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.”

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

(12)http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2010/10/07/the-tea-party-movement-is-a-middle-class-revolt

(13)http://www.nber.org/papers/w5774.pdf?new_window=1

(14)http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/23/so_rich_so_poor_peter_edelman#transcript

(15)http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/us/welfare-limits-left-poor-adrift-as-recession-hit.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

(16)http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/opinion/the-age-of-innocence.html?_r=3&ref=opinion

(17)http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/student-loans-weighing-down-a-generation-with-heavy-debt.html?ref=tuition&gwh=A192E2C120C487DF2288577E2C662C39

(18)http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/17/economics-globalrecession

The real joke: oppression through marginalization

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Prairie Science under Uncategorized

This article originally appeared in CounterPunch on 5/4/2012.

It’s not easy to get the President of the United States to provide meaningful answers to questions regarding issues of serious concern to the population. During a Q&A session with Obama put together by YouTube in January, a woman pressed him about her husband’s extended unemployment to which he responded: “send me your husband’s resume” (1) (2). Dodging questions is pretty standard especially when the truth is not going to make you very popular. The jobs issue is central to Obama’s presidency so it’s likely that he could have provided a meaningful albeit depressing answer. Unfortunately, the show has to go on and it did so by ignoring the most popular questions which—remarkably enough—did not have to do with his wedding anniversary or the midnight snacking habits that were discussed, but rather with the War on Drugs (3) (4).

Given his role as the President, one would hope that his public appearances and remarks would serve useful purposes such as providing substantive and honest information regarding policy positions and government activity. His responses during the YouTube Q&A were not totally egregious, but the superficial behavior at these Correspondents’ Dinners is just depressing. Performing skits and telling jokes was the top priority last year while Operation Neptune Spear was being carried out. Again, the show had to go on. The subjects tackled during this year’s Dinner included eating dogs, Young Jeezy, and casual homophobia. The funniest bit, however, was the greasy comment on what he declared to be a great American tradition: “a free press that isn’t afraid to ask questions, to examine and to criticize” (5).

Whether or not those questions get answered, the free press he was referring to is far from traditional. For one thing the spectrum of representative interest is sharply polarized. For example, there are blogs and there are media conglomerates much like there are local coffee shops and there are Starbuckses. Even though both provide similar commodities, the two sides operate in different ways because they exist for different reasons. So even though neither ThinkProgress nor The Wall Street Journal is under any coercion, the latter is still owned by the multibillion dollar News Corporation which exists to make profits for investors. This has two major implications for an outlet like WSJ. Firstly, as a corporate subordinate, its terminal function is to contribute to wealth consolidation. It may not accomplish this explicitly (e.g. “playing politics”), but it would not have been absorbed if it did not contribute to Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line (6). Secondly, its massive financial backing inexorably enables it be ultra-prominent and consequently ultra-powerful. Its elite status will obviously influence its content by filtering out writers with non- or anti-elite sentiments. These principles generalize to other dominant media such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

So just whose views are the big three free press outlets representing? An April report published by FAIR looked into which perspectives were being represented on their op-ed pages during September and October 2011 when the Occupy movement was in full swing: the movement which is now recognized to have dramatically shifted political discourse in the U.S. as recent articles in the Post and in Rolling Stone make clear (7) (8). The report revealed that elites from academia, think tanks, big business, and government institutions made up 84%, 84%, and 73% of the guest column bylines in the Times, the Journal, and the Post respectively. Those proportions aren’t surprising because they’re pretty much taken for granted: you wouldn’t expect anyone else’s opinion to be important enough to be featured. The study also found that op-ed writers were overwhelmingly white males: 80-90%. Furthermore, the Occupy movement was barely discussed in the opinion pages of all three papers. Again, given the structure of American society, it’s not that surprising. However, the connection you’re not supposed to make is the obvious one that contradicts principles of a “free press” (9).

To make this connection, we can start by acknowledging some major domestic concerns which, unsurprisingly, include job creation, Social Security, education, and Medicare (10). The problem is that elites from academia, think tanks, big business, and government are the least burdened by these concerns. The fact remains that there are people that depend on Social Security for survival (11).

Another hot issue involves reproductive rights and the War on Women (12). Male op-ed writers comprised 80%, 84%, and 87% of the NYT, the Post, and the Journal respectively. When the topics include obstetrical sonograms, contraception, abortion, and equal pay/benefits for women, the integrity of the discussion is going to suffer when male perspectives dominate.

The same logic applies to race issues. Latinos make up 16% of the U.S. population, but their voice was confined to less than half a percent of the op-ed bylines which might not bode well for discussions on immigrant rights or border control. Blacks were under-represented too which has frightening implications. Michelle Alexander’s newly popular book The New Jim Crow discusses the scandalous incarceration rate in the United States (highest in the world) that disproportionately targets the black population and supplements a growing “undercaste” (14). She traces it back to the Nixon and Reagan administrations’ schemes to exploit white working class racism and fear to gain political power. It’s a national horror that just so happens to not really involve white elites from academia, business, think tanks, and government or their friends or their families.

The race issue is particularly egregious. Blacks are incarcerated at a rate that is comparatively appalling and often for petty drug crimes such as marijuana possession. In prison, they’re basically free (slave) labor. When they get out they are disenfranchised, barred from juries, and struggle to find employment and therefore healthcare. The fiscal consequences of the War on Drugs or the ethics of incarceration versus treatment are topics that are usually discussed in the papers (15) (16). Lucid commentary on the grave human damage does come out, but infrequently (17) which is remarkable because the issue is so deeply offensive to principles of compassion and liberty that it ought to be making headlines.

Incidentally the major assertions made by Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow are not groundbreaking or radical. The trajectory of the War on Drugs and its disproportionate affect on the black population had already been figured out by the mid-90s but mainstream discourse was just not ready for that kind of information (18) (19). Alexander’s study, which is deeply researched and excellently delivered, just came out at the right time. (Actually it took two years for it to get popular). This reveals a great deal about the nature of our press.

Well if the press’ function is to inform the public mind so as to facilitate democratic participation and influence political discourse, what can we expect to hear from elected and appointed officials? Gil Kerlikowske, the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy gave a talk a few days ago on drug policy reform at the Center for American Progress (20). I work in the same building and I happened to walk by him on the way in: I wouldn’t have known about it otherwise. Even with prodding by the Center’s president Neera Tanden to address incarceration, Kerlikowske managed to avoid talking about drug war casualties by focusing strictly on drug abuse treatment. In this capacity, he labeled the Affordable Care Act “revolutionary” for its requiring insurers to treat drug addiction like any other disease. There was barely any mention of the incarceration disaster and absolutely no mention of the effects on the black population.

His lauding of the AFA, however, is interesting. Obama’s health plan and his drug control strategy are similar in their ostensibly liberal motivations. Furthermore, these superficialities are reinforced by the White House and the press. Obamacare expands coverage which helps the poor and sick so therefore it must be populist, liberal, and benign and so on (21) (22). Similarly, the drug control strategy will treat addiction and help ex-convicts find housing and not relapse so therefore it’s humane and progressive (23).

Unfortunately, the sinister and anemic properties of either are rarely addressed. Obamacare’s expanded coverage is a blessing to the very entities that are responsible for the health crisis: it funnels billions to private insurers and pharmaceutical companies (24). Similarly, targeting addiction is not an answer to the incarceration problem nor does it confront the damage to black communities (25).

But for the White House to highlight the hidden problems would irritate investors that influence campaigns through lobbying. Private correction corporations such as CCA and GEO profit off of taxpayer funded incarceration. Studies have shown private prison population grew in the last decade as their lobbying dollars increased (26). A Boston Phoenix article reads: “Despite clear racial, economic, and cultural disparities, cries from constituents fell on deaf ears while law-enforcement lobbyists successfully cajoled and frightened congressional leaders” (27). Operating through outfits like ALEC, they push for legislation that harshen sentencing for crimes (28).

Health insurance and pharmaceutical companies similarly influence the Affordable Care Act and thus the rhetoric available to Obama. (29) (30).

Given that vast sectors of the American population hang in the balance in all of these issues, you might assume that the “great American free press” that isn’t afraid to question or criticize would actually ask questions or speak critically in regards to these discrepancies. But the lives and careers of politicians, business executives, and elite journalists are so intertwined and symbiotic that the public has to be marginalized. The reason is simple, their interests are opposed. Furthermore, the public mind is clouded by superficial dichotomies such as Democrats vs. Republicans, pro-life vs. pro-choice, drug treatment vs. overpolicing, etc. For an elite journalist, these topics are perfectly valid on intellectual and professional levels. For a politician, they serve invaluable rhetorical purposes. Forgotten, suppressed, and marginalized, however, are the issues pertinent to the millions that personally have to worry about food, rent, healthcare, education, transportation, debt, and retirement. That’s the real skit. That’s the funniest joke.

(1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeTj5qMGTAI

(2) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/44/post/obama-offers-to-find-woman-a-job-during-google-chat/2012/01/31/gIQAckhbeQ_blog.html

(3) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/30/obamas-pot-question-will-_n_1242008.html

(4) http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/retired-lapd-brass-challenges-obama-on-drug-policy/252187/

(5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfG8Btb0l3g

(6) http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/14/rupert-murdoch-wall-street-journal

(7) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/occupy-the-regulatory-system/2012/04/27/gIQAjo21lT_blog.html

(8) http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ready-for-the-fight-rolling-stone-interview-with-barack-obama-20120425

(9) http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4513

(10)http://www.people-press.org/2012/01/23/public-priorities-deficit-rising-terrorism-slipping/

(11)http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3260

(12)http://www.salon.com/2012/04/30/war_on_women_isnt_over/singleton/