[PEN-L] Black community votes with its feet
NY Times, August 22, 2007 Iraq War Brings Drop in Black Enlistees By SARAH ABRUZZESE WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 — Joining the Reserve Officer Training Corps was once an attractive choice for people with few options growing up in impoverished, predominantly black East Baltimore. That has all changed, largely because of the war in Iraq. “Now, it is like, no way,” said Cornelius McMurray, who does outreach with a local church and says the young black people he works with view life in Baltimore as enough of a war. “It is a continuous fight waking up and walking the streets every day.” In the Bronx, Adeyefa Finch says he simply walks past the recruiters who, seeking out minority members along Fordham Road, make the case that the military can help with college financing and job placement after they serve. “I’m not really into going overseas with guns and fighting other people’s wars,” said Mr. Finch, 18, headed to college this fall to study accounting. That kind of rejection of military service as an option of young blacks throughout the country has resulted in a sharp drop in black recruitment figures since the war began. Defense Department reports show that the share of blacks among active-duty recruits declined to 13 percent in 2006 from 20 percent in 2001, the last year before the invasion of Iraq began to seem inevitable. And while blacks continue to account for a larger share of the existing troop level than their share of the general population, as has been the case throughout the 34 years of the all-volunteer force, that margin is shrinking. The sharpest decline in black recruitment has been experienced by the Army, which has the most troops deployed in Iraq; black recruits dropped to 13 percent of the Army’s total in 2006 from 23 percent in 2001. In the Marines, with the second-largest force in Iraq, the share of black recruits decreased to 8 percent from 12 percent in the same period. There were also declines in the Navy and the Air Force, though not as great as those in the two other services. The commander of the Army’s recruitment efforts, Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, himself a black graduate of West Point, said there were several reasons for the change, including a healthy job market competing for youths but also African-Americans’ disapproval of the war. General Bostick said parents and educators who had recommended the military in the past might be less inclined to do so today. In a recent CBS News telephone poll, 83 percent of the blacks surveyed said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq; only 14 percent said it had done the right thing in taking military action. Whites, by contrast, were closely divided: 48 percent said military action had been right, and 46 percent said the United States should have stayed out. The poll was conducted Aug. 8-12 with 1,214 adults nationwide and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. The poll numbers show up in the daily hardships of recruiters trained by Sgt. First Class Abdul-Malik Muhammad, based in Birmingham, Ala. “With blacks, there is not really a great support for the war,” Sergeant Muhammad said, recalling one prospective recruit who was told by his parents that they would sever all ties with him if he enlisted. There were few such warnings half a century ago, when, as a trailblazer in equal opportunity employment, the military offered a chance for education and training. “You could go right off the street and into the military and make something of yourself,” said Ronald Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland. One vocal opponent of the war, the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, senior pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said, “I still think that in many ways the armed forces is unfortunately one of the few viable options for young people growing up in inner cities who may lack resources for college and have few other opportunities for upward mobility.” But for others, times have changed. Joining up is not even part of the discussion for high school students who attend Bethel A.M.E. Church in Baltimore, said the Rev. Dana Ashton, who works with young people. Students within her congregation go to college. And Latoya Rawls of Clinton, Md., has decided against the military despite flirting with the idea for some time. Ms. Rawls, a college student who works at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, cites both the danger of serving in Iraq — a peril evident in the wounded soldiers she sees at the hospital — and what she deems the unjust nature of the war. The severity of the decline has caused the Army to take a close look at how it recruits blacks, General Bostick said, resulting in new marketing campaigns and the use of soldiers who are returned to their home areas to recruit. In addition, the military has started offering higher enlistment bonuses. The Army met its
[PEN-L] Thomas Friedman
I'm told that today's Thomas Friedman column extols decoupling for utilities. It is no surprise that he doesn't know what he;s talking about. Can anyone who gets the column send me a copy? Gene Coyle
Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Friedman
Gene Coyle wrote: I'm told that today's Thomas Friedman column extols decoupling for utilities. It is no surprise that he doesn't know what he;s talking about. Can anyone who gets the column send me a copy? The New York Times / August 22, 2007 Go Green and Save Money By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Have your eyes recently popped out of your head when you opened your electric bill? Do you, like me, live in one of those states where electricity has been deregulated and the state no longer oversees the generation price so your utility rates have skyrocketed since 2002? If so, you need to listen to a proposal being aired by Jim Rogers, the chairman and chief executive of Duke Energy, and recently filed with the North Carolina Utilities Commission. (Duke Energy is headquartered in Charlotte.) It's called save-a-watt, and it aims to turn the electricity/utility industry upside down by rewarding utilities for the kilowatts they save customers by improving their energy efficiency rather than rewarding them for the kilowatts they sell customers by building more power plants. Mr. Rogers's proposal is based on three simple principles. The first is that the cheapest way to generate clean, emissions-free power is by improving energy efficiency. Or, as he puts it, The most environmentally sound, inexpensive and reliable power plant is the one we don't have to build because we've helped our customers save energy. Second, we need to make energy efficiency something that is as back of mind as energy usage. If energy efficiency depends on people remembering to do 20 things on a checklist, it's not going to happen at scale. Third, the only institutions that have the infrastructure, capital and customer base to empower lots of people to become energy efficient are the utilities, so they are the ones who need to be incentivized to make big investments in efficiency that can be accessed by every customer. The only problem is that, historically, utilities made their money by making large-scale investments in new power plants, whether coal or gas or nuclear. As long as a utility could prove to its regulators that the demand for that new plant was there, the utility got to pass along the cost, and then some, to its customers. Mr. Rogers's save-a-watt concept proposes to change all of that. The way it would work is that the utility would spend the money and take the risk to make its customers as energy efficient as possible, he explained. That would include installing devices in your home that would allow the utility to adjust your air-conditioners or refrigerators at peak usage times. It would include plans to incentivize contractors to build more efficient homes with more efficient boilers, heaters, appliances and insulation. It could even include partnering with a factory to buy the most energy-efficient equipment or with a family to winterize their house. Energy efficiency is the 'fifth fuel' — after coal, gas, renewables and nuclear, said Mr. Rogers. Today, it is the lowest-cost alternative and is emissions-free. It should be our first choice in meeting our growing demand for electricity, as well as in solving the climate challenge. Because energy efficiency is, in effect, a resource, he added, in order for utilities to use more of it, efficiency should be treated as a production cost in the regulatory arena. The utility would earn its money on the basis of the actual watts it saves through efficiency innovations. (California's decoupling systems goes partly in this direction.) At the end of the year, an independent body would determine how many watts of energy the utility has saved over a predetermined baseline and the utility would then be compensated by its customers accordingly. Over time, said Mr. Rogers, the price of electricity per unit will go up, because there would be an incremental cost in adding efficiency equipment — although that cost would be less than the incremental cost of adding a new power plant. But your overall bills should go down, because your home will be more efficient and you will use less electricity. Once such a system is in place, Mr. Rogers added, our engineers would wake up every day thinking about how to squeeze more productivity gains out of new technology for energy efficiency — rather than just how to build a bigger transmission or distribution network to meet the growing demands of customers. (Why don't we think about incentivizing U.S. automakers the same way — give them tax rebates for save-a-miles?) That is how you produce a more efficient energy infrastructure at scale. Universal access to electricity was a 20th century idea — now it has to be universal access to energy efficiency, which could make us the most energy productive country in the world, he added. Pulling all this off will be very complicated. But if Mr. Rogers and North Carolina can do it, it would be the mother of all energy paradigm shifts. -- Jim Devine / In every [stock-dealing] swindle every one knows
[PEN-L] Flipping Out
Cable TV show about a real estate flipper: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/flipping-out/
[PEN-L] new radio product
BEHIND THE NEWS with Doug Henwood podcast: http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/radio-feed.php iTunes: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/ viewPodcast?id=73801817 Best Music on an Economics Politics Radio Show Village Voice Best of NYC 2005 Just added to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/ Radio.html: August 16, 2007 SUNGUR SAVRAN on Turkey * DEAN BAKER on the housing bust August 9, 2007 PETER SPIEGELMAN, editor of Wall Street Noir, and Lawrence Light, one of the contributors, on finance crime fiction * Andrew Beveridge on women earning more than men in NYC, and other demographic curiosities (like who can afford all that luxury housing) they join - July 5, 2007 AUDACIA RAY, author of Naked on the Internet, on women, the net, and sex * LEN RODBERG rebuts the attacks on Michael Moore's tremendous movie, SiCKO June 28, 2007 ROBERT FRANK, author of Richistan, on today's neo- Gilded Age rich * CAMILO MEJIA, author of Road from ar Ramadi, on the army, Iraq, and deserting from the army in Iraq June 14, 2007 Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism, on the psychopolitics of Zionism and the possibilites of a single-state solution in Israel/Palestine * Christian Parenti on Afghanistan June 7, 2007 ADOLPH REED on Obama, the toxic grip of foundations, and how presidential campaigns are like running for Prince of the Fourth Grade * ANATOL LIEVEN on Putin's Russia and U.S.-Russian relations May 31, 2007 RAJ NAYAK of the Brennan Center and RAJANI ADHIKARY of the Restaurant Opportunities Center on restaurant work in NYC * SAADIA TOOR and KOUROSH SHEMIRANI on how Western leftists should think about the abuse of women and same-sexers in Iran and other Muslim countries (and for Toor's critique of Arundhati Roy et al, see here) May 3, 2007 JOEL SCHALIT on Israeli politics and the (weakening?) hold of the Zionists in the U.S. * FIONA HARVEY, environment correspondent of the Financial Times, and KEVIN SMITH, author of The Carbon Neutral Myth, on carbon offsets: something promising, or a dangerous racket? April 26, 2007 RACHEL SHERMAN, author of Class Acts, on the production of class and consciousness in luxury hotels * ELIZABETH ECONOMY on China's contribution to climate change * CHRISTIAN PARENTI, guest editor of The Nation's special issue on climate change, on green power * DOUG HENWOOD, contributor to that issue, on elite attitudes and --- Rasha Salti from Beirut on war, politics, and daily life * George Galloway, pre-reality TV, on Iraq, imperialism, and the colonial mind * Michael Eric Dyson on black class tensions * David Roediger the whitening of new immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries * Gilbert Achcar on Israel's defeat in Lebanon and the gathering defeat of the U.S. in Iraq * Charles Komanoff on carbon taxes * Beverly Wright on New Orleans, the Delta, and the geographies of race and toxicity * George McGovern and William Polk on exiting Iraq * Sam Gindin on the auto crisis and auto workers * Bethany Moreton on Wal-Mart Ozark culture (and The Nation's amazing shift on chain stores) * Amiri Baraka on lots of stuff * Nicholas Stern on climate change * James Howard Kunstler on oil, waste, ugliness, death * Lisa Jervis Andi Zeisler on Bitch * Jagdish Bhagwati on globalization * Val Moghadam on politics and gender relations in Iran * Hamid Dabashi on Iran * Robert Fitch on corruption and fragmentation in American unions * Barbara Ehrenreich on middle class horrors * Heather Rogers on garbage capitalism * Marie Trigona on worker-run businesses in Argentina * Bill Fletcher on war and peace * David Dunbar, co-editor of Debunking 9/11 Myths, on how the conspiracists are wrong * Sarah Stillman on feminism at Yale * Leslie Harris on slavery in New York * Caitlin Zaloom on the anthropology of futures markets * Melissa Hope Ditmore et al on sex work * Slavoj Zizek on war, imperialism, and fantasy * Douglas Massey in Mexican immigration * Naomi Klein on Argentina and the global justice movement * Susie Bright on sex and politics * John Mueller on how the terrorism threat is vastly overblown * Dean Baker on the housing bust * Moazzam Begg, on his three years as an unwilling guest of the U.S. government in Gitmo and elsewhere * Matt Taibbi on covering the 2004 campaign, and the dismal state of American politics and media * Richard Gott on Hugo Chavez * Anatol Lieven (several times) on Iraq, Chechnya, US nationalism, and why the US must give up its empire * Katha Pollitt, author of Virginity or Death, on feminism and politics * Julia Sweig on Cuba * Ned Sublette on music and politics * Robin Blackburn on pensions * Cynthia Enloe on masculinity in the Bush administration (and oil) * Joel Kovel, editor of Capitalism Nature Socialism, on the psychology and politics of Israel and Zionism * Michelle Goldberg on the Christian right * Ken Sherrill on gay politics * Patrick Cockburn on Iraq * Andrew Ross on his year spent with the IT crowd in China * Stephenie Hendrics vs
Re: [PEN-L] Books/ articles criticizing this eurocentric idea
On Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at 16:18:08 (-0400) Walt Byars writes: Hi, can anyone recommend some books or articles criticizing the (absurd sounding) claim that that the idea of political freedom and its desirability were invented in the West and only exists in other cultures because of Western influence (and similar such claims)? It depends on what's meant by political freedom. On the on had, as far as I can tell, democracy goes back to primitive communism: most tribal societies had tremendous amounts of democracy, no matter where they were in the world. (The Greeks didn't invent it.) On the other hand, Western-style possessive individualism (a.k.a. anti-social personality disorder) does seem to have arisen with capitalism, somewhere between 1600 and 1700. (The first well-known book with this sort of ideology is Hobbes' LEVIATHAN, published in 1660.) Possessive individualism suggests a different kind of political freedom than democracy does. -- Jim Devine / In every [stock-dealing] swindle every one knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbor, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety. Après moi le déluge! is the watchword of every capitalist ... -- K. Marx
[PEN-L] How the Brits lost Basra
The link won't work if you are not subscribed. So here's the text: * * * Wednesday Aug 22 2007 All times are London time COMMENT ANALYSIS Analysis How the British army lost Basra By Stephen Fidler Published: August 20 2007 18:33 | Last updated: August 20 2007 18:33 In the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, British troops were regularly shown on UK television walking around Basra wearing berets. There was a sharp contrast with the way nervy, heavily protected US troops were throwing their weight around in Baghdad. The message received by the British public, which holds its military in high regard, was that this softly-softly approach would – thanks to experience in Northern Ireland and elsewhere – succeed in a peacekeeping mission where the Americans' heavy-handed tactics would fail. It was a view held almost universally in the British army. British military guys can be totally insufferable about this, says one retired US general who advises the Bush administration on Iraq. The four provinces comprising the UK's sector in south-eastern Iraq were also regarded as relatively friendly. The Shia majority in the region had largely welcomed the toppling of Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime and British forces did not confront the Sunni insurgency faced by the Americans in central Iraq. But the days of soft hats and handing sweets to children are now long gone. Casualties being suffered by UK troops in Iraq are now coming at a higher rate than at any time since the March 2003 invasion. UK troops are expected to pull out of Saddam's former palace in Basra, where a battlegroup of about 700 men has been under consistent fire, within weeks. The numbers of UK troops in Iraq will then fall from about 5,500 to 5,000, with a large majority of them based at just one location – Basra airport. UK military and MoD civilian fatalities in Iraq With such a small force, soldiers are being used essentially to protect themselves. Their objective, says Nick Clissitt, a retired brigadier who served in Iraq, appears to be largely to provide a symbolic show of support for Washington and the Iraqi government. And that's pretty expensive and it's not sustainable, he says. Officially, the British government says its approach continues to be that of handing over responsibility to Iraqi security forces as they become ready. Troops are still training members of the Iraqi army's 10th division and other forces, contributing to the protection of supply lines from Kuwait to Baghdad and elsewhere and carrying out targeted security operations, often in support of Iraqi forces, the Ministry of Defence says. But while the government's public statements give the impression of a job done, the reality of what UK troops are preparing to leave behind is different. A report from the International Crisis Group, a non-government group working to prevent conflict, said in June that relentless attacks against British forces in effect [have] driven them off the streets and into increasingly secluded compounds. It went on: Basra's residents and militiamen view this not as an orderly withdrawal but rather as an ignominious defeat. Today, the city is controlled by militias, seemingly more powerful and unconstrained than before. That point was driven home on Monday as Muhammad Ali al Hassani, governor of Muthanna province, next to Basra, was killed by a roadside bomb, becoming the second southern provincial governor to be assassinated in two weeks. British forces handed over Muthanna to Iraqi control in July 2006. Now hunkered down in defensive positions in Basra, they have lost the ability to reverse the downward spiral in the south. Anthony Cordesman, a specialist on the Middle East and military affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote in a report on February: The British decisively lost the south – which produces over 90 per cent of government revenues and 70 per cent of Iraq's proven oil reserves – more than two years ago. Privately, many serving and retired British officers who have been through Iraq have been saying similar things for some time, though some dispute the terminology. To speak of defeat is too simplistic. But we are living with the consequences of past decisions and actions – that's a reality – and there is no point in saying that everything in the garden is rosy, because it isn't, says a recently retired British general. One conclusion is almost universally drawn: British troops suffered from being the junior partner in a coalition whose senior partner comprehensively failed in its post-war planning. Clare Short, Britain's international development minister until she resigned less than two months after the start of the war, says the UK government's post-war planning was linked to that of the US state department and contemplated an internationally supported reconstruction effort. This approach was scrapped, she says, after the January 2003 presidential directive
[PEN-L] reflections on the current crisis
Robert Wrubel wrote: Wasn't there also a supply factor, in an excess of money that needed to find new outlets for investment? I replied: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8c9dea94-3e30-11dc-8f6a-779fd2ac.html The surpluses built up faster as oil and other commodity prices went up. Somewhat analogous to the Eurodollar boom in the 1970s. (This Euro- prefix has nothing to do with the currency that got same name more recently.) In today's FT, Martin Wolf has a column in which he exculpates the Fed from the credit bubble -- at least partially. He lays some of the blame on the savings glut. The article is worth reading, because he breaks down the savings glut into its component parts. Unfortunately, I can't fetch the article online now. (If somebody can, please post.)
[PEN-L] reflections on the current crisis
Also, if somebody has Henry Kaufman's (WSJ) piece Our Risky New Financial Markets, please share with the list.
Re: [PEN-L] Books/ articles criticizing this eurocentric idea
Bruni, Luigino. 2006. Civil Happiness: Economics and Human Flourishing in Historical Perspective (London: Routledge). He says that a very attractive type of individualist communitarianism existed in Italy in the 13th century until the tyrants took over the city states. Machiavelli reflected the tyrannical period. On Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 04:08:46PM -0700, David B. Shemano wrote: Jim Devine writes: On the other hand, Western-style possessive individualism (a.k.a. anti-social personality disorder) does seem to have arisen with capitalism, somewhere between 1600 and 1700. (The first well-known book with this sort of ideology is Hobbes' LEVIATHAN, published in 1660.) Possessive individualism suggests a different kind of political freedom than democracy does. Do you really believe that Western-style possessive individualism did not exist before 1600? Or do you mean that there was no ideological defense of the behavior before Hobbes, which is a different point? David Shemano -- 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] reflections on the current crisis
Here's Henry Kaufman.Our Risky New Financial MarketsBy HENRY KAUFMANAugust 15, 2007; Page A13Tremors from America's quaking subprime mortgage market have spread throughout the financial world. This latest disturbance in global financial markets is neither isolated nor idiosyncratic. It points to deeper, enduring changes in the structure of our markets -- changes that have profoundly altered the behavior of market participants in ways that tend to encourage risk-taking beyond prudent limits. Just as troubling is the failure of official policy makers to effectively rein in such excesses, leaving our financial system vulnerable to similar turmoil in the future.The principal structural driver behind this and similar financial tribulations is the massive growth of financial markets, combined with a plethora of new credit instruments. By any measure, current financial activity -- new financing or secondary market trading volume -- dwarfs the past. The outstanding volume of nonfinancial debt now exceeds nominal GDP by $15 trillion, compared with $6 trillion a decade ago. Traditional credit instruments such as stocks, bonds and money-market obligations have been joined by a long and diverse roster of new obligations, many of them extraordinarily complicated. Along with the arcane tranches of mortgages that recently garnered attention are a myriad of financial derivatives, ranging from those traded on exchanges to tailor-made products for the over-the-counter market.Leading financial institutions have grown rapidly as well. More importantly, they have evolved to become integrated, diversified, global enterprises that bear little resemblance to traditional commercial banks, investment banks or insurance companies. As these giants grow and dominate the market, they carry enormous potential for conflicts of interest -- they simultaneously act as investors of their own massive assets and as dealmakers and consultants on behalf of their clients. And their reach into the financial system is so broad and deep that no central bank is willing to allow the collapse of one of these leviathans. They are deemed "too big to fail."These structural and institutional changes have, in turn, encouraged a new understanding among market participants of liquidity. In the decades that followed World War II, liquidity was by and large an asset-based concept. For business corporations, it meant the size of cash and very liquid assets, the maturity of receivables, the turnover of inventory, and the relationship of these assets to total liabilities. For households, liquidity primarily meant the maturity of financial assets being held for contingencies along with funds that reliably would be available later in life. In contrast, firms and households today often blur the distinction between liquidity and credit availability. When thinking about liquid assets, present and future, it is now commonplace to think in terms of access to liabilities.This new mindset has been abetted by the tidal wave of securitization -- the conversion of nonmarketable assets into marketable assets -- that swept across the financial world in recent decades. This flood of marketable assets not only has eroded traditional concepts of liquidity, it has stimulated risk appetites and fostered a belief that credit usually is available at reasonable prices.Technological change also has bolstered the easy-credit outlook now commonplace among investors. As markets have been linked globally by information technology networks, financial information flows nearly instantaneously, computerized trading is spreading, and transactions are executed almost without delay. Investors can access financial data and participate in markets around the world and around the clock.These two developments -- securitization and the seamless interconnectivity of markets -- have brought intricate quantitative risk modeling to the forefront of financial practices. Securitization generates market prices, while information technology offers the power to quantify pricing and risk relationships. Few recognize, however, that such modeling assumes constancy in market fundamentals. This is because modeling does not adequately account for underlying structural changes when attempting to calculate future risks and prices.Nor can models take into account the impact of growing financial concentration in the making of markets and in the pricing of securities that are traded infrequently, or that have tailor-made attributes. And what about the risks to financial markets of a major military flare-up, the ravages of a pandemic flu, a terrorist attack that would immobilize computer networks, or even shifts in the broader monetary environment? Do the models quantify these and other profound risks in any meaningful way?Then there is the question of asset pricing. An essential component of successful risk modeling is accurate pricing of the securities used in the analysis. Here, again, the strictly quantitative approach
