Re: [PEN-L] walter reed, privatization, and public health care
On 3/24/07, ken hanly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The Canadian system is extremely limited in what it covers. Most dental care is not covered, long term care for the aged. Provinces have add ons but over the last long while the ad-ons are being subtracted or weakened. A good example is the various pharmacare plans in different provinces. Also doctors are now able to bill patients for certain costs. How do Canadians usually pay for things and services that are not covered? Pay out of pocket or buy insurances to cover gaps? -- Yoshie
Re: [PEN-L] walter reed, privatization, and public health care
I don't know why you think that the Canadian system is better than the UK system. WHO ranks Canada as 30 in the world whereas UK is 18. Coverage is far superior in Great Britain. Certainly the system has gone downhill but this is virtually universal in developed capitalist countries. US is certainly bad at 37 (just above Cuba at 39)--although I recall an efficiency ranking that puts Cuba above the US. Indeed the US spends more of GDP on healthcare than almost any other country with meager results: Press Release WHO/44 21 June 2000 WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION ASSESSES THE WORLD'S HEALTH SYSTEMS The World Health Organization has carried out the first ever analysis of the worlds health systems. Using five performance indicators to measure health systems in 191 member states, it finds that France provides the best overall health care followed among major countries by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan. The findings are published today, 21 June, in The World Health Report 2000 Health systems: Improving performance. The U. S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds. The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on health services, ranks 18th . Several small countries San Marino, Andorra, Malta and Singapore are rated close behind second- placed Italy. The Scandinavian social democratic countries are falling further behind as the capitalist welfare system is eroded more and more: Norway 11, Sweden 23, Finland 31, Denmark 34. To answer Yoshie's question. Canadians pay some out of pocket, some through supplemental insurance at the work place, and some individual insurance. Blue Cross is widely purchased and there are many other plans. I purchase Blue Cross in case I have to use an ambulance which is not covered. Provincial plans vary widely and supplement the overall coverage. --- Gar Lipow [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 3/24/07, joel blau [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Gar Lipow wrote: Assertion unbacked by evidence - for discussion purposes: Single payer health is better than a National Health Service under capitalism, because a National Health Service is more vulnerable to conservative sabotage. Joe Blau This doesn't sound right to me. When he was finance minister in the mid 1990s, Paul Martin cut the budget for the Canadian single payer system. In England, Thatcher did the same to the National Health Service. Both systems seem equally vulnerable to the vagaries of budgetary politics. What distinction are you making that leads you to believe otherwise? Joel Blau There are two systems that are clearly worse than Canada's. One is the U.S; system, the other the UKs. The UK has gotten away with cutting their National Health to a much lower % of GDP than Canada has. The distinction I'm making is that in a capitalist nation with a weak working class, independent contractors will be able to fight cuts better than employees. Ken Hanley Many European plans are far superior to the Canadian systems. Both National Health Services and single payer systems can be sabotaged where there is the will and political climate that allows it. But most European plans are closer to single payer than to a National Health Service. France, the worlds best health system, is in practice a single payer system. (It is techncially a multiple payer system - but in practice the multiple payers are non-profit administrators for a single government plant, which sets both coverage for patients, and compensation rates for providers.) Sweden and Finland in Europe, and Cuba among the poor nations are counterexamples - well functioning National Health Systems. But Cuba does not have an internal capitalist class, and Sweden and Finland have strong working class movements even though reaction is strong there. Also Sweden and Finland, though decent systems, have worse results than France. I'm not wedded to this hypothesis, but there does seem to be evidence that having government act as health insurer rather than primary direct employer of medial labor weakens (but does not eliminate) its ability to cut funds for its healthcare system. Blog: http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html
[PEN-L] Frank L. Kluckhohn follow-up
Yesterday, after I reported on the pro-Franco reporting of NY Timesman Frank L. Kluckhohn during the Spanish Civil War, I was somewhat surprised to discover a comment in his defense from one of his relatives, a man named R.H. Kluckhohn who describes himself as a retired man keen on model railroads and active in his local Episcopalian church: Ya gotta love those ad hominem diatribes and partial quotes. Fact: Franco won and kicked Frank Kluckhohn out of Spain. So much for polemics. If Frank Kluckhohn was kicked out of Spain for anything he wrote about Franco, that seemed to have eluded the attention of his editors who simply noted that he had been reassigned to Mexico in 1936. (It should be added, however, that he was expelled from Mexico for reporting the woes of foreign businessmen with such zeal that Mexican authorities lost patience, according to Time Magazine. If anything, his tender concerns for foreign businessmen in a radicalized Mexico seems completely in line with his hostility to the Spanish Republic. When he was in Mexico, Kluckhohn filed a number of articles on Leon Trotsky. At this time, he was pals with a character named Frank Jellinek, who according to Trotskys bodyguard Joseph Hansen, was a GPU agent using the cover of a reporting job for PM Magazine in New York. At a press conference on the findings of the John Dewey Commission of Inquiry on the Moscow Trials, Jellinek showed up with Kluckhohn but had to be removed for making a disturbance. After leaving the NY Times, Kluckhohn became an adviser to the Secretary of Defense in the Truman administration in 1948. From that point on, he kept shifting rightward steadily until his death in an auto accident in 1970. In the 1960s, he directed an outfit called Committee to End Aid to the Soviet Enemy and then moved on to the Press Ethics Committee, which the NY Times obituary described as designed to ferret out slanted reporting and editing of the newsin other words a forerunner to Reed Irvines Accuracy in Media, David Horowitzs Frontpage, et al. Heres a good article on what Kluckhohn was up to around this time: The Washington Post, Apr 25, 1969 The Washington Merry-Go-Round Neo-Nazis Plan Press Ethics Unit By Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson One of the most significant operations of the secret neo-Nazi movement In the United States is a plan to establish a press ethics committee to rate newspapermen and broadcasters and to censure those who embarrass the movement. Director of this committee is Frank Kluckhohn, who has been close to Willis Carto, chief mainspring of the neo Nazi underground and organizer of the Liberty Lobby. Carto helped raise $90,000 which was distributed to conservative Congressional candidates last year. Chief danger of this underground is its influence with a long list of Congressmen to whom it contributed heavily. One of those enlisted was the sonorous, oratorical, naive Sen. Everett McKinley Dirk sen of Illinois, Republican Leader in the Senate, who has played directly into the hands of the underground. Dirksen did exactly what Kluckhohn and the Liberty Lobby have been hoping to do by attacking the New York Times and its reporter, Neil Sheehan, for digging into the manner in which Otto Otepka raised the money to pay his attorney, Roger Robb, plus other defense expenses in his battle against the State Department The Department, under Dean Rusk, had dropped Otepka for leaking classified information on Walt Rostow and others to Sen. Tom Dodd (D-Conn.). Rostow was the National Security Adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. President Nixon has now promoted Otepka from his former $14,000 job in the State Department to a $36,000 job on the Subversive Activities Control Board. By so doing, Mr. Nixon rebuffed his own Secretary of State, William P. Rogers, who refused to reinstate Otepka. Robb, Otepkas attorney, has been promoted by Mr. Nixon to the U.S. Court of Appeals, one of the most important judicial appointments in the nation. Persecuting N.Y. Times When the New York Times dug into the John Birch Society and other right-wing sources from which Otepka had raised his legal defense fund, Sen. Dirksen took the unusual step of denouncing the Times, and threatened to denounce on the floor of the Senate the reporter who wrote the story. It was the New York Times, incidentally, which fired Kluckhohn. And it was Dirksen who urged President Johnson to save the Subversive Activities Control Board, to which Otepka has now been appointed. What the New York Times did was a straight piece of reporting, which every newspaper has a right and obligation to do in order to keep the public informed. Reporter Sheehan showed how Otepka had been palsy-walsy with the John Birch Society and had raised at least $22,000 from its members or its fronts. Sheehan queried Otepka about these activities. He declined to discuss them.
Re: [PEN-L] Norton nonsense
thanks. I'll tell you if it works. On 3/24/07, joel blau [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Leigh Meyers wrote: Ah Norton, the anti-virus that IS one. Runner-up... ZoneAlarm OK, I can tell you how, but you'll need to install a registry cleaner like Cclean, Registry Mechanic or regvac. Use it to clean your registry. With Registry Mechanic, use the defaults. I'm fond of Registry Mechanic, it's never done anything untowards to my computer. You should be ok with the freebie version that doesn't remove certain items. Those items aren't relevant. Cclean is also good, and it's top quality, professional, free/begware http://www.ccleaner.com/download/. Check ALL the boxes in the 'Issues' section. I have both and use them regularly... Cclean installs a right-click menu on the trash bin. A convienient way to clean temp files and keeps the web browsing experience snappy. Now: What you do, and I KNOW it sounds brutal, is search your computer for the words Symantec and then Norton... no particular order, and DELETE EVERYTHING. That's right, folders and all, by the roots. If 'delete' balks at a file because it's in use, don't fret, skip it, it won't be in use in about 15 minutes. Next, use registry Mechanic, or whichever you choose and scan everything that is scannable temp folders, everything. After you get the results, clean everything. Now, reboot... the computer wiill cough and sputter, and you may get a bounch of error messages. The computer WILL start. Now, run the registry cleaner again. Search again for the N word and the S word. They should be deletable now Registry clean one more time. That should do it. Vaya Con Dios I had the same problem, and the Dell tech person (from India) sent me to SmitFraud fix. The viruses disappeared. I'd confirm this strategy with someone who knows more, but it did work for me. Joel Blau For DOG'S sake, make sure you have SOME antivirus software on tour computer. On 3/24/07, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I took Norton/Symantech anti-virus (etc.) off my PC after long frustration. But I still got a message from Norton saying that my PC is vulnerable to worms. So I went to the Norton page and found and ran a program that allegedly gets rid of all Norton programs (created, I think, due to a lawsuit against Norton). But I still get a message from Norton saying that my PC is vulnerable to worms. what to do? -- Jim Devine / The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -- C. P. Kindleberger -- Jim Devine / The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -- C. P. Kindleberger
Re: [PEN-L] Norton nonsense
This might be overkill, but the only other thing, after you do all the other stuff, ==if you feel lucky (as in Clint Eastwood 'lucky') and confident playing with the guts of the registry== , would be to physically check the registry with windows regedit, to manually find delete everything still linked to the N and S words. There shouldn't be too many... if any. Then registry clean again. Leigh On 3/25/07, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: thanks. I'll tell you if it works. On 3/24/07, joel blau [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Leigh Meyers wrote: Ah Norton, the anti-virus that IS one. Runner-up... ZoneAlarm OK, I can tell you how, but you'll need to install a registry cleaner like Cclean, Registry Mechanic or regvac. Use it to clean your registry. With Registry Mechanic, use the defaults. I'm fond of Registry Mechanic, it's never done anything untowards to my computer. You should be ok with the freebie version that doesn't remove certain items. Those items aren't relevant. Cclean is also good, and it's top quality, professional, free/begware http://www.ccleaner.com/download/. Check ALL the boxes in the 'Issues' section. I have both and use them regularly... Cclean installs a right-click menu on the trash bin. A convienient way to clean temp files and keeps the web browsing experience snappy. Now: What you do, and I KNOW it sounds brutal, is search your computer for the words Symantec and then Norton... no particular order, and DELETE EVERYTHING. That's right, folders and all, by the roots. If 'delete' balks at a file because it's in use, don't fret, skip it, it won't be in use in about 15 minutes. Next, use registry Mechanic, or whichever you choose and scan everything that is scannable temp folders, everything. After you get the results, clean everything. Now, reboot... the computer wiill cough and sputter, and you may get a bounch of error messages. The computer WILL start. Now, run the registry cleaner again. Search again for the N word and the S word. They should be deletable now Registry clean one more time. That should do it. Vaya Con Dios I had the same problem, and the Dell tech person (from India) sent me to SmitFraud fix. The viruses disappeared. I'd confirm this strategy with someone who knows more, but it did work for me. Joel Blau For DOG'S sake, make sure you have SOME antivirus software on tour computer. On 3/24/07, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I took Norton/Symantech anti-virus (etc.) off my PC after long frustration. But I still got a message from Norton saying that my PC is vulnerable to worms. So I went to the Norton page and found and ran a program that allegedly gets rid of all Norton programs (created, I think, due to a lawsuit against Norton). But I still get a message from Norton saying that my PC is vulnerable to worms. what to do? -- Jim Devine / The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -- C. P. Kindleberger -- Jim Devine / The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -- C. P. Kindleberger
[PEN-L] Rethinking Mutual Aid
At the origins of the modern Left, mutual aid organizations were very common, probably the predominant form of proletarian organizations. Marxists, however, have tended to think that such mutual aid organizations are primitive workers' organizations inferior to trade unions and political parties specializing in protesting government and corporations and extracting higher wages and benefits from them (when they are not in a position to run the government themselves). Of course, such protests must be still held, in defense of wages, benefits, and things like that, but both the growth of the informal sector and the growth of service jobs in competitive (rather than monopolistic) industries in the formal sector -- both are worldwide phenomena -- means that the types of organizations dominant in the age when industrial workers in monopolistic sectors were well organized, on the political offensive, and set the standards that pulled the rest up can no longer be easily sustained -- many of the industrial unions in the USA are in their twilight years. Since capital has reorganized workplaces and social geography, we, too, need to change what we do and how we do it. -- Yoshie
Re: [PEN-L] Rethinking Mutual Aid
back when the social-democratic and communist parties had mass working-class bases, mutual aid organizations were often under their umbrellas, parts of their broader networks. On 3/25/07, Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At the origins of the modern Left, mutual aid organizations were very common, probably the predominant form of proletarian organizations. Marxists, however, have tended to think that such mutual aid organizations are primitive workers' organizations inferior to trade unions and political parties specializing in protesting government and corporations and extracting higher wages and benefits from them (when they are not in a position to run the government themselves). Of course, such protests must be still held, in defense of wages, benefits, and things like that, but both the growth of the informal sector and the growth of service jobs in competitive (rather than monopolistic) industries in the formal sector -- both are worldwide phenomena -- means that the types of organizations dominant in the age when industrial workers in monopolistic sectors were well organized, on the political offensive, and set the standards that pulled the rest up can no longer be easily sustained -- many of the industrial unions in the USA are in their twilight years. Since capital has reorganized workplaces and social geography, we, too, need to change what we do and how we do it. -- Yoshie -- Jim Devine / The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -- C. P. Kindleberger
Re: [PEN-L] Rethinking Mutual Aid
one type of working-class mutual aid organization is the Lodge (like the Moose or the Elk) which started out as funds for pooling funds for such things as paying burial expenses. On 3/25/07, Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 3/25/07, Sandwichman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To steal a page from Karl Polanyi, the distinction I would suggest between mutual aid organizations and trade unions is that the former operate on somewhat of a principle of reciprocity whereas the latter tacitly accept the principle of market exchange but seek to intervene to correct market failures with regard to what Polanyi describes as the fictional commodity of labour. At some level, any notion of a just exchange (such as the Ricardian socialist goal of workers receiving the full product of their labour, etc. or the eerily similar neoclassical assumption that workers are paid at the value of their marginal productivity) gets caught up in commodity fetishism because it reduces a qualitative human relationship to some abstract quantitative terms. It may be -- and I guess it probably was -- that mutual aid societies headed down this road as they acquired enough actuarial experience to be able to calculate the financially viable relationship between of contribution and benefit levels. I've yet to investigate exactly what happened to early forms of workers' organizations. It may be that they were taken under the wings of then growing social democratic parties and lost their autonomous existence or withered when they adjusted themselves to the notion of just exchange, but formal and informal mechanisms of mutual aid still spring up, especially among immigrant workers. Circumstances force them, e.g., having to share housing, having to send back money to places where banks, the Western Union, etc. don't exist, and so forth. Kinds of organizations that have been growing in number and significance include workers centers, service organizations that tap into and help reinforce existing networks of mutual aid that transcend the boundary between workplace and community organizing. -- Yoshie -- Jim Devine / The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -- C. P. Kindleberger
[PEN-L] Let's Get Personal - Foreclosure No. A200642668
The last couple of paragraphs are chilling. Subprime bust forces families from homes By ADAM GELLER, AP National WriterSun Mar 25, 12:17 AM ET http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070325/ap_on_bi_ge/house_of_cards;_ylt=AmVHzG8HUzGS7zpSHvGTjzfMWM0F The lights are still on inside Foreclosure No. A200642668 — so while there's time, have a look around. Here's the living room, still covered in the worn blue shag Angela Sneary always intended to replace with the sheen of hardwood. And downstairs, through a curtain of plastic beads, is the basement where husband Tim was going to knock out a wall and put in a foosball table. Step this way and the Snearys point out the places where they never could find the cash to hang a ceiling fan, install a hot tub, replace the siding ... a long list of abandoned ambitions that seem almost too big to squeeze into the modest four-bedroom tri-level. Owning a home is all about finding humor in unfinished projects. But in the house set back from a bend at 11030 Eudora Circle, the Snearys never had the luxury. They ran out of money first. Then, they ran out of time. Soon, they'll almost certainly be out of a home. Buying a home is the American dream and a record number of Americans — nearly 70 percent — are living it. Many families, though, likely never would have become owners if not for the tremendous growth over the past decade of a new kind of mortgage business called subprime lending. It long seemed like a winning proposition for all parties. Now the costs are becoming apparent — and they are very unsettling. Subprime lenders peddle new kinds of mortgages, often requiring no money down and made at teaser interest rates that soon rise. They target marginal borrowers with weak credit or questionable incomes who previously might not have gotten a loan at all. By last year, subprime loans made up 20 percent of the market for new mortgages. But as the housing market cools, thousands of subprime borrowers are struggling to keep their homes. A number of subprime lenders, saddled by failed loans and a shortage of cash, have folded or staggered. In some particularly hard-hit neighborhoods in Denver's suburbs — one of a few metropolitan areas where the problem is especially grave — home after home sits dark. Clearly, this isn't how the American dream is supposed to play out, but who's to blame? The experience of families like the Snearys show how the squeeze created by questionable lending can quickly be compounded by family economic crises, a lack of planning and knowledge, and the rapid shifts in a real estate market that once seemed unstoppable. You were set up to fail, one real estate agent told them. It's a sobering thought for anybody who shares the American dream. After all, it hits so close to home. ___ Tim first met Angela when he was just 5. She was hours old. Their fathers were best friends, two old hippies who partied together. On an afternoon 33 years ago, they celebrated Angela's arrival. Tim stared at the tiny infant a nurse held up to the maternity ward window and waved. Sixteen years later, Angela's dad died. Tim, just out of the Navy, went to pay his respects. He offered his arms to Angela — and never let go. In the wedding photos, Tim's rock-star hair reaches the shoulders of his white tuxedo. Angela's bridal gown does little to hide her eighth month of pregnancy. The new family grew fast — a year after Amanda was born, Timmy Jr. followed and three years later came Steven. Tim found work doing landscaping in Denver's mushrooming subdivisions. Angela got a job working for an insurance company. Eventually, they combined to make around $55,000 a year. They moved from rental to rental, aspiring to buy. By 2004, their rental town house was getting tight. A neighbor complained they were noisy. The couple set out to look at homes in Thornton, a fast-expanding, mostly working-class suburb 20 minutes outside Denver. They loved the second house the agent showed them, tucked in a 1970s subdivision with streets curled around each other like a ball of yarn. It was painted glowing pink with a big shade tree out front. The kitchen drawer-pulls were shaped like tiny forks and spoons. It had spacious bedrooms for all three kids, plenty of space for three dogs and six cats. Tim walked in here and said this is perfect, Angela recalls. It cost $204,000. We thought we were getting a deal, Tim says. The agent said he'd find them a mortgage, no money down. The Snearys say they never thought to shop around. More than two years and 100-plus homes later, agent Kent Widmar says he has no memory of the couple or the deal. But he knows his customers — and subprime loans are the only loans most can get. I kind of work the bottom of the market, the tough deals, the people that can't get credit anywhere, Widmar says. You're dealing with people where nobody else (other lenders) is even going to talk to them ... It's not like you have a whole lot of choices. The Snearys say
Re: [PEN-L] Rethinking Mutual Aid
On 3/25/07, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: one type of working-class mutual aid organization is the Lodge (like the Moose or the Elk) which started out as funds for pooling funds for such things as paying burial expenses. At one point, that probably was the only alternative to paupers' graves. Though many workers in the North have gained wages and benefits beyond that bare subsistence level, they still turn to organizations that encompass their lives beyond working lives, from birth to marriage to death. Marx envisioned the future of trade unions thus: Apart from their original purposes, they [trade unions] must now learn to act deliberately as organising centres of the working class in the broad interest of its _complete emancipation_. They must aid every social and political movement tending in that direction. Considering themselves and acting as the champions and representatives of the whole working class, they cannot fail to enlist the non-society men into their ranks. They must look carefully after the interests of the worst paid trades, such as the agricultural labourers, rendered powerless [French text has: incapable of organised resistance] by exceptional circumstances. They must convince the world at large [French and German texts read: convince the broad masses of workers] that their efforts, far from being narrow -- and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions. (1866, http://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1866/instructions.htm#06) For many reasons, internal and external, trade unions couldn't -- and generally didn't aspire to -- become such organizing centers that can enlist non-society men and look after the worst paid trades. It is extremely difficult to organize trade unions of workers who are not employed in monopolistic industries in the formal sector, and those are the very workers who are increasing in number and proportion. And those workers tend to have needs -- e.g., immigrant workers needing to learn a new language -- that go far beyond workplace organizing. -- Yoshie
[PEN-L] Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune
Mike Davis, Slavoj Zizek, et al. have written about the growth of global slums and informal sectors and what that means for the prospects of social revolution. What do such urban informal workers think of themselves and the world in which they live? What social identities and ideologies do they develop? While urbanization of the global South is new, the fact that insurgent identities are not necessarily -- perhaps seldom -- based on the idea of the working class is not new. Even those who organized the Paris Commune, what Marx thought of as the first dictatorship of the proletariat at work, thought of themselves quite differently than many Marxists imagined them to be. Contradiction between objective and subjective -- who we are and what we think of ourselves -- is a permanent feature of lives under capitalism, though contradiction is more visible than ever today. Moreover, if recent studies of workers involved in the Paris Commune are correct, those who were less well organized in existing craft and trade associations got involved in the commune more than better organized workers. The key to mobilization was cross-class neighborhood networks, rather than single-class work-based organizations. That's an important insight that we can put to use in many parts of the world. -- Yoshie http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0348/is_n1_v39/ai_20641674/print Labor History, Feb. 1998 Insurgent Identities: Class, Community and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune. - book reviews Judith F. Stone Roger V. Gould, 1995 Chicago, University of Chicago Press pp. viii + 253; $15.95 (paperback) Roger V. Gould has written an ambitious study in historical sociology. His major concern is theory and he approaches the history of 19th century revolutionary upheavals in France as a uniquely informative natural experiment (192). To a large degree this experiment is a negative one: to demonstrate the inadequacies and limitations of the new social history developed in the 1960s. Gould argues that this master narrative of class formation still retains considerable influence in the analysis of 19th century social movements. Class struggle and the story of working class formation persist as dominant explanatory themes and, in Grould's view, often distort empirical evidence. Variations of the class formation theory have also been influential in the field of urban sociology. Gould mentions the limitations of liberal explanations for the transformation of Paris from 1853 to 1870, but he saves his sharpest criticism for the varieties of Marxist, class-based analyses of the reordering of the French capital during the Second Empire. As an alternative to a class analysis of collective behavior, Gould offers participation identities based on collective identities that are multidimensional, change over time and are shaped by varying social networks and particularly powerful events. Gould argues that this perspective is preferable to the discursive, culturalist alternative to class analysis, since participation identity can be supported by empirical evidence. Insurgent Identities is an extended test of participation identities theory and a persistent refutation of class analysis as an overarching explanatory method. The Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871 provide the empirical data for this experiment. Gould's central point is that the uprising of June 1848 and the Commune, often presented as two related episodes in the unfolding saga of the French labor movement, were fundamentally different. Causes and participant motivation in each struggle bore few similarities to the other; these distinctions are essential in order to under-stand the dynamic of the two revolts. Simply put, those who mounted the barricades in 1848 did so as workers, fired by the Revolution's initial linking of universal male suffrage and the right to work. The specific conjuncture of mass unemployment in the 1840s and the revolutionary institutions of the Luxembourg Commission and the National Workshop forged an identity of workers as a social class. When the conservative National Assembly moved to dismantle these working class institutions, workers defended them on the barricades. In 1871 many who participated in the Commune did so as members of the outlying neighborhoods newly created during Baron Haussmann's transformation of Paris. They also acted as Parisians committed to defending their newly won municipal liberties and adamant in their hostility to a conservative government. Unlike the class-based insurgency of 1848, Gould insists that the Commune was an urban protest, made possible by the dramatic reconstruction of the city between 1853 and 1870. The new socially heterogeneous networks which emerged in the peripheral neighborhoods, the multiclass organizations of radical clubs and the National Guard, and, most importantly, the Franco. Prussian War with its devastating four month siege of Paris, forged new identities open to
Re: [PEN-L] Rethinking Mutual Aid
or the Supreme Tribe of Ben-Hur! http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2007/02/irregular-secret-society-bloggin g.html The Ku Klux Klan revival in the 1920s was largely a result of an extremely successful PR campaign carried out by a firm that specialised in helping insurance lodges to recruit members. The religion of Druidism has had a number of schisms over issues related to their mutual insurance company. best dd -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jim Devine Sent: 25 March 2007 20:30 To: PEN-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU Subject: Re: Rethinking Mutual Aid one type of working-class mutual aid organization is the Lodge (like the Moose or the Elk) which started out as funds for pooling funds for such things as paying burial expenses.
Re: [PEN-L] Rethinking Mutual Aid
On 3/25/07, Daniel Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: or the Supreme Tribe of Ben-Hur! http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2007/02/irregular-secret-society-bloggin g.html The Ku Klux Klan revival in the 1920s was largely a result of an extremely successful PR campaign carried out by a firm that specialised in helping insurance lodges to recruit members. The religion of Druidism has had a number of schisms over issues related to their mutual insurance company. To what extent were workers involved in the KKK? While Gone with the Wind has been rightly criticized, what it captures well is the fact that the KKK involved the pillars of community, more often than not. -- Yoshie
Re: [PEN-L] walter reed, privatization, and public health care
On 3/24/07, Leigh Meyers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When exactly was the 'golden age' of the VA health delivery system? Certainly not right after WWII: Reading back up to the beginning of this thread, I just noticed your remark. I think that the VA system could and did work when the nation was not fighting a big war. The present system was shaped on the assumption of volunteer soldiers going only on occasional peace-keeping missions and the like, the government having failed to adjust the system to the level of casualties that obviously would result from wars like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. -- Yoshie
Re: [PEN-L] walter reed, privatization, and public health care
Nobody was speaking of a Golden Age. The idea was that under Clinton, the agency got very efficient in some respects, then privatization a flood of soldiers for whom they were not prepared. Some of my students from the 1st Gulf War told me horror stories about the VA under Clinton, though. 1 could not get treatment, even though he needed his wife to carry his book to class. On Sun, Mar 25, 2007 at 05:10:30PM -0400, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: On 3/24/07, Leigh Meyers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When exactly was the 'golden age' of the VA health delivery system? Certainly not right after WWII: Reading back up to the beginning of this thread, I just noticed your remark. I think that the VA system could and did work when the nation was not fighting a big war. The present system was shaped on the assumption of volunteer soldiers going only on occasional peace-keeping missions and the like, the government having failed to adjust the system to the level of casualties that obviously would result from wars like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. -- Yoshie -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com
Re: [PEN-L] Rethinking Mutual Aid
On 3/25/07, Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: While Gone with the Wind has been rightly criticized, what it captures well is the fact that the KKK involved the pillars of community, more often than not. ] isn't it Birth of a Nation that's about the KKK? GWTW is pretty pro-South, but I don't remember the KKK being in it. (But then again, I think I saw it 30 years ago.) -- Jim Devine / The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -- C. P. Kindleberger
Re: [PEN-L] Rethinking Mutual Aid
On 3/25/07, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 3/25/07, Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: While Gone with the Wind has been rightly criticized, what it captures well is the fact that the KKK involved the pillars of community, more often than not. isn't it Birth of a Nation that's about the KKK? GWTW is pretty pro-South, but I don't remember the KKK being in it. (But then again, I think I saw it 30 years ago.) Yes, The Birth of a Nation is about the KKK and pro-Southern whites, but so is Gone with the Wind, though more ambiguously so. Ashley Wilkes, Scarlet's original love and the mirror of Southern gentlemen, is a member of the Klan. -- Yoshie
Re: [PEN-L] Rethinking Mutual Aid
On 3/25/07, Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, The Birth of a Nation is about the KKK and pro-Southern whites, but so is Gone with the Wind, though more ambiguously so. Ashley Wilkes, Scarlet's original love and the mirror of Southern gentlemen, is a member of the Klan. the Wilkes-types usually kept an arms-distance from the KKK, joining white citizens' councils instead. -- Jim Devine / The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -- C. P. Kindleberger
Re: [PEN-L] Rethinking Mutual Aid
On 3/25/07, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 3/25/07, Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, The Birth of a Nation is about the KKK and pro-Southern whites, but so is Gone with the Wind, though more ambiguously so. Ashley Wilkes, Scarlet's original love and the mirror of Southern gentlemen, is a member of the Klan. the Wilkes-types usually kept an arms-distance from the KKK, joining white citizens' councils instead. It is said that the KKK drew members from from every class of white society (qtd. Michael W. Fitzgerald, Lou Faulkner Williams, The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials, 1871-1872, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Pp. xiii + 197. $35.00 (ISBN 0-8203-11795-0), http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/17.1/br_10.html). While almost all social movements, left or right or center, are multi-class movements, I'd think that, given the nature of the organization (anti-labor as well as anti-Black), many members were from the higher classes and strata of communities. -- Yoshie
[PEN-L] Two Job openings at Dollars Sense
Dear friends and colleagues, We at Dollars Sense have two job openings: for a development and promotion coordinator, and for a business and circulation coordinator. We would greatly appreciate any help you may be able to provide in filling these positions (e.g. forwarding this message to any potential candidates you may know of, posting the notices in newsletters, forwarding to email lists, etc.). I am pasting into this message two versions of each of the job postings (short versions and long versions). In solidarity, Chris Sturr, co-editor of Dollars Sense Job Opening Development and Promotion Coordinator Dollars Sense, the 32-year-old progressive economics publisher based in Boston, Mass., seeks a Development and Promotion Coordinator. We publish an 8,000-circulation bimonthly magazine and nine book titles. The primary areas of responsibility of the Development and Promotion Coordinator are: Direct-mail fundraising Major donor fundraising Magazine promotion Advertising As part of a team of one other business and three editorial staff, the Development and Promotion Coordinator works closely with a volunteer collective of activists and social scientists committed to social justice and economic democracy. Staff members are automatically members of the DS collective and attend Thursday evening collective meetings, where editorial and business decisions are made. All staff members participate in planning and carrying out promotion and fundraising activities, and all share a range of administrative and clerical tasks in the office. Fundraising experience; excellent writing, computer, and administrative skills; creativity and enthusiasm; progressive politics; and some professional experience required. Grant writing; magazine promotion; some bookkeeping experience preferred. People of color are strongly encouraged to apply. Position is part-time (30 hours/week) with COLA+3% annual raise, full health benefits, three weeks vacation. Send cover letter and resume by April 15th, 2007 to: Development Coordinator Search, Dollars Sense, 29 Winter Street, Boston, MA 02108 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]. Applications will be reviewed as they're received. [short version of ad:] Dollars Sense Progressive economics publishing collective in Boston seeks part-time (30-hour/week) DEVELOPMENT/PROMOTION COORDINATOR, responsible for fundraising, magazine promotion. Fundraising experience; excellent writing, computer, and administrative skills; creativity and enthusiasm; progressive politics; and some professional experience required. Grant writing; magazine promotion; some bookkeeping experience preferred. People of color are strongly encouraged to apply. Send cover letter, resume by April 15th to: Dollars Sense, 29 Winter Street, Boston, MA 02108 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]. Job Opening Business Circulation Coordinator Dollars Sense, the 32-year-old progressive economics publisher based in Boston, Mass., seeks a Business and Circulation Coordinator. We publish an 8,000-circulation bimonthly magazine and nine book titles. The Business and Circulation Coordinator is responsible for: Financial planning, including annual budget and cash-flow projections Accounts payable/accounts receivable/payroll Communicating with customers, primarily college bookstores, and vendors Overseeing the annual audit Overseeing the circulation vendor Handling unusual circulation problems As part of a team of one other business and three editorial staff, the Business and Circulation Coordinator works closely with a volunteer collective of activists and social scientists committed to social justice and economic democracy. Staff members are automatically members of the DS collective and attend Thursday evening collective meetings, where editorial and business decisions are made. All staff members participate in planning and carrying out promotion and fundraising activities, and all share a range of administrative and clerical tasks in the office. Excellent computer and administrative skills; bookkeeping experience, preferably with Quickbooks; some experience with budgeting and financial management; progressive politics; and some professional experience required. Circulation experience preferred. Requires a careful, detail-oriented person. People of color are strongly encouraged to apply. Position is part-time, approximately 30 hours/week, with COLA+3% annual raise, full health benefits, three weeks vacation. Note: number of hours per week is negotiable, as we would consider narrowing job responsibilities to hire a qualified candidate for fewer hours. Send cover letter and resume by April 15th, 2007 to: Business Coordinator Search, Dollars Sense, 29 Winter Street, Boston, MA 02108 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]. Applications will be reviewed as they're received. [short version of ad:] Dollars Sense Job opening at progressive economics
[PEN-L] Shocking Immigration Fact of the Day
Desai, Mihir A., Devesh Kapur, and John McHale. 2002. The Fiscal Impact of High Skilled Emigration: Flows of Indians to the U.S. http://www.people.hbs.edu/mdesai/fiscalimpact.pdf -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com
[PEN-L] shocking immigration fact of the day -- fixed
Desai, Mihir A., Devesh Kapur, and John McHale. 2002. The Fiscal Impact of High Skilled Emigration: Flows of Indians to the U.S. http://www.people.hbs.edu/mdesai/fiscalimpact.pdf Indian-born residents of the U.S. are four times as likely to have a graduate degree as the native-born and their median income is 16% higher than the median income of the native-born. A population that is only 0.1% of the population of India has aggregate income that is 10% of Indian national income. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com
Re: [PEN-L] Rethinking Mutual Aid
The KKK was so ubiquitous at its height (something like 25% of adult males in Indiana, for example) that it could hardly have avoided having a large proportion of its support coming from the working class. Need to distinguish, by the way, between the original 19th century KKK, the one in Gone With The Wind and the 1920s revival KKK, which was re-established in the wake of Griffith's film. They were both terrorist organisations, but they aren't the same bunch - there was no organisational continuity and a lot of doctrinal differences (most notably, anti-Catholicism was only a feature of revival-KKK). As far as I can tell, the anti-Klan societies which were also a big feature of the 1920s revival period (Knights of the Flaming Circle, Order of Anti-Poke-Noses, etc) were mainly middle class affairs. best dd - To what extent were workers involved in the KKK? While Gone with the Wind has been rightly criticized, what it captures well is the fact that the KKK involved the pillars of community, more often than not. -- Yoshie
Re: [PEN-L] Rethinking Mutual Aid
allegedly, when my grandfather ran (published) the newspaper in Clarksburg, West Virginia, in the 1920s, it crusaded against the KKK there. Coal-miners joined the cause, using dynamite to threaten the KKK. That's what my father said, but my mom said there was no evidence. On 3/25/07, Daniel Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The KKK was so ubiquitous at its height (something like 25% of adult males in Indiana, for example) that it could hardly have avoided having a large proportion of its support coming from the working class. Need to distinguish, by the way, between the original 19th century KKK, the one in Gone With The Wind and the 1920s revival KKK, which was re-established in the wake of Griffith's film. They were both terrorist organisations, but they aren't the same bunch - there was no organisational continuity and a lot of doctrinal differences (most notably, anti-Catholicism was only a feature of revival-KKK). As far as I can tell, the anti-Klan societies which were also a big feature of the 1920s revival period (Knights of the Flaming Circle, Order of Anti-Poke-Noses, etc) were mainly middle class affairs. best dd - To what extent were workers involved in the KKK? While Gone with the Wind has been rightly criticized, what it captures well is the fact that the KKK involved the pillars of community, more often than not. -- Yoshie -- Jim Devine / The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -- C. P. Kindleberger
Re: [PEN-L] Norton nonsense
I've done everything -- including buying and installing Registry Mechanic -- and the problem remains! BTW, there's a great old e-mail post that circulated a few years ago that says that MS Windows is a virus. On 3/25/07, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: thanks. I'll tell you if it works. On 3/24/07, joel blau [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Leigh Meyers wrote: Ah Norton, the anti-virus that IS one. Runner-up... ZoneAlarm OK, I can tell you how, but you'll need to install a registry cleaner like Cclean, Registry Mechanic or regvac. Use it to clean your registry. With Registry Mechanic, use the defaults. I'm fond of Registry Mechanic, it's never done anything untowards to my computer. You should be ok with the freebie version that doesn't remove certain items. Those items aren't relevant. Cclean is also good, and it's top quality, professional, free/begware http://www.ccleaner.com/download/. Check ALL the boxes in the 'Issues' section. I have both and use them regularly... Cclean installs a right-click menu on the trash bin. A convienient way to clean temp files and keeps the web browsing experience snappy. Now: What you do, and I KNOW it sounds brutal, is search your computer for the words Symantec and then Norton... no particular order, and DELETE EVERYTHING. That's right, folders and all, by the roots. If 'delete' balks at a file because it's in use, don't fret, skip it, it won't be in use in about 15 minutes. Next, use registry Mechanic, or whichever you choose and scan everything that is scannable temp folders, everything. After you get the results, clean everything. Now, reboot... the computer wiill cough and sputter, and you may get a bounch of error messages. The computer WILL start. Now, run the registry cleaner again. Search again for the N word and the S word. They should be deletable now Registry clean one more time. That should do it. Vaya Con Dios I had the same problem, and the Dell tech person (from India) sent me to SmitFraud fix. The viruses disappeared. I'd confirm this strategy with someone who knows more, but it did work for me. Joel Blau For DOG'S sake, make sure you have SOME antivirus software on tour computer. On 3/24/07, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I took Norton/Symantech anti-virus (etc.) off my PC after long frustration. But I still got a message from Norton saying that my PC is vulnerable to worms. So I went to the Norton page and found and ran a program that allegedly gets rid of all Norton programs (created, I think, due to a lawsuit against Norton). But I still get a message from Norton saying that my PC is vulnerable to worms. what to do? -- Jim Devine / The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -- C. P. Kindleberger -- Jim Devine / The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -- C. P. Kindleberger -- Jim Devine / The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -- C. P. Kindleberger
Re: [PEN-L] Norton nonsense
On 3/25/07, ravi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: By message do you mean one of those transient pop-up windows? The problem is probably that Norton's background process is not uninstalled (when you try to) because it is running. You could bring up Task Manager (right click on the taskbar and choose Task Manager) and find and kill the Norton process. Unfortunately, you are going to have to guess its name. What sort of system are you running? Windows 98? XP? 2000? Vista? Do you have administrative rights to the computer? --ravi If the registry entries are all gone and the folders have been removed everywhere (including hidden folders like Documents Settings/Application Data/All Users (and your user name too) Norton shouldn't know what to do. Make sure to look for hidden folders and files I'd like to think that after ALL that there aren't any Norton related processes that could have started on bootup, but it can't hurt to check. Here's one to look for... Lucomserver, it's the live update 'phone home' function. Also, if you find the offending routine, you kill it, and it comes back, try starting the computer in 'safe' mode, kill the process if it even started, then seach the file name and while the process isn't running delete the file and any other Norton and Symantec entries in the registry.
[PEN-L] Reverse Foreign Aid: $784 Billion from the South to the North
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/magazine/25wwlnidealab.t.html March 25, 2007 Idea Lab Reverse Foreign Aid By TINA ROSENBERG For the last 10 years, people in China have been sending me money. I also get money from countries in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa — really, from every poor country. I'm not the only one who's so lucky. Everyone in a wealthy nation has become the beneficiary of the generous subsidies that poorer countries bestow upon rich ones. Here in the United States, this welfare program in reverse allows our government to spend wildly without runaway inflation, keeps many American businesses afloat and even provides medical care in parts of the country where doctors are scarce. Economic theory holds that money should flow downhill. The North, as rich countries are informally known, should want to sink its capital into the South — the developing world, which some statisticians define as all countries but the 29 wealthiest. According to this model, money both does well and does good: investors get a higher return than they could get in their own mature economies, and poor countries get the capital they need to get richer. Increasing the transfer of capital from rich nations to poorer ones is often listed as one justification for economic globalization. Historically, the global balance sheet has favored poor countries. But with the advent of globalized markets, capital began to move in the other direction, and the South now exports capital to the North, at a skyrocketing rate. According to the United Nations, in 2006 the net transfer of capital from poorer countries to rich ones was $784 billion, up from $229 billion in 2002. (In 1997, the balance was even.) Even the poorest countries, like those in sub-Saharan Africa, are now money exporters. How did this great reversal take place? Why did globalization begin to redistribute wealth upward? The answer, in large part, has to do with global finance. All countries hold hard-currency reserves to cover their foreign debts or to use in case of a natural or a financial disaster. For the past 50 years, rich countries have steadily held reserves equivalent to about three months' worth of their total imports. As money circulates more and more quickly in a globalized economy, however, many countries have felt the need to add to their reserves, mainly to head off investor panic, which can strike even well-managed economies. Since 1990, the world's nonrich nations have increased their reserves, on average, from around three months' worth of imports to more than eight months' worth — or the equivalent of about 30 percent of their G.D.P. China and other countries maintain those reserves mainly in the form of supersecure U.S. Treasury bills; whenever they buy T-bills, they are in effect lending the United States money. This allows the U.S. to keep interest rates low and Washington to run up huge deficits with no apparent penalty. But the cost to poorer countries is very high. The benefit of T-bills, of course, is that they are virtually risk-free and thus help assure investors and achieve stability. But the problem is that T-bills earn low returns. All the money spent on T-bills — a very substantial sum — could be earning far better returns invested elsewhere, or could be used to pay teachers and build highways at home, activities that bring returns of a different type. Dani Rodrik, an economist at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, estimates conservatively that maintaining reserves in excess of the three-month standard costs poor countries 1 percent of their economies annually — some $110 billion every year. Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia University economist, says he thinks the real cost could be double that. In his recent book, Making Globalization Work, Stiglitz proposes a solution. Adapting an old idea of John Maynard Keynes, he proposes a sort of insurance pool that would provide hard currency to countries going through times of crisis. Money actually changes hands only if a country needs the reserve, and the recipient must repay what it has used. No one planned the rapid swelling of reserves. Other South-to-North subsidies, by contrast, have been built into the rules of globalization by international agreements. Consider the World Trade Organization's requirements that all member countries respect patents and copyrights — patents on medicines and industrial and other products; copyrights on, say, music and movies. As poorer countries enter the W.T.O., they must agree to pay royalties on such goods — and a result is a net obligation of more than $40 billion annually that poorer countries owe to American and European corporations. There are good reasons for countries to respect intellectual property, but doing so is also an overwhelming burden on the poorest people in poorer countries. After all, the single largest beneficiary of the intellectual-property system is the pharmaceutical industry. But consumers in poorer nations do not get
