date:20020927


 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/21/02 19:49 PM 
New York TIMES/September 19, 2002
Are Political Contributions Worth the Money?
By ALAN B. KRUEGER
In a provocative new study that effectively challenges the conventional
wisdom, Stephen Ansolabehere, John de Figueiredo and James M. Snyder Jr.,
professors at M.I.T., come out decidedly in favor of the latter explanation.
The authors argue that individual contributors are ultimately responsible
for the bulk of campaign contributions - around 80 percent


'provocative new study'... 'new improved 
laundry detergent'... 'three out of four 
doctors'...  yawn...  

anyone can get reported finance info from 
federal election commission indicating 
that about 25% of private funds spent on 
campagins is raised through small, direct-
mail contributions, about 25% comes from 
large, individual gifts (although bush 
and gore collected about 75% of their 
donor contributions from individuals 
giving $1000 maximum amount), about 25% 
is provided by pacs, and about 25% is 
drawn from political parties/candidates' 
personal or family resources...

interest groups are not required to 
report another source of campaign funds, 
independent expenditures (what those 'in 
trade' called issue advocacy)...

re. pacs, while it has never been clear 
that they 'corrupt' process, they have 
become important to campaign finance...  
and while many (if not most) pacs donate 
less than $5000 maximum per candidate,
allied pacs often coordinate contributions, 
thus, increasing amount a candidate 
actually receives from same interest 
group... 

my findings neither involved nor required 
bickering over which pooled data set 
technique is best suited for analysis of 
electoral campaigns or about how smallest 
decisions in politics are always 'fascinating' collective action problems michael 
hoover

Re: Re: Moussolini's Corporation

2002-09-27 Thread Lisa Stolarski


Yikes, Ian.  I am not familiar with tort law or any of the other laws James
mentions here.  Could you break this down a little bit for me?  What I
thinkI understand is that for the fascists public law is really the will of
private property owners because the fascists blurred the legislative and the
judicial realms.  So in enforcing the laws the powerful could change the
laws. I can't be sure since you are mentioning laws that I only have a vague
understanding of what them mean.

Hum.  If this is what the fascists were saying then I have this to say
in response.  The WTO has ruled that every labor law they have encountered,
every environmental law, etc. to be a barrier to fair trade and therefore
illegal under international law.

Lisa 


on 09/27/2002 1:13 AM, Ian Murray at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 
 - Original Message -
 From: Lisa Stolarski [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
 Found this at this site
 
 
 http://cityhonors.buffalo.k12.ny.us/city/aca/hist/ibhist/ibhiststud/histlit.
 html
 
 
 
 Under his new government policy, every economic activity in the country
 was
 put under a government-appointed panel, called a corporation.
 Representatives of management and labor, in each industry served on these
 panels. All profits under the corporate state went to the government. The
 Parliament became nothing more than a instrument for the corporations.
 
 
 It seems that Moussolini's corporation was one that was created by the
 state.
 
 Still unraveling this mystery.
 
 Lisa S.
 
 
 
 From one of James Boyle's recent exams:
 http://www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/exam98.htm
 
 2.) Furthermore, the realists understood, as had the classics, that the
 whole structure of the classical scheme depended upon the coherence of
 private law and the public/private distinction. Thus, the realists spent
 little time attacking the methodology of constitutional law and concentrated
 instead upon undermining the coherence of the key private-law categories
 that purported to define a sphere of pure autonomy. For example, Morris
 Cohen's Essay Property and Sovereignty pointed out that property is
 necessarily public not private. Property means the legally granted power to
 withhold from others. As such, it is created by the state and given its only
 content by legal decisions that limit or extend the property owner's power
 over others. Thus, property is really an (always conditional) delegation of
 sovereignty, and property law is simply a form of public law.. Realism had
 effectively undermined the fundamental premises of liberal legalism,
 particularly the crucial distinction between legislation (subjective
 exercise of will) and adjudication (objective exercise of reason.)
 Inescapably it had also suggested that the whole liberal worldview of
 (private) rights and (public) sovereignty mediated by the rule of law was
 only a mirage, a pretty fantasy that masked the reality of economic and
 political power. Since the realists, American jurists have dedicated
 themselves to the task of reconstruction
 
 Discuss and criticize this quotation with reference to the history of
 American tort law, using examples drawn from either the development of the
 law of product liability or the law of causation.

Anti-American?

2002-09-27 Thread Louis Proyect


Not again

Tomorrow thousands of people will take to the streets of London to protest 
against an attack on Iraq. Here, the distinguished Indian writer Arundhati 
Roy argues that it is the demands of global capitalism that are driving us 
to war

Friday September 27, 2002
The Guardian

Recently, those who have criticised the actions of the US government 
(myself included) have been called anti-American. Anti-Americanism is in 
the process of being consecrated into an ideology. The term is usually used 
by the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely - but shall we 
say inaccurately - define its critics. Once someone is branded 
anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they're 
heard and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.

What does the term mean? That you're anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to 
free speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That 
you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean you don't admire the 
hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear 
weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to 
withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?

This sly conflation of America's music, literature, the breathtaking 
physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with 
criticism of the US government's foreign policy is a deliberate and 
extremely effective strategy. It's like a retreating army taking cover in a 
heavily populated city, hoping that the prospect of hitting civilian 
targets will deter enemy fire.

full: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,800015,00.html


Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org

Re: RE: Re: Piracy?

2002-09-27 Thread Louis Proyect



That's referring to the tapes recorded at concerts, which they encouraged
...  the good ol' hippie capitalists were as aggressive as anyone else in
defending the copyright on their studio albums, and for that matter, on
controlling the use of their copyrighted artwork.

dd

Actually, the Grateful Dead are on record as being neutral on Napster, 
Kazaa, etc. (See: http://www.gdlive.com/.) Mostly their beef is with people 
trying to make profits off of mp3's, which is hardly the case with the 
average fan. This is consistent with their policy on bootlegged tapes. They 
didn't mind that people exchanged them, only that they not make a profit 
from them.


Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org

Re: Re: Re: Bush Militarism- How many Divisionsare there in


 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/22/02 13:52 PM 
2) Carrol: I have been aware of a proposed conflict presidential power
between the 'cowboys' (Texan based oil)  the 'yankees' (northern based
financial based capital). Is this outlandish  inconsistent with facts?
Hari


former sdser/new leftist turned conspiracy 
theorist carl oglesby may have been first 
to use cowboy/yankee concept/terminology
in his early 70s book 'the cowboy and
yankee war'...  distinction probably more 
relevant at that time re. some differences
between 'frostbelt' and 'sunbelt'
capital...  significantly, however, u.s.
foreign policy never changed much
regardless of whether 'liberal' yankees or 'conservative' cowboys won elections... 
  
still, notion of 'plural elite' has some 
merit, conservative-elite thinker/poli 
sci guy thomas dye, who seems to be 
one of few still using yankee/cowboy 
framework, has added third faction that he 
calls 'techno-elite' to describe likes of 
gates (guess likes of ben  jerry don't yet
rate)...
  
of course, power-elite is not necessarily 
same as ruling class (right-wing variant of 
former and its 'liberal eastern establishment'
of left-leaning intellectuals, government
bureaucrats, media, 'rockefeller interests',
etc.)...

ruling class differences - between domestic
and transnational capital, for example -
revolve around how best to stifle class 
conflict in order to maintain existing
system... 'debates' rarely consider 
interests of working people... certainly, 
restraints upon ruling class exists, a no 
small part of which is what they think 
they can get way with, but also (somewhat
ironically, perhaps) co-optation/
legitimation of representative' government...
michael hoover

Perils of Pauline

2002-09-27 Thread Louis Proyect


(Most people are aware that Christopher (Colonel Blimp) Hitchens has left 
the Nation Magazine in a snit because the magazine's refused to back George 
W. Bush's war on terrorism with sufficient enthusiasm. Nobody should get 
the wrong impression, however, that the magazine is a consistent beacon of 
enlightenment when it comes to questions of Empire. In the very same issue 
where Hitchens bids goodbye, you get an atrocious article by Ahmed Rashid 
titled Afghanistan Imperiled. If the title conveys the image comes to 
mind of Pauline tied to the railroad tracks while Uncle Sam comes to her 
rescue, you would not be mistaken.)

Rashid:

Washington has begun to help build a new national army, but this will take 
years to achieve. And this policy is directly undermined by continued US 
funding of the warlords. Even though the majority of the 1,500 delegates to 
the Loya Jirga harshly criticized the warlords, the Pentagon has renamed 
them regional leaders, giving them a legitimacy that Afghans themselves 
are unwilling to bestow.

At the end of August the Pentagon finally appeared to be getting the 
message. I do think increasingly our focus is shifting to training the 
Afghan national army, supporting ISAF, supporting reconstruction 
efforts--those kinds of things that contribute to long-term stability, 
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told me in an interview at the 
Pentagon.

full: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021014c=1s=rashid


Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org

Re: corporate poltiical contributions over-rated?

2002-09-27 Thread Bill Lear


On Saturday, September 21, 2002 at 16:16:58 (-0700) Devine, James writes:
New York TIMES/September 19, 2002
Are Political Contributions Worth the Money?
By ALAN B. KRUEGER
...

I haven't followed the entire discussion and have quickly read the
article, so I may have missed something, but as Tom Ferguson points
out, when Michael Dell contributes $50,000 to politics, it isn't to
burnish his personal image.  I don't see any evidence of the authors
attempting to find patterns in donations by individuals who own or
control corporations, as Ferguson does so astutely.  This seems to me
to be a extremely shoddy study, and Krueger's analysis of it
very superficial.


Bill

RE: RE: Re: Piracy?

Title: RE: [PEN-L:30593] RE: Re: Piracy?





 
 The editor of the new book on the Grateful Dead says that 
 they owed much of
 their popularity to bootleg tapes that spread the word about 
 the band.
 
 That's referring to the tapes recorded at concerts, which 
 they encouraged
 ... the good ol' hippie capitalists were as aggressive as 
 anyone else in
 defending the copyright on their studio albums, and for that 
 matter, on
 controlling the use of their copyrighted artwork.
 
 dd


Bob Dylan has made a lot of money -- and some of his best albums -- by selling cleaned-up versions of what originally were bootlegs. So what goes around comes around, whatever that means. 

JD

RE: Re: Re: Re: Bush Militarism- How many Divisionsare there in

Title: RE: [PEN-L:30598] Re: Re: Re: Bush Militarism- How many Divisionsare there in





agreeing with Michael H., 


The pluralist theory of competing factions makes sense -- once it's realized that the process of competition is weighted to benefit those with the most wealth or similar economic resources. 

C. Wright Mills made the distinction between the ruling class and the power elite. Not using his definitions' terminology (since I can't find my copy of the book), the former refers to that segment of the societal structure that is served by the mode of production. On the other hand, the power elite refers to those (currently) with the most political power, for making collective decisions for society as a whole. (The power elite is more of an empirical concept than the ruling class, too.) Obviously, the ruling class is represented in the power elite, along with military interest groups and the like. Different elements of the ruling class compete to get represented in the power elite. 


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine




 -Original Message-
 From: Michael Hoover [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
 Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 6:25 AM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: [PEN-L:30598] Re: Re: Re: Bush Militarism- How many
 Divisionsare there in
 
 
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/22/02 13:52 PM 
 2) Carrol: I have been aware of a proposed conflict presidential power
 between the 'cowboys' (Texan based oil)  the 'yankees' 
 (northern based
 financial based capital). Is this outlandish  inconsistent 
 with facts?
 Hari
 
 
 former sdser/new leftist turned conspiracy 
 theorist carl oglesby may have been first 
 to use cowboy/yankee concept/terminology
 in his early 70s book 'the cowboy and
 yankee war'... distinction probably more 
 relevant at that time re. some differences
 between 'frostbelt' and 'sunbelt'
 capital... significantly, however, u.s.
 foreign policy never changed much
 regardless of whether 'liberal' yankees or 'conservative' 
 cowboys won elections... 
 
 still, notion of 'plural elite' has some 
 merit, conservative-elite thinker/poli 
 sci guy thomas dye, who seems to be 
 one of few still using yankee/cowboy 
 framework, has added third faction that he 
 calls 'techno-elite' to describe likes of 
 gates (guess likes of ben  jerry don't yet
 rate)...
 
 of course, power-elite is not necessarily 
 same as ruling class (right-wing variant of 
 former and its 'liberal eastern establishment'
 of left-leaning intellectuals, government
 bureaucrats, media, 'rockefeller interests',
 etc.)...
 
 ruling class differences - between domestic
 and transnational capital, for example -
 revolve around how best to stifle class 
 conflict in order to maintain existing
 system... 'debates' rarely consider 
 interests of working people... certainly, 
 restraints upon ruling class exists, a no 
 small part of which is what they think 
 they can get way with, but also (somewhat
 ironically, perhaps) co-optation/
 legitimation of representative' government...
 michael hoover

[no subject]









Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

PK on CA energy emergency

Title: PK on CA energy emergency

[is this accurate?]

New York TIMES/September 27, 2002
In Broad Daylight
By PAUL KRUGMAN

ou are one of only a handful of major players selling wholesale electricity. Surely the thought has to occur to you: what would happen to prices if one of my plants just happened to go off line? And when companies act on that thought . . . well, you get the picture.

I wrote that in March 2001, when the California electricity crisis was at its height. Even then the experts I talked to -- economists who followed the situation closely, and kept an open mind -- believed that energy companies were deliberately creating shortages. But only in the last few weeks, with a series of damning reports and judgments, has conventional wisdom grudgingly accepted the obvious.

And that's the real mystery of the California crisis: how could a $30 billion robbery take place in broad daylight?

True, it was always hard to pin down specific acts of market manipulation. Stanford's Frank Wolak likens energy companies to an employee who keeps calling in sick: the pattern is clear, but unless you catch him faking an ailment, it's hard to prove that he is malingering.

But the evidence is starting to pile up. First there were those Enron memos. Then the California Public Utilities Commission determined that most of the blackouts that afflicted California between November 2000 and May 2001 took place not because generating capacity was inadequate, but because the major power companies kept much of their capacity off line. Most recently, a judge for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has ruled that El Paso Corporation used its control over a key pipeline to create an artificial natural gas shortage.

But why did energy companies think they could get away with it?

One answer might be that the apparent malefactors are very big contributors to the Republican Party. Some analysts have suggested that energy companies felt free to manipulate markets because they believed they had bought protection from federal regulation -- the conspiracy-minded point out that severe power shortages began just after the 2000 election, and ended when Democrats gained control of the Senate.

Federal regulators certainly seemed determined to see and hear no evil, and above all not to reveal evidence of evil to state officials. A previous FERC ruling on El Paso was, in the view of many observers, a whitewash. In another case, AES/Williams was accused of shutting down generating units, forcing the power system to buy power at vastly higher prices from other units of the same company. In April 2001, FERC and Williams reached a settlement in which the company repaid the extra profits, but paid no penalty -- and FERC sealed the evidence. Last week CBS News reported that federal regulators have power control room audiotapes that prove traders from Williams Energy called plant operators and told them to turn off the juice. The government sealed the tapes in a secret settlement -- the same settlement? -- and still refuses to release them.

If that's true, FERC caught at least one power company red-handed, in the middle of the crisis, at a time when state officials were begging the agency to take action -- and then suppressed the evidence. Yet this story has received little national play.

For some reason it has never been cool to talk about what was really happening in California. When the crisis was in full swing, most commentators clung to a story line that blamed meddlesome bureaucrats, not profiteering corporations. When the crisis came to an end, it suddenly became old news.

Maybe our national faith in free markets is so strong that people just don't want to talk about a case in which markets went spectacularly bad. But I'm still puzzled by the lack of attention, not just to the disaster, but to hints of a cover-up. After all, this was the most spectacular abuse of market power since the days of the robber barons -- and the feds did nothing to stop it.

And if FERC was strangely ineffective during the California crisis, what can we expect from other agencies? Across the government, from the Interior Department and the Forest Service to the Environmental Protection Agency, former lobbyists for the regulated industries now hold key positions -- and they show little inclination to make trouble for their once and future employers.

So we ignore California's experience at our peril. It's all too likely to be the shape of things to come.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

RE: Moussolini's Corporation

Title: RE: [PEN-L:30591] Moussolini's Corporation

My understanding is that the more pleasant part of the ideology of fascism was corporatism, in which tri-partite boards were set up that united business, government, and labor, as a way of avoiding class conflict and managing the common concerns of society. Something similar appeared during World War I in the U.S. and (more famously) in Franklin Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act. (It is not the same as a corporation, which is simply a way of organizing business.)

Of course, in practice, Mussolini's corporatism was severely biased against labor, because the bully boys broke up unions, especially the commmunist and socialist ones, encouraging those that survived (especially craft unions) to be company unions or collaborators of other sorts. As usual, a pleasant ideology covered up a nasty reality.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

-Original Message-
From: Lisa Stolarski [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2002 9:10 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:30591] Moussolini's Corporation

Found this at this site

http://cityhonors.buffalo.k12.ny.us/city/aca/hist/ibhist/ibhis
tstud/histlit.
html

Under his new government policy, every economic activity in
the country was
put under a government-appointed panel, called a corporation.
Representatives of management and labor, in each industry
served on these
panels. All profits under the corporate state went to the
government. The
Parliament became nothing more than a instrument for the corporations.

It seems that Moussolini's corporation was one that was
created by the
state.

Still unraveling this mystery.

Lisa S.

Re: Re: PK against the war


 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/24/02 13:18 PM 
Jackson was effective in portraying himself as a man of the people even
though he was one of the richest people in all of Tennessee.
Michael Perelman


'jacksonian democracy'...  'era of the common 
man...  blah, blah, blah...

jackson's administration was dominated by 
economic arisocrats and policies favored 
financial, trading interests (including 
major expansion of private use of public 
lands)...  meanwhile, about 40% of
population was impoverished, child labor
ran rampant, cholera and typhoid
epidemics swept through cities...

aj was first prez to be nominated via
national convention which replaced
'king caucus' system of congressional
nomination...  fwiw, separation of
powers principle was 'saved'...  more
significantly, prez's became more
willing to veto legislation and
engage in military action...

jackson believed in and acted on
theory of strong prez with power
transcending formal constitution
(lots of poli sci people consider
jackson great prez claiming that
he used his power wisely - entering
cherokee lands without their consent
be damned!)...

there was some elite disagreement of
more recent cowboy/yankee sort, jackson
was first prez to come from outside
'framers' orbit, bank of u.s. dispute
was, in very real sense, about 'new
capital' concern with established 
'eastern' finance capital...
michael hoover

Re: Momentum?


I also notice in the reports that the press makes the protest demands seem
more focussed.  Maybe because of a decline in the turtle costumes.  But
the give the impression of honest differences rather than ridiculing the
protesters.

On Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 09:13:20AM -0700, Ian Murray wrote:
 [ 4 out of 5 economists choose Crest...:-) ]
 
 The protesters, backed by an increasingly influential array of respected
 economists, complain that the two institutions are controlled by the United
 States and have undermined poor countries by insisting on free-market
 policies that primarily benefit large corporations.
 
 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/27/international/americas/27FUND.html
 

-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Personalities and the List


A new participant wrote me off for his criticizing me for trying to put
the lid on the discussion of Hitchens.  Jim's post of Paul Krugman's
article on the California energy crisis made me recall the message
regarding Hitchens.

While Clinton was president, some of Krugman's articles were awful; with
Bush (and his handlers) in charge, Krugman is mostly on target.  During
the Clinton era, Jim even sent many of his articles as part of the
Krugman Watch.

How is it that so much of modern political discourse concerns
personalities?  With Bush as president, we have a non entity formally in
charge, and yet the right wing agenda keeps plugging along -- even
faster than under Reagan.  Yet all Bush can communicate is his anger.
We could have an inflatable president, which could be pumped up and
presented at important occasions, and the system would be virtually
unchanged.

Yet very little discussion here and elsewhere seems to be directed at
the underlying nature of the forces in control.  So, here is my
question: what could be done to try to redirect analysis away from
personality?
--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

Re: Re: corporate poltiical contributions over-rated?



- Original Message -
From: Bill Lear [EMAIL PROTECTED]


 On Saturday, September 21, 2002 at 16:16:58 (-0700) Devine, James writes:
 New York TIMES/September 19, 2002
 Are Political Contributions Worth the Money?
 By ALAN B. KRUEGER
 ...

 I haven't followed the entire discussion and have quickly read the
 article, so I may have missed something, but as Tom Ferguson points
 out, when Michael Dell contributes $50,000 to politics, it isn't to
 burnish his personal image.  I don't see any evidence of the authors
 attempting to find patterns in donations by individuals who own or
 control corporations, as Ferguson does so astutely.  This seems to me
 to be a extremely shoddy study, and Krueger's analysis of it
 very superficial.


 Bill



The Right had a hissy fit over Ferguson's text; after all Public Choice
types of analysis were their baby and for Ferguson to revive a Beardian
approach and turn the tables on them led to numerous attempts to revive the
image of business as a pragmatic undertaking while the State was inundated
with scoundrels. The most notable attempt to date is Fred McChesney's
Money for Nothing. A critique of the book is below. When I first read
Ferguson's book I wondered what Nicos Poulantzas would have thought.


2/3/98

MONEY FOR NOTHING: POLITICIANS, RENT EXTRACTION, AND POLITICAL EXTORTION
Author: Fred S. McChesney
Publisher: Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1997 (216 pp)
Reviewer: Albert A. Foer
Date of Review: February 3, 1998
Appeared in White House Weekly


The Commonwealth of Virginia, once known as the Mother of Presidents,
today bears a certain academic notoriety as the intellectual mother of the
theory of failing political processes. How far the Common Weal has rolled!
The so-called Virginia school of political economy and public choice uses
standard economic principles to analyze political behavior, and what it
finds feeds the libertarian movement. A recent contribution to this
expanding opus comes from Fred S. McChesney, a professor of economics at
Emory University's School of Law, whose book Money for Nothing develops a
model of routinely practiced political extortion as the basis of political
decision-making.

The road to Virginia starts in Chicago, where one might well anticipate a
certain cynicism about politics. Regulation was for many years viewed as
serving a public interest, but a more Machiavellian perspective began to
emerge in 1971 when the University of Chicago's George Stigler produced an
interpretation of regulation grounded in the ability of government to
benefit private parties by legalizing price fixing, policing cartel
agreements, and restricting entry into markets. By making it possible
through these and other means for businesses to earn super-competitive
returns called economic rents, regulation was revealed to have particular
value to the interests being regulated. Indeed, the value was so great that
producers would make payments to politicians -in the form of campaign
contributions, get-out-the-vote campaigns, intimations of future jobs, and
occasional outright bribes-- in return for rent-creating regulation.

Developing Stigler's model of a market for regulation, Sam Peltzman, Gordon
Tullock, and James Buchanan, among others, further explored the phenomenon
of rent-seeking, showing how various political decisions could be explained
by bribes (legal or illegal) paid to politicians for regulatory largesse.
The central insight of this public choice analysis is that political
actors are just like everyone else, which in the story told by economists
means that they are rational individuals who act in their own self-interest.
Tautologically, if elected politicians and bureaucrats are acting to
maximize their own welfare, there is no longer a viable concept of a public
interest, because the public's agents by definition have theirs own private
agendas.

McChesney argues that this analysis doesn't go far enough. Certainly,
politicians may seek votes or money from producers and offer rents from
consumers in exchange. But a politician may also make his demands on
private parties, not by promising benefits, but by threatening to impose
costs-a form of political extortion or blackmail. In other words, the
politician would be paid, not for rent creation, but for withholding action
that would destroy existing private rents. What Caesar gives, Caesar can
take away. Most of the book elaborates on a model of how politicians force
special interests to pay them money for nothing. Not satisfied with supply
and demand curves that illustrate the model, McChesney also attempts to show
that the model accurately describes the way the world really works.

For example, when Bill Clinton targeted the health-care system for overhaul
at the beginning of 1993, the stage was set for rent extraction. Just as the
model would predict, the pharmaceutical companies, which had a lot to lose
if the Clinton proposal was enacted, poured untold funds

Re: Personalities and the List

2002-09-27 Thread Doug Henwood


Michael Perelman wrote:

How is it that so much of modern political discourse concerns
personalities?

Well there's the media, which thrives on them, and they set a good 
bit of the agenda, or at least what people think and talk about. U.S. 
politics has long turned on personalities, though - 19th century 
presidential campaigns were full of mudslinging and hero manufacture. 
Also in the U.S., our main politicians agree on so much, as do 
journalists, that horse race and personality issues dominate. It's 
amazing to see Daschle complain that Bush is politicizing the war, as 
if war weren't political. But I guess he means injecting it into the 
partisan marketing campaign, which always puts the sissy Dems at a 
disadvantage.

Doug

Re: Re: Personalities and the List


I don't disagree that the media thrives on personalities, but is there
anyway that we could learn to communicate in such a way that more
important aspects of political economy can be engaging?

Doug Henwood wrote:

 Michael Perelman wrote:

 How is it that so much of modern political discourse concerns
 personalities?

 Well there's the media, which thrives on them, and they set a good
 bit of the agenda, or at least what people think and talk about. U.S.
 politics has long turned on personalities, though - 19th century
 presidential campaigns were full of mudslinging and hero manufacture.
 Also in the U.S., our main politicians agree on so much, as do
 journalists, that horse race and personality issues dominate. It's
 amazing to see Daschle complain that Bush is politicizing the war, as
 if war weren't political. But I guess he means injecting it into the
 partisan marketing campaign, which always puts the sissy Dems at a
 disadvantage.

 Doug

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

Re: Personalities and the List

2002-09-27 Thread Yoshie Furuhashi


At 9:59 AM -0700 9/27/02, Michael Perelman wrote:
How is it that so much of modern political discourse concerns
personalities?

Because political parties have withered away.
-- 
Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: 
http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html
* Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html
* Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/

Re: Re: Personalities and the List


Didn't the withering process begin with the post Watergate dems coming to
Congress?

On Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 01:12:17PM -0400, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
 At 9:59 AM -0700 9/27/02, Michael Perelman wrote:
 How is it that so much of modern political discourse concerns
 personalities?
 
 Because political parties have withered away.
 -- 
 Yoshie
 
 * Calendar of Events in Columbus: 
 http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html
 * Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html
 * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/
 * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/
 

-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Re: Re: Personalities and the List

2002-09-27 Thread ravi


Michael Perelman wrote:
 Doug Henwood wrote:
Michael Perelman wrote:
 stuff


i think mp is very kind, so he is pretty right most of the time. i don't
agree with a lot of doug's posts, but he is like an awesome dude for
doing the wbai radio show and running lbo. ;-)

the philosopher quine i think (jks can correct me, that is if he is
still being nice to me ;-)), or perhaps one of the logical positivists,
 suggested that we should do away with ordinary language and use a new
pseudo-mathematical language that would make meaningless debates
impossible (by not permitting the expression of ambiguities and
self-contradictions, etc) and force some form of responsible analysis.

in recasting debates about issues into debates about personalities, are
we just following biological programming and an instinct to make
problems too complex for our brains, more tractable (albeit
meaningless)? even if we can counter the forces at work to reduce the
discussion to one of personalities, can we devise a form of
debate/analysis that can make progress? i.e., is political science a
science?

just some silly speculation at the cost of the list membership. my
apologies!

--ravi

Re: Moussolini's Corporation


 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/27/02 00:15 AM 
government policy, every economic activity in the country was
put under a government-appointed panel, called a corporation.
Representatives of management and labor, in each industry served on these
panels. All profits under the corporate state went to the government. The
Parliament became nothing more than a instrument for the corporations.
It seems that Moussolini's corporation was one that was created by the
state.  
Lisa S. 


Italian fascist idea combined 'corporatism' 
and 'syndicalism...  catholicism's organicist 
and corporatist features provided receptive intellectual climate for corporatism...  
meanwhile, syndicalism was admired for (among 
other things) being anti-parliamentary...
Alfredo Rocco (Mussolini's right-hand man),
held that social development led naturally
to nationalization of syndicates under 
state control for national interest...
in theiry, only parliamentary structure 
to remain would be assembly of economic
producers operating without fetters of
political parties...

italisn fascist state created about 20 
corporations in late 20s ostensibly
integating employers, workers, government, 
with each having role to play in 
overseeing major industries...  
 
several years later, mussolini government
established national council 'incorporating'
above into three-tiered structure comprised
of economic associations, state bureaucracy,
and central committee of government
ministers, heads of employers and workers
associations, top level civil servants (all
supposedly under watchful eye of el duce)...

corporate state reached zenith (well, sort of)
in late 30s when fascist chamber was created
to replace what remained of italian 
parliament... 

of course, in practice, italian fascist 
corporatism smashed working class 
organizations and intimidated certain
factions of capital in attempt to control 
major economic interests...

Supposed national interests were to take 
precedence over narrower sectional ones...
as giovanni gentile had said: everything
for the state, nothing against the state,
nothing outside the state (or something
like that)...

as for Mussolini, he claimed corporatism
was 'third way' between capitalism and
socialism...

corporatism was less important among
nazis who tended (in theory, if one
can call it such) towards kind of 
medievalism...   michael hoover

Re: Re: Personalities and the List

2002-09-27 Thread Bill Lear


On Friday, September 27, 2002 at 10:15:37 (-0700) Michael Perelman writes:
Didn't the withering process begin with the post Watergate dems coming to
Congress?

Or maybe with Teddy Roosevelt coming into office?  The massive
corporate consolidation begun at the end of the 19th century allowed
one-stop fundraising for parties, and nation-wide publications made
campaigning from back porches that much easier.  Guess who was left
behind?


Bill

Re: Personalities and the List

2002-09-27 Thread Tom Walker


Michael Perelman wrote,


 We could have an inflatable president, which could be pumped up and
 presented at important occasions, and the system would be virtually
 unchanged.

Correction: the adjective virtually is unnecessary here. Certainly in some
dimension I am sure there is a flesh and blood ex-drunk  named George Dubya
Bush who is listed on the federal payroll as POTUS, civil service grade
whatever. Machts nicht. The REAL President Bush IS an inflatable vinyl doll.
The media is the bellows that keeps this ghastly doll pumped and ready for
action.

I'm a Dubya doll, in the Dubya pol,
Life in plastic, it's fantastic,
You can write my speech, make those liberals screech
Imagination, Mandate is your creation

Wolfie: Come on Dubya, Let's go bomb 'em
Dubya: Ha ha ha yeah
Wolfie: Come on Dubya, Let's go bomb 'em
Dubya: ooh ooh

Re: RE: Moussolini's Corporation


RE: [PEN-L:30591] Moussolini's Corporation
- Original Message -
From: Devine, James



My understanding is that the more pleasant part of the ideology of fascism
was corporatism, in which tri-partite boards were set up that united
business, government, and labor, as a way of avoiding class conflict and
managing the common concerns of society. Something similar appeared during
World War I in the U.S. and (more famously) in Franklin Roosevelt's National
Industrial Recovery Act.  (It is not the same as a corporation, which is
simply a way of organizing business.)

===

An excellent text on how that process played out in the US is Labor's Great
War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern
American Labor Relations, 1912-1921. Some scholar - I can't remember who -
described  the contemporary US system as corporatism without labor.






Of course, in practice, Mussolini's corporatism was severely biased against
labor, because the bully boys broke up unions, especially the commmunist
and socialist ones, encouraging those that survived (especially craft
unions) to be company unions or collaborators of other sorts. As usual, a
pleasant ideology covered up a nasty reality.

=

European corporation law and corporatism have their roots in the Protestant
Reformation [see JB Schneewind's The Divine Corporation and the History of
Ethics in Philosophy in History edited by Richard Rorty et al, as well as
Morris Cohen's classic essay].

Coming closer the present, it was Pareto's approach to political economy
that inspired Mussolini and his gang of thugs, even though Pareto denounced
Mussolini's clampdown of free speech; even so, Pareto had abandoned
liberalism before the turn of the century. The 'twist' is that Pareto
optimality is a form of the Lockean proviso within Locke's labor theory of
property, which in turn is a variation on some of the ecclesiastical
precepts put forth by Richard Hooker.

While Locke's approach to property and enterprise is a desert based theory
of entitlement, corporatism revived an older, delegative theory of property
as a power to coerce; since property was nothing more than what the State
said it was, the links between corporatism and rent-seeking and notions of
the State as a protection racket came into rather sharp relief in Italy as
the American Legal Realists were starting to make some impact on US
jurisprudence.


Ian

Re: Re: Re: Moussolini's Corporation



- Original Message -
From: Lisa Stolarski [EMAIL PROTECTED]



 Yikes, Ian.  I am not familiar with tort law or any of the other laws
James
 mentions here.  Could you break this down a little bit for me?  What I
 thinkI understand is that for the fascists public law is really the will
of
 private property owners because the fascists blurred the legislative and
the
 judicial realms.  So in enforcing the laws the powerful could change the
 laws. I can't be sure since you are mentioning laws that I only have a
vague
 understanding of what them mean.

===

Sorry. The JB piece grabbed me because he pointed to the delegative theory
of property and contract. See the post I just sent for some of the
historical background. It seems to me that the fascists had a much different
take on the public/private distinction and the individualism that it's
rooted in than US style liberalism. What would be interesting to find out
more information is just how Pareto's ideas made their way across the
Atlantic to the US and how that played out in influencing the development of
the US' economics and legal professions.


 Hum.  If this is what the fascists were saying then I have this to say
 in response.  The WTO has ruled that every labor law they have
encountered,
 every environmental law, etc. to be a barrier to fair trade and therefore
 illegal under international law.

 Lisa



It's a bit more complex than that, but to a very real extent some Nafta and
WTO rules do attempt to breakdown the distinction between regulations and
takings in order to intimidate national and sunational governments by trying
to go back to a fork in the history of law before the legal realists mounted
their attacks on the older theories of property rights.

Speaking of labor law and the WTO:

 Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 11:45:29 -0400
   From: Robert Howse [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: potential WTO challenge to GSP conditionality with important
implications for human rights

In case you are not yet following it, I wanted to alert members of these
lists to a possible WTO dispute settlement claim that may threaten the
ability of WTO Members to use GSP preferences as a means of encouraging
human rights performance in developing countries.  India and several other
WTO Members are in the consultations phase with the EC in a challenge to
aspects of the EC's preference scheme, including incentives for inter alia
labor rights compliance.   The argument appears to be that such incentives
are discriminatory in a manner that is contrary to the Enabling Clause
which provides the ARt. I exemption that makes these preferences
GATT-legal, and that they frustrate development, whereas the Enabling
Clause suggests that preferences must further development.

Legally I do not believe that this is a strong claim.   It involves
bootstrapping aspirational language about the nature of the system of
preferences that is borrowed from UNCTAD into legal conditions.  But the
language  in question never appears in the Enabling Clause as legal
conditions of the MFN exception. And even if such bootstrapping were
accepted, there are strong arguments that such conditionality is not
discriminatory and that it serves not to undermine development properly
understood but to further it. Nevertheless, given the refusal to even
discuss labor and human rights issues at the WTO, preferences remain an
important element of leverage, for both the EC and the US, and panels have
sometimes bought weak legal arguments in the past, so this is a high stakes
case if it goes to litigation.  Moreover, if a panel were to find for
India, and determine that the EC was not meeting the requirements in the
Enabling Clause for the MFN exception needed to operate the preferences,
then Art. XX would be in play, for the first time in a labor-rights-related
claim.  Doubtless the EC would argue XX(a) public morals, as well as
perhaps XX (b) as well inasmuch as labor rights conditionality is
concerned.  One cannot underestimate the importance of judicial
consideration of Art. XX in this context to the entire trade-human rights
issue.

List members should therefore follow the development of this dispute very
closely.   I would like to try and establish an informal brains trust of
WTO legal minds that would delve into every aspect and argument implied in
this claim with a view to writing op-eds, amicus briefs, and other public
interventions in support of labor rights conditionality.  In the US
congressional staff should also be sensitized the to the potential
significance of the dispute.  Anyone interested?  Also, some of you
probably have more up to date information than I do on the state of
play--obviously, if the dispute is on the verge of out of court settlement
for instance I would want to hear about it!




best,


rob

Re: Re: Personalities and the List


Ok Walker.  You want to challenge my language.  How about your ex-drunk?
Smoking gun had a video of a drunk W. and by the looks of it the event was
not too long ago.

On Fri, Sep 27, 2002 at 11:10:28AM -0700, Tom Walker wrote:
 Michael Perelman wrote,
 
 
  We could have an inflatable president, which could be pumped up and
  presented at important occasions, and the system would be virtually
  unchanged.
 
 Correction: the adjective virtually is unnecessary here. Certainly in some
 dimension I am sure there is a flesh and blood ex-drunk  named George Dubya
 Bush who is listed on the federal payroll as POTUS, civil service grade
 whatever. Machts nicht. The REAL President Bush IS an inflatable vinyl doll.
 The media is the bellows that keeps this ghastly doll pumped and ready for
 action.
 
 I'm a Dubya doll, in the Dubya pol,
 Life in plastic, it's fantastic,
 You can write my speech, make those liberals screech
 Imagination, Mandate is your creation
 
 Wolfie: Come on Dubya, Let's go bomb 'em
 Dubya: Ha ha ha yeah
 Wolfie: Come on Dubya, Let's go bomb 'em
 Dubya: ooh ooh
 

-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

RE: Momentum?

Title: RE: [PEN-L:30607] Momentum?





on the other hand, US National Public Radio told me this morning that some of the demonstrators were making undue 911 calls to confuse/harass the police. Clever, but it's not a tactic to win popular support, if they actually did it. 


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine




 -Original Message-
 From: Ian Murray [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
 Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 9:13 AM
 To: pen-l
 Subject: [PEN-L:30607] Momentum?
 
 
 [ 4 out of 5 economists choose Crest...:-) ]
 
 The protesters, backed by an increasingly influential array 
 of respected
 economists, complain that the two institutions are controlled 
 by the United
 States and have undermined poor countries by insisting on free-market
 policies that primarily benefit large corporations.
 
 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/27/international/americas/27FUND.html

academic lingo

Title: academic lingo





[was: RE: [PEN-L:30615] Re: Re: Re: Personalities and the List] 


Ravi wrote:
the philosopher quine i think (jks can correct me, that is if he is
still being nice to me ;-)), or perhaps one of the logical positivists,
suggested that we should do away with ordinary language and use a new
pseudo-mathematical language that would make meaningless debates
impossible (by not permitting the expression of ambiguities and
self-contradictions, etc) and force some form of responsible analysis.


Isn't that kind of thinking a basis for a lot of the meaningless jargon that pollutes academic life? 



Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

intraestablishmentarian debate about Iraq Attack

Title: intraestablishmentarian debate about Iraq Attack





from SLATE: 


politics
Gore's War
Can Al Gore rouse the Democrats?
By Joe Klein
Posted Thursday, September 26, 2002, at 11:05 AM PT


The default position on Al Gore appears to be ridicule. He opens his mouth and is immediately assumed cynical, tactical, self-serving, self-pitying, awkward, embarrassing, unintentionally hilarious, or all of the above. Much of this comes from Republicans, who seem afflicted by near-psychotic rhetorical twitching whenever the man who won the popular vote in the year 2000 makes a public appearance. This week, for example, an amoeba from the GOP National Committee stepped out and pronounced Gore's speech about Iraq more appropriate for a political hack than a presidential candidate. But the press has been equally dismissive (including me). And so have many of his fellow Democrats. 

A few months ago, Gore told some of his closest supporters that he'd made a mistake in the 2000 campaign by paying too much attention to polls, tactics, and all the rest. ... I should have let it rip, poured out my heart, and my vision ... and let the chips fall where they may. These quite sensible remarks occasioned a small tornado of disdain from the press and political consultants. James Carville and others said, inaccurately, that Gore was blaming his consultants. He wasn't. He was blaming himself. It was, in fact, an altogether admirable pronouncement: Would that more politicians were able to distance themselves, from time to time, from their witch doctors. Perhaps a new campaign position should be created--angel's advocate: an adviser who counsels candidates to talk about the issues they really care about rather than pandering to the solipsistic laments of nitwit focus groups. But that's another story ... or maybe it isn't.

Because it seems that Gore has decided to be as good as his word. His Iraq speech this week was rather inconvenient for Democrats--especially those in Congress running for re-election, who have decided to take Iraq off the table as quickly as possible so they can go home and talk about prescription drug benefits for senior citizens and other issues that poll well. Indeed, it is now assumed that most Democrats will stow their doubts and better instincts and rush a vote in favor of the president's war resolution--because their political consultants are convinced that Iraq is a bad issue for them! 

The unanimity of this conviction among consultants (and the willingness of commentators to buy into it) should give us pause. It is especially noxious because the issues the consultants want Democrats to run on--pandering to the elderly, demagoguing on entitlements, and blaming George W. Bush for the business cycle--are minuscule when compared to the decisions about to be taken by the Bush administration. This is not merely about Iraq: The White House is proposing a radical new military and diplomatic doctrine for the United States--the right to intervene, unilaterally and pre-emptively, whenever we see fit. This has actually been put into writing, into words so simple, the president has said, that the boys in Lubbock can understand it.

And the Democrats don't want to talk about it? What can one say about such monumental fecklessness? Perhaps this: Any local candidate who refuses to address, in detail, these essential issues of war and peace is trying to distract the public from the most important national discussion since the end of the Cold War and therefore deserves to lose.

Al Gore's speech wasn't a masterpiece. It seemed hastily composed and rewritten (Gore has an unfortunate habit of pulling sweaty all-nighters before a major address). William Safire has noted some of the sloppy, contradictory thinking. And an argument can be made that there was politics involved--that Gore was positioning himself for 2004.

But raising an important issue for tactical effect is quite different from ignoring an issue for tactical convenience. Gore performed an essential public service. He nudged a necessary debate. And he raised a crucial distinction: A war against Iraq and the war on terrorism are not identical. Indeed, an immediate attack (in January, one assumes) on Saddam Hussein--which everyone expects, and we must hope, will result in a rapid success--could complicate the larger campaign. A successful war against Iraq raises at least three nettlesome questions:

Will it increase or decrease the threat of a biological or chemical attack on the United States?


Will it increase or decrease the stability of the region?


Will it increase or decrease the number of young Muslims who believe the prevailing propaganda about America's moral and spiritual role in the world?

Almost every politician I've spoken with--Democrat and Republican--has grave doubts about at least some of the details of the operation that we seem to be hurtling toward. After all, for the past 20 years it has been America's tacit but obvious policy to keep

Re: academic lingo

2002-09-27 Thread joanna bujes


No, I don't think so. (see ravi's post below). 

What pollutes academic life is the fact that ideas are turned into
various forms of intellectual real estate. This transformation is
effected by the expression of ideas/arguments in a capricious
poetics/language -- making it difficult for any but those initiated in
that poetics/vocabulary from participating in the conversation. 

Not surprisingly, what develops out of this process are not various
schools of thought but varied academic cliques (lacking a
common idiom) led by superstars affiliated with various premiere
universities. 

Or to put it another way, when I think of my nineteen year old son being
given a humanist education, by these morons, it makes my blood run
cold.

Joanna




[was: RE: [PEN-L:30615] Re: Re:
Re: Personalities and the List] 

Ravi wrote: 
the philosopher quine i think (jks can correct me, that
is if he is 
still being nice to me ;-)), or perhaps one of the logical
positivists, 
suggested that we should do away with ordinary
language and use a new 
pseudo-mathematical language that would make meaningless
debates 
impossible (by not permitting the expression of ambiguities
and 
self-contradictions, etc) and force some form of responsible
analysis. 

Isn't that kind of thinking a basis for a lot of the
meaningless jargon that pollutes academic life? 

 
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

RE: Re: academic lingo

Title: RE: [PEN-L:30625] Re: academic lingo





I think you're right. Many times on pen-l, I've railed against the Mandarin Mentality of academics, who use all sorts of unneeded jargon or math in order to make their ideas seem profound (or to get tenure, or whatever). 

But the idea of a new pseudo-mathematical language that would make meaningless debates impossible and force some form of responsible analysis has been used for this purpose. 

Prof. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine 
-Original Message-
From: joanna bujes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 1:36 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:30625] Re: academic lingo



No, I don't think so. (see ravi's post below). 


What pollutes academic life is the fact that ideas are turned into various forms of intellectual real estate. This transformation is effected by the expression of ideas/arguments in a capricious poetics/language -- making it difficult for any but those initiated in that poetics/vocabulary from participating in the conversation. 

Not surprisingly, what develops out of this process are not various schools of thought but varied academic cliques (lacking a common idiom) led by superstars affiliated with various premiere universities. 

Or to put it another way, when I think of my nineteen year old son being given a humanist education, by these morons, it makes my blood run cold.

Joanna






[was: RE: [PEN-L:30615] Re: Re: Re: Personalities and the List] 


Ravi wrote: 
the philosopher quine i think (jks can correct me, that is if he is 
still being nice to me ;-)), or perhaps one of the logical positivists, 
suggested that we should do away with ordinary language and use a new 
pseudo-mathematical language that would make meaningless debates 
impossible (by not permitting the expression of ambiguities and 
self-contradictions, etc) and force some form of responsible analysis. 


Isn't that kind of thinking a basis for a lot of the meaningless jargon that pollutes academic life? 


 
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: RE: Re: academic lingo

2002-09-27 Thread joanna bujes



But the idea of a new pseudo-mathematical language
that would make meaningless debates impossible and force some form of
responsible analysis has been used for this purpose.

True. But if our goal is to find the truth, rather than to censure
unorthodox ideas, the technique of choice would be something like
cultivating the rigor of thought shown by Wittgenstein in
Philosophical Investigations or by Marx in practically
everything he wrote.

I refuse any option that excludes the vernacular as a common idiom.
It is not our language that fails us, but our (unacknolwedged) motives.


Joanna

Re: ex-drunk

2002-09-27 Thread Tom Walker


Michael Perelman wrote,

 Ok Walker.  You want to challenge my language.  How about your ex-drunk?
 Smoking gun had a video of a drunk W. and by the looks of it the event was
 not too long ago.

You win. I was just trying to show deference to the office of the President.
I mean, who ever heard of anyone sober choking on a pretzel? For that
matter, who ever heard of anyone eating a pretzel without drinking beer?

Re: RE: Re: academic lingo


RE: [PEN-L:30625] Re: academic lingo
- Original Message -
From: Devine, James



I think you're right. Many times on pen-l, I've railed against the Mandarin
Mentality of academics, who use all sorts of unneeded jargon or math in
order to make their ideas seem profound (or to get tenure, or whatever).


But the idea of a new pseudo-mathematical language that would make
meaningless debates impossible and force some form of responsible analysis
has been used for this purpose.


==

The guy Ravi is thinking about is Rudolf Carnap, who was a longtime friend
of Quine. His quest for a neutral language of describing physical and social
facts led to the whole verificationist theory of meaning and truth disputes
in epistemology and the philosopy of science -theory ladenness of
observation, reflexivity as undermining of the doctrine of verificationism
itself etc. If I remember right he was a fan of the Esperanto 'movement.'

The lineage of what Carnap was struggling for comes from Leibniz' dream of a
form of language and decision for resolving diplomatic disputes which were
rooted in theological disputes; the tower of Babel problem. Once you read
his Monadology as a form of 'social physics' his claim of the
pre-established harmony may be shown to be a foil for just who gets to have
the final say in a dispute in which the parties can't even agree as to
whether there is one true answer to some ethical, normative, injunctive
dilemma, trilemma, quadrilemma etc. Since the pre-established harmony is
something, Leibniz claimed, was something imperishable it not only served as
'first cause' it was also a telos of all the monads as well; even as Leibniz
knew that the mechanics and calculus banished teleology from physical
causality. The pre-established harmony is now the axiom of the
self-consistency of mathematical space-time. In social systems however, the
tower of Babel problem[s] is/are still with us and the alethic and dialethic
aspects of logic are undergoing a serious revival - paraconsistency,
defeasible deontic logics etc.

Back in those days it seems God/Scripture was the final word
[pre-established harmony] which led to the modern obsession with objectivity
and justification procedures because of the potential for interminable
interpretive regresses due to the notion that Scripture itself admitted of
an irreducible plurality of perspectives. Hence Kant's obsession with the
notion of the Transcendental, meta-perspectival marks the secularization of
the manner in which the Pietists approached the issue of the problem of
interpretive regresses. The problems are still with us of course and the
'enlargement' of our vocabularies in order to secure advantages in disputes
which may not have any one right, true answer makes for jargon as a
positional good.

Ian

Re: RE: Momentum?

2002-09-27 Thread Dan Scanlan


on the other hand, US National Public Radio told me this morning 
that some of the demonstrators were making undue 911 calls to 
confuse/harass the police. Clever, but it's not a tactic to win 
popular support, if they actually did it.

Three points from a radio activist:

US National Public Radio is not a good news source.

How would anybody know it was demonstrators? Certainly the 
demonstrators wouldn't say so.

It's not about winning popular support (unless you're the corporate 
government, then the phrase is buplic inertia). It's about stopping 
the corporations and their wars on us and others.


Dan Scanlan

-- 




During times of universal deceit,
telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell



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Re: Re: RE: Momentum?

2002-09-27 Thread ravi


Dan Scanlan wrote:
on the other hand, US National Public Radio told me this morning 
that some of the demonstrators were making undue 911 calls to 
confuse/harass the police. Clever, but it's not a tactic to win 
popular support, if they actually did it.
 

talking about NPR, for folks who are in the NYC/NJ area, noam chomsky
will be on brian lehrer's morning show (10am, 820am) on the 9th of
october. today's programme: a ex-israeli minister talking about how the
first strike in the middle east war is not really going to be bush
attacking [the people of] iraq (so we might as well stop debating it),
but instead iran and syria attacking israel using the hezbollah.

--ravi

RE: Re: RE: Re: academic lingo

Title: RE: [PEN-L:30627] Re: RE: Re: academic lingo





Joanna: I refuse any option that excludes the vernacular as a common idiom. It is not our language that fails us, but our (unacknolwedged) motives. 

amen, sister!


Jim

RE: Re: RE: Momentum?

Title: RE: [PEN-L:30630] Re: RE: Momentum?

Dan writes:US National Public Radio is not a good news source.

that's why I identified it as the source.

Also: It's not about winning popular support... It's about stopping the corporations and their wars on us and others.

how are we going to stop the corporations without some sort of popular support?

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

-Original Message-
From: Dan Scanlan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 2:48 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:30630] Re: RE: Momentum?

on the other hand, US National Public Radio told me this morning
that some of the demonstrators were making undue 911 calls to
confuse/harass the police. Clever, but it's not a tactic to win
popular support, if they actually did it.

Three points from a radio activist:

US National Public Radio is not a good news source.

How would anybody know it was demonstrators? Certainly the
demonstrators wouldn't say so.

It's not about winning popular support (unless you're the corporate
government, then the phrase is buplic inertia). It's about stopping
the corporations and their wars on us and others.

Dan Scanlan

--
--

During times of universal deceit,
telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell

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Re: Re: Re: Personalities and the List

2002-09-27 Thread Doug Henwood


Michael Perelman wrote:

Ok Walker.  You want to challenge my language.  How about your ex-drunk?
Smoking gun had a video of a drunk W. and by the looks of it the event was
not too long ago.

Wow, Michael, I've never seen you so pugilistic!

The cover of The Economist a week or two ago was a close-up of W, 
with ravaged-looking facial capillaries. I immediately wondered if 
that was the magazine's - excuse me, the newspaper's - way of saying 
W was boozing again.

Doug

Presidential images

Title: Presidential images





back when Reagan was Prez, BUSINESSWEEK once had a cover picture that made him look dead. 



Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine


 The cover of The Economist a week or two ago was a close-up of W, 
 with ravaged-looking facial capillaries. I immediately wondered if 
 that was the magazine's - excuse me, the newspaper's - way of saying 
 W was boozing again.
 
 Doug


[was: RE: [PEN-L:30634] Re: Re: Re: Personalities and the List]

Re: Personalities and the List

2002-09-27 Thread Ralph Johansen

- Original Message -
From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 6:59 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:30609] Personalities and the List

 A new participant wrote me off for his criticizing me for trying to put
 the lid on the discussion of Hitchens.  Jim's post of Paul Krugman's
 article on the California energy crisis made me recall the message
 regarding Hitchens.

 While Clinton was president, some of Krugman's articles were awful; with
 Bush (and his handlers) in charge, Krugman is mostly on target.  During
 the Clinton era, Jim even sent many of his articles as part of the
 Krugman Watch.

 How is it that so much of modern political discourse concerns
 personalities?  With Bush as president, we have a non entity formally in
 charge, and yet the right wing agenda keeps plugging along -- even
 faster than under Reagan.  Yet all Bush can communicate is his anger.
 We could have an inflatable president, which could be pumped up and
 presented at important occasions, and the system would be virtually
 unchanged.

 Yet very little discussion here and elsewhere seems to be directed at
 the underlying nature of the forces in control.  So, here is my
 question: what could be done to try to redirect analysis away from
 personality?
 --

 Michael Perelman
 Economics Department
 California State University
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Chico, CA 95929
 530-898-5321
 fax 530-898-5901

Michael, I appreciate your leaving me anonymous, in your response, but hey,
here I am. I want to enter the list without incurring a grudging welcome,
but really, I don't feel that I was that out of line. I didn't sign up to
contribute to this list in order to pile on any individual. It frequently
happens that what someone with a substantial audience says is put in such a
way that analysis of what they say might be instructive for me as well as
others- and I'm perfectly content to leave out, on this list, that which is
merely snide and pejorative personality bashing; it would be helpful if they
did, too. I'm also in agreement that personality bashing is not particularly
productive, although I can qualify that in some instances. I'm also most
willing to accept criticism of my positions, because I'm a life-long
learner, just as is everyone else here, I assume. I also like what you say
about looking at the underlying nature of the forces in control.

But I do think that people who sound off without a grasp of historical
materialist analysis, [there, I said it, now I won't be able to get on an
airplane any more] and who then take umbrage when challenged, are leading
people away from a focused view of the world and should be called on it. And
anyhow, being very shy about my capacity to argue at this level, I probably
will enter very seldom.

This is what I wrote to Michael Perelman [note that I said debate on the
positions of...]:

- Original Message -
From: Ralph Johansen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, September 24, 2002 1:01 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: american solipsism redux

 I don't understand why Perelman should say that debate on the positions of
 people of the soggy left of center like Mark Cooper and Hitchens is
 unnecessary. It's obvious, from both of Cooper's statements quoted here by
 Henwood and Proyect, that his analysis is not grounded in consistent
 comprehension of the nature of capitalist imperialism.

 Statements like during the first Gulf War you could delude yourself into
 thinking we were rescuing occupied Kuwait, for example. Who could so
delude
 themselves - besides, that is, Mark Cooper? For what benign reasons does
he,
 or did he, think that the US entered Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait,
 other than concerns about interference with absolute US domination of all
 energy sources? Does he trouble himself with the history of this episode,
 including the fact that Saddam had tacit US approval and that Kuwait,
before
 it was ruled by its current syphilitic sheiks', was part of the territory
 of Iraq? [I may not have that accurately, but I welcome correction].

 Or this: the administration's warmongering stems not at all from any
 authentic security concerns but rather from cold and cynical domestic
 political calculation. The implication is that when war criminals
preoccupy
 themselves with authentic security concerns  rather than
 mitigation/elimination of the crimes committed which give rise to their
 hysterical fear of the rest of the world, that is somehow an acceptable
 response.

 Or this: The U.S. has not (unfortunately) occupied the country. Millions
 were not driven out or killed or forced into famine. American ground
troops
 have not been dragged into a Vietnam-like quagmire. The regime we have put
 into power is not worse than -- or the same as -- the Taliban. It's
backward
 and corrupt, but it's better. Civilians were killed -- as they are in all
 wars. (The Salvadoran guerrillas -- heroes to the left -- once boasted of
 their successful

Fw: No-fly blacklist snares political activists - SF Chronicle September 27, 2002

2002-09-27 Thread Ralph Johansen

- Original Message -
From: Ralph Johansen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 11:12 AM
Subject: No-fly blacklist snares political activists - SF Chronicle
September 27, 2002

 No-fly blacklist snares political activists
 Alan Gathright, Chronicle Staff Writer
 Friday, September 27, 2002
 ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.
 URL:
 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/09/27/MN181034.DTL

 A federal No Fly list, intended to keep terrorists from boarding
 planes, is snaring peace activists at San Francisco International and
 other U. S. airports, triggering complaints that civil liberties are
 being trampled.

 And while several federal agencies acknowledge that they contribute
 names to the congressionally mandated list, none of them, when
 contacted by The Chronicle, could or would say which agency is
 responsible for managing the list.

 One detainment forced a group of 20 Wisconsin anti-war activists to
 miss their flight, delaying their trip to meet with congressional
 representatives by a day. That case and others are raising questions
 about the criteria federal authorities use to place people on the list
 -- and whether people who exercise their constitutional right to
 dissent are being lumped together with terrorists.

 What's scariest to me is that there could be this gross interruption
 of civil rights and nobody is really in charge, said Sarah Backus, an
 organizer of the Wisconsin group. That's really 1984-ish.

 Federal law enforcement officials deny targeting dissidents. They
 suggested that the activists were stopped not because their names are
 on the list, but because their names resemble those of suspected
 criminals or terrorists.

 Congress mandated the list as part of last year's Aviation and
 Transportation Security Act, after two Sept. 11 hijackers on a federal
 watch list used their real names to board the jetliner that crashed
 into the Pentagon. The alerts about the two men, however, were not
 relayed to the airlines.

 The detaining of activists has stirred concern among members of
 Congress and civil liberties advocates. They want to know what
 safeguards exist to prevent innocent people from being branded a
 threat to civil aviation or national security.

 No Accountability

 And they are troubled by the bureaucratic nightmare that people stumble
 into as they go from one government agency to another in a maddening
 search to find out who is the official keeper of the no-fly list.

 The problem is that this list has no public accountability: People
 don't know why their names are put on or how to get their names off,
 said Jayashri Srikantiah, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties
 Union of Northern California. We have heard complaints from people who
 triggered the list a first time and then were cleared by security to
 fly. But when they fly again, their name is triggered again.

 Several federal agencies -- including the CIA, FBI, INS and State
 Department -- contribute names to the list. But no one at those
 agencies could say who is responsible for managing the list or who can
 remove names of people who have been cleared by authorities.

 Transportation Security Administration spokesman David Steigman
 initially said his agency did not have a no-fly list, but after
 conferring with colleagues, modified his response: His agency does not
 contribute to the no- fly list, he said, but simply relays names
 collected by other federal agencies to airlines and airports. We are
 just a funnel, he said, estimating that fewer than 1,000 names are on
 the list.

 TSA has access to it. We do not maintain it. He couldn't say who
 does. Steigman added he cannot state the criteria for placing someone
 on the list, because it's special security information not releasable
 (to the public).

 However, FBI spokesman Bill Carter said the Transportation Security
 Administration oversees the no-fly list: You're asking me about
 something TSA manages. You'd have to ask TSA their criteria as far as
 allowing individuals on an airplane or not. In addition to their alarm
 that no agency seems to be in charge of the list, critics are worried
 by the many agencies and airlines that can access it.

 The fact that so many people potentially have access to the list,
 ACLU lawyer Srikantiah said, creates a large potential for abuse.

 At least two dozen activists who have been stopped -- none have been
 arrested -- say they support sensible steps to bolster aviation
 security. But they criticize the no-fly list as being, at worst, a Big
 Brother campaign to muzzle dissent and, at best, a bureaucratic
 exercise that distracts airport security from looking for real bad
 guys.

 I think it's a combination of an attempt to silence dissent by scaring
 people and probably a lot of bumbling and inept implementation of some
 bad security protocols, said Rebecca Gordon, 50, a veteran San
 Francisco human rights activist and co-founder of War Times, a San
 Francisco

Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush Militarism- How many Divisionsare there

2002-09-27 Thread Hari Kumar


Thanks Michael Hoover.
The analysis I first read (re sectional interests the Yankees vs the
Cowboys) did indeed invoke Ogelsby. It was in a work by W.B.Bland in
an issue of Communist League from the 70's;  discussed matters of the
USA politics - from the Kennedy assassination - through to Watergate -
in terms of power blocks within the USA ruling class.
Points arising:
YOU WROTE: 1) former sdser/new leftist turned conspiracy theorist carl
oglesby may have been first  to use cowboy/yankee concept/terminology in
his early 70s book 'the cowboy and
yankee war'...  distinction probably more  relevant at that time re.
some differences between 'frostbelt' and 'sunbelt' capital...
significantly, however, u.s. foreign policy never changed much
regardless of whether 'liberal' yankees or 'conservative' cowboys won
elections...
REPLY:
Well - well the direction of US foreign policy need not necessarily
change. All I am suggesting is that within the context of an overall
agreement to screw the workers/peasants fo the USA/the world - there may
be cause to disagree on some matters within the ruling class. I am
trying to understand why there can be a lobby within the US ruling
circles that might at this present juncture contradict the general
agreement ot launch war. Now while I agree with the other Michael P -
that this si pretty muted opposition (Michael Pereleman says it is none)
there si some. Why? Who (which sectional class interest) gains?
 2) You wrote: ruling class differences - between domestic and
transitional capital, for example -
revolve around how best to stifle class conflict in order to maintain
existing system... 'debates' rarely consider interests of working
people... certainly, restraints upon ruling class exists, a no small
part of which is what they think they can get way with, but also
(somewhat ironically, perhaps) co-optation/
legitimation of representative' government...
REPLY: No disagreement!
Thanks again. I will check out Thomas Dye.
Cheers!
Hari

lockout


Friday, September 27, 2002 · Last updated 4:26 p.m. PT
Longshoremen Locked Out on W. Coast
By JUSTIN PRITCHARD
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

SAN FRANCISCO -- The association representing shipping lines decided Friday
to lock out longshoremen at all West Coast ports until Sunday morning as
contract negotiations deteriorated.

The 36-hour cooling-off period, which will immediately curtail the flow of
goods across the nation, was announced after the Pacific Maritime
Association accused the longshoremen's union of slowing down the pace of
work as a tactic to gain leverage in increasingly acrimonious talks.

The association's board met Friday morning and unanimously agreed to shutter
the ports, according to president Joseph Miniace. The lockout was scheduled
to begin Friday evening.

Miniace called it a very, very tough decision, but one that the
association had to make because the union was bargaining in bad faith.

It's the very last thing we wanted to do, Miniace said. But the union
forced us into this.

A spokesman for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union said that
union negotiators wanted to keep talking. The union learned of the lockout
Friday morning from association negotiators when the two sides met for
talks.

Miniace showed the same disrespect for the union he has since the beginning
of these talks, union president James Spinosa said. He is unilaterally
taking the action of closing all ports and bears full responsibility for its
effects on the American economy.

The disruption could stanch the flow of products from Asia just as importers
are rushing to distribute goods for the holiday season. The association has
said that a coastwide labor disruption could cost the U.S. economy around $1
billion per day. The ports handle more than $300 billion in imports and
exports each year.

At this point we are hopeful the two parties will come back to the
bargaining table in good faith, Department of Labor spokeswoman Sue Hensley
said. We are monitoring this very closely.

The crisis was foreshadowed Thursday evening when the association said
longshoremen were slowing the pace of work at ports in Los Angeles, Oakland,
Portland, Ore., Seattle and Tacoma, Wash.

The union had issued a directive earlier Thursday telling the 10,500 workers
it represents at all 29 major Pacific ports to work in strict accordance
with all safety and health rules.

The union says that five longshoremen have died in West Coast ports since
mid-March, and that the crush of cargo has made the docks an even more
chaotic and dangerous workplace.

Spinosa said work rates have hummed along at record levels in recent weeks -
but that longshoremen wouldn't continue to cut corners and risk their safety
if the association wouldn't bargain in good faith.

The association has consistently said that if it determined workers were
slowing down their pace on purpose, there would be a lockout.

On Friday, the association reported that productivity in some ports had
dropped by as much as 90 percent.

In Oakland, the association said, one of the massive cranes that typically
unloads 30 containers each hour averaged just three containers overnight. It
cited other examples along the coast.

ILWU members are effectively striking while working, causing the threat of
economic hardship on four million American workers whose livelihoods depend
on these ports, as well as the thousands of companies whose cargo is being
held hostage at the terminals, Miniace said.

The two sides have been bargaining over a new contract for months, but talks
have steadily deteriorated. The talks crumbled this week over the question
of how to implement new technology, an issue shipping lines have stressed
they must resolve before signing a new contract.

The union says it doesn't oppose new technology, but wants guarantees that
positions created by technological advances are union covered.

The association says a growth in trade will translate into more union jobs
over time, but the union shouldn't dictate that it gets every new job
created by new technology.

---

On the Net:

http://www.ilwu.org/main.htm

http://www.pmanet.org/

telecom market madness


This article is fascinating.  Market enthusiasts proclaim that
markets are magnificant processors of information.  This article
desribes how markets are driven by frenzy more than by
information.


TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Wildly Optimistic Data Drove
Telecoms to Build Fiber Glut

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


Of all of the myths that drove the 1990s technology boom --
dot-coms made good investments, the New Economy would never
experience a recession, small telecom companies could beat the
mighty Bells -- the most damaging may have been the fallacy that
Internet traffic was doubling every three months.

The belief that Internet traffic could grow so quickly -- if
true, it would have meant annual growth of more than 1,000% --
led more than a dozen companies to build expensive networks as
they rushed to claim a piece of the next gold rush. The statistic
sprouted up in reports by industry analysts, journalists and even
government agencies, which repeated it as if it were the gospel
truth. Internet traffic, the Commerce Department said in a 1998
report, doubles every 100 days.

Except that it didn't. Analysts now believe that Internet traffic
actually grew at closer to 100% a year, a solid growth rate by
most standards but one that was not nearly fast enough to use all
of the millions of miles of fiber-optic lines that were buried
beneath streets and oceans in the late-1990s frenzy. Nationwide,
only 2.7% of the installed fiber is actually being used,
according to Telegeography Inc. Much of the remaining fiber --
called dark fiber in industry parlance -- may remain dormant
forever.

That capacity glut has sent bandwidth prices plummeting an
average of 65% each of the last two years. It also has led most
of the long-haul data-transmission companies to file for Chapter
11 bankruptcy protection. Even WorldCom Inc., the granddaddy of
all fiber companies, is sinking under the weight of more than
$7.4 billion in accounting irregularities.

This was the clincher, the myth that justified all of the other
excesses of the dot-com era, says Andrew Odlyzko, a researcher
at the University of Minnesota who was among the first to
question the statistic. The times were good, so why question it?
No one wanted to acknowledge that the emperor had no clothes.

The issue isn't simply a matter of setting the historical record
straight. The amount of unused capacity is so vast that it will
be virtually impossible for any new fiber company, no matter how
good its technology or business plan, to raise funds in the
foreseeable future. And as the first wave of data carriers begins
to emerge from Chapter 11 this year, these now debt-free
companies may undercut rivals even more, potentially leading to a
new wave of bankruptcies or liquidations.

WorldCom, whose future is already in doubt, may have even more to
answer for. The earliest company to state that Internet traffic
was doubling every 100 days was WorldCom's UUNet subsidiary, and
the statistic became a mantra for top executives like John
Sidgmore, WorldCom's current chief executive. A closer look at
Commerce Department and Federal Communications Commission reports
that repeat the statistic reveals that WorldCom was their only
source. But people familiar with the situation say that UUNet
routinely counted fiber-optic capacity as traffic, rendering the
statistic essentially worthless as a barometer of the Internet's
growth.

WorldCom officials now concede that Internet traffic rarely, if
ever, was doubling every 100 days, but they deny the company
intentionally provided misleading data. Instead, they insist that
number referred to total capacity of the company's backbone
network, which was growing extremely fast as UUNet raced to keep
up with a flood of orders from Internet service providers and
others in the mid and late 1990s.

The actual traffic growth was never close to 1,000% per year,
says Vint Cerf, an early Internet architect who is a senior vice
president at WorldCom. But I don't think it was an attempt to
misstate anything -- it was an honest characterization of what
kind of demand we were seeing from these companies.

That point appears to have been lost on the analysts and
investment bankers who reaped untold millions of dollars helping
companies like Global Crossing Ltd. fund their fiber networks. In
April 1998, then-Salomon Smith Barney analyst Jack Grubman wrote
a research report touting Level 3 Communications Inc. shortly
after the company's initial public stock offering. Like the
attic of a house gets filled, no matter how much bandwidth is
available, it will get used, he wrote.

Level 3's stock has lost more than 95% of its value, but the
company appears to be one of the survivors: a recent $500 million
infusion from a group led by superstar investor Warren Buffett
has given it the money to begin buying up weaker rivals.

Many rivals aren't as lucky, and the data-transmission market is
littered with the carcasses of companies that have

On the US ruling class split

2002-09-27 Thread Sabri Oncu


Here is a very interesting post on the subject to PSN:

http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/psn/2002/msg02263.html

Best,
Sabri

debunking greenspan redux or, finance as bubble gum and duct tape


Credit Bubble Bulletin, by Doug Noland
The Trials and Tribulations of Speculative Finance
September 27, 2002
full piece at:
http://www.prudentbear.com

[snip]

That Greenspan would this week comment that outsized risk premiums suggest
the potential for a far larger world financial system suggests that he has
conveniently sunk to a new low in economic analysis (and that he is
deluded).  This key issue goes all the way back to the John Law's Great
fallacy:  that economic wealth can be created simply by providing additional
money (finance).  And in reasoning that either lacks credibility or
understanding, Greenspan would like us to believe we can have our cake and
eat it too - that more beneficial finance can be created that leads to
more wealth and higher living standards, as long as it is managed ever
more effectively.  This recalls his dangerously uninformed analysis that
that SE Asian crisis was caused by unhedged holdings.


[snip

subsidies backlash


Brazil fights US and EU farm subsidies

Charlotte Denny
Saturday September 28, 2002
The Guardian

Brazil launched a broadside against Europe's and America's lavish payments
to their farmers yesterday, filing a double complaint at the World Trade
Organisation over cotton subsidies in the US and sugar subsidies in the EU.

The challenge by one of the leading members of the Cairns groups of
agricultural free traders strikes at the heart of the complicated system of
quotas and payments that protect western farmers.

Brazil blames America's $3.9bn (£2.5bn) cotton subsidies for ruining its own
far more efficient industry. The US is the world's most expensive producer
of cotton, with costs per lb twice the world average. Brazil says the EU's
sugar regime is also damaging to its farmers.

Aid agencies yesterday accused the US of dumping its surplus cotton on world
markets and contributing to a catastrophic price fall. World prices have
fallen by half since the mid-1990s and, adjusted for inflation, they are at
their lowest level since the great depression.

In a report released to coincide with the filing of the Brazilian case,
Oxfam said the subsidy regime, which costs three times more than America's
aid budget for all of Africa's 500m people, was contributing to mass poverty
in cotton producing nations such as Mali and Chad.

The US is the world's strongest proponent of free trade, but when poor
cotton farmers in Mali try to trade on the world market, they must compete
against massively subsidised American cotton, said Kevin Watkins, the
report's author. This makes a mockery of the idea of a level playing field.
The rules are rigged against the poor.

The WTO is likely to take at last a year to decide if the cotton and sugar
regimes break its rules

Re: On the US ruling class split


I have not seen any anti-war activity from any of the leaders in
government.  I just sent a note to my former student -- his wife used to
babysit for us and he helped keep our tractor in repair -- who is now a
congressman visiting Iraq.  He is a blue dog Dem.  He was a liberal state
senator, but he is in a relatively conservative district.  He was a
decorated Vietnam veteran.

I would like to learn more about his motives, but the fact that someone
like Mike went to Iraq is a sign that the Dems could be more vocal.

-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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Re: Re: On the US ruling class split

2002-09-27 Thread Waistline2

In a message dated 9/27/02 6:42:57 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:


I have not seen any anti-war activity from any of the "leaders" in
government. I just sent a note to my former student -- his wife used to
babysit for us and he helped keep our tractor in repair -- who is now a
congressman visiting Iraq. He is a blue dog Dem. He was a liberal state
senator, but he is in a relatively conservative district. He was a
decorated Vietnam veteran.

I would like to learn more about his motives, but the fact that someone
like Mike went to Iraq is a sign that the Dems could be more vocal.





I understand - really. 


Political representatives cannot be more vocal than their base or they would not be elected. This is a real equation. My older brother is running for Vice president of the UAW (autoworkers union) - the highest elected position outside of President. He could not be in that position in the first place if he did not have a finger on the pulse of his base. 

My brother gave me a copy of "War of the Rat's" which became the basis for the movie "Enemy at the Gates" - by a French director. He also gave me "900 Days In Leningrad" - twenty years ago, and has a fundamental conception of the fault line of W.W.II. He applied Stalin's scorched earth policy in numerous political campaigns.

Forget motives at this stage of the game. 

We are not in a good position. 

Melvin P.

EU Schlerorsis

2002-09-27 Thread phillp2


Several times in recent days Ian and other have posted articles 
about the abject failure of the EU to deal with its economic 
problems (and also similar articles about Japan).  Many of the 
posted articles end up referring to the failure of Europe -- and 
particularly Germany -- to deal with 'labour market inflexibility.'  By 
posting these articles, without comment, gives the impression that 
'labour market inflexibility' is the cause of the Euro disease.  This is 
CRAP and mearly repeats the OECD neoliberal ideology that is 
being peddled by the OECD, IMF, etc -- the same crap that is 
being peddled by the IMF, WB etc  -- AND HAS BEEN 
DENOUNCED BY STIGLITZ  in his keynote address to the ILO last 
year.  It has also been demonstrated in econometric analysis by 
Tom Palley in his study posted on the Levy Institute web site.  

So why do we keep posting this crap?  There is no labour market 
rigidity in Europe that causes unemployment.  Palley 
demonstrates that  empirically.  Stiglitz shows that theoretically.  
Lets cut that crap and put the blame where it really belongs -- on 
the monetarist stupidities that dominate the ECB and the EMU.

Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba

Re: RE: Re: academic lingo

2002-09-27 Thread Waistline2

In a message dated 9/27/02 1:52:51 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:


I think you're right. Many times on pen-l, I've railed against the Mandarin Mentality of academics, who use all sorts of unneeded jargon or math in order to make their ideas seem profound (or to get tenure, or whatever). 

But the idea of "a new pseudo-mathematical language that would make meaningless debates impossible and force some form of responsible analysis" has been used for this purpose. 

Prof. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine 




The question is how to express oneself in the way that peoples in America think things out. This requires a profound materialist assessment of cultural specificity of various classes and is subject to the thinking of the individual. 


Melvin P

Re: EU Schlerorsis

- Original Message -
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, September 23, 2002 3:28 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:30646] EU Schlerorsis

 Several times in recent days Ian and other have posted articles
 about the abject failure of the EU to deal with its economic
 problems (and also similar articles about Japan).  Many of the
 posted articles end up referring to the failure of Europe -- and
 particularly Germany -- to deal with 'labour market inflexibility.'  By
 posting these articles, without comment, gives the impression that
 'labour market inflexibility' is the cause of the Euro disease.  This is
 CRAP and mearly repeats the OECD neoliberal ideology that is
 being peddled by the OECD, IMF, etc -- the same crap that is
 being peddled by the IMF, WB etc  -- AND HAS BEEN
 DENOUNCED BY STIGLITZ  in his keynote address to the ILO last
 year.  It has also been demonstrated in econometric analysis by
 Tom Palley in his study posted on the Levy Institute web site.

 So why do we keep posting this crap?  There is no labour market
 rigidity in Europe that causes unemployment.  Palley
 demonstrates that  empirically.  Stiglitz shows that theoretically.
 Lets cut that crap and put the blame where it really belongs -- on
 the monetarist stupidities that dominate the ECB and the EMU.

 Paul Phillips,
 Economics,
 University of Manitoba

==

I agree that they are crap. I post them so that if others are sufficiently
infuriated and can afford the time to send a short response and denounce
them [ I do this with various pieces when I'm confident enough to
counterblast], we might make some headway with the media. Writing them off
as hopeless becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy problemHere's contact
info for the Guardian. I'm pretty sure the contact info for the NYT and Wash
Post are in the archives.

How to contact Guardian Unlimited

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Re: EU Schlerorsis


Paul is probably correct in his analysis, but a bit intemperate in his
presentation.

On Mon, Sep 23, 2002 at 05:28:15PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Several times in recent days Ian and other have posted articles 
 about the abject failure of the EU to deal with its economic 
 problems (and also similar articles about Japan).  Many of the 
 posted articles end up referring to the failure of Europe -- and 
 particularly Germany -- to deal with 'labour market inflexibility.'  By 
 posting these articles, without comment, gives the impression that 
 'labour market inflexibility' is the cause of the Euro disease.  This is 
 CRAP and mearly repeats the OECD neoliberal ideology that is 
 being peddled by the OECD, IMF, etc -- the same crap that is 
 being peddled by the IMF, WB etc  -- AND HAS BEEN 
 DENOUNCED BY STIGLITZ  in his keynote address to the ILO last 
 year.  It has also been demonstrated in econometric analysis by 
 Tom Palley in his study posted on the Levy Institute web site.  
 
 So why do we keep posting this crap?  There is no labour market 
 rigidity in Europe that causes unemployment.  Palley 
 demonstrates that  empirically.  Stiglitz shows that theoretically.  
 Lets cut that crap and put the blame where it really belongs -- on 
 the monetarist stupidities that dominate the ECB and the EMU.
 
 Paul Phillips,
 Economics,
 University of Manitoba 
 

-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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