Endnotes

Wrote three things today

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 17:12:18 -0500

In which I point out that commitment to shrinking the size of the safety net is a matter of broad Washington consensus, not just Republican ideology.

In which I talk about the shrinking of the regulatory/administrative state as well.

And then there’s the private life of power, alive and well in the Chicago education system.

Bonus round: Two excellent and thoughtful responses from Elias Isquith and Jamelle Bouie. Already responded to Elias above—needless to say Jamelle and I disagree about some things, which I might address in more detail later on.

No comment.

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 15:57:29 -0500

No comment.

Patricia Barber is easily my favorite contemporary jazz singer:...

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 11:31:03 -0500

Patricia Barber is easily my favorite contemporary jazz singer: witty, melancholy, and enigmatic.

Wrote some stuff today

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:53:23 -0500

1.) Labor leaders are feeling positive about last night’s fiscal cliff deal, but they’re worried about the looming debt ceiling and sequestration battles.

They’ve managed to delay—but not truly rout—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts.

2.) Liberals should be calling for a radical expansion of the social safety net, not just trying to prevent cuts.

Drawing on the Frase-Sunkara plan for inspiration.

Wednesday Latvia Blogging

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:32:00 -0500

I spent a bit of this afternoon reading up a bit on Latvian macroeconomics, as one does. It all started when the New York Times ran a piece suggesting that austerity had actually worked in the little Baltic republic. But you’ll notice that the author of the piece seems to be hiding his whole hand here. According to him, this is the recent economic history of Latvia:

Global economic collapse.
Austerity.
?????
Economic growth!
But people are still poor.
Ashen faced old woman clad in a babushka sighs heavily and shrugs. But what can you do.

Krugman responds, writing: “Even in Keynesian models, a small open economy can, in the long run, restore full employment through deflation and internal devaluation; the point, however, is that it involves many years of suffering — in the long run we are all dead.” But I think we should also note what Latvia got in return for the austerity measures: a bailout amounting to $10.3 billion, or 38% of the country’s GDP.

So if there’s a lesson, it could be that austerity will totally work in the United States if the Troika gives us $5.74 trillion. But I don’t think that will happen, do you?

Now please enjoy Latvia’s official Eurovision 2000 entry:

Happy New Year - Todd Snider

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 15:26:00 -0500

Happy New Year - Todd Snider

On the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 15:06:03 -0500

Here. Nothing particularly new or insightful for those who are already familiar with the privacy issues, but hopefully it’s a decent primer for those who didn’t already know about the Senate’s bipartisan endorsement of warrantless wiretapping.

Life after 'right-to-work'

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:12:15 -0500

Nevada has been a right-to-work state since the early ’60s, but Culinary Workers Local 226 seems to have been doing alright. Another argument for the value and resilience of social movement unionism.

"Furthermore, all correspondence referring to [the final solution] was subject to rigorous..."

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 09:14:00 -0500

“

Furthermore, all correspondence referring to [the final solution] was subject to rigorous “language rules,” and, except in the reports from the Einsatzgruppen, it is rare to find documents in which such bald words as “extermination,” “liquidation,” or “killing” occur. The prescribed code words for killing were “final solution,” “evacuation” (Aussiedlung), and “special treatment” (Sonderbehandlung).

[…]

For whatever other reasons the language rules may have been devised, they proved of enormous help in the maintenance of order and sanity in the various widely diversified services whose cooperations was essential in this matter. Moreover, the very term “language rule” (Sprachregelung) was itself a code name; it meant what in ordinary language would be called a lie.

[…]

Eichmann’s great susceptibility to catch words and stock phrases, combined with his incapacity for ordinary speech, made him, of course, an ideal subject for “language rules.”

”

- Currently reading Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem.

The year in labor

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 15:03:37 -0500

I wrote a brief recap of what happened to organized labor in 2012. The short version: It’s mostly hopeless, but not totally hopeless.

Notably, the good news for labor mostly occurred within “non-traditional”* unions or campaigns. I’ve written quite a fair amount about those small but meaningful successes, so here’s a truncated list if you want to read more:

‘We’re going to fight for what’s right for the kids’: Chicago teachers on why they’re striking

Phoenix Rising: How one union is changing Arizona’s politics

After the strike, fast food workers expect support to grow

After Black Friday, anti-Walmart campaign goes international

And if you’re looking for the thematic through-line, here’s an analysis of why all of this is happening now:

New York’s fast food workers strike. Why now?

Lastly, though it doesn’t quite fit into the list of articles above, I can’t resist plugging this investigative report I did from Michigan shortly after the state’s governor signed its new “right-to-work” legislation:

Right-wingers Koch, ALEC, pushed Michigan ‘right-to-work’ laws

2012 was a pivotal year. For better or worse, 2013 won’t exactly be boring, either.

*Scare quotes around “non-traditional” because what we now think of as “traditional” unionism is largely a product of the post-war status quo and the National Labor Relations Act, whereas “non-traditional” labor actions are often something of a throwback to the unionism style of the 1890s/1930s.

Be honest with yourself. You knew this was coming. (Merry...

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 13:17:49 -0500

Be honest with yourself. You knew this was coming. (Merry Christmas.)

Here’s a slightly less tongue-in-cheek Christmas music...

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 13:28:15 -0500

Here’s a slightly less tongue-in-cheek Christmas music selection, from the baroque composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. Sonata no. 3, “The Nativity,” from his 15 Mystery Sonatas.

I recommend checking out all 15 if you get the chance. As a non-religious person, listening to these sonatas helps bring me closer to what I think must be the characteristic religious experience: tranquility combined with a sort of paradoxical intensity of feeling.

Merry Christmas!

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 11:01:00 -0500

Merry Christmas!

"...the growing role that education plays in preserving class divisions."

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 14:44:04 -0500

The other side to this story is the campus-level resistance to growing tuition fees and debt burdens. The pushback is happening all over the world—Montreal, the UK, Latin America, California, and so on—but the most recent local example was the Cooper Union occupation in New York (which I covered for MSNBC, a few days before it fizzled out).

What the New York Times article tells you, more vividly than anything else I’ve read, is why those anti-tuition hike protests are happening. Read it. Or, if you’re pressed for time, you can just look at the data.

Endnote: Laissez-faire was planned

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 12:06:00 -0500

Needless to say, this argument doesn’t apply solely to gun control, or even solely to criminal justice issues. There’s no political concern that’s purely a “criminal justice issue,” a “social issue,” an “economic issue,” etc.—it’s all politics, it’s all society. And the not-so-hidden authoritarianism of the minimal state reveals itself in all kinds of right-wing projects.

Take market utopianism. To the market utopian, “freedom” means a combination of Hobbesian negative liberty and consumer choice. The state inherently restricts our freedom because the state interferes. Furthermore, because the state is a monopoly, it must prevent citizens (by which I mean consumers) from choosing between different competitive offers.

The market is the opposite of the state. Market competition means more consumer choice, and therefore more freedom. And because we’ve defined freedom as liberty from state interference, the very idea of unfreedom within a non-state institution becomes logically absurd. As long as there are competitors to choose from, we are free.

The problem is that the more freedom of this type you want to give people, the more you’re forced to coerce them in all kinds of unpleasant ways. Collective action, state redistributivism, and irrational market behavior all undermine the wonderfully free, wonderfully frictionless system which market utopians are trying to build. After a certain point, the only way to bring people to freedom is if the night-watchman frog-marches them there at gunpoint.

This is what Karl Polanyi meant when he wrote that “laissez-faire was planned.” You can find all sorts of real-world examples out there, but the most recent one which comes to mind is Michigan’s transformation into a right-to-work state. To Governor Rick Snyder and his political allies, right-to-work is really “freedom to work”: It prevents mandatory enrollment in a collective body, allowing the consumer greater choice about what he does with his money.

But note that Snyder extended this freedom in what seems like a paradoxically undemocratic manner: It was rushed through the legislature with practically no public debate, and some of the right-to-work legislation was even specifically crafted so that it could not be overturned by popular referendum. Even on explicitly libertarian grounds, the freedom-value of the legislation seems kind of dubious, as it bans private employers and private associations from entering into certain types of contracts.

But of course, that’s the point. Market freedom—whether it means the freedom to not pay dues or the freedom to purchase assault rifles—is an ideal that must preserved at the expense of any more robust conception of liberty. Laissez faire was planned. The night-watchman’s job is to see that plan carried through.

wonderserv: “We’re in the universe and the universe is in us.”...

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 08:33:37 -0400

wonderserv:

“We’re in the universe and the universe is in us.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Democrats, understandably, want to keep winning more seats, and so the likeliest outcome is a..."

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 13:05:48 -0400

“Democrats, understandably, want to keep winning more seats, and so the likeliest outcome is a continuation of a trend we’ve seen for the past couple of decades: the Democratic Party’s gradual rightward drift on economic policy.”

- Why we shouldn’t expect Obama to think big on jobs - Lean Forward

My first piece of real commentary/analysis for Lean Forward.

"It’s amazing that it’s considered revolutionary to wear my hair the way it grows out of..."

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 13:18:58 -0400

“It’s amazing that it’s considered revolutionary to wear my hair the way it grows out of my head.”

- Melissa Harris-Perry and guests on ‘why black hair matters’ - Lean Forward

"When Senator John McCain is the only one in the national debate bringing up Bradley Manning’s..."

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 10:29:28 -0400

“When Senator John McCain is the only one in the national debate bringing up Bradley Manning’s treatment, we are at this weird, bizarre moment.”

- Hastings: ‘There’s a bipartisan consensus behind this national security state’ - Lean Forward

Matthews: "It's time for the president to go big" with a bigger jobs bill - Lean Forward

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 18:48:38 -0400

Matthews: "It's time for the president to go big" with a bigger jobs bill - Lean Forward:

This is what I meant earlier when I said that Romney was Even More Austerity candidate.