Good News

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WASHINGTON — Little-noticed in the tumult of the presidential campaign an the teetering economy, the Teamsters have racked up a series of organizing and contract wins, and may be on the verge of another, at United Air Lines.

The wins range from signing up approximately two-thirds of the workers at UPS Freight — the former Overnite Express — to breaking into the Deep South bastion of Mobile, Ala., by first winning a recognition vote last July and then getting a contract last month, with the help of the NAACP, at the New Era cap company there.

Mark Gruenberg, Monday, March 24, 2008

I’ve never liked this idea that the news should cover ‘good news’ although it’s very clearly true that the major networks and cable news shows push violence. I watched FOX the other morning at the gym and for nearly an hour it was murder after murder after murder. It’s a weird smoke-screen, too, because all of the moral outrage seems to dissipate when the subject changes to the state-sponsored violence in Iraq.

It’s also true that the ‘bad news’ focus makes the presidential race freakishly narrow minded. Really, it becomes ‘bad news horse race’ news. Obama and Clinton are essentially tied, and neither has much of a chance of winning by getting enough delegates. Yet the media narrative has become, “Will Hillary Clinton destroy the Democratic party by refusing to give up?” It’s part of ‘acceptable sexism.’

Why aren’t Obama and Clinton engaged in a fierce competition over ideas about justice and the economy and the war and health care and so on? That’s a better question. This is the context that made the labor news refreshing. It shows that there are media out there offering ‘good news’ of a substantive sort. Now if we could only get ABC to ask the candidates how they would help extend the winning streak.

Posted in: Language, Online Places, Union, War, Writing

The Three Trillion Dollar War at Home

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The United States has passed an historic and symbolic watershed in its unrelenting, two generations-long quest to incarcerate as many Blacks as humanly possible. As of January 1, more than one of every 100 adults is behind bars, about half of them Black. That’s not counting Afro-Latinos and other Hispanics. The U.S. is the unchallenged leader in mass incarceration, with the largest Gulag on the planet, based on raw numbers of inmates – 2,319,258 in federal and state prisons and local jails – and per capita incarceration: 750 inmates for every 100,000 people. Russia, which led the world back in Soviet times, is number two, with 628 inmates per 100,000. The Black and brown U.S. prisoner population, alone, roughly equals that of China’s – a nation with four times the population of the U.S.

Black Prison Gulag and the Police State, Glen Ford , March 5, 2008

The administration’s estimates have been low—and wrong—from the start. Some of this is the result of its shortsightedness about every aspect of the war, beginning with its nature and duration. For instance, extensive use of reservists and the National Guard avoided the need to increase the size of the armed forces or resort to a draft—but at a heavy price, including reliance on highly paid contractors, people who in other contexts would have been called mercenaries. Another factor is the soaring price of fuel caused by the increase in the price of oil—which is itself, in part, a consequence of the war.

But even the $600 billion number is disingenuous—which is to say false. The true cost of the war in Iraq, according to our calculations, will, by the time America has extricated itself, exceed $3 trillion. And this is a deliberately conservative estimate. The ultimate cost may well be much higher.

The $3 Trillion War, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes April 2008

With the 5th anniversary of the war coming on March 19 we will soon be swamped in numbers, such as Stiglitz’s estimate. The thing about these sorts of numbers is that they can become so abstract that they are meaningless. I am not sure concrete illustrations help: “…to count out One Trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) dollars nonstop without sleeping or eating it would take Thirty-Nine Thousand (39,000) years”( Earth’s Common Sense Think Tank).

What I find much more frightening are the problems we are not talking about because we are always talking about the war. Edwards’ push in other directions only went so far; the limited health care proposals of both Clinton and Obama may just make things worse. Now comes word that the U.S. leads the world in mass incarceration and that not surprisingly the prisons echo the class system and are filled with the minority poor.

Posted in: Economics, War

The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot

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Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree – domestically – as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government – the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens’ ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors – we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don’t learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of “homeland” security – remember who else was keen on the word “homeland” – didn’t raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable – as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Naomi Wolf, The Guardian, Tuesday April 24 2007

When I was a young man– 25 or 30 years ago– we tossed around the word ‘fascist’ like it was candy. It was our favorite epithet, as useful for a grumpy friend or an unfriendly store clerk as for Reagan and his ilk. So whenever I hear the term outside of very specific historical contexts, a red flag goes up.

So I was a little suspicious when I heard about Naomi Wolf’ new book, The End of America, and the series of talks she has been giving on what she calls the closing of open societies. How do you go from a democracy, however flawed, like Germany, to fascism?

I am not certain I am persuaded by the above interview, but some of her questions are chillingly perceptive. We think we know what fascism looks like she says, only because we think of the jack-boots and violent armies of WWII. It began quite differently, of course, in a society Wolf shows we would feel was very familiar. If you check off her list of 10 steps it’s a little too close for comfort.

Wolf’s ideas suggest that electing a democratic president, as well as a more strongly democratic Congress, has a very literal meaning this time. I haven’t had the time to read the book but there’s a great series of videos where she sets out her basic argument. This seems to me exactly the right context for the next election. Somehow, I don’t think that cranky old Republican grandfather is going to help.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Language, War, Writing