21
Feb

Thoughts On Race, Class, And Culture

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President Obama’s newly appointed attorney general gave a speech that has caused some who advocated or voted for his confirmation, as well as many others, to reconsider the wisdom of giving such a role to Marc Rich’s lawyer.

Eric Holder, without a doubt one of those bright, competent idealogues appointed by the president to bring renewed vigor and (heaven forfend) respectability to the state, used the occasion of a speech dealing with “Black History Month” to browbeat Americans for not trying harder to seek out and socialize with people of racial backgrounds other than their own. Rhetorically, he referred to all races, but in reality he was basically telling white folks to spend a lot more quality time with black folks outside of work.

Now there is nothing wrong with an individual wishing for or vocally urging this. Indeed, it is an inherent right all of us enjoy by virtue of being born human persons, to have the freedom of speech that peaceful persons in all rights possess. But when Mr. Holder says, under the color of his state authority as chief Federal law enforcement officer, that, after we make nice with each other at the office;

“We are then free to retreat to our race protected cocoons where much is comfortable and where progress is not really made. If we allow this attitude to persist in the face of the most significant demographic changes that this nation has ever confronted- and remember, there will be no majority race in America in about fifty years- the coming diversity that could be such a powerful, positive force will, instead, become a reason for stagnation and polarization. We cannot allow this to happen and one way to prevent such an unwelcome outcome is to engage one another more routinely- and to do so now.”

One way to address this perceived problem IS  dialogue, Mr. Holder, but if “we” somehow fail “to do so now”, what other “ways” are you contemplating for not allowing a social stratification you personally find distateful to happen - government mandates? Forced integration? Suburban-urban busing? A federal-government mandated mass version of “Wife Swap” or “Trading Spouses“? What leads you believe that your position, however powerful, includes in its job description “national race nanny”? More importantly, why are you instead of going out prosecuting Wall Street’s global Ponzi schemes, are you instead engaging in dry, dare I say colorless imitations of the far more entertaining Al Sharpton and Jessee Jackson?

Lest you believe I am offering all criticism without critique, there IS a way that you can help achieve the goal you seek - that of more off-work-time fraternization between blacks and whites who, by your own admission, seem to abide each other well at work - scrap the entire EEOC sexual-harassment apparatus.

Its sexual harassment codes have a chilling effect on race relations, perhaps what you and your predecessors intended, but this general chill undoubtedly inhibits workers from even considering romantic relationships with people at their workplace.

Because people doing similar jobs tend to earn similar wages (despite the braying testimony of the  show-pony of the Ledbetter Equal Pay Act), the workplace used to represent opportunities to meet and develop relationships with people of similar economic backgrounds, as well as a significant source of both economic and social mobility. But EEOC rulings and rules have made many employers paranoid about appearing to condone workplace relationships out of fear of federal reprisal.

This is completely counter-productive. And I say that because I have observed a noticeable increase in natural integration in workplaces I have worked in over the past 20 years, coming about despite government rules and initiatives. And it is coming about due to the realization, understood, yet as-yet-unvoiced by many middle-class white - race is not the most important difference between different people. Class and culture are far more important discriminators among 21st-century middle-class people. Since in America class maps almost perfectly over economic class (strivers of all races have more economically and culturally in common with each other than with kinsmen of different cultural and economic strata),  the more important difference or similarity between people of different races is culture.

For this very reason, we are seeing more blacks and other minorities entering the middle-class, and bringing more middle-class blacks and whites into social contact at work as you yourself seem to understand. With accession to the middle class, blacks and whites from poorer social strata find that their economic and cultural circumstances change.This is not a small thing, lack of cultural comonality, familiarity, or cultures that seem alien, hostile, or antithetical are discomfiting and often undo much progress, just as a person who yells a racial epithet in anger can.

There is a certain amount of assimilation of these economically-advancing blacks(and poor whites too) into middle-class cultural norms, just as for years there has been a diffusion of elements of lower-class black American culture (where the differences are most stark, and therefore generative of cultural synthesis) into the culture at large.

This is derided by some vocal persons in some quarters as somehow being unauthentic . But American culture has always and everywhere differed from the old, stale cultures of Europe precisely because of its dynamic, synthetic nature, its ability to take the best, freshest, most dynamic pieces of the cultures of its constituent people and form a stream of new culture, both grounded in and yet wholly different from the earlier culture. To the degree which this synthesis enrichens and strengthens shared cultural norms, even more natural integration will occur. So stop squashing it already!

But to return to your remarks indicating that you don’t see this long-term trend, and that you believe that voluntary social groupings you don’t like equal segregation, this article by Lila Rajiva identifies the biggest obstacle to racial harmony - the state;

“We can call it segregation today, but I wonder what people segregated a century ago would think about that. Students clustered in groups of their own choosing are not terrified men and women fleeing dogs and police batons.

Actually, you don’t need to go back a century. You can find the same thing today in prisons, at non-violent demonstrations, wherever people are rounded up and snatched out of their houses. The victims are black, brown and white. And they’re not where they are because we don’t talk enough about race in this country. They’re there because we don’t talk enough about the state.”

You see, Mr. Holder, when it comes to race, the state has an extremely poor track record. The idea of a state functionary lecturing the entire population on the proper niceties of race relations seems to be to me, a bit, well, Rich.

16
Feb

The Importance Of Failure

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

A friend writes;

There’s this preacher in my town in Colorado here who was Mr. Always Spirited and Mr. Always Trying to Do Something Positive and he was the kind of guy who could always talk someone down from a ledge or who would always finish roofing the Habitat for Humanity House or whatever, and this weekend he blew his brains out.? If the smileys all snuff themselves, what does that mean for the grumps?

It’s sad, but anecdotally it does seem like many people who spend a lot of time and effort trying heroically to be  helpful end up with a terminal case of the blues.

I don’t know this person, and thankfully no one I have known well has suffered this malady, but it seems to me like at least some of these very helpful people are in part indulging in self-therapy, running apparently cheerily ahead of the reaper, until something trips them up.

This is by no means always fatal, but the consequences would seem to be serious enough to indulge in a bit of prophylactic melancholy, so that when one of the inevitable slings and arrows of outrageous fortune hits, it isn’t a mortal wound. In some ways, failure can act as a kind of inoculation, the old cliche being ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’.

Though I can’t recommend ‘vaccinating’ oneself by deliberately bringing misfortune down taking considered risks early in life almost guarantees a few serviceable failures. It isn’t the failures that work the magic, but what coping with failure teaches you. In incremental, but important ways, the skills you learn have survival value.

My own survival lessons include; flunking out of pre-med, losing at love, making a career move and finding myself alone and nearly broke in a strange city, asshole managers, brushes with the law, unbelievable working conditions, a couple of major disasters, marathon commutes, and myriad other indignities great and small, punctuated by bad relationships, boredom, and loneliness.

(Lest you think my life has been nothing but doom and gloom, I have spent less than 0.1% of my life even thinking about my personal failures, including this article. I’m deleriously happy now.)

In fact, the freedom to fail, and the imperative for letting failures occur could not be more timely than in the case of the financial and economic calamity we are facing right now. Failure in the cases at hand needs to happen, it should happen, it is not being permitted to happen, but in the end, after lots of painful, harmful, and completely necessary prolongation by government, I am convinced, it will happen anyway.

Dealing with each of these things taught me things about the corrective value of failure, the importance of family, and the support of good friends. I could easily have avoided failure by avoiding the risks. I could have accepted the failures as some divine judgement on my character, indicating to me that maybe I ought to tightly circumscribe my career and personal ambitions. Instead, I learned, I adapted, I sought out new directions, and I have prospered. Taking those risks has also taken me amazing places, shown me astonishing things, introduced me to incredible people, and enrichened my world beyond description.

And I’m still a realist. The world could go completely egg-shaped for me again one day. But I’ll be ready.

14
Feb

The Next Bubble - Government Bonds

Which One Goes Next?

Which One Goes Next?

There seem to be a couple of likely candidates for the next bubble to pop, among them commercial real estate, with its heavy dependence on (collapsing) retail sales, and government bonds, which are are intimately tied to (ballooning)  government infrastructure spending.

The people I have talked to about commercial real estate (owners / investors) seem split on whether / when the commercial realty bubble will pop, or whether it will be a slow outgas followed by gradual recovery.

In contrast, no one  that I have heard or conversed with is optimistic about government bonds. Talking to a municipal bond trader the other day, I remarked ” the infrastructure spending in the proposed stimulus has got to be good news for your business, right?” He replied to the effect that no, most people in the bond business are very concerned that there is in actuality a growing bubble in government debt, which the stimulus bill has every chance of making much worse.

So, how do you short government bonds again?

(Image from philadelphia reflections, a monetarist’s blog, unfortunately)

11
Feb

A Grown-Up Perspective on Wal-Mart

Evil Wal-Mart Greeter Tries To Force People To Have A Nice Day

Evil Wal-Mart Greeter Tries To Force People To Have A Nice Day

Writer Charles Platt goes undercover at a Wal-Mart in Flagstaff, AZ and makes some pretty interesting observations;

Getting hired turned out to be a challenge. The personnel manager told me she had received more than 100 applications during that month alone, chasing just a handful of jobs. Thus the mystery deepened. If Wal-Mart was such an exploiter of the working poor, why were the working poor so eager to be exploited? And after they were hired, why did they seem so happy to be there? Anytime I shopped at the store, blue-clad Walmartians encouraged me to “Have a nice day” with the sincerity of the pope issuing a benediction.

On average, anyone walking into Wal-Mart is likely to spend more than $200,000 at the store during the rest of his life. Therefore, any clueless employee who alienates that customer will cost the store around a quarter-million dollars. “If we don’t remember that our customers are in charge,” our trainer warned us, “we turn into Kmart.” She made that sound like devolving into some lesser being - a toad, maybe, or an ameba.

Contrast this with the vague, inaccurate bile spilled on the wakeupwalmart site, owned by the UFCW;

This summer, Wal-Mart has organized mandatory meetings across the country, all with one purpose: to intimidate rank-and-file employees into voting Republican. The company’s workers have been forced to attend ideologically-charged, Wal-Mart-sponsored rants against Democrats, Barack Obama, and landmark legislation that would make it easier for workers to vote for or against representation.

Um, that would be the “Employee Free Choice Act“, a law that if passed Obama has indicated he would sign. This law would eliminate secret ballots for authorizing a union in a workplace and invite outright intimidation, coercion, manipulation, and force. “Free Choice” indeed - sign or else is more like it. What employer in his or her right mind wouldn’t try to convince his employees to oppose this?

(link from Citizen X, photo from some random anti-Wal-Mart site)

07
Feb

More On The Ethanol Scam

Biofuels - Killing Poor People Since 2005

Biofuels - Killing Poor People Since 2005

In these pages and elsewhere, here, and here, the LibertyGuys have repeatedly exposed the government’s ethanol scam for what it is - naked fascism disguised as “aid to family farms” and “energy independence”. As early as 2005, we were not only warning about the non-viability of even heavily-subsidized ethanol as an economic, less-polluting gasoline alternative, (dimwitted green fantasies / wishful thinking to the contrary) but were also early exponents of the view that the diversion of food crops and resources to fuel production could lead to a calamitous food emergency across poor subsistence cultures.

Counterpunch’s Robert Bryce exhaustively catalogs the failures of the ADM-Grace-Cargill grifting scheme in a new article.

This is the best quote, which drives our point about the diversion of food crops home;

“An April 8 internal report by the World Bank found that grain prices increased by 140 percent between January 2002 and February 2008.
“This increase was caused by a confluence of factors but the most important was the large increase in biofuels production in the U.S. and E.U. Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize [corn] stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate.” Robert Zoellick, president of the Bank, acknowledged those facts, saying that biofuels are “no doubt a significant contributor” to high food costs. And he said that “it is clearly the case that programs in Europe and the United States that have increased biofuel production have contributed to the added demand for food.”

07
Jan

Suddenly, Talk Of A Gaza Cease-Fire

On NPR today, I heard two examples of frantic backtracking on the Gaza atrocity. Condolezza Rice, in her best hurt little girl voice pleading for Israel to offer humanitarian aid to the “civilians” in the massive Israeli concentration camp, and a movement among Israelis to reverse the awful policy. Another author, Amos Oz, says that the only solution to the problem is the “two-state solution” (forgive me if this formulation draws uncomfortable parallels.)

This sudden sea change is an example of the truism that no matter how corrupt, undemocratic, or awful a government, it still rests upon the consent of the governed. It signifies an uncanny awareness that as a result of this unrighteous action, the very legitimacy of the Jewish state in Palestine has come under serious, widespread question and attack, and the elites there and in the US are in a fearful panic over what this might mean.

GOOD.

06
Jan

The Destruction Of Gaza - Obama’s First War, or Bush Valedictory?

Obama: "No Comment."

Obama: "No Comment."

Look through these photos (WARNING: The above photo is the LEAST bloody) and try to square them with all of the pro-Israel spin on this horrible piece of business in the major US media. You can’t. It’s cold-blooded mass murder, and the network bobble-heads are calling it “self-defense”. It is exactly analogous to responding to a prison riot with F-16s and cluster munitions.

We harbor no illusions - the Israelis are equipped, trained, and funded by the US, and they do nothing without the dictator’s say-so. So what do our current and future Duce have to say about this atrocity?

President Bush: “I understand Israel’s desire to protect itself,” Bush said in the Oval Office. “The situation now taking place in Gaza was caused by Hamas…Instead of caring about the people of Gaza, Hamas decided to use Gaza to launch rockets to kill innocent Israelis,” Bush said. “Israel’s obviously decided to protect herself and her people.”

Uh-huh. Funny, we don’t hear about the innocent Arabs (yes, Virginia, there are women and children in Gaza, despite what The Ministry Of Truth says)

Future President Obama: “There was no immediate comment on the Israeli air strikes on Gaza from Obama, who is vacationing with his family in Hawaii, or his staff.”

Clearly, Bush has decided to let the Israelis have their head, to attack Gaza when they have really wished to attack Iran.

And Obama’s tepid response indicates not only that he has no problem with this, but that perhaps he is allowing Bush to test the waters for steering America in a new foreign policy direction.

No, not a peaceful one, silly, but a policy where the US simply funds, equips, and trains the soldiers of other countries to do our dirty work. Hmm, I wonder where that’s been tried before?

05
Jan

Is Richardson Really So Corrupt?

Seems that Obama’s Dream Team is coming apart at the seams even before his innauguration. Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson is backing out of the Commerce slot due to the heat he is catching in his home state. But what could that possibly have to do with the duties of Commerce Secretary as stated in the US Code?

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The Secretary of Commerce shall have charge of the forecasting of weather, the issue of storm warnings, the display of weather and flood signals for the benefit of agriculture, commerce, and navigation, the gauging and reporting of rivers, the maintenance and operation of seacoast telegraph lines and the collection and transmission of marine intelligence for the benefit of commerce and navigation, the reporting of temperature and rain-fall conditions for the cotton interests, the display of frost and cold-wave signals, the distribution of meteorological information in the interests of agriculture and commerce, and the taking of such meteorological observations as may be necessary to establish and record the climatic conditions of the United States, or as are essential for the proper execution of the foregoing duties.

Snore. I can do that on my iPhone at any time day or night so my two cents says that we no longer need a Commerce Czar. Meanwhile, back to poor Bill. Is there a concern that he will use his vast power and budget to pick winners and losers? Not any worse than any of the past position holders such as Don Evans under Bush II.

At the direction of the President, Secretary Evans launched a government-wide Manufacturing Initiative. This is a major effort based on some 50 recommendations by industry to make manufacturers more competitive in world markets. Many of the recommendations are being put into effect, including: a new President’s Manufacturing Council; a new Commerce assistant secretary for manufacturing; a get-tough Unfair Trade Practices Task Force; a tax simplification study by the Treasury Department; and a comprehensive regulatory review by the President’s Office of Management and Budget.

Maintaining U.S. leadership in high-tech industries also is a focal point for Secretary Evans. He directed efforts to redefine government’s role in research in order to spur the development of more cutting-edge technologies; to promote the expansion of E-commerce and telecommunications with as little government intervention as possible; and to improve the Department’s economic data collection and distribution capabilities.

01
Jan

“Orderly” vs “Catastrophic”

I’m watching some great Peter Schiff bits from CNN, CNBS, Bloomberg, etc and they all seem to be 5 or 6 little heads on a screen ganging up on Pete’s little head in the corner. Every one to a person is trying to convince us that the only solution to a “catastrophic” hit to the economy is an “orderly” march toward Soviet-style statism. Sickening.

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Spoiler Alert: The Soviet union was a dismal failure from start to finish.

30
Dec

He’s Still a Politician But …

… then again, a broken clock is right twice a day. Democrat Republican senator from Kentucky and Major League Hall of Famer Jim Bunning was recently uninvited to the Detroit sports card show after voting ‘no’ to an auto industry bailout.

PLAYING FIELD TO POLITICS

The Gibraltar Trade Center has canceled an appearance by former Detroit Tigers pitcher Jim Bunning at a weekend sports card show after the Kentucky congressman voted against the loan package Thursday night to help Detroit’s auto companies.

Bunning is a former Hall of Famer who was a popular draw at the shows. He was set to sell autographs this weekend at the center on Eureka Road in Taylor….

Robert Koester said his father’s decision to drop Bunning came within 20 minutes of discovering how he voted on the bailout package.