Justice for Guatemala?

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Prairie Science under Foreign Affairs

This article originally appeared as a Le Monde Diplomatique exclusive on 3/3/2013.

As ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt stands trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, media attention is turning once more to Guatamala and the economic situation there. On January 5, the New York Times published an article titled “As Biofuel Demand Grows, So Do Guatemala’s Hunger Pangs”, describing the ripple effects of U.S. laws that mandate the partial use of biofuel in automobiles — and more specifically laws that require fuel companies to ensure a minimum contribution of corn-derived ethanol in gasoline pools. Poor countries such as Guatemala are hit particularly hard as increasing proportions of agricultural resources are shifted away from food production. The article notes that the “average Guatemalan is now hungrier because of biofuel development.”

Guatemalan farmers are further subjected to devastating corn production fluctuations that result from anthropogenic climate change as noted in an April 2012 article published in Nature Climate Change. Westerners are virtually insulated from such market volatilities by buffers such as Latin America. This disclosure weighs even more heavily on the conscience when we consider that chronic under-nutrition rates are 49% among children under the age of five, earning Guatemala the rank of fourth highest rate in the world according to the World Food Programme and the United Nations. This is an ignoble distinction that those of us who are U.S. consumers evidently contribute to.

Guatemala is a dramatic example in which the poverty that is closely related to its poor health outcomes has deep—though not entirely causative—ties to U.S. policies in the region as the historical record indicates. Though this is no secret to those remotely familiar with the nation’s politics, it’s worth running through given the recent headlines concerning Efraín Ríos Montt, Guatemala’s former military dictator, who was recently ordered to stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

His influence, dictatorship and de facto presidency was central to Guatamala’s violent civil war that lasted 36 years. The NYT notes that “survivors have described how military units wiped out Indian villages with extraordinary brutality, killing all the women and children along with the men.” Furthermore, a United Nations truth commission found that 200,000 people were killed “mostly by state security forces”; the report, Guatemala, Memory of Silence, noted that “whilst anti-communism, promoted by the United States within the framework of its foreign policy, received firm support from right-wing political parties and from various other powerful actors in Guatemala, the United States demonstrated that it was willing to provide support for strong military regimes in its strategic backyard”.

Montt was trained at the United States Army School of the Americas in 1950, and his rise to power via a coup-d’état in 1982 was backed by the CIA (1). CIA involvement traces all the way back to 1954 as Kate Doyle’s tremendous work at the National Security Archive has shown (2).

The period leading up to 1954 was known as the “Ten Years of Spring”. During this time, the political leadership, primarily Captain Jacobo Árbenz, instituted sweeping democratic reforms — free speech, open tolerance of political activity, and most importantly land redistribution among dispossessed peasants. These endeavours came into direct conflict with United Fruit Company (UFCO), a Boston-based agribusiness, which had a virtual monopoly on fruit production and owned much of the land in not just Guatemala, but throughout Central America (hence the term “banana republic”).

UFCO was able to convince the Eisenhower administration that economic and ideological interests of the U.S. were threatened by the reformist government (3), and the CIA was authorized to carry out Operation PBSUCCESS which deposed Árbenz in the now infamous 1954 coup d’état. Quoted in the New York Times, Stephen Schlesinger, an adjunct fellow at the Century Foundation, notedthat Arbenz “was not a dictator, he was not a crypto-communist…He was simply trying to create a middle class in a country riven by extremes of wealth and poverty and racism”. The ideological doctrines governing U.S. foreign policy at the time, however, necessitated his removal.

One of the most important documents compiled by Doyle concerning U.S. involvement is a declassified State Department memo written by Viron Vaky, U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission in Guatemala. In it, he says that the use of counter-terror posed a serious problem because “the tactics are having a terribly corrosive effect on Guatemalan society and the nation’s political development”; “they present a serious problem for the U.S. in terms of our image in Latin America and the credibility of what we stand for”; and “the problems have a corrosive effect on our own judgments and conceptual values.” He goes on to describe the indiscriminate brutality of the tactics and how they “retarded modernization and institution building”.

Guatemala is still recovering from this history. It remains a peasant society with a tiny minority of wealthy landowners. According to the World Factbook published by the CIA, the richest 20% of the population accounts for more than 51% of overall consumption. More than half of the population lives below the national poverty line and 13% lives in extreme poverty. The situation is far worse for the indigenous sector that makes up 38% of the total population: 73% under the poverty line and 28% in extreme poverty. The human development index is the second lowest in the hemisphere, surpassed only by Haiti. These facts require that the biofuel situation be considered very carefully. However, the background to the Rios Montt trial suggests that the U.S. ought to bear some responsibility, perhaps just symbolically.

A New York Times article published on March 11, 1999 was headlined “Clinton Offers His Apologies to Guatemala” and quotes the former president: “For the United States, it is important that I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake”. He never actually apologized. However, how could he? It’s difficult to precisely assign blame. Yet the sheer brutality and gravity of the crimes urges us to remain remain accountable.

As “Guatamala, Memory of Silence” reported in 1999 (4), “acts such as the killing of defenceless children, often by beating them against walls or throwing them alive into pits where the corpses of adults were later thrown; the amputation of limbs; the impaling of victims; the killing of persons by covering them in petrol and burning them alive; the extraction, in the presence of others, of the viscera of victims who were still alive; the confinement of people who had been mortally tortured, in agony for days; the opening of the wombs of pregnant women, and other similarly atrocious acts, were not only actions of extreme cruelty against the victims, but also morally degraded the perpetrators and those who inspired, ordered or tolerated these actions.”

Notes.

(1) “The campaign to bring Efrain Rios Montt to trial” (PDF), Amnesty International, July 2008.

(2) The Guatemala 1954 Documents. From the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

(3) Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States, pp. 337-360. Harvard University Press, 1998.

(4) “Guatemala, Memory of Silence.” See note 5. Section II (“Human rights violations, acts of violence and assignment of responsibility”), passage 87.

Junk food industry and consumer advocacy

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Prairie Science under Domestic Affairs

This article appeared in CounterPunch on 2/22/2013.

An extraordinary investigative piece appeared in the NYT Magazine today. It adapted from an upcoming book by Michael Moss, Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, the result of years of poking and digging through the processed-food industry. Moss’ work reveals conscious efforts by the “junk food” industry over the last several decades to make their products more addictive and alluring to the consumer population by combining food science with crafty advertising strategies.

For example, he explains how Lunchables came to the rescue of the Oscar Mayer company whose meat products were suffering from associations with high cholesterol, heart attacks, and strokes. Using organized focus groups to characterize its primary consumers, the company was able to discover that working moms were desperate for quick, convenient, and healthy options for their kids’ lunch. In the mothers that struggled to balance nourishing their children properly while getting to work on time, they found “a gold mine of disappointment and problems.” So they engineered a prepackaged lunch which contained sliced meat, crackers, and processed cheese in just the right proportions. Thus, Lunchables were born and flew off the shelves soon after. It was not long before a sugary dessert and soda were added to the mix to boost sales: a strategy Moss refers to as “when in doubt, add sugar.”

The lunch kits solved the convenience problem by employing a household strategy in consumer capitalism: shifting costs to the externality pool. That is, manipulating nutritional content and public perception to maximize sales while disregarding the negative health consequences to the public which are serious. As Moss notes in his article, obesity among both adults and children have gone through the roof. The CDC reports that in 2010, 35% of American adults and 17% of American children were obese. Furthermore, the annual medical costs associated with obesity could be as high as $147 billion as public health researchers have estimated. Other outcomes are effected too including the prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, and gout to name a few.

Andreyeva T, et. al. (2007). Obesity and disability: a shape of things to come. Retrieved February 20, 2013, from the RAND Corporation web site: http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9043-1.html

The public health risks were known and the strategies were employed consciously. It’s not a conspiracy. By now everybody knows that Lucky Charms is not a balanced breakfast. It’s simply our peculiar market forces at work: “People could point to these things and say, ‘They’ve got too much sugar, they’ve got too much salt.’ Well, that’s what the consumer wants, and we’re not putting a gun to their head to eat it. That’s what they want. If we give them less, they’ll buy less, and the competitor will get our market. So you’re sort of trapped.” [Geoffrey Bible, former C.E.O. of Philip Morris].

I’m not condemning Count Chocula or advocating the banning of junk food. I only hope to point out the dichotomy that exists between personal and corporate responsibility. Existing legislation simply doesn’t incentivize the latter. Costs to the public–both financial and physical–don’t factor into the budgets of the “junk-food” industry. And this readily generalizes to tobacco, oil, transportation, polymer materials, and so on. Quantity is more profitable than quality. Addictive is more profitable than healthy. These are simply the peculiarities of our system. Consequently the industry is free to push products that have been engineered to be addictive just as ordinary citizens are free to eat them: “The biggest hits — be they Coca-Cola or Doritos — owe their success to complex formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don’t have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells the brain to stop eating.”

One will often hear arguments that attribute these consequences to being inherent to capitalism or claim that anything else would encroach on personal liberty. But this is certainly not the case. We have legal methods of internalizing externalities. A carbon emissions tax is one example. Another is the proposed tax for sugar-sweetened beverages. But these are extremely difficult to implement due to the overwhelming political power of the modern corporation which often holds these measures to be restrictive and overly bureaucratic. However, these arguments are inconsistent with everyday experience. The U.S. is an extraordinarily free society, but it’s not totally free. We are required to obey traffic laws, property rights, and patent monopolies which are agreed-upon restrictions of personal liberty.

So the average citizen has to accept limited restrictions to personal freedom for the good of society, but we find that corporations are largely free of such restrictions. Moss’ article contains examples of corporate strategists becoming overcome by guilt due to their socially irresponsible behavior. Their attempts to make changes to the system, however, are met with hostility which reveals quite a bit about the possibility of change within the system. Jeffrey Dunn, former senior executive at Coca-Cola, attempted to end the marketing of Coke in public schools. This caused quite a stir and one bottler wrote a vicious letter to the company. According to Dunn, “He said what I had done was the worst thing he had seen in 50 years in the business. Just to placate these crazy leftist school districts who were trying to keep people from having their Coke. He said I was an embarrassment to the company, and I should be fired.” Soon enough, Dunn was fired.

That consumer advocates are demonized in the U.S. is no secret. The use of the term “leftist” in the above quote is telling and reeks of classist propaganda. What troubles me is that I don’t know what sort of understanding readers are supposed to glean from Moss’ article. The results of his investigation are impressive, but the picture he paints has a sort of trite familiarity. We’ve all heard stories about tobacco lobbying and pharmaceutical mismarketing, but in the end we’re left with a sort of impotence and resignation in regards to our current situation. We know about the Surgeon General warnings on cigarette packs, but we have no idea how they got there. The general perception is that being anything but a spectator has too many associated costs e.g. being fired or labeled a “crazy leftist”.

When externalities grow so large that their effects can no longer be ignored, the public has no choice but to become participants in its own affairs. And, in my view, public participation is always a good thing. The problem, however, lies in the sequence of such events. If large scale consequences such as obesity, exploding commodity prices, and drought tell us anything, it’s that the damage has already been done.

Iran, climate change, and a bipartisan agenda

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Prairie Science under Foreign Affairs

This article originally appeared in New Left Project on 11/6/2012

Election Day finally arrives in America and whichever candidate emerges victorious will inherit a presidency that is sure to be a decisive one given what is at stake. To the careful observer of US political trajectory, two issues stand out as the most consequential in regards to the security and wellbeing of not only the domestic population, but the rest of the world as well. These are anthropogenic global warming and uranium enrichment in Iran. The first issue is significant due to its uncontroversial implications for human catastrophe if left unchecked. The second, because of the financial and social burdens of possible military escalation which, given the players involved, could trigger nuclear disaster. The ambiguous manner in which these subjects are treated in the public arena reveals much about the intentions behind current policy.

Challenging conventional wisdom about climate change

Most Americans that step outside and/or watch TV know that these are major issues. However, the reasons for their importance are often omitted from public discussion as was made clear in the recent presidential debates. Moreover, President Obama’s virtual silence on the climate issue has upset many now disillusioned by the failure of actions to match the clean energy sentiments he voiced in 2008.

Furthermore, climate skepticism is given an unusual level of prominence in US press by international standards as revealed by a recent study published by an Oxford University researcher. The study, which compared articles from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to equivalent newspapers in Brazil, China, France, India, and the UK, concluded that there is “evidence for seeing a greater presence in the US media of the sort of scepticism [sic] which strongly attacks the scientific legitimacy of climate change policy proposals compared to all the other five countries.”

Action on climate change is further constrained by the political context within which mainstream politicians operate. Writing in the New York Times, Scott Shane recently observed that “in the current fiscal environment, promising an ambitious effort to reduce poverty or counter global warming might imply big new spending, which is practically and politically anathema.” As Shane writes, “any candidate troubled by how the United States lags behind its peers in health or education has plenty of advisers and consultants to warn him never to mention it on the stump”.

Despite the silence from politicians and the steady stream of propaganda from the climate denial front, a recent report published by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication found that a large majority (74%) of the American population agree that global warming is affecting weather in the United States. Furthermore, this number is up by 5 points since Spring 2012. In other words, unusually warm months and frequent droughts are not passing unnoticed. The problem is that the connection to human activity is not being made as often as it should be. Recent Pew polling shows that 42% of Americans acknowledge the human origin of global warming (incidentally, the numbers are 18% and 63% for Romney and Obama supporters respectively). The data indicate that though people are recognizing that the weather is becoming increasingly abnormal, they hesitate to draw anthropogenic conclusions despite the scientific consensus.

This comes as less of a surprise, however, when we consider the power of the interests driving the debate. An American Petroleum Institute strategy memo famously published in the New York Timesin 1998: “Victory will be achieved when average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science…[and] media coverage reflects balance on climate science and recognition of the validity of viewpoints that challenge the current ‘conventional wisdom’”. This is still the strategy of Big Oil today. Take, for example, a report on climate change authored by Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute in October 2012. Some of its “key findings” include “Impacts of observed climate change have little national significance;” “Sea level rises caused by global warming are easily adapted to;” “Policies enacted by the developed world will have little effect on global temperature.” The Cato Institute was co-founded by Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries Inc., an industry giant in oil refining and associated manufacturing. He and his brother, David, remain major shareholders at Cato. Furthermore, the author Pat Michaels admitted to 40% of his work being funded by the petroleum industry in a CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria.

Subverting Iranian autonomy

So even though everybody’s frightened about bizarre weather events, our leaders and media outlets encourage uncertainty and confusion. In other words, you might be worried about the future, but you have to deal with your own assumptions about what the problem really is. On the other hand, uncertainty is not the tactic of choice when it comes to the Iran problem and the very real possibility of war. A singular perspective dominates: that Iran’s enrichment program is for the sole purpose of building a bomb to use against Israel or facilitate terrorism against the West. This undoubtedly terrifying prospect has become a dogma of U.S. (and Israeli) policymakers.

This dogma, however, remains unconfirmed and questionable despite several investigations. AReuters release in March put it succinctly: “The United States, European allies, and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran’s nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead”. Even Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta conceded to the Senate Budget Committee that “our intelligence makes clear that they haven’t made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon.” All of this is consistent with Iran’s repeated claims that their enrichment program is solely for civilian objectives and that it is well within its right to pursue such a program as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and member of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Regardless, the hardliners insist that possessing offensive capacities is the eventual goal.

Why would they pursue nuclear weapons? Here we can make educated guesses by looking at the available data. A survey of Arab public opinion published in March 2012 revealed that a large majority believes Israel and the United States to be the greatest threats to peace while only 5% believed Iran to be most threatening. Furthermore, they opine that since Israel, the chief harasser of Iran, itself possesses nuclear weapons, then Iran, too, has a right to possess them.

The idea that Iran would seek to possess a nuclear weapon as a deterrent and neutralizer of Western belligerence is not particularly novel and is understandable given the constant hostility perceived by the regional population. As recently pointed out by Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian, the security and autonomy afforded by nuclear weapons is what is most unsettling to US policymakers. The idea that Iran would use them offensively is highly implausible from a strategic standpoint. Doing so would surely invite a military retaliation on a scale that would certainly dwarf the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if Iran survived as a nation, a regime change would undoubtedly occur.

Regardless, the US and Israel have repeatedly threatened to attack if Iran does not scale down its enrichment program In both countries, threats of unilateral action are in sharp opposition to public opinion showing how dismissive state leaders have become: 70% in the U.S. and 61% in Israel. Furthermore, 51% of Americans oppose a military strike even with UN authorization. Perhaps the most notable finding, however, is that the percentage of Americans that consider Iran’s nuclear program a threat has dropped 22 percentage points since its peak in 2002. Not only does the publicnot want war, the number of people convinced that Iran’s enrichment program is a threat has beensteadily declining. The reason could be that Iran’s behavior has not been particularly hostile since 2002. As it happens, we find in some cases that their lack of hostility is actually met with confusion and apprehension by US/Israeli elites.

A recent New York Times article is particularly revealing: “Israel’s defense minister [Ehud Barak] said Tuesday that the country had interpreted Iran’s conversion of some enriched uranium to fuel rods for civilian use as evidence that Iran had delayed ambitions to build a nuclear weapon”. Note that Iran’s conversion to fuel rods is in perfect agreement with what they have repeatedly claimed to be doing: enriching uranium for civilian purposes in accord with the Non-Proliferation agreements. However, Barak’s interviewer soon after wrote in The Daily Telegraph that “Iran’s decision to convert much of its stockpile of 20 per cent enriched uranium into harmless fuel rods” suggests that Ayatollah Khameini could be “more cautious than we think” and “is nervous and feeling the pressure.” Perhaps by accident, he appears to violate US/Israeli dogma when he wonders whether “the ultimate destination of Iran’s nuclear programme [is] still an open question?”

What is the Supreme Leader of Iran “feeling the pressure” of? It goes unspoken that the US is already waging war with Iran through cyber attacks and economic sanctions that have devastated the country. Though it has become increasingly clear that Tehran will not budge, the population continues to take the beating. The annual inflation rate is over 20%—possibly even double that—while food prices and unemployment have skyrocketed. In a recent letter to the New York Times, an Israeli citizen writes: “These sanctions are affecting at least 50 million women and children” and asks, with reason, “Isn’t this a form of collective punishment that might be considered a war crime under the Geneva convention?”.

Clearly the US will go to great lengths to prevent an autonomous, secure Iran. To understand why autonomy in the Middle East is so threatening a prospect, we must consider the importance of regional control to the US. Relinquishing control would enable independent development and/or allow adjacent super powers – Russia and China – to become the primary enforcers and thereby increase their global influence. Further, nuclear security would grant the current Iranian regime more control over its own energy resources which could be used to effectively compete with US clients in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It is in this context that Israel serves its most useful function as a U.S. satellite presence in the region. Its high-tech industry, strategic location, and cultural orientation are what make it “our natural ally.” And as long as Iran is perceived to pose an “existential threat” to the United States’ enforcer in the Middle East, the hawks will not put down the drum.

The war games cannot continue

The election campaign and especially the presidential debates have made clear how necessary mythology and illusion are to economic security. If the reality of anthropogenic global warming were to become a national truism, then we may begin to question the value of our military exploits in the Middle East. Both candidates want to take steps to ensure the flow of oil and profits into US pipelines but neither want to discuss the irreversible damage further military conflict and carbon-intensive activity could do to the economy and to the environment. Obviously the U.S. cannot relinquish its influence in the region and thereby forfeit its substantial leverage over adjacent superpowers. However, a multilateral diplomatic solution to this obvious dilemma simply will not be discussed or considered.

By focusing on the “threat” posed by Iran, the United States political apparatus is able to channel public concern in a way that justifies aggressive tactics. As long as the population is sufficiently misinformed and fearful about Iran’s nuclear program, then our military presence in the region can be scaled up conveniently — given a fitting pretext — without significant domestic opposition which is absolutely critical at this time to challenge the oil-based destruction of the environment.

More broadly, it appears that the only rational course of action is substantial public activism to redirect government intervention – not only to promote growth in the clean energy sector, but also to reign in the military-industrial complex behind fossil fuels. Though government has historically been complicit in escalating the climate-petroleum doom cycle (e.g. military exploits in the Middle East), it is the only mechanism by which the public can initiate change. To accomplish this, the propaganda campaigns against Iran and anthropogenic global warming need to be properly understood so that the right steps can be taken to circumnavigate them avoid disaster.

In this respect, Hurricane Sandy and its associated tragedies have been a slap in the face to the American people. Consequently, a recent BusinessWeek cover story titled “It’s Global Warming, Stupid” acknowledged the “success of climate deniers in framing action on global warming as inimical to economic growth,” but noted that “the US can’t afford regular Sandy-size disruptions in economic activity”. This is sadly and undoubtedly true not just for the US, but for all nations and all of humanity.

Zadie Smith, Jay-Z, Russell Simmons Occupy Wall Street

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Prairie Science under Domestic Affairs

This article originally appeared in CounterPunch on 9/19/2012.

A recent interview with rapper and millionaire Jay-Z in T Magazine of the New York Times has caught fire not for its luminary centerpiece, but rather for his clumsy dismissal of Occupy Wall Street. While discussing the rise of a new generation of Pitchfork-friendly indie rap e.g. Odd Future, he recognized that “people have a real aversion to what people in power did to this country…so they are lashing out, like: This is the son that you made…look at your son…look at what you’ve done.”

In a way, this is a reasonable, albeit crude, assessment of the Movement from the outsider’s perspective. However, he soon revealed himself to be awkwardly out of touch.

“I’m not going to a park and picnic, I have no idea what to do, I don’t know what the fight is about. What do we want, do you know? I think all those things need to really declare themselves a bit more clearly. Because when you just say that ‘the 1 percent is that,’ that’s not true. Yeah, the 1 percent that’s robbing people, and deceiving people, these fixed mortgages and all these things, and then taking their home away from them, that’s criminal, that’s bad. Not being an entrepreneur. This is free enterprise. This is what America is built on.”

The interviewer’s internal response to the mogul’s remark was, simply put, stunning: “It’s so weird watching rappers becoming elder statesmen.” Such prosaic tact is to be expected given that the interviewer was none other than Zadie Smith, award winning fiction author and professor at NYU. Her fiction titles include White Teeth and On Beauty.

No one really noticed though, alas. In fact, most references to Jay’s comment make it seem as if this were an ordinary celebrity interview appearing in NYT. Smith happens to be luminary herself, though, albeit in obscurer circles namely intellectual-slash-literary ones. It’s worth noting that the Occupy comment is but a tiny fraction of the 3000-word piece which explores rap and black culture (can the former be discussed without the latter?) as seen through Jay’s eyes, yet filtered through Smith’s pen.

Jay is famous for his ultra-confident style and wit. However, there are moments when it seems that Smith, as an outsider, understands his persona more than he does. They are hard to pinpoint; Smith’s writing is apprehended in fleeting moments rather than segments. She notes that “He likes to order for people” and reflects, “Apparently I look like the fish-sandwich type” with more amusement than sarcasm. We never discover if she likes fish sandwiches or appreciated the gesture. I’m confident, however, that Smith is wise enough not to turn down free lunch at a fancy restaurant.

Regardless, most readers found the bulk of the interview superfluous. Smith, recognizing Jay-Z as more a persona than activist, was able to take the Occupy comment with a grain of salt and move on:

“But still I think “conscious” rap fans hope for something more from him; to see, perhaps, a final severing of this link, in hip-hop, between material riches and true freedom. (Though why we should expect rappers to do this ahead of the rest of America isn’t clear.) It would take real forward thinking. Of his own ambitions for the future, he says: “I don’t want to do anything that isn’t true.” Maybe the next horizon will stretch beyond philanthropy and Maybach collections.”

The other hip-hop mogul that isn’t Puff Daddy, namely Russell Simmons, founder of Def Jam record company, took it more seriously. Indeed, Jay’s comment was actually a reference to a conversation he previously had with Simmons, a long-time friend. In response to Jay’s insensitivity, he noted “As the same man that said he would pay more taxes if it helped educate more children and create affordable healthcare, Jay-Z’s words matter” and thus took it upon himself to clarify things for his friend. Couldn’t be a better man to do it given Simmons’ active engagement with Occupy.

After listing the 99 problems including healthcare reform, prison-industrial complex, war spending, GMOs, gay rights, immigration reform, the tuition crisis, and wealth inequality and describing the disastrous effects of Citizens United vs. FEC on American franchise, he closes with the bottom line:

“So, Jay, here’s the deal. You’re rich and I’m rich. But, today it’s close to impossible to be you or me and get out of Marcy Projects or Hollis, Queens without changing our government to have our politicians work for the people who elect them and not the special interests and corporations that pay them. Because we know that these special interests are nothing special at all. In fact, they spend millions of dollars destroying the fabric of the black community and make billions of dollars in return.”

Jay-Z’s verse, prose, and life have demonstrated that he is a passionate authority on the subject of poverty, entrepreneurship, and the American dream. And Zadie Smith’s interview-essay gracefully reveals that the mystery of Shawn Carter aka Jay-Z transcends celebrity and riches. Simmons has tactfully appealed to his understanding to coax a rebuttal which may never come.

If it does, it will be from the perspective of a man that affirmatively hustled and clawed his way to the top in a society that systematically sought to keep him down and in many ways still does. He may begrudge the system, but he doesn’t need to answer for it. It’s worth remembering that he is neither a Princeton academic nor a militant subversive. He literally beat the system not by lamenting its injustices, but by circumnavigating them and recording the odyssey chapter by chapter.

“No one came to our neighborhoods, with stand-up jobs, and showed us there’s a different way. Maybe had I seen different role models, maybe I’d’ve turned on to that.”

Corn Shortage and Global Warming

Posted on August 26, 2012 by Prairie Science under Domestic Affairs

This article originally appeared in TruthOut on 8/25/2012

(Photo: Claudio Alejandro Mufarrege)

The January 2009 issue of the prestigious journal Science included an article entitled “Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat.” Using 23 global climate models, the investigators calculated a 90 percent probability that the growing season temperatures by the end of the 21st century will exceed the most extreme seasonal temperatures on record from 1900 to 2006. That is to say, in less than a century, the average summer temperature will most likely exceed the hottest summer we’ve ever experienced. The study was framed within the context of the 2007 global food crisis and used historical examples to emphasize the deleterious consequences of extreme seasonal heat on global food markets. It made no explicit reference to anthropogenic warming, but ominously concluded with, “Ignoring climate projections at this stage will only result in the worst form of triage.”

Yet it continues. Big news this week highlights the sharp decrease in US corn production due to the worst drought in 50 years. Corn output has particularly broad implications given its uses in ethanol production and livestock feed. Furthermore, the United States is the world’s leader in corn production, and as such, the toll will be felt globally.

Lower corn production translates to higher prices for US fuel companies, which are required to ensure that 9 percent of their gasoline pools come from ethanol under the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) implemented under Bush II. This ultimately comes out to the biofuel conversion of 40 percent of the domestic corn crop. The pressure of rising corn costs is also felt by meat/poultry companies such as Tyson, and will translate to higher prices for livestock-based products such as cheese and milk.

The volatility of the global food market was underlined by the 2007 food crisis, which contributed to the social unrest behind the Arab Spring. As such, there has been growing fear of another food crisis in light of these drought-related harvest shortcomings. Lisa Jackson, current administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has been urged by a bipartisan group of senators to ease the restrictions, which were designed to promote the domestic biofuel market, on farmers and oil refiners. The argument is that unless the US government acts swiftly and accordingly to stabilize prices, volatile food prices will translate to suffering in the general population.

Given the dire implications of climate-related food shortages and subsequent geopolitical instability, one would imagine that now would be a good time to discuss anthropogenic global warming and steps that could be taken in order to prevent this year’s hottest days from becoming the norm in 50 years, as suggested by the above-mentioned study.

However, this idea is discarded as mere platitude. The Washington Post recently reported, “Corn production in the U.S., the world’s largest grower and exporter, will drop 13% to a six-year low after the hottest July since 1936 damaged Midwest fields,” but then totally drops the climate connection. This negligence is practiced across the board. The recent Reuters release states, “Corn prices have surged more than 60 percent in the past two months as the United States reels from the extreme weather, while global soy supplies are also tight after drought in South America.”

Current discussion makes it seem as if this “extreme weather” were an amusing anomaly to be solved by market manipulations and financial precision. (For another example, see a statement released by the Heritage Foundation.) The point is that it’s pretty terrible that we can sit here and discuss food crises and global instability with straight faces without acknowledging the elephant in the room. Climate-oriented strategies cannot possibly solve the problem in the short-term, but it is critical that they be addressed when discussing the long-term. Failure to do so spells out true human catastrophe, especially when the world population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050.

Jeremy Grantham recently wrote in the Financial Times that due to vested interests and short-sightedness, the “world is likely to act too slowly to conserve resources, improve farming technologies, and discourage meat eating and waste” and that “our behavior, which unnecessarily pushes up prices, will inadvertently cause malnutrition and outright starvation in poor countries.” Every agribusiness and fuel company corporate executive can shout about the human suffering that would occur if their costs rise too quickly, but it’s difficult not to feel embarrassed when Grantham points out that the caloric content of a single sport-utility gas tank of corn-based ethanol would sustain one Egyptian farmer for a whole year.

Executive and legislative politicians have elections to think about. Corporate leaders have profit obligations to shareholders. For good professional reasons, they simply cannot afford to heed the long-term. The rest of us have gas tanks to fill.

Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission.

Syrian conflict has created a refugee crisis

Posted on August 19, 2012 by Prairie Science under Uncategorized

The civil war in Syria has expectedly fostered a humanitarian crisis for noncombatants. The UN Refugee Agency revealed that 170,000 Syrians have been registered in adjacent Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. The crisis has restricted civilian access to food and medical care. The latter is particularly alarming given the contaminated water supply in Damascus which has caused an outbreak of diarrhea. The sudden influx of displaced Syrians has overwhelmed state authorities and relief groups trying to organize a response.

The number of registered refugees in Turkey is approaching 60,000 and close to 40,000 in Lebanon. The chief obstacle for providing proper medical care is funding. Indeed, Lebanon’s Higher Relief Committee, the country’s principal aid organization, suspended medical and nutritional assistance due to lack of funding.

Algerian diplomat and Nobel laureate Lakhdar Brahimi has been appointed by the United Nations to replace former UN secretary general Kofi Annan as the international mediator on Syria. Hilary Clinton has expressed full support for the decision and the attempt to secure peace in Syria. Cash assistance would be infinitely more useful.

The problem of unnecessary humans

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Prairie Science under Uncategorized

This article originally appeared in Dissident Voice on 8/6/2012.

Dealing with superfluous populations has been a vexation shared by all industrial capitalist societies for generations. In other words, the problem for modern rulers and leaders is what to do with societal segments that contribute little to wealth creation by production or consumption. Columbia Professor Emeritus of Sociology Herbert Gans referred to the modern U.S. constituents of these segments as “surplus workers” that eventually become superfluous via indefinite unemployment (1). The “surplus pool” increases in size with the failure by job creators to do what they claim to do. The concept, however, generalizes to any society or state in which the exploitation of land and/or resources is being obstructed by the presence of unnecessary humans.

Throughout history, ruling classes employed a variety of strategies to shrink the surplus pool. In 1788 the British Empire began exporting some of its surplus to Australia in order to establish a new penal colony. The endeavor was delayed by the presence of the indigenous society that needed to be dealt with: one surplus displacing another. Similarly, they and other European empires exported feudal leftovers to the Americas and subsequently established colonies after exterminating the native civilizations we learn about in elementary school.

Other alleviating mechanisms include war enlistment, extreme poverty resulting in death, or illness resulting in death. All three effectively reduce the burden of superfluous populations. Moral traits and altruistic inclinations, however, get in the way sometimes and history does reveal welfare implementations for the indigent, orphaned, and widowed that were often inspired by Abrahamic doctrines.

Enlightenment-era renegotiations of the social contract and the upsurge of global wealth during the rise of industrial capitalism gradually reinforced the notions of not only expecting but demanding the fulfillment of welfare commitments by state governments particularly in Europe. The United States, however, was never as anchored to social obligations as mainland Europe given its comparatively blank sociopolitical history. This contributed to the country’s delayed abolishment of slavery and recognition of worker organization.

The chattel-based planter economy of the early Union along with concurrent industrialization in its northern territories created difficult conditions for poor white farmers. To avoid drowning in economic hardship, the only option was to take part in the drive toward western expansion that was eventually encapsulated in the philosophy of Manifest Destiny. In order for the blossoming nation to move forward with continental ownership, the truly unnecessary Native Americans had to undergo displacement or simple erasure.

20^th century dynamics labor-capital dynamics limited the ways in which the United States could deal with its superfluous elements. The Great Depression highlighted the inability to exterminate, export, resettle, or enslave the unemployed. It was during subsequent administrations over several decades that the formalized welfare provisions were enacted which are readily recalled as the New Deal, Social Security, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Medicare, and Medicaid. And of course, consecutive military engagements were able to partially absorb displacement shocks.

These welfare distributions became increasingly important as neoliberalism and financial enterprises began to dominate U.S. policy beginning with the collapse of the Bretton-Woods system in 1973 which allowed multinational corporations to benefit from an unprecedented degree of capital mobility (2). Naturally, domestic labor being restricted by land boundaries and sociocultural beacons was thus unable to sync with overseas investment by U.S. firms. This ultimately contributed to increasing unemployment, downward pressure on wages, poverty, and further dependence on welfare programs. Indeed, Nobel laureate and economist at Columbia University Joseph Stiglitz warned that unaddressed inequality in America, already the worst among industrialized societies, is fostering a resemblance to two-tiered societies of the Third World (3).

Peter Edelman at Georgetown University Law Center has revealed a great deal about current poverty in the U.S. (4) (5). His research demonstrated that as of 2010, 103 million Americans had incomes below twice the poverty line i.e. below $36,000 per year for a family of three. 20 million Americans live in deep poverty which includes incomes below half the poverty line i.e. below $9000 per year for a family of three. These are people that depend on healthcare assistance such as Medicaid, nutritional assistance like food stamps, and tax credits. Research done by the Heritage Foundation estimated that federal welfare spending approached $700 billion in 2010 alone (6).

The growing surplus pool has been a constant irritation to policymakers and business planners seeking to tap into the welfare cashflow. The vast portion of that money that is not filtered through private institutions (e.g. public funded private health coverage) is largely wasted on unnecessary humans. The most prominent effort to correct this blunder is the endeavor to privatize Social Security which happens to be a quite functional, efficient, and well-funded system as Nobel laureate Stiglitz confirmed (7). However, the current implementation sustains beneficiaries without generating very much profit. Allowing them to simply pass would free up potential sources of capital. Another possibility would be for them to take out loans which perhaps can be repaid by their children.

These latter two options, however, would be difficult to implement given their friction with values of sympathy and compassion that reside in the ethos of the general public. That is to say, the moral foundation that sustains welfare spending the U.S. threatens the viability of such measures. In the face of this type of opposition, legislators and executives have resorted to the employment of subversive rhetoric appealing to irrational elements of the human psyche in order to justify institutional oppression of superfluous segments. This includes the exploitation of latent nativism, racism, jingoist nationalism, and religious adherence to the obscure and, in fact, unknowable motives of the “founding fathers.”

The clearest example is undoubtedly the United States penchant for incarceration that disproportionately targets racial minorities as Michelle Alexander’s recent book The New Jim Crow explains in great detail (8) (9). The War on Drugs that was escalated by President Nixon in the 1970s was continued by Presidents Reagan and Clinton with some pretty ugly consequences. The strategy was to impose over-the-top punishments for minor drug offenses overwhelmingly committed by the poor while at the same time demonizing blacks as welfare queens and gangsters. The effect is the underhanded shift of superfluous elements into prison camps where they can perform something comparable to slave labor and simultaneously evade poverty statistics (10). And of course, for efficiency purposes, a portion of the public spending on incarceration is handed to correctional corporations that profit from America’s toughness on crime (11).

The state-initiated demonization of population segments not in accord with neoliberal reforms is not unique to the United States. The Indian government has repeatedly labeled a vast sector of its own population as terrorists in order to justify the use of paramilitary forces to destroy associated rural societies that obstruct economic initiatives. The reactionary group, known as the Maoists, has employed violent tactics in an effort to oppose the corporate and government infiltration of the farmers’ lands (12). For these people, there is no New World or Manifest Destiny to absorb them. The only options aside from succumbing to state violence are to pick up and move into urban slums to find work or to simply commit suicide. Incidentally, the latter option has become a full-blown crisis with a quarter-million farmer suicides since 1995 (13).

However, overt violence like that in India would be intolerable in the United States. Still, there are other tactics aside from incarceration that severely undermine surplus citizens struggling to keep up with the new global economy. Take, for example, the Affordable Care Act which is President Obama’s flagship legislation. Its purpose is to deal with the current healthcare crisis that has left over 50 million without health insurance: 17% of the population. Furthermore, recent estimates link 26,000+ deaths of working-age adults annually to lack of medical insurance (14). To be honest, Obamacare is quite far from solving the actual problem and in my opinion is, in fact, a step in the wrong direction. The fact remains, however, that it would expand the insurance umbrella over millions previously uninsured. Though that insurance may still bankrupt them, it would at least allow them to see a doctor when they’re sick.

The opposition to the health reform has been expectedly silly. Conservatives claim that it’s too expensive a burden for a debt-ridden economy. The latest CBO projections, however, show that Obamacare is likely to reduce the federal deficit by $109 billion over ten years: a modest amount, but a reduction nonetheless (15). Falseness makes a weak argument, so Governor Rick Perry of Texas resorted to evangelical constitutionalism when declaring combat on the new law recently by rejecting federal funding to expand Medicaid. He patriotically refused to “socialize” medicine in the great state of Texas out of respect for the kind of freedom envisioned by the Founding Fathers (16). Unfortunately, Texas happens to be the state with the most egregious coverage gap in the country: 25% uninsured while home to some of nation’s best hospitals. Governor Perry’s refusal to address the problem reflects outright contempt for his state’s unnecessary humans.

So at this juncture we ought to ask ourselves, how far has civilization come in the treatment of underclass constituents? Governor Perry is a small example, but his outlook readily generalizes. He can’t exterminate or export them, but ignoring them seems to work. Though the implications for democracy are frightening, sometimes it’s difficult not to laugh at the irony present in religious devotion to founding principles. To be sure, the poor and/or unemployed are, in a commercial sense, valueless. They effect no labor and they can’t afford to buy any products. The only thing that makes these people necessary is their capacity to cast votes, but only in a functioning democracy. Do we have one? If we could deposit our superfluous population in prison, in war, or underground, would we have one then?

Notes.

1) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/25/opinion/the-age-of-the-superfluous-worker.html

2) http://www.attacmallorca.es/web/uploads/Kotz1.pdf

3) http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/american-dream-myth-joseph-stiglitz-price-inequality-124338674.html

4) http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/23/so_rich_so_poor_peter_edelman

5) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-edelman/america-has-class-problem_b_1676928.html

6) http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2011/04/22/americas-ever-expanding-welfare-empire/

7) http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-july-25-2012/exclusive—joseph-stiglitz-extended-interview-pt–1

8) http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2010/10/toxic_persons.html

9) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25376

10) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/books/michelle-alexanders-new-jim-crow-raises-drug-law-debates.html?pagewanted=all

11) http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/09/26/328486/us-private-prison-population-lobbying/?mobile=nc

12) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8355156.stm

13) http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/sainath/article3595351.ece

14) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/20/us-usa-healthcare-deaths-idUSBRE85J15720120620

15) http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57479021-503544/cbo-health-care-repeal-would-cost-$109-billion/

16) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/09/rick-perry-obamacare_n_1658934.html

D.C. Citizens March Against Pepco

Posted on June 29, 2012 by Prairie Science under Domestic Affairs

This article originally appeared in OpEd News on 6/22/2012.

Several of us were drawn to the office windows beyond cubicles overlooking the intersection of 14^th Street and H Street Northwest in downtown Washington D.C. On June 12, 2012, more than a hundred D.C. residents had marched down the street in a New Orleans funeral-style protest organized by non-profit group OurDC the mission of which is to “ensure that every city resident has a Good paying job, a Good benefits package, and Good working conditions so that all District families can live Good successful lives” (http://thisisourdc.org/). The procession was complete with masks, jazz music, dancing, a woman on stilts, and a grim coffin to symbolize the hopeful burial of Pepco’s $42.5 million energy rate hike (1).

The Corporation, Pepco

Pepco, the Potomac Electric Power Company, is the principal supplier of electric energy in the District. In a recent stockholder’s meeting report issued to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company revealed that CEO compensation increased from $3.6 million to $7.2 million from 2010 to 2011. The total compensation for the top executives in 2011 exceeded $18 million (2).

These figures would suggest straightforward growth for the company, but the matter is complicated in light of the headline of a recent Associated Press release which reads “Pepco 1Q profit rises 6 percent, but revenue falls.” Indeed, lower taxes allowed the company to recover from a 21% drop in revenue ($1.63bil to $1.29bil) attributed to mild winter weather causing a decline in electricity usage. In just one year, the company’s tax expenses fell from $34 million to $14 million (3).

These figures seem really quite silly for a company that was named America’s most hated company by Business Insider almost a year ago. It beat out Delta Air Line, Facebook, and UnitedHealth which is an impressive feat for a regional outfit that affects only Washington D.C. and nearby Maryland communities. It’s a reasonable distinction, however, given that a nationwide survey revealed that Pepco’s service caused 70% more power outages than equivalents in other big cities. Furthermore, the outages lasted more than twice as long.

To be sure, the consequences can be severe. Norma Jackson, a 76-year-old resident of a retirement community in Silver Spring, MD, almost died during a winter outage that lasted more than three days. She was hospitalized for over a month and subsequently required dialysis treatments three times per week.

The great need for infrastructural improvements is readily apparent. Pepco’s poor quality alarmed Maryland governor Martin O’Malley so much that he felt compelled to publicly condemn Pepco in 2010 and describe the situation as “totally unacceptable.” He called for an investigation into Pepco’s response times and noted that “power stays on more consistently in many developing nations than it does now in the communities surrounding our nation’s capital” (4).

Pepco has consistently blamed trees as the primary cause of power line disruption. However, a Washington Post analysis revealed that equipment failures were far more frequently to blame than tree fall. And indeed, Bill Gausman, the senior VP for strategic initiatives for Pepco Holdings Inc., acknowledged in 2010 the need to spend more money. However, he asserted that “Ultimately, the public will have to pay for these improvements” (5).

The Public, Washington D.C.

Sure enough, two years later in 2012, Pepco is attempting to have the public foot the bill for a $42.5 million rate hike. D.C. residents have taken to the streets continually ever since with the most recent occasion taking place on June 12 by OurDC. Their mission against Pepco has clear parallels with the general ethos of the Occupy movement and it’s undeniable that they have benefited from the expansion of public consciousness brought about by OWS.

James Adams, a leading organizer for OurDC, acknowledged previous collaborations with the Occupy movement and common perspectives regarding the “fractured morality of the corporate boardroom.” The two groups temporarily consolidated during a November 2011 march on Francis Scott Key Bridge in a brilliant display of solidarity and organization. The purpose of the protest was to “call on Congress to create jobs, stop cuts, and make Wall Street banks pay,” according to the OccupyDC website.

However, according to Adams, OurDC membership demographics exclude it from employing the same tactics as Occupy. The supporters are unemployed, but with families. As such, there’s no option to partake in park campouts or face imprisonment. Nonetheless, given the recession-era burdens of unemployment, the protestors cannot afford to take on the burden of a $42.5 million rate hike while Pepco’s top executives are experiencing similar scale pay increases.

While conservatives celebrate the corporation as the center of job creation, Pepco cut its workforce by 40% over the past decade which no doubt contributed to D.C. unemployment. And of course, any company that can cut labor expenditures while maintaining profit margins will attract investors regardless of product/service quality. The only sector left to provide work is the local government which ends up offering tax relief to Pepco and thus drains the revenue well that could be used to create jobs.

The racial implications of such revenue drain are devastating, but not unexpected. A recent NY Times article noted that Blacks are hit the hardest by job reductions in the public sector given that one in five black workers have public sector jobs (6). The article highlighted the illusory nature of the American dream. Since the decline of manufacturing in America and the dramatic rise of black incarceration as a function of disastrous drug policy since the 1970s, the public sector has been the principal means to a decent middle class life for African-Americans. The immediate effects of its decline are predictable.

Furthermore, it’s had an extreme racial component particularly in D.C. where the Pepco protests are taking place. Research from the Economic Policy Institute revealed that the 2011 4^th quarter unemployment rate in D.C. was 20.3% for Blacks and 3.3% for Whites. Unfortunately, this sort of inequality is a dramatic example of a national trend that is bound to reinforce itself due to the personal consequences of class warfare that don’t even involve race.

“Pepco earns millions of dollars and pays its shareholders big checks while asking me, an unemployed mother who’s looking for work to pay more to keep my lights on,” laments Pepco customer Ashley Howard. “I feel like Pepco’s on welfare and I’m paying to put food on a millionaire’s table. It’s greed.”

Notes.

(1) http://www.wtop.com/109/2898599/Protesters-take-cues-from-New-Orleans

(2) http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1135971/000119312512137709/d317477ddef14a.htm#toc317477_13

(3) http://news.yahoo.com/pepco-1q-profit-rises-6-percent-revenue-falls-200616839–finance.html

(4) http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/capital-land/2010/08/o%E2%80%99malley-compares-pepco-service-developing-nation/131427

(5) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/04/AR2010120403721_4.html

(6) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/us/as-public-sector-sheds-jobs-black-americans-are-hit-hard.html

In Defense of Best Coast

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Prairie Science under Uncategorized

This article originally appeared in OpEd News on 6/11/2012.

When Crazy For You was released by the indie-pop duo, Best Coast, in the summer of 2010, the response was overwhelmingly positive. The blogosphere instantly fell in love with the lo-fi beach melodies that evoked Phil Spector’s work with the 1960s vocal acts such as The Crystals and The Ronettes. Indie mandarins adored the fuzzy guitars, the humid reverbs, and the sun-soaked ennui of lead singer Bethany Cosentino’s amateur reflections. The record is a perfect soundtrack to the kind of lazy summer most people stop having around the age of 18 when financial and materialistic concerns become more prominent in their lives.

What distinguished Best Coast from dream-surf contemporaries such as The Drums, Beach Fossils, Wavves, and Tame Impala was the potent nostalgia of youth carried in Cosentino’s soaring vocal melodies and lovelorn obsessions. She, herself, commented in an interview that “nothing makes [me] happier” than “playing to two rows of 16-year-old girls that are all singing every single lyric to her song” (1). And in that capacity, the debut LP received high praise from major reviewers including The Los Angeles Times (3.5/4) , Pitchfork (8.4/10 BNM), and Robert Christgau, the dean himself, who gave it an A- (2) (3) (4).

Because the band was categorized with outfits like The Drums and Wavves, her ostensibly bratty, shallow, and simple lyrics were well-received and added to the band’s appeal because they resonated so well with the surf-pop and youthful nostalgia narratives. However, that kind of appreciation is predictably unsustainable. Like a comic-book superhero movie, Crazy For You was basically deemed a thoroughly enjoyable seasonal release, albeit perfectly forgettable and unsuited for deeper literary or acoustical investigation.

It was within this context that Best Coast’s follow up, The Only Place , was received in mid-May. For this go-around, the band hired producer Jon Brion to advance their sound to the next level. He is known for his production work with Kanye West and his graceful soundtrack work on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind . This effort found the band dropping the damp, lo-fi sound for a cleaner and more polished sound that puts more focus on tempo, instrumental precision, and Cosentino’s absolutely stunning vocal talent. Indeed, the production upgrade allows the listener to fully acknowledge her song contributions that were somewhat stifled in Crazy For You .

The reaction has been expectedly lackluster. With a 2/5 score in the Guardian, the reviewer laments that the lyrics “about being bored and lazy become cloudingly familiar,” and that the record “needs more sunshine” (5). Similarly, a 6.2/10 review by Pitchfork opined that the departure of the original summer haziness emphasized the “weakest quality” of Best Coast: the lyrics (6).

Unfortunately, the duo was pretty much doomed from the release of the first LP. They suffered from a grave miscategorization of which the band itself was likely unaware. Though Cosentino’s simplistic declaratives and yearning melodies were understood as enhancements of the overall beachy lo-fi vibe, they were not correctly recognized as the principally redeeming aspects of the band’s work. The first record was great not because it was a solid addition to the surf and dream pop catalog of Wild Nothings and The Drums, but because Cosentino achieved something extraordinarily intelligent and creative. While evoking the sound of 1960′s era girl groups and rock bands, she simultaneously explored themes of postmodern feminism, rebellion, and adolescence that did not exist for the Shangri-Las.

The bipolar narrator in “Crazy For You” is a free and independent girl reflecting on her own irrationality and possible insanity, which is not an exaggeration. The other verses on the record are the ramblings of an intoxicated, erratic, jealous, and bored ex-girlfriend. However, even though she had 16-year-old girls in the front row of her shows that might relate to this identity, there’s no doubt that present, too, were males of all flavors. There was something deeper that was more compelling than just fantasizing about boyfriends.

A little bit of contemplation makes clear that the band’s original record was more than just the soundtrack to a lazy summer. Given the overarching themes of Cosentino’s musings and repetitions, her lyrics were far from ordinary and even farther from being the weakest quality of the album. It is a rare postmodern exploration of ennui and the liberated mind. Most notably, the conflict is internal to Cosentino: she’s singing to herself. And her bipolar erraticism is not unlike Dostoyevsky’s Nastassya Filippovna from The Idiot. Her self-destructive nature is prominent on the first record while the compassionate and pitiful elements are explored on the follow-up. It is only within this proper context that the follow up record can be regarded as the worthy piece of work which it represents.

The Only Place , lyrically, is the meditation of a maturing young adult. Though it was attacked for cheaply celebrating a return to the band’s Californian roots and rehashing familiar topics of laziness and heartbrokenness, a closer listen reveals an existential sorrow that was not present on Crazy For You . Gone is the carefree ennui, and newly present are themes of taking responsibility and real appreciation for the familiar concept of home. The original sun-drenched intoxication has been replaced with the quiet clarity and regret of a post-hangover reckoning. It is not the Thom Yorke’s despair; rather, it is closer to Nicholas Cage’s character’s struggle to reconcile real life with his obsessive compulsive disorder in the 2002 film, Matchstick Men. Indeed, some of the lyrics sound like the sober musings of the Alcoholics Anonymous variety: “I used to wake up in the morning and reach for that bottle and glass, but I don’t do that anymore…kicked my habits out the front door.”

And yes, in some ways, it is a drug-recovery record. And in this sense her burnt out sentiments recall Iggy Pop’s Berlin-era wok. But Cosentino succeeds by employing her incredibly emotive voice and raw honesty: “My mom was right, I don’t wanna die, I wanna live my life.” As she repeats this refrain in a distinctive Best Coast manner, it is difficult not to be overwhelmed by sympathy and solemnity upon first listen. It certainly was for me, so I’d suggest trying it for yourself. It is doubly gut-wrenching when juxtaposed with the childish frivolity of some of her past lyrics: “I just want to tell you, that I’ve always missed you. I just want to tell you, that I’ve always loved you.” Though we may remain skeptical at her newfound seriousness, she sings confidently: “Cause you seem to think you know everything, but you don’t know why I cry.” The complex reconciliation of two opposed personalities is food for thought.

The reality of her journey into adulthood is encapsulated in perhaps the albums strongest verse: “What a year this day has been, what a day this year has been.” Regardless, even if the revamped lyrical context is not sufficiently convincing, the record is still redeemed by its fantastic pop-sensibilities and vocal melodies. The delicate and gentle guitar arpeggios of “How They Want Me To Be” recall some of the finer moments of the underrated Wincing The Night Away by The Shins. And the refreshing gentleness extends to pretty much every track.

As a standalone record, it most certainly holds its own. I suspect that the negative reviews were likely the result of incorrectly evaluating the merits of the first record, for which everyone was hoping a mere extension. Careful and sympathetic consideration, however, demonstrates that the two can be and ought to be viewed as companion pieces that color in the existential drama of the Best Coast’s young adult. Best Coast is not a zeitgeist or an acoustic innovation, but they have certainly crafted a poignant narrative that nourishes the imagination which contemporary acts such as Frankie Rose and Real Estate do not even attempt. It is sorrowful in a way that makes part of me wish I never heard it.

Notes.

(1) http://vimeo.com/18442034

(2) http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/28/entertainment/la-et-0728-albumreviews-20100728

(3) http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14472-crazy-for-you/

(4) http://social.entertainment.msn.com/music/blogs/expert-witness-blogpost.aspx?_p=b6f8921f-c6b6-405b-88d0-58a7c06c1000&post=b99c44b2-adbc-4ee9-9ca8-38ec70666aef&ref=bfv

(5) http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/17/best-coast-only-place-review

(6) http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16609-the-only-place/

David Brooks on American Capitalism

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Prairie Science under Uncategorized

This article originally appeared in CounterPunch on 5/24/2012.

A recent op-ed by NY Times columnist, David Brooks, asserts that “Forty years ago, corporate America was bloated, sluggish, and losing ground to competitors in Japan and beyond.” However, the rise of private equity firms and “bare-knuckled corporate executives” contributed to structural changes from which “American businesses emerged leaner, quicker, and more efficient” even though the “process was brutal and involved streamlining and layoffs” (1).

That last part is crucial and it’s likely that the corporate apologist and bobo-expert regrets including it. The latter term was a reference to his book Bobos in Paradise in which he argues that the modern American yuppie-elite is an amalgamation of the bohemian rebel of the 60s and the wealth-seeking corporate climber of the 80s. If you read the book, you’ll find that the “bobo” is the primary beneficiary of the vitalized American business that he celebrates. And he’s quite right that American business emerged leaner and more efficient.

Businesses exist to make profits for the investors and shareholders that own the business. It’s this incentive that free market fanatics tout as central to the doctrine’s celebrated efficiency. These businesses operate on the efforts of rented wage labor of both blue and white collars. However, even though it’s true that American business has experienced booming profits since the 1970s, what Brooks fails to mention is that these benefits have been sharply concentrated at the top alone.

It’s barely news that wealth and income distribution in recent decades has been dramatically lopsided with the top 1% taking in 10% of the nation’s income since 1979 and holding on to about 30% of the nation’s wealth (2) (3). Being in the top 1% is no easy task, either. The average salary is $1 million per year (4). If you care to look closely enough, you’ll find that these figures come right out of the Congressional Budget Office.

Furthermore, the “leaner, quicker, and more efficient” American business indirectly reflects the decline in American manufacturing industry and the rise of multinational institutions that sell no product but continuously engage in complex financial manipulations and specialized transactions. This process of financialization was set off by the United States’ decision to unilaterally disengage from the Bretton Woods monetary system that it and Britain championed after World War II. The dollar was no longer accountable to gold convertibility and thus began policies associated with “neoliberalism” (5).

The general trend was that American businesses found it much cheaper to open the door to foreign imports of goods and products from both unskilled and skilled labor. This crippled the American manufacturing industry by debasing workers in textiles, steel, automobiles, and consumer electronics. So, even though computers were invented on the college campus using American taxpayer funding throughout the 1950s and 1960s, it became possible to cheaply assemble them abroad in the Third World by foreign workers and subsequently import them (6).

Obviously the effects followed a class-specific distribution. Manufacturing was where you could find a decent job without a college degree. The working class mix included poor native-born whites, African-Americans, and southern and eastern European immigrants. They were dealt with accordingly. Black life was recriminalized under what Michelle Alexander termed “The New Jim Crow” (7). With more blacks currently imprisoned than were ever enslaved, black communities can’t even pretend to reap the benefits of Brooks’ celebrations (8) (9). Those who were able to hold on to their jobs saw their real wages more or less stagnate and working hours increase. The skilled workers that lost their manufacturing jobs were forced into the menial service economy in competition with Latin American immigrants (10). This competition was only exacerbated by the devastating effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement that was designed specifically to enrich big business at the expensive the American worker (11). The growing dispossessed formed the basis of today’s Tea Party Movement (12).

Those that could not find employment at all watched lifelines slip away for themselves and their families with the decline of the United States welfare system under Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton (13). 20 million Americans currently live in extreme poverty with incomes below half of the poverty line. For 6 million Americans, the only source of income is food stamps (14). What’s rarely mentioned is that with conservative reforms of programs such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and what used to be Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the core issue remains single mothers and impoverished children. Jason DeParle described the recession-era trend of food stamp users skyrocketing while welfare cash payouts remained on the decline in a recent NY times article. He noted that the 90s economic boom, no doubt the kind that Brooks had it mind, was accompanied aggressively by the drive to “end welfare as we know it” (15). However, according to Brooks, “Many voters have come to regard their desires as entitlements” and “they become incensed when their leaders are not responsive to their needs.” He asserts that “like any set of human begins, they command their politicians to give them benefits without asking them to pay” (16). I suppose you have to hand it to him for finding it so easy to categorize a “set of human beings.”

“Successful” middle class citizens including myself sometimes found their way through institutions of higher learning which were often touted as the means to personal enlightenment and economic prosperity. College was central to the American dream. However, one peak behind the curtain reveals that tuition only imposes a new set of chains in the form of debt burden as the New York Times recently described (17). The trillion dollar debt bubble in the United States drives the population further into the pockets of the 1%. The rest, I suppose, rent themselves to the military.

So Mr. Brooks was certainly right. Without question, the neoliberal agenda has dramatically invigorated American businesses from “sluggish” to “leaner, quicker, and more efficient.” It accomplished this by adopting a simple strategy that came right out of the UChicago economics department: protect domestic business interests but open the labor force to market pressures. This entailed subsidizing American exports using tax payer funding, but simultaneously pulling the rug right out from underneath the very same taxpayer. The highly respected American economist Richard Wolff summed it up perfectly (18):

“Since the 1970s, most US workers postponed facing up to what capitalism had come to mean for them. They sent more family members to do more hours of paid labour, and they borrowed huge amounts. By exhausting themselves, stressing family life to the breaking point in many households, and by taking on unsustainable levels of debt, the US working class delayed the end of American exceptionalism – until the global crisis hit in 2007. By then, their buying power could no longer grow: rising unemployment kept wages flat, no more hours of work, nor more borrowing, were possible. Reckoning time had arrived. A US capitalism built on expanding mass consumption lost its foundation.”

Notes.

(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/opinion/brooks-how-change-happens.html?ref=davidbrooks

(2) http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/09/simple-look-income-inequality

(3) http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/inequality-is-most-extreme-in-wealth-not-income/

(4) http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

(5) http://business.pages.tcnj.edu/files/2011/07/VanArnum.Thesis.pdf

(6) http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/01/china-challenge-baily

(7) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-alexander/the-new-jim-crow_b_454469.html

(8) http://pbstandards.org/news/article/221?newstype=1

(9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/inimai-chettiar/prison-system-jim-crow_b_1297413.html

(10)http://economyincrisis.org/content/service-economy-taking-over-us

(11)http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-r-shaffer/immigration-is-a-nafta-pr_b_642484.html