worse if we had government bureaucrats deciding what health care you deserve instead of profit-motivated private companies. PASS MEANINGFUL HEALTH CARE REFORM LEGISLATION, NOW.

Rejecting the "cult of the market"

French President Nicholas Sarkozy is onto something (no, not "on something") here.

"A great revolution is waiting for us. For years, people said that finance was a formidable creator of wealth, only to discover one day that it accumulated so many risks that the world almost plunged into chaos," argues the French leader. "The crisis doesn't only make us free to imagine other models, another future, another world. It obliges us to do so."

Sarkozy's "revolution" would still use measures of economic growth and contraction in the analysis of a nation's success. But the definition would be expanded beyond traditional gross domestic product (GDP) models to include measures of well-being and what Sarkozy describes as "the politics of civilization." These include environmental sustainability, the quality of public services and the amount of time citizens of a country have to meet family responsibilities -- which the French leader values as "personal services provided within a family circle."

I've been thinking along these lines quite a bit during the past few months, and have been contemplating what I'm tentatively calling "social profit." The general idea is that the standard measure of a company's profitability - revenues minus expenses - is skewed almost entirely toward the interests of shareholders and executives, and ignores the impact of a company's actions on its workers, its suppliers and customers, its community and society as a whole.

Under standard accounting, if a corporation fires a thousand workers and realizes payroll and other cost savings which are greater than the lost revenue which those workers generated, then the corporation's accounting profit improves. Shareholders and executives benefit (from the resulting improvement in the corporation's stock price) while workers and their families suffer. If a corporation determines that belching mercury and other toxic matter from its smokestacks into the atmosphere can be done at a lower cost (from resulting legal actions and regulatory penalties) than responsibly installing state-of-the-art pollution control equipment, then its accounting profit improves, again benefiting shareholders and executives while harming everyone who lives nearby with the nasty enviromental fallout. If a corporation forces its suppliers into unreasonable cost concessions, it lowers its own input costs but only by lowering the revenue of the suppliers, which may result in the suppliers freezing or reducing wages to its workers, or even instituting layoffs. Again, the corporation's shareholders executives gain, while the suppliers and their workers lose. Or, as Sarkozy might note, if a corporation demands that its employees work such unreasonably long hours that their family lives are disrupted or even damaged, the corporation gains through greater output and efficiency while families are harmed.

Simply put, accounting profit is too narrowly focused. It evaluates a corporation as if it exists in a vacuum, as if its sole responsibility is to enrich its shareholders and executives while all other stakeholders - workers, suppliers, customers, the community - are of little or no consequence. Social profit, by contrast, would measure a corporation's actions on all of its stakeholders. If a company generates high accounting profits, that's perfectly fine, but only if it does so while not damaging the rest of society in the process. Though my concept of social profit applies specifically to corporations, it could easily be extended to national economies, where Sarkozy rightly suggests GDP is as unreasonably narrowly focused as an economic benchmark as accounting profit is for corporations.

I like where Sarkozy is going with this, and hope he finds a receptive audience at the G-20 summit.

No to "triggers"

The latest proposal in the healthcare reform debate is to defer the public option for now, with the caveat that it could be implemented, or "triggered", several years from now if private insurers do nothing to reduce health insurance costs. This makes no sense for several reasons. First, the insurance industry has done absolutely nothing up until now to control costs, so why should we believe that they'll suddenly wise up and do so, just because there's the possibility of a public option being instituted sometime in the future? (And make no mistake, it will no more than a possibility - no matter how concrete Congress makes the "trigger" legislation, it's inevitable that enough wiggle room will be built in to enable the public option to be deferred again several years from now, or even abandoned completely.) Instead, the industry will likely use the trigger as a grace period to squeeze several hundred billion dollars more out of the American public.

Second, if the public option will be legitimate government policy in three years, why isn't it legitimate policy right now? Why wait?

The insurance industry has had it too good for far too long - raising premiums to policyholders while continuing to delay or deny coverage - and a public option trigger will do nothing more than to extend the insurers' good times for several more years, and won't fix our broken healthcare system. We're paying more for healthcare than every other country in the world, and yet the quality of that healthcare lags most of the developed world, and the private insurance industry's position as profit-grabbing middleman is the primary cause. We can do better, and must do better.

I know the Obama Administration is under a lot of pressure to pass any sort of healthcare reform so it can claim political victory. But 65 million voters didn't put Obama into office so he could claim political victories. Instead they voted for change, for a better way of life for all Americans. Weak healthcare reform is the wrong kind of change, and might be even worse than maintaining the unsatisfactory status quo. Pass a strong public option right now.

Save the public option!

I'm dismayed that the Obama Administration is already backing down from including a public insurance option as part of healthcare reform. Without a public option, it will be reform in name only, and our broken healthcare system won't be fixed.

The “public option,” a new government insurance program akin to Medicare, has been a central component of Mr. Obama’s agenda for overhauling the health care system, but it has also emerged as a flashpoint for anger and opposition. Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, said the public option was “not the essential element” for reform and raised the idea of the co-op during an interview on CNN.

Mr. Obama himself sought to play down the significance of the public option at a town-hall-style meeting on Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo., when a university student challenged him on how private insurers could compete with the government.

After strongly defending the public plan, the president suggested that he, too, viewed it as only a small piece of a broader initiative intended to control costs, expand coverage, protect consumers and make the delivery of health care more efficient.

No no no. The public option is the essential element. The best way to "control costs, expand coverage, protect consumers and make the delivery of health care more efficient" is to have a public option which will force private insurers to be more competitive. This will benefit both those who are currently uninsured (who will gain coverage) and those (myself included) who already have employer-provided private insurance, who will gain from more comprehensive coverage and controlled growth of policy premiums.

And the argument that "a public plan would invariably drive private insurers out of business and prompt employers to drop private coverage" doesn't hold either. The insurance companies are already in such a position of strength that even a few million people migrating to the the public plan won't bankrupt them, but should instead spur them to be more efficient and negotiate more vigorously with pharmaceutical companies and hospitals instead of just passing along higher costs to employers and individuals. This will make their health plan offerings more affordable, and make them more palatable to employers, who will thus be more likely to continue providing coverage to workers.

What's wrong with a little competition, anyway? Isn't that what capitalism is all about? What are the private insurers afraid of, other than the days of their being able to print money coming to an end?

I would like every conservative politician who rails against the so-called "government takeover of healthcare" to immediately renounce Medicare and Medicaid and demand the immediate termination of those programs. Those politicians would be lucky to suffer no more than simply losing their next election - but instead, I think it's more likely they'd be greeted in their home districts by angry constituent seniors armed with torches and pitchforks, with tarring and feathering suddenly coming back into vogue.

Effin golden, indeed

Amazon customers are having a field day adding tags to Rod Blagojevich's upcoming (and self-serving, delusional, narcissistic, etc.) memoir The Governor. I'm guessing most if not all of the contributors were his former constituents, howling online in outrage as they wonder (as I've done) how the hell they ever voted this guy into office twice. Here are all the tags so far that were selected more than once.

moron (121); delusional (91); crook (79); fraud (58); historical fiction (46); insanity (41); impeachment (35); fantasy series (29); hairbrush (27); hair care (20); comedy (19); testicular virility (7); sociopath (4); corruption (3); effin golden (3); illinois political corruption (3); narcissistic personality disorder (3); pay to play (3); cuckoo (2); disgrace (2); dogs (2); embarrassment (2); fitzpatrick (2)

The full list is here. (My favorites, at one vote each, are "governor goofy" and "careful picking up the soap.") And please, literature lovers, do society a favor - don't buy the book (let the schmuck pay for his own legal defense) and leave your own tag instead.

(Via Gapers Block Book Club.)

The Baffler returns!

No, not some second-rate Batman villian, but the great journal edited by Thomas Frank.

"In my little imagination, I never really felt like The Baffler went away," he said. "I mean, I just got back from the hardware store. I went to buy grass seed. The name of the seed? 'Rebel'! It's like there's almost no point anymore to the word!"

I was big fan of The Baffler back in the day, and am glad to see it return, so much so that I will be a regular subscriber this time instead of sporadically picking it up from the newsstand. My only regret is that, having ceased publication in 2003, it missed the meatiest parts of the Bush administration. The journal's wisdom and common sense would have gone a long way towards comprehending the insanity of that thankfully bygone era.

Antitrust: good news, bad news

Good: the new antitrust regime in Washington is getting aggressive.

President Obama’s top antitrust official and some senior Democratic lawmakers are preparing to rein in a host of major industries, including airline and railroad giants, moving so aggressively that they are finding some resistance from officials within the administration.

Bad: Some Obama administration officials are resisting.

In some cases, though, the new approach is being opposed by administration officials. Some fear that the crackdown is coming at a bad time, as corporate America reels from the recession. Other officials embrace the Bush administration’s view that larger companies and industry alliances can provide consumer benefits by making their businesses more efficient.

I really don't understand the latter, especially since two of the administration's biggest problems right now - reining in the excesses of Wall Street and reforming the healthcare system - are the direct result of previous administrations abdicating their antitrust responsibility, stepping aside and allowing the financial and healthcare industries to consolidate. Power became highly concentrated within those industries, competition slackened, prices rose and consumer choices decreased, and now those major players are so politically and economically strong that they can easily block any attempt at reform.

Repeat after me, Mr. Obama: increased industry power does NOT benefit consumers or society as a whole - no matter what those industries tell you. Do everything in your power to regulate industry and restore the critical competition that your predecessors let slip away.

Walter Cronkite

(Photo by CBS)

I'm sure the tributes for this great man will keep rolling in, from people who knew him well or speak more eloquently than I can. For me, all you need to know about Cronkite was the comment that Lyndon Johnson made after the anchorman returned from Vietnam and expressed serious reservations about the war effort: "If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America." We will never have another journalist as influential, respected and trusted as Walter Cronkite. Rest well, sir.

No caption needed

(Photo by Tom McCauley, Associated Press)

Although this picture speaks for itself, I welcome your suggestions for an appropriate caption. Feel free to leave one as a comment.

Perry Mason

It warms my heart to hear that Sonia Sotomayor was such a fan of Perry Mason while growing up. (And indeed, it's very hard to imagine Calista Flockhart or James Spader inspiring a young person to go into law, as Raymond Burr did for Sotomayor.) I was a huge fan myself, especially during grad school, so much so that I was often late for my noon class in trying to catch the last minutes of episodes that started on WTBS at 11:05 a.m. There was just something about the tone and mood of the show - the relentless pursuit of justice for the wrongly accused, the unapologetic sanctimony, the dark suits and Thunderbirds and swanky cocktail lounges, the endless befuddlement of authority as embodied by District Attorney Hamilton Burger. Even the utter implausibility of the latter factor - Burger losing every case to Mason, who always extracted a courtroom confession from an unwitting witness - never dampened my ardor for the show. Glad to see I'm not alone.

Who said it?

"When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account."

Sonia Sotomayor? No, Samuel Alito. And yet the same Senate conservatives who had no problem with this position in 2006, when they confirmed Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, now hypocritically insist that a Supreme Court Justice should never practice empathy when making their judicial decisions, thus making Sotomayor (who has professed similar empathy) somehow unfit for the Court. Oh, please.

(Via Think Progress.)

Dim bulbs not quite so dim any longer

Gee, what do you know? Government regulation spurs innovation.

When Congress passed a new energy law two years ago, obituaries were written for the incandescent light bulb. The law set tough efficiency standards, due to take effect in 2012, that no traditional incandescent bulb on the market could meet, and a century-old technology that helped create the modern world seemed to be doomed.

But as it turns out, the obituaries were premature.

Left to the free market, the incandescent bulb industry would probably have just puttered along, selling century-old technology that wasted energy and indirectly generated air pollution from the power plants that supply electricity, because doing so was a slow-growth but high-cashflow business. But then, when the government toughens up energy efficiency standards, the industry suddenly realizes it has to do things differently in order to survive, and comes up with a vastly improved product. For the same reason, if the government finally gets tough with the coal industry and the power plants it feeds, the result won't be the death of those industries, but instead revitalized industries that do things better than they did before. Same thing with raising fuel efficiency and emissions standards for the auto industry - if those companies are smart enough to change, they'll survive and even thrive. And if they're not smart enough, they shouldn't be in business anyway.

Karl Malden

For me, there's no greater testament to the greatness of Karl Malden than his quietly electrifying performance in On The Waterfront, and particularly the unforgettable scene in the video above, which moves me even more than Brando's famous "I coulda been a contender" scene.

A.O. Scott has written a fine appreciation of Malden (who died this week, at age 97) which is very much worth reading as well. I might just have to rent A Streetcar Named Desire today, on this rainy holiday.

So who's the judicial activist, exactly?

The well-worn refrain is that liberal judges are activists who are bent on dictating social policy, while conservative judges respect precedent and always defer to the decisions of elected officials who are accountable to the electorate. Wrong.

On another point, the (Ricci) ruling underscored the emptiness of the “judicial activist” label that Republicans like to use in debates over nominees to the federal courts, including Judge Sotomayor. In the firefighters’ case, she actually refused to second-guess the city’s decision — an act of judicial restraint. It was the court’s conservatives, including Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted to overturn the decision of an elected government.

Liberal or conservative, all judges are activists sometimes, and status-quo conservators at other times. Sotomayor may have often been an activist in her rulings, but that's not the case here. To dismiss her as a "judicial activist" is simple-minded and just plain wrong.

No No No No No

White House drafting indefinite detention order

This is NOT the sort of thing we voted for in November. This is nothing more than a continuation of Bush's abhorrent status quo, and if the majority of voters really wanted unfettered executive power such as this, we would have voted McCain into office. If we really want to set an example for the rest of the world and show our commitment to liberty and personal freedom, giving the executive branch the unilateral power to detain terror suspects indefinitely without trial is absolutely NOT the way to do so. I don't care if the executive order can be rescinded at any time - merely enacting it sets a dangerous precedent, particularly for the next paranoid conservative to occupy the Oval Office.

Too big to fail? How about too big to exist?

Excellent essay here by Eric Dash in the NYT on financial insitutions which have been deemed "too big to fail" and thus are considered deserving of a federal bailout to protect the financial system as a whole. But if these institutions have grown so large (through predatory consolidation and the complete abdication of antitrust oversight by the government) that their failure would cause the entire system to collapse, then why allow them to continue to exist in their enormous, bloated and unwieldy form? If their sheer size is implicitly a threat to the system, shouldn't they be broken up?

Once upon a time, our government diligently enforced antitrust law, recognizing the threat to our economy and society itself of unfettered corporate power, but such oversight has been all but abandoned as our government has caved in to free-market zealotry. The free-market argument for unchecked consolidation - that it generates critical economies of scale and allows banks to compete globally - has been completely refuted by the organizational basket case that is Citigroup. And also, I suspect, Bank of America, which has experienced considerable indigestion from its swallowing of Merrill Lynch and Countrywide, two colossuses in their own right whose great size couldn't prevent their collapse.

Bailing out companies like these without breaking them up - and the recently proposed industry regulation is a nice idea, but doesn't go nearly far enough - simply ensures that they'll be back soon for another bailout. Which doesn't help anyone other than Wall Street.

Working: President, Lordstown Local, UAW

Reading Working last night, I was struck by this passage from the UAW local boss in Lordstown, Ohio, which is timely today even though it was said back in 1972. He's talking about the onset of robotic automation at General Motors, which sped up output but also resulted in extensive layoffs.

When they took the unimates on, we were building sixty an hour. When we came back to work with the unimates, we were building a hundred cars an hour. A unimate is a welding robot. It looks just like a preying mantis. It goes from spot to spot to spot. It releases that thing and it jumps back into position, ready for the next car. They go by them about 110 an hour. They never tire, they never sweat, they never complain, they never miss work. Of course, they don't buy cars. I guess General Motors doesn't understand that argument.

There's twenty two, eleven on each side of the line. They do the work of about two hundred men - so there was a reduction of men.

You always hear economists and business commentators sing the praises of "productivity", which is just a fancy way of saying "producing more with fewer workers." What they never say is that fewer workers also means layoffs, and reduced consumer spending, and lower quality of life in the towns that rely so heavily on the auto industry. Sure, robotics increase production, but at a human cost that is rarely mentioned. Or an economic cost, even to GM - as the union boss points out, robots don't buy cars. Imagine how many more cars GM could have sold all these years if they were still paying the paychecks of several hundred thousand more autoworkers whom were cast aside in the quest for "efficiency."

Heroes of Democracy, Part 1

This is wonderful: a high school kid who operates a lending library of banned books - out of his school locker.

I would be in so much trouble if I got caught, but I think it's the right thing to do because before I started, almost no kid at school but myself took an active interest in reading! Now not only are all the kids reading the banned books, but go out of their way to read anything they can get their hands on. So I'm doing a good thing, right?

A kid who loves both literature and free speech. Maybe the future of our country is in good hands after all.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Quote

"I’ll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."
- Jesse Ventura

Studs Terkel on May Day

I can think of no better way to honor May Day than with this priceless anecdote from the late Studs Terkel.

About 25 years ago, Studs Terkel was waiting for a number 146 bus alongside two well-groomed business types. "This was before the term yuppie was used," he explains. "But that was what they were. He was in Brooks Brothers and Gucci shoes and carrying the Wall Street Journal under his arm. She was a looker. I mean stunning - Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus and carrying Vanity Fair."

Terkel, who is 95, has long been a Chicago icon, every bit as accessible and integral to the cultural life of the Windy City as Susan Sontag was to New York. He had shared the bus stop with this couple for several mornings but they had always failed to acknowledge him. "It hurts my ego," he quips. "But this morning the bus was late and I thought, this is my chance." The rest of the story is his.

"I say, 'Labour Day is coming up.' Well, it was the wrong thing to say. He looks toward me with a look of such contempt it's like Noel Coward has just spotted a bug on his collar. He says, 'We despise unions.' I thought, oooooh. The bus is still late. I've got a winner here. Suddenly I'm the ancient mariner and I fix him with my glittering eye. 'How many hours a day do you work?' I ask. He says, 'Eight.' 'How comes you don't work 18 hours a day like your great-great-grandfather did? You know why? Because four guys got hanged in Chicago in 1886 fighting for the eight-hour day ... For you.'

"Well, he was scared and nervous and the bus was still late. I've got this guy pinned up against the mailbox. He couldn't get away. 'How many days a week do you work?' I went on. Well, then the bus came and I never saw them again. But I think that every workday morning she was looking from the 15th floor of their apartment block to see if that mad man was still there."

Sadly, that mad man is no longer with us, but I hope that couple never forgot the encounter.

(Via MobyLives.)

DINO attack!

All of the ballyhoo about Arlen Specter switching parties and the likelihood (assuming Al Franken is finally allowed to assume the Senate seat which is rightly his) that the Democrats will gain a filibuster-proof 60-member Senate majority obscures one critical fact: the Dems rarely vote as a unified bloc anyway, thanks to moderates and pseudo-Republicans like Joe Lieberman who lurk within the ranks. The latest example? Today, Twelve Democrats broke ranks and voted against an amendment (introduced by Illinois' Dick Durbin) which would have allowed bankruptcy judges to modify terms of homeowners' mortgages to avoid foreclosure and allow them to stay in their homes. The moderates, or Democrats In Name Only, once again caved in to the banking industry (which you might think is so disgraced these days that it wields no influence whatsoever) and gave Wall Street exactly what it wanted.

I'm not surprised that the Republicans (a/k/a the Commerce Party) voted unanimously against the amendment, but if your Senator happens to be named Baucus, Bennet, Byrd, Carper, Dorgan, Johnson, Landrieu, Lincoln, Nelson, Pryor, Specter or Tester, please feel free to send them a nastygram, thanking them for once again kowtowing to powerful business interests at the expense of the everyday people who put them in office.

“What we’re talking about here are people who don’t have any paid lobbyists,” Mr. Durbin said, speaking of homeowners in financial trouble. “What they’re counting on are people, senators in this chamber who will stand up for them. The bankers don’t want this. They hate the Durbin amendment like the devil hates holy water.”

Senators standing up to Wall Street? Thanks for tilting at windmills, Senator.

Update: Another sharp comment from Durbin, via Think Progress:

At some point the senators in this chamber will decide the bankers shouldn't write the agenda for the United States Senate. At some point the people in this chamber will decide the people we represent are not the folks working in the big banks, but the folks struggling to make a living and struggling to keep a decent home.

Again, thank you, Senator.

The old is new again

Another flashback from The Progressive, this one by Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior under FDR, from 1938:

About one-half of the wealth of this country is in corporate form, and over one-half of it is under the domination of 200 corporations, which in turn are controlled by what Ferdinand Lundberg in his recent book referred to as “America’s 60 Families.”

Eight years ago America’s 60 families had held in their hands, since the close of the World War, complete dominion over the economic and political life of the country...Out of their divinely claimed genius as managers of private enterprise the 60 families promptly led the American people into the worst peacetime catastrophe ever known...The new government bailed the 60 families out of the consequences of their own mesmeric miscalculations and their unintelligent leadership of the system of private enterprise of which they had pretended to be master managers...

Substitute "Wall Street" for "60 families", and it's obvious that things really haven't changed much during the last 71 years.

Quote

"I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1929

The Progressive is celebrating its 100th anniversary, and given our current economic doldrums the magazine rightly thought it would be appropriate to re-run a series of articles which it originally published during the Great Depression. (This happens to be quite timely for me, as I just started reading Michael Harrington's 1962 study The Other America: Poverty in the United States, in which the author argues that the welfare state created in response to the Depression mostly benefitted the middle and upper classes, and not the poor.) Here are the articles that have run so far:

Wagner Urges Unemployment Relief Action, by Senator Robert Wagner (June 14, 1930)

“Individualism” Seen in Destructive Phase, by Theodore Dreiser (January 9, 1932)

Human Wreckage: A Plea for Federal Relief, by William Green (February 20, 1932)

The Long Plan for Recovery, by Senator Huey P. Long (April 1, 1933)

Word of the day: ceilidh

Or, more accurately, the word of yesterday...

ceilidh

Main Entry: cei·lidh (pronunciation)

Variant(s): also cei·li \'kā-lē\ Function: noun Etymology: Irish céilí & Scottish Gaelic cèilidh visit, social evening, party with music and dancing, from Old Irish céilide visit, from céile servant, companion, neighbor; akin to Welsh cilydd companion, Old Breton kiled Date: 1875

Scottish & Irish : a party with music, dancing, and often storytelling

As part of my Irish reading month, right now I'm halfway Patrick McCabe's Winterwood, in which the word ceilidh comes up frequently. I was familiar with the definition (albeit from Local Hero, a Scottish film) but couldn't quite remember the pronunciation. And now I know - KAY-lee.

Can't say I enjoyed any music or dancing last night - Julie's in bed with a nasty case of the flu - but I did have homemade corned beef and cabbage, Guinness bread (bless her heart - despite her weakened state she still cooked all of this) and a pint of Extra Stout, all of which were excellent.

Fighting Illini in the Sweet Sixteen!

The Academic Performance Tournament.

Frankly, I'd rather see my alma mater win this "tournament" than the one on the hardwood.

Turtle Wax, Bastion of Sexism

As a male who is much more likely to clean the house (and did so, in fact, as recently as this past weekend) than wax his car, I am quite offended by the sexism promoted by these Turtle Wax bottles from the 1950s. And in case you're wondering: no, I do not clean house with a frilly apron around my waist and a ribbon in my hair - nor a self-satisfied smile on my face either.

"The sound of ideologies clashing"

Wise words from one of my favorite bards, Billy Bragg:

Outside the patient millions
Who put them into power
Expect a little more back for their taxes
Like school books, beds in hospitals
And peace in our bloody time
But all they get is old men grinding axes

Far too many old men grinding far too many axes in Washington this week. For the good of the country, those patient millions, I hope those in power set aside all of the rhetoric and the posturing and get this stimulus bill passed. We need it.

Ben & Jerry & George

Gerry Canavan links to this post about Ben & Jerry's supposed (but likely fake) solicitation of a new ice cream flavor to "honor" our recently departed President. Here are a few of my suggestions:

Let Them Eat Cake
Thickheaded Brickle
My Pet Gooseberry
Plutocrunch
Cherry Tarture
The War Criminal Raisins and Sprinkles (nod to Okkervil River)
War Criminilla

Governor Quinn on the Illinois River

Our new governor in Illinois, Pat Quinn, wrote the following in a foreword to the photographic collection Life Along The Illinois River, by David Zalaznik:

Since the very beginning of our state’s history, the Illinois River has brought life to our communities, our economy, and our people....But as the nineteenth century came to a close, the river that had brought prosperity to so many began to suffer from human thoughtlessness...As the river waters grew shallower and dirtier, the river ecosystem dwindled. ‘Wash days’ in urban areas sent masses of gray phosphorous-filled suds floating downstream, while littered garbage and other wastes left the rivers and their banks odorous and unsightly.

Then the federal Clean Water Act of 1972 was passed, providing much-needed regulation of industrial pollution sources and beginning a slow but spectacular river renaissance. As water quality improved, many species of fish returned, and wetlands that had been barren welcomed renewed growth of native plants...As the remarkable photographs in this book so clearly illustrate, the Illinois River valley has enjoyed a spectacular comeback. I hope you will enjoy this book—and more important, I hope it will inspire you to come and explore the rich cultural heritage and great natural beauty of Illinois River Country.

I concur with the blogger at University of Illinois Press (where I once worked part-time, untold moons ago) in the hope that Quinn in Springfield, along with Obama in Washington, are the political equivalent of the Clean Water Act. Goodness knows there's plenty of odorous and unsightly wastes to be purged from both cities.

Heckuva job, Bushie

Yes, I know I previously said that this would be my last jab at Dubya, but unfortunately the impact of his "leadership" will continue to be felt for the indefinite future - and felt quite painfully. So ongoing commentary may be warranted.

Dressing down at the White House

As if I didn't already have enough reasons to love this guy:

President Barack Obama has brought a more relaxed style to the White House, according to Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times, among other things going suit coat-less in the Oval Office and allowing others to do the same.

Though dress shirts and ties are apparently still required in the Oval Office, I still appreciate the gesture. I'm one of only two or three male bankers in my office who never wears a tie or suit - just button-down shirts, slacks and dress shoes. (My attire raised a few eyebrows at first, but since then everyone seems to have gotten used to both that and my goatee, which appears to be even more rare in the facial-hairless banking world.) Since leaving my last job (which was jeans-casual) for the prim and stuffy world of banking, I've regularly questioned the strict adherence to the old-fashioned business dress code. It makes even less sense when you consider that most of our clients have already abandoned suits in favor of business casual, so I keep asking who it is, exactly, that we're dressing up for.

And as if I didn't already have enough reasons to despise this guy:

One of the story's most memorable anecdotes is actually not about Obama but former President George Bush and it was told by Dan Bartlett who was a senior adviser to Obama's predecessor.

"I'll never forget going to work on a Saturday morning, getting called down to the Oval Office because there was something he was mad about," said Dan Bartlett, who was counselor to Mr. Bush. "I had on khakis and a buttoned-down shirt, and I had to stand by the door and get chewed out for about 15 minutes. He wouldn't even let me cross the threshold."

Bush was really a stickler about no one, including himself, entering the Oval Office without a tie and suit coat on.

I guess if Dubya chafes at retirement - after all, there's little brush-clearing to be done in his new and snooty Dallas neighborhood - he can always come and work for my bank. He'd fit right in.

Unconscionable

Economic stimulus plan passes the U.S. House, despite not a single Republican voting for it. You read that right - the GOP voted 178-0 against this critically-needed legislation.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a swift victory for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House approved a historically huge $819 billion stimulus bill Wednesday night with spending increases and tax cuts at the heart of the young administration's plan to revive a badly ailing economy. The vote was 244-188, with Republicans unanimous in opposition despite Obama's frequent pleas for bipartisan support.

Is it really possible that not a single Republican congressman thought the stimulus plan was a good idea? I doubt it. The GOP, for all their America-first, flag-waving patriotism, don't care nearly as much about America and its citizens as they do about playing nice within their little party sandbox. The American economy is collapsing, and they all vote the party line instead of doing what's right. Shame on them.

Amen

Kudos to U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman, for ruling that Illinois' "moment of silence" law - a thinly-veiled attempt toward easing prayer into public schools - is unconstitutional.

As passed by the Illinois General Assembly, the law allows students to reflect on the day's activities rather than pray if that is their choice and defenders have said it therefore doesn't force religion on anyone.

But Gettleman backed critics such as the American Civil Liberties Union, who say the law is a thinly disguised effort to bring religion into the schools.

The "teacher is required to instruct her pupils, especially in the lower grades, about prayer and its meaning as well as the limitations on their 'reflection,'" Gettleman ruled.

"The plain language of the statute, therefore, suggests and intent to force the introduction of the concept of prayer into the schools," he said.

I was opposed to the law from the start, and am glad to see that at least one member of our federal judiciary has more common sense than the Illinois state legislature.

Barack Obama, and Why My Dad Was Wrong

Today represents a monumental turning point in America's history. Our country was founded on the ideals of freedom and equality, two principles which for the better part of two centuries remained mere ideals and were never fully put into practice. Political and economic power became concentrated, in Washington and on Wall Street, while the vast majority of everyday citizens simply had to make do and scratch out the best existence that they could. While Wall Street could be excused for its actions - it has always unapologetically been a money-making venture and nothing but, and by its very definition is motivated entirely by profit and greed - Washington could not. Despite being the seat of our national government and the birthplace of democracy - government of the people - Washington increasingly became an exclusive club, a self-perpetuating establishment of incumbent politicians, lobbyists and cronies who ran our country however they pleased. For most of its existence, our government has excluded women and racial minorities, as well as the voices of everyday citizens, belying the oft-repeated claim of America's greatness as a bastion of freedom and equal opportunity.

The inauguration of Barack Obama as our 44th President is the first step towards true democracy. Obama truly represents the American Dream - the son of a mixed-raced marriage, of an immigrant father and Heartland mother, who grew up in a struggling but loving single-parent household, who struggled with his identity before ultimately embracing his roots, who rose from his humble and peripatetic beginnings to an Ivy League education and the national political stage while never losing sight of and compassion for the common man. By a wide margin, American voters have elected a man who is not only African-American but also has a middle name which is Muslim in origin, and looked beyond both superficialities to the man within or, in the words of Martin Luther King, "the content of his character." America chose compassion and optimism and change over the petty, small-minded status quo. With Barack Obama, America has taken the first step toward fulfilling the democratic promise on which the country was founded more than two hundred years ago.

Four years ago, after Obama was elected to the United States Senate, I was talking to my father, a loving man but lifelong political conservative who would pass away from cancer a few months after the election. I asked him what he thought of our new senator, and he replied that Obama seemed like a good man but that he'd never rise any higher than the Senate "with a name like that." My father was no bigot, or at least no more bigoted than other men of his era who grew up mostly apart from minorities. I don't think he meant Obama any ill will or thought any less of him because of his skin color or name, but instead meant that he didn't think America was tolerant enough to elect such a man, or openminded enough to look beyond superficialities and truly consider the content of his character.

I am quite pleased to say that my dad was utterly and completely wrong. We are that tolerant and openminded, and because of that we have elected a good man who will help all of us, together, work toward true equality and opportunity for everyone. Liberty and justice for all.

The Official George W. Bush Presidential Librarium

Rightly questioning the merits of a Presidential library which honors a man of limited intellectual curiosity and an even more limited grasp of objective truth, the good folks behind Goodnight Bush present an alternative: the George W. Bush Presidential Librarium. Some of the highlights for me are Rummy's Believe Me or Not, Church & Skate ("the half-pipe where we erase the separation between wicked and awesome!") and Wet N' Wild Waterboarding ("It should be a crime to have this much fun...somehow, it isn't").

Yes, I'm indulging in one last dig at the Fratboy In Chief before sanity is restored on Tuesday. Or actually second-to-last: my final disrespectful act will be, of course, the ceremonial flush.

On Blagojevich

Okay, I admit it. I made a mistake, a huge mistake. I not only voted for Rod Blagojevich twice, but very publicly supported him here. (For a complete confession of my Blago blog sins, see links below.) The shady dealings in the governor's office started surfacing during his first term, but I mostly ignored them. Part of that was due to my cynical belief that it was just another case of business as usual in Illinois politics, but mostly because I believed in his progressive causes - universal health care, environmental protection, government-funded stem cell research, etc. I thought he was trying to do the right thing for the people of Illinois, and figured that if the price of that sort of progress was some political chicanery, then so be it.

But the red flags really went up this past summer, when the state government ground to a complete halt during a budget impasse, as Blago kept insisting that his social programs be passed even though the economic downturn meant there was no way to pay for them as long as he held fast to his campaign pledge of no personal income tax increases. While I admire him trying to keep his campaign promises, I admire even more a politician who can face political reality - there's no way his political initiatives would ever make it through the legislature without a major tax increase. But he arrogantly stuck to his guns, scrapping his early call for a huge business tax increase (which had absolutely no chance of ever passing) and feebly insisting that his programs could be paid for by expanding casino gambling in the state. He did all of this while showing absolutely no interest in negotiating with the legislature - it would be his way or no way at all. And "no way" is what it became. Today the state owes billions in Medicare and Medicaid payments to dozens of hospitals throughout the state, still has seriously unfunded the state employee pension plan, and needs even more billions in infrastructure spending, none of which it can possibly pay for. All of this showed me he was incapable of governing, and my support for him quickly faded.

And now it clearly appears that he wasn't at all interested in doing the right thing for the people of Illinois - he only wanted the right thing for himself. It's obvious that every state function under his control - filling a vacant U.S. Senate seat, awarding state contracts - was for sale to the highest bidder, with the proceeds and perks all going directly to him. All of which is appalling in itself, but even more appalling is the outrageous arrogance he has publicly displayed ever since his indictment, refusing to resign and saying he will be vindicated by the legal system. He keeps saying he wants what's best for the people of Illinois, even as he has made the state into a national laughingstock, brought the state government to a standstill, and even bogged down the U.S. Senate, where our elected representatives are supposed to be focused on getting us out of our economic morass but instead have to deal with the political circus of the Roland Burris appointment which Blago went right ahead and made, in defiance of both the Springfield legislature and the Democratic Party leadership in Washington.

Yes, Blago will have his day in court. But no matter whether he's guilty or not - and the feds' wiretaps seem almost inarguably damning - he has completely lost his ability to lead the state. And that, regardless of his legal guilt or innocence, means he should resign immediately - for the good of people of Illinois, whom he keeps insisting that he cares so much about. If he truly cares about us, he would leave office right now.


Blago Mea Culpa:
On drug reimportation
On requiring pharmacists to offer birth control
On state-funded stem-cell research
On children's health insurance
On environmental protection

Festivus for the rest of us

Oh man, I love this.

Capitol Festivus pole goes up, and gripes begin
Festivus display at Illinois Capitol

Christian guy: "Festivus is nothing — it means nothing, it represents nothing...At least the atheist sign had a viewpoint...I think (the Festivus pole is) a mockery."

Atheist gal: "If the state's going to create a forum for religion at this time of year, which we do not approve of, this is what's going to happen,"

Festivus guy: "I'm halfway thinking about complaining about the location."

AP writer: "Festivus was, after all, a holiday built around the airing of grievances."

Religious displays have no place on any government property. Even if our country was founded as a Christian nation - and that's highly debatable - the Constitution prohibits the establishment of an official religion, and to my mind allowing nativity scenes or menorahs or whatever on public property is an officially sanctioned promotion of religious beliefs, one which has no place in our multicultural society. If you really want a nativity scene, just slap one on your front lawn between the plastic reindeer and the inflatable Frosty the Snowman, just like all my suburban neighbors do. Now that's the true American way.

"This is a farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

This is, hands down, the video clip of the year, one which perfectly encapsulates the wrongness of Bush's misguided mission in Iraq and the illegitimacy of our military presence there. Not to mention his almost-flippant, "What me worry?" attitude.

McClelland on Blago

Chicago writer Ted McClelland (whose book Horseplayers I read and enjoyed last year) offers up an excellent backgrounder on Rod Blagojevich at Salon.

Here's a short quiz. Which of the following is statistically more likely to land a Chicagoan in jail: a) joining the Gangster Disciples, b) selling crack on a West Side street corner, or c) becoming governor. The answer is c, of course, which makes me wonder. If governing Illinois is such an at-risk occupation, why don't we just abolish the job and replace it with a board of directors or a court-appointed supervisor?

Like most embarrassed and/or bemused Illinoisans this week - especially those of us who elected him twice - I have plenty of thoughts on Blagojevich, and will be sharing them here soon.

Alistair Cooke

Lovely piece from the BBC on Alistair Cooke, who would have turned 100 years old this week. As the story discusses, Cooke spent much of his life trying to understand and explain America to the rest of the world. This quote, as related here by his daughter, is particularly remarkable:

Perhaps in every period of affluence and self-indulgence, America needs a national crisis, a depression, a collapse of the money market, to throw up a benevolent leader - he had better be benevolent if the system is to hold - who mobilizes the best of America instead of the worst.

Remarkable, especially considering he said this in 1998, years before the rise of Barack Obama to the national stage. I doubt if many Americans even recognized its self-indulgence and the illusory nature of its affluence during the past few years, which have abruptly brought us to the crisis we're in right now. (And I certainly hope and trust that Obama is just such a benevolent leader.) Seems like Cooke knew us better than we know ourselves.

Words to live by

I saw this somewhere over the weekend, but don't remember where or even the exact words, so I'll just paraphrase without attribution:

"In this economic climate, love the job you're with."

I'm taking these words to heart. I'm not at all enamored with my current job situation, but after being briefly unemployed last year (under considerably better economic conditions and while collecting full severance pay and having health insurance) I will readily admit that my employment sure beats the alternative. So I'm grinning and bearing, but also keeping an eager eye on the next step.

R.E.M. believes...

...and so do I. From last Tuesday night's show in Santiago, Chile. (Via Stereogum.)

Yes we can...

...and yes we will. Now the really hard work begins.

(Photo credit: Shannon Stapleton, via Reuters)

VOTE!

Whether Democrat, Republican, Green, Independent, Socialist, Libertarian or what have you, get out there and vote today. The country really doesn't ask that much of its citizens, but one of our most critical responsibilities is voting and participating in the (small-d) democratic process. And if nothing else, voting today earns you the right to bitch for the next four years.