UNDERNEWS
July 19, 2000
For more than 35 years,
Washington's most unofficial source
THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
Editor: Sam Smith
1312 18th St. NW #502, Washington DC 20036
202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779
E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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WORD
I was going to buy a copy of "The Power of Positive Thinking," and then I
thought: what the hell good would that do? -- Ronnie Shakes
MARGINS OF ERROR
The margin of error of journalists talking about political polls is far
greater than that of the pollsters themselves. For example, the sainted
Chris Matthews last night masticated at length on a poll that showed Bush
only 2 points ahead and what this turn of events might mean for the
election. There was one small problem: at the time, three other surveys were
showing Bush with margins of 5, 6, and 9 points, the last from the tracking
poll of Rasmussen Research, which did the best job in the primaries,
according to an exclusive Review analysis.
Conventional journalists make two big mistakes in reporting on polls: (1)
they sometimes report only the polls their employer has paid for or (2) they
treat each poll as a full story in itself independent of other available data.
The Review -- alone in the nation, so far as we know -- provides a running
average of major polls in key races. This procedure compensates for
different techniques used by pollsters. For example, Gallup -- which gave
Bush the two point lead -- pushes undecideds to select a candidate while
Rasmussen does not.
Using our five poll average, Bush is ahead of Gore by 5.6 points. Amazingly,
the average of all polls since April is 5.75. In short, based on available
surveys, nothing much has happened in the race between Gore and Bush.
Meanwhile, our latest projection gives Bush 135 more electoral votes than
Gore. In the Senate, it looks like the GOP and Democrats will each pick up
one seat and there are four GOP seats in doubt.
Most interesting poll of late: Bush has developed an 8-point lead in
Wisconsin after being virtually tied with Gore. Nader now scores 9 points in
the state.
GROWING GREEN
TPR has added to (and collated) a number of web pages on the history of the
American Green movement, producing a scrapbook of items written along the
way by your editor, one of the founders of the Association of State Green
Parties. (For the best comprehensive treatment of Green history get John
Rensenbrink's "Against All Odds")
Among the items of interest is a brief review of the proto-Green Provos, the
Dutch anarchists of the 1960s, who not only raised environmental issues,
but, in the words of High Times journalist Teun Voeten "set the stage for
the creation of the Merry Pranksters, Diggers, and Yippies. They were the
first to combine non-violence and absurd humor to create social change. They
created the first 'Happenings' and 'Be-Ins.' They were also the first to
actively campaign against marijuana prohibition. "
When Princess Beatrice announced plans to join a former member of Nazi
Youth, the Provos opened a bank account for an anti-wedding gift and started
a 'White Rumors' plan, encouraging such imagined threats as LSD being dumped
in the city water supply or the mass drugging of the royal horses. Then, a
few days before the wedding, the Provos simply disappeared in order to avoid
arrest. Responding to the White Rumors, however, the government had
stationed 25,000 troops along the parade route.
The Provos, foreshadowing problems that would face the German Greens, did
not handle well the transition from street theater to political success.
Writes Voeten, "A Provo Politburo emerged, consisting of VIP Provos who
began devoting most of themselves to political careers."
GROWING GREEN http://prorev.com/greengo.htm
HIGH TIMES ARTICLE ON THE PROVOS http://pdxnorml.org/HT_provos_0190.html
AGAINST ALL ODDS
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0966062914/progressiverevieA/
ECO NOTES
SPOKANE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW: Hordes of disease-bearing ticks. More shellfish
contamination. Frequent landslides and floods. Dirtier air, rising oceans
and severe summer droughts. Zeroing in on Washington state after a decade of
the hottest weather on record, the Nobel Prize-winning group Physicians for
Social Responsibility is warning about major public health consequences from
global warming over the next century . . .
The report warns of several problems, including:
� More turbulent weather.
Floods, droughts, storms and heat waves may increase deaths among children,
the poor and the elderly and cause economic dislocation . . .
� Rising seas may threaten fresh-water supplies and displace coastal residents.
The ocean near Seattle has been rising 8 inches per century and is likely to
rise another 19 inches by 2100 due to climate change, the report says.
� Deteriorating air. Ozone alerts, pollen and gaseous chemicals would
increase. The trend could be especially harmful to the 600,000
Washingtonians, including 150,000 children, who suffer from asthma.
� Infectious diseases are likely to spread.
� Contamination of water, food and shellfish could be harder to control.
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=071800&ID=s827653&cat=sectio
n.Regional
PHYSICIANS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY http://www.psr.org/
ON CAMPUS
AUSTRALIAN STUDENT UNIONS representing 600,000 members will campaign against
clothing and sporting good companies to raise awareness of child labor in
the lead-up to the Olympics in Sydney. The National Union of Students,
working with the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia, will
organize 48 Australian university campuses, focusing on Nike, Fila and
others who have refused to sign the code of conduct.
The union is also planning a "no sweat" clothing label to be sewn on
garments "so manufacturers can show consumers they have abided by the
Homeworkers Code of Practice." Michelle O'Neil, union secretary of the
Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia asserted that the Code
represents a commitment from companies to pay industry wages and not exploit
home workers or use child labor.
FROM THE HALLS OF MONTEZUMA
TO THE CONFERENCE IN ROOM 3006
All the services are suffering from flag officer bloat these days but the
Marines have come up with the best excuse. Our Pentagon sources tell us the
Marines feel they need more generals in part to hold their own when engaged
in joint activities with the other services. It's apparently hard on corps
morale to be sitting in a conference with your stars outnumbered by those on
the shoulders of your Army and Navy colleagues. Twelve new Marine generals
have been added in just the past few years.
AMERICAN INDICATORS
-- Percent of Americans who agree with the Miranda warning: 86%
-- Percent of Americans who think it is at least somewhat likely that
genetically altered food will upset the balance of nature and damage the
environment: 56%
-- Percent of Americans who think Al Gore's 1996 fundraising practices were
illegal or unethical: 51%
NEW WORLD ORDER
How serious was the Supreme Court's ruling against Massachusetts engaging in
selective purchasing of goods from abroad, that said that local governments
could not conduct foreign policy? According to Michael Shuman's "Going
Local," 126 municipalities, plus 27 states, divested from firms doing
business in South Africa during the apartheid protests; 86 municipalities
formed links with Nicaragua during our undeclared war against that country;
73 formed sister-city relations with towns in the Soviet Union; 29 provided
sanctuary for Guatemalan and Salvadoran refugees and ten funded offices of
international affairs, essentially municipal state departments. While it is
not clear what the Supreme Court's feeling about such efforts would have
been if these activities had been enjoined, the ruling on Massachusetts does
not offer much optimism.
GOING LOCAL
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0684830124/progressiverevieA/
THE CLINTONS
JOHN MCCASLIN, WASHINGTON TIMES: Let's get this straight: President Clinton
couldn't "recall" being alone with Monica Lewinsky in the West Wing of the
White House. Yet 26 years ago, he recalls, Hillary Rodham Clinton didn't
utter an anti-Semitic slur against his congressional campaign manager, Paul
Fray.
Mrs. Clinton couldn't locate her missing Rose Law Firm billing records in
the White House family quarters, until such time as they mysteriously
reappeared next to an ironing board. Yet this week, Mrs. Clinton easily
retrieved a handwritten letter, dated July 1, 1997, in which Mr. Fray asks
the first lady for forgiveness (for what we don't know).
http://washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm
MONUMENTAL FOLLY (CONT'D)
We spoke recently of the gross excesses of national monumentality cropping
up in Washington, but failed to mention one of the most egregious examples.
Final approval is near for a World War II monument plunked down right
between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Not only will this
sully one of the great vistas -- a more than two-mile view from Memorial to
the Capitol -- but the design looks suspiciously like something ordered by
one of those guys we defeated in the war being memorialized. After protests,
the designers agreed to sink the monument about six feet to reduce the eye
pollution. We can't quite get the picture of this, but as best as we can
figure it will look like a formal setting for a speech by Mussolini slowly
rising out of the ground to greet us.
Meanwhile, LL Bean, which is opening a store in the suburbs, is advertising
its venture with huge posters featuring a photo of Lincoln at rest in his
memorial -- except that he is wearing Been boots.
LOOSE CHANGE
REUTERS: A new Federal Reserve Bank of New York research paper debunks
"new-economy" claims that rising productivity and technological advances
have permanently altered the relationship between US growth and inflation.
The paper, written by two bank research economists, said falling import
prices--aided by cheap oil and Asia's recent financial crisis--played the
key role in capping US inflation in the last few years . . . The paper found
that US import prices fell at an average annual rate of 6.4% from 1995 to
early 1999, thanks to falling oil prices, a strong dollar and the 1997-98
Asian financial crisis that resulted in cheaper prices on Asian exports. The
authors also concluded that the impact of wage increases and exchange rates
on inflation in the short run may be overstated.
JUST POLITICS
JIM SMITH, LA LABOR NEWS: A generational shift in the US political scene is
underway. The new and most important issue for every politician and every
voter is becoming who is on the side of the corporations and who is on the
side of the people (everyone else). "Global capitalism versus the people" is
becoming the rallying cry in the same way that "slave or free" was the issue
in the generation leading up to the civil war and "winning the war" was the
overwhelming political issue of the 1940s.
Poor and working-class people are beginning to abandon Democrats, who as a
party abandoned Roosevelt's New Deal some years ago. Now, the Democrats have
joined with the Republicans, who once called themselves the Party of
Lincoln, to promote the interests of global corporate capitalism at any
cost. This has been a long evolutionary process for the two parties. What's
new in 2000 is a growing revulsion with corporate political parties by
millions of ordinary people, labor unions and nearly every other
non-corporate segment of society.
Ralph Nader has every right to say "I told you so" to those who are just
waking up to political realities. For more than 30 years he has tirelessly
campaigned as a consumer advocate and has warned against the growing power
and arrogance of the corporations. Labor has largely ignored him . . .
Does Ralph Nader care about production issues? Can he relate to people who
live from paycheck to paycheck (or no paycheck to no paycheck)? What does he
really know or care about unions? In two remarkable speeches, one to the
NAACP convention on July 11 and another at a union rally in San Jose last
March, Nader made it clear that he understands, as no other candidate does,
the conditions of the poor, people of color, women and the unions . . .
Said Nader: "The early view of unions was a vision of a just society. The
entire society's direction was the interest of those early union organizers.
They weren't just interested in getting a decent standard of living for
their workplace. But those early union philosophers and organizers were
replaced by business unionism, or as one major union leader said, 'What does
American labor want? Here's my answer: More.' And that played right into the
hands of corporations and their divide-and-rule tactics of pitting labor
against other less fortunate people in the society."
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
MEDIACRACY
FAIR: Robert Giles, former editor and publisher of the Detroit News, is a
leading candidate for the position of curator at Harvard's Nieman Foundation
for Journalism. The prospect of Giles overseeing a center that teaches media
ethics has alarmed many of those familiar with his role in the long-running
labor dispute at the News and the Detroit Free Press, which has been jointly
operated with the News since 1989. More than 2,000 reporters, mailers,
printers and circulation workers, represented by six unions, walked out in
July 1995, citing management demands for give-backs on healthcare and the
attempt to impose a "merit pay" system after a six-year wage freeze. The
National Labor Relations Board upheld the unions' charges of unfair labor
practices and called for strikers to be re-hired, but management refused to
fire the "permanent replacement" workers they had brought in. The NLRB's
ruling was recently overturned by the conservative DC Court of Appeals.
Columbia Journalism Review (11-12/95) called the News and Free Press
coverage of their own labor dispute "strikingly tilted," a charge Giles
didn't deny, claiming he felt that the newspapers had "to balance the story"
since "the unions, in our judgment, really have had a sort of platform to
present their positions without any meaningful challenge."
FAIR http://www.fair.org
JACKIE O'NEILL, ASSISTANT TO HARVARD PRESIDENT NEIL RUDENSTINE
mailto:jackie_o'[EMAIL PROTECTED]
FEEDBACK
FROM A READER: When the White House drug czar office was exposed as using
"cookies" on their web -- little intrusive things that are implanted in the
computers of unsuspecting visitors to trace their web activity -- I got
myself a device to erase cookies from my computer. So today I tried to
access the NY Times, and suddenly it wasn't letting me back in, even as a
registered user.
The message that appeared? "Please note: to enter the site your browser must
accept cookies. Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company" Is it any wonder
that the drug czar can get away without much scrutiny at the Times?
WHICH IS WHAT WE HAVE BEEN TRYING TO SAY
"Obviously, the president probably has more experience than any living human
being about how deep in the gutter some people can go,'-- White House
communications director Joe Lockhart
AIDS IN AFRICA
LESTER BROWN, WORLDWATCH: The recent International AIDS conference in
Durban, South Africa, reminds us that Africa is dying. The HIV epidemic
that is raging across Africa is now taking some 6,030 lives each day, the
equivalent of 15 fully loaded jumbo jets crashing--with no survivors. This
number, climbing higher each year, is expected to double during this decade.
Public attention has initially focused on the dramatic rise in adult
mortality and the precipitous drop in life expectancy. But we need now to
look at the longer term economic consequences--falling food production,
deteriorating health care, and disintegrating educational systems.
Effectively dealing with this epidemic and the heavy loss of adults will
make the rebuilding of Europe after World War II seem like child's play by
comparison.
While industrial countries have held the HIV infection rate among the adult
population to less than 1 percent, in some 16 African countries it is over
10 percent. In South Africa, it is 20 percent. In Zimbabwe and Swaziland, it
is 25 percent. And in Botswana, which has the highest infection rate, 36
percent of adults are HIV positive. Barring a medical miracle, these latter
countries will lose one fifth to one third of their adults by the end of
this decade. Attention in Durban focused on the high cost of treating those
already ill, but the virus is continuing to spread. Unless its spread is
curbed soon, it will take more lives in Africa than World War II claimed
worldwide. As deaths multiply, life expectancy falls. Without AIDS,
countries with high infection rates, like Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South
Africa would have a life expectancy of some 70 years or more. With the virus
continuing to spread, life expectancy could drop to 30--more like a medieval
than a modern life span.
The HIV epidemic is affecting every segment of society, every sector of the
economy, and every facet of life. For example, close to half of Zimbabwe's
health care budget is used to treat AIDS patients. In some hospitals in
Burundi and South Africa, AIDS patients occupy 60 percent of the beds.
Health care workers are worked to exhaustion. This epidemic, now producing
thousands of orphans each day, could easily produce 20 million orphans by
2010, a number that could overwhelm the resources of extended families.
http://www.worldwatch.org/chairman
FIELD NOTES
Today's Word comes from NANCYS NETWORK, an off-beat site
http://www.nancysnetwork.com/index.html
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