Find another video of the same scene here.

Good coverage at the Davis Enterprise.

A useful primer on the legalities of pepper spray and excessive force. Here’s the money quote (this is from Vineyard v. Wilson and Stanfield, but the primer reviews several cases, including the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals case Headwaters v. County of Humboldt):

“To balance the necessity of the use of force used against the arrestee’s constitutional rights, a court must evaluate several factors, including ‘the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.’” The court continued: “In determining if the force was reasonable, courts must examine (1) the need for the application of force, (2) the relationship between the need and the amount of force used, and (3) the extent of the injury inflicted.” Graham dictates unambiguously that the force used by a police officer in carrying out an arrest must be reasonably proportionate to the need for that force, which is measured by the severity of the crime, the danger to the officer, and the risk of flight.”

And here’s a letter from a assistant professor of English at UC Davis, calling for the chancellor’s resignation (brave for a junior faculty member):

Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi

18 November 2011

Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi

Linda P.B. Katehi,

I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, and I teach in the Program in Critical Theory and in Science & Technology Studies. I have a strong record of research, teaching, and service. I am currently a Board Member of the Davis Faculty Association. I have also taken an active role in supporting the student movement to defend public education on our campus and throughout the UC system. In a word: I am the sort of young faculty member, like many of my colleagues, this campus needs. I am an asset to the University of California at Davis.

You are not.

I write to you and to my colleagues for three reasons:

1) to express my outrage at the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest on the UC Davis campus today

2) to hold you accountable for this police brutality

3) to demand your immediate resignation

Today you ordered police onto our campus to clear student protesters from the quad. These were protesters who participated in a rally speaking out against tuition increases and police brutality on UC campuses on Tuesday—a rally that I organized, and which was endorsed by the Davis Faculty Association. These students attended that rally in response to a call for solidarity from students and faculty who were bludgeoned with batons, hospitalized, and arrested at UC Berkeley last week. In the highest tradition of non-violent civil disobedience, those protesters had linked arms and held their ground in defense of tents they set up beside Sproul Hall. In a gesture of solidarity with those students and faculty, and in solidarity with the national Occupy movement, students at UC Davis set up tents on the main quad. When you ordered police outfitted with riot helmets, brandishing batons and teargas guns to remove their tents today, those students sat down on the ground in a circle and linked arms to protect them.

What happened next?

Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.

What happened next?

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

This is what happened. You are responsible for it.

You are responsible for it because this is what happens when UC Chancellors order police onto our campuses to disperse peaceful protesters through the use of force: students get hurt. Faculty get hurt. One of the most inspiring things (inspiring for those of us who care about students who assert their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly) about the demonstration in Berkeley on November 9 is that UC Berkeley faculty stood together with students, their arms linked together. Associate Professor of English Celeste Langan was grabbed by her hair, thrown on the ground, and arrested. Associate Professor Geoffrey O’Brien was injured by baton blows. Professor Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, was also struck with a baton. These faculty stood together with students in solidarity, and they too were beaten and arrested by the police. In writing this letter, I stand together with those faculty and with the students they supported.

One week after this happened at UC Berkeley, you ordered police to clear tents from the quad at UC Davis. When students responded in the same way—linking arms and holding their ground—police also responded in the same way: with violent force. The fact is: the administration of UC campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize students and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly. Many people know this. Many more people are learning it very quickly.

You are responsible for the police violence directed against students on the UC Davis quad on November 18, 2011. As I said, I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation on these grounds.

On Wednesday November 16, you issued a letter by email to the campus community. In this letter, you discussed a hate crime which occurred at UC Davis on Sunday November 13. In this letter, you express concern about the safety of our students. You write, “it is particularly disturbing that such an act of intolerance should occur at a time when the campus community is working to create a safe and inviting space for all our students.” You write, “while these are turbulent economic times, as a campus community, we must all be committed to a safe, welcoming environment that advances our efforts to diversity and excellence at UC Davis.”

I will leave it to my colleagues and every reader of this letter to decide what poses a greater threat to “a safe and inviting space for all our students” or “a safe, welcoming environment” at UC Davis: 1) Setting up tents on the quad in solidarity with faculty and students brutalized by police at UC Berkeley? or 2) Sending in riot police to disperse students with batons, pepper-spray, and tear-gas guns, while those students sit peacefully on the ground with their arms linked? Is this what you have in mind when you refer to creating “a safe and inviting space?” Is this what you have in mind when you express commitment to “a safe, welcoming environment?”

I am writing to tell you in no uncertain terms that there must be space for protest on our campus. There must be space for political dissent on our campus. There must be space for civil disobedience on our campus. There must be space for students to assert their right to decide on the form of their protest, their dissent, and their civil disobedience—including the simple act of setting up tents in solidarity with other students who have done so. There must be space for protest and dissent, especially, when the object of protest and dissent is police brutality itself. You may not order police to forcefully disperse student protesters peacefully protesting police brutality. You may not do so. It is not an option available to you as the Chancellor of a UC campus. That is why I am calling for your immediate resignation.

Your words express concern for the safety of our students. Your actions express no concern whatsoever for the safety of our students. I deduce from this discrepancy that you are not, in fact, concerned about the safety of our students. Your actions directly threaten the safety of our students. And I want you to know that this is clear. It is clear to anyone who reads your campus emails concerning our “Principles of Community” and who also takes the time to inform themselves about your actions. You should bear in mind that when you send emails to the UC Davis community, you address a body of faculty and students who are well trained to see through rhetoric that evinces care for students while implicitly threatening them. I see through your rhetoric very clearly. You also write to a campus community that knows how to speak truth to power. That is what I am doing.

I call for your resignation because you are unfit to do your job. You are unfit to ensure the safety of students at UC Davis. In fact: you are the primary threat to the safety of students at UC Davis. As such, I call upon you to resign immediately.

Sincerely,

Nathan Brown
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Program in Critical Theory
University of California at Davis

(2) Funny Video of Nov. 19th Actions in NYC: You have probably heard about the ridiculous police response to the inspiring day of actions in NYC.  Things were pretty exciting (though on a much smaller scale) in Boston.  My sister has been visiting from West Virginia, and we emerged from the South Station T exit into Dewey Square (where the #OccupyBoston encampment is) just as the solidarity march for #OWS NYC was arriving back at the square, with maybe a thousand marchers, who sang “Happy Birthday” for the two-month anniversary of the movement.  After taking a tour of the encampment, we managed to hear a great talk by left economist Rick Wolff–I’ll post the video of that talk once our comrades from the Zinn Memorial Lecture Series make it available.  Meanwhile, enjoy this funny video celebrating #OWS’s 11/17 day of action and the NYPD:

the raid on zuccotti park from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

Here’s the original link.

(3) Greenway Board Betrays #OccupyBoston. The board of the Greenway Conservancy sent this letter to the mayor of Boston:

(Odors? Really? And the farmers market seemed to get along great with the protesters, from what I could see.) But luckily some great folks from the Legal Working Group of #OccupyBoston had the foresight to ask a court to issue an injunction preventing the city from evicting us, which they did. Here’s the Boston Globe piece about it; download a pdf of the injunction itself here.

(4) Matt Taibbi Comes Around. Here’s a great article by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone that I keep forgetting to post. The main point I liked was his explanation of the idea, which we’ve discussed here, that Occupy “prefigures” a better society:

There was a lot of snickering in media circles, even by me, when I heard the protesters talking about how Liberty Square was offering a model for a new society, with free food and health care and so on. Obviously, a bunch of kids taking donations and giving away free food is not a long-term model for a new economic system.

But now, I get it. People want to go someplace for at least five minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell you something. It may not be a real model for anything, but it’s at least a place where people are free to dream of some other way for human beings to get along, beyond auctioned “democracy,” tyrannical commerce and the bottom line.

But read the whole thing–it’s great.

(5) Glenn Greenwald on Apparent Attempt to Co-opt #OWS for Obama. I would like to hear more about this: Glenn Greenwald on SEIU president Mary Kay Henry apparently attempting to co-opt #OWS for Obama’s re-election (SEIU has already endorsed him). (Interestingly, she was arrested in NYC on Nov. 17th, I heard.) It definitely sounds creepy and Greenwald is right that it seems likely to backfire.

That’s it for now.

–Chris Sturr

Economists to Shepherd Greece and Italy

Mike Epitropoulos | November 11, 2011

The mainstream press around the world is jubilantly covering the change in leadership in both Greece and Italy, as the people in those countries and the other “PIIGS” continue to have harsh austerity measures imposed upon them. In Greece, the new Prime Minister is Loukas Papademos, a former vice-president of the European Central Bank (ECB), former Governor of the Bank of Greece and a participant in the Trilateral Commission. In Italy, it is economist and former European commissioner, Mario Monti, who replaces Silvio Berlusconi as Prime Minister.

In both cases, the Troika—the EU, the ECB and the IMF—have been putting heavy pressure on these already-conservative governments to step up the speed and severity of cuts in social spending, cuts in the public sector and wages, and of course privatizations. The EU’s history of “economics first, politics second’ is on display once again.

Democracy (of any sort) is under overt attack.

In Greece, the ball started rolling when PASOK Prime Minister, George A. Papandreou shocked the political world by calling for a national referendum on the deal that was agreed to with the Troika on October 26th that calmed international financial markets, along with a vote of confidence for his government. Some in the West were impressed by his ‘democratic’ impulse, but anyone remotely familiar with Greece knows that what we witnessed was a “treek” (trick)! The immediate questions in such instances have to be, “what are the motives for, consequences of and reactions to the referendum?”

Up until that point, all of the opposition parties in the Greek parliament were opposed to the referendum and were calling for elections. The referendum was nixed within a day. But the call for a referendum, exposed New Democracy (ND), the conservative branch of Greece’s two-party duopoly (PASOK being the other ‘democratic’ party). ND’s leader, Antonis Samaras, came out and called for a “transitional government” to approve the October 26th agreement—thereby binding Greece legally and politically to Troika austerity—and then to hold general elections.

All of this is an “end around” the people. Greeks have been in the streets consistently since May, mirroring Spain’s Indignados, and Italian protestors, as precursors to our own OWS movement.

Legendary Greek singer/songwriter, Mikis Theodorakis, wondered aloud whether the “treek” of the referendum and the vote of confidence by Papandreou was a sign that the Prime Minister had totally lost it, or whether this represented action by ‘international consultants’ whose sole aim is to disable any popular, democratic impulse in Greece and seal the deal for the banks and the Troika.
The new Greek Prime Minister, Loukas Papademos, has absolutely no popular, political base. Contrary to the glowing reports by Western and financial press, this “unity government” is not at all representative of the spirit of the Greek people, even if one would only consider mainstream political polling numbers. The Papademos government is comprised of the Greek two-party duopoly—PASOK and ND—and the far-Right nationalists of George Karatzaferis, LAOS. They all vehemently oppose any sort of popular participation in making any decisions regarding the austerity measures and the October 26th agreement and the next national budget.

The Greek media continues to present the news in the spirit of Margaret Thatcher’s notion of “There is no alternative”—T.I.N.A. As they present the new Papademos cabinet, they go to their reporters in Brussels, New York, and Washington, where they report how happy the Euro-technocrats, Wall Street investors and IMF specialists are. From Greece, they interview the presidents of the Federation of Hellenic Enterprises (SEB), the National Confederation of Greek Commerce (ESEE), and the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry (EBEA). All of this, representing the total approval of the elite—“the 1%” if you will! And at the same time, the total disregard for the people—who, for the most part, aren’t responsible for the mess they are in.

The Troika—the EU, the ECB, and the IMF—are openly employing the two-party duopoly in hijacking Greece with the neo-Nazis in what is becoming a tragedy of democracy. They are framing any and all popular opposition to their decisions, rule, and legitimacy as ‘undemocratic’ by labeling this a “time for national unity”. You are either “with them, or against them”— does that ring a bell?
The short-term aims are crystal clear: Austerity, Privatization, and Dismantling of the Greek welfare state. This is a modern version of IMF conditionality, including crackdowns on political opposition, albeit in new, finessed ways.

What is really funny is that mainstream economists and experts still say that even implementing all of these harsh measures, with the 50% haircut, won’t pull Greece out of debt for years to come.
After what we have been living through, how and why should we be mesmerized and happy to have economists, bankers and technocrats coming to power? These are precisely the architects of the current global capitalist crisis. They should be put in their proper place—many even in jail.

How will the Papademos administration handle protestors in Syntagma Square? Many friends, family, and colleagues in Greece are wondering and worried how the upcoming November 17th remembrance of the uprising against the military Junta in 1974 will be handled. Should we really expect average Greeks to suddenly embrace an essentially imposed government?

It is incumbent on us all to pay close attention to how the new banker-technocrats in Greece (Papademos) and Italy (Monti) will handle both their economic and political rule.

Get the Hint

(1)  Seniors: Hat-tip to regular blog reader TM for alerting us to an op-ed by WashPo economics blah-blah-er Robert Samuelson (no relation to Nobel prize winning economist Paul Samuelson), who seems to have it in for Social Security.  Samuelson tells us that The Elderly Are Better Off Than Advertised. See, I knew that someone besides union public servants like teachers and social workers was responsible for budget deficits!  It turns out it’s the greedy, wealthy elderly.

As part of his argument for means-testing Social Security and Medicare, Samuelson claims that “many Americans still accept the outdated and propagandistic notion that old age automatically impoverishes people.”  As evidence that the elderly are well off, he points to a study that concludes overall that “Most older people are enjoying greater prosperity than any previous generation.”  But the reason that most older people are better off is because of Social Security and Medicare!  Consider this statistic from the study:  “The proportion of elderly living in the ‘high income’ group–defined as four times the poverty line, or almost $52,000 for a couple in 2009–rose from 18.4 percent in 1980 to 30.6 percent in 2007.”  I wonder what Samuelson makes that he thinks it’s a great achievement that just over 30% of the elderly live on $52K for a couple.  Put it another way:  almost 70% of the elderly live on less than $52K for a couple (and I’m guessing a lot of them live on considerably less than that).

Of course the reason that defenders of Social Security and Medicare want to keep it from being means-tested is to keep it universalistic, and keep it from being the kind of welfare-style program that leads “taxpayers” to resent paying for other people’s benefits.  But maybe that’s exactly why people like Samuelson want means-testing–to prepare for the further erosion of these programs.

(2) Students: Catherine Rampell is becoming one of our favorite Times reporters.  Today’s paper has a nice piece by her, Many With New College Degree Find the Job Market Humbling, about the bad situation for recent college graduates (nice of the Times to cover this right as they are celebrating their graduation).  The data are disturbing; on top of 22.4% of members of the class of 2009 who are unemployed, 22% are working in jobs that do not require a college degree.  And members of that latter group are displacing workers without college degrees who would otherwise be able to hold those positions. Add to this the huge burden of student-loan debt, and the fact that crappy jobs and low pay at the beginning reverberate throughout one’s career, and it’s a rough situation.  This provides a nice follow-up to an article that D&S intern Katherine Faherty wrote for our Jan/Feb 2010 issue, “A Dismal Time to Graduate: What the recession means to the class of 2009, including me.” (Sorry, the article is not online–drop us a line and we’ll send you a pdf.) I’m happy to report that last I heard Katherine was among the 55.6% of the class of 2009 who are employed at jobs requiring a college degree.

(3) Who “Creates Jobs”: One of the right-wing arguments that irks me most is the notion that we shouldn’t overburden the rich with taxes (or otherwise dislike the rich or blame them for social ills) because the rich “create jobs.”  Dave Johnson has a nice response to this at the Campaign for America’s Future:  Actually, the Rich Don’t Create Jobs, We Do. Hat-tip to blog reader and D&S subscriber Barry B.

–Chris Sturr

Here’s the fake press release announcing that GE would repay its $3.2bn tax refund.

Here’s the AP story falling for the hoax.

Here’s the USAToday story falling for the hoax.

(I’m not sure how long these will stay posted.)

And here’s Business Insider story revealing it as a hoax.

Here’s the press release, which is brilliant:

13 April 2011

GE Responds to Public Outcry – Will Donate Entire $3.2 Billion Tax Refund to Help Offset Cuts and Save American Jobs

Fairfield, CT, 13^th April, 2011– GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt has informed the Obama administration that the company will be gifting its entire 2010 tax refund, worth $3.2 Billion, to the US Treasury on April 18, Tax Day, and will furthermore adopt a host of new policies that secure its position as a leader in corporate social responsibility.

“We want the public to know that we’ve heard them, and that we know many Americans are going through tough times,” said GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt. “GE will therefore give our 2010 tax refund back to the public and allow the public to decide how to spend it.”

Immelt acknowledged no wrongdoing. “All seven of our foreign tax havens are entirely legal,” Immelt noted. “But Americans have made it clear that they deplore laws that enable tax avoidance. While we owe it to our shareholders to use every legal loophole to maximize returns – we also owe something to the American people. We didn’t write the laws that let us legally avoid paying taxes. Congress did. But we benefit from those laws, and now we’d like to share those benefits. We are proud to be giving something back to America, and we are proud to set an example for all industry to follow.”

Over the coming weeks, GE will conduct a nationwide survey to determine how the company’s $3.2 billion returned refund is to be allocated. The survey will be conducted both online and offline, and will permit the public to weigh in on which of the recently-enacted budget cuts they would like to see reversed.

In tandem with the gift, the company is also announcing a host of new policies to restore public faith in the GE brand, including a commitment to keep American jobs in America, and to create one U.S. job for each new job created abroad. The ambitious plan will overhaul accounting systems to allow public transparency and phase out the use of tax havens in five years. “Given my recent appointment as President Obama’s Chairman of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, it is no longer appropriate for GE to engage in practices that, whether by fact or perception, are at odds with the greater good of the nation,” Immelt said.

Immelt outlined several concrete steps he would take to push for modernized tax policies that reflect the realities of the global economy. “I will personally ask President Obama to work with Congress to require country-by-country reporting by multi-national corporations of the sales made, profits earned and taxes paid in every jurisdiction where an entity operates. Instead of moving money via “transfer pricing,” corporations ought to pay taxes in the jurisdictions where profits are actually made. If Congress is able to establish standard industry-wide solutions, GE will close our tax haven operations abroad, including our subsidiaries in Bermuda, Singapore and Luxembourg.”

Further details on GE’s new policy will be released in the coming weeks.

About GE
GE (NYSE: GE) is an advanced technology, services and finance company taking on the world’s toughest challenges. Dedicated to innovation in energy, health, transportation and infrastructure, GE operates in more than 100 countries and employs about 300,000 people worldwide. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.ge.com.

Total Recall

(1) Vegan Protest Fuel: Today’s syllogism: “All Wisconsinites may be cheeseheads,
but not all Wisconsinites eat cheese,” therefore, vegan demonstrators need an alternative to the pizzas from Ian’s Pizza that so many people have thoughtfully donated to the efforts in Madison.  Our friend Hillary Rettig is one of the people behind the Vegan Protest Fuel effort;  to donate or find out more, visit their website or Facebook page; here is the press release:

Success of “Ian’s Pizza” Donations
Spurs Creation of “Vegan Protest Fuel” Program

“All Wisconsinites may be cheeseheads,
but not all Wisconsinites eat cheese,” says one protester.

3/7/2011 – For Immediate Release

Contacts:
Hillary Rettig (Boston, MA), 781-500-9942, hillaryrettig@yahoo.com

Global donations of Ian’s Pizza pizza has kept many of Wisconsin’s
Capitol protesters nourished, but one group was feeling left out – the
vegan and vegetarian community. The vegetarians don’t eat meat, of
course, and many don’t eat cheese. The vegans eat neither.

Meanwhile, Boston, MA, resident (and vegan) Hillary Rettig was avidly
following the protests but wondering about those same vegans and
vegetarian protesters. Inspired by the Ian’s Pizza story, she contacted
Madison-based protester and vegan Dan Nordstrom and suggested a similar
donation program featuring vegan food. “It made sense,” says Nordstrom.
“All Wisconsinites may be cheeseheads, but not all Wisconsinites eat
cheese.”

Members of the local vegan and vegetarian community immediately
embraced the idea. Simply Vegan, a campaign of Madison based Alliance
for Animals provided a temporary Paypal account, and Madison-based
vegetarian restaurant The Green Owl Cafe agreed to not only fulfill the
orders, but provide discounts, deliveries and donations. Union Cab
donated transportation, and ACE Hardware provided discounted cups and
utensils.

With those elements in place, Nordstrom and Rettig then created a
Facebook page about the program, dubbed “Vegan Protest Fuel,” and got
the word out. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Vegan Protest Fuel
collected $840 in donations from supporters in eleven states, including
Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, South Dakota, and Alaska, and was
able to provide hundreds of protesters with cruelty-free sandwiches and
soups.

Along with feeding hungry vegans and vegetarians, the activists fed
non-vegetarian protesters in hopes that many non-vegetarian protesters
will experience for themselves how delicious and sustaining vegan food
can be.

Rettig, author of a self-help book for activists entitled The Lifelong
Activist, said she was thrilled to be helping Wisconsinites, whom she
called “heroes.” “Helping organize this program is such a small thing to
do for people who are on the front line fighting for all of our
freedoms.”

(2) The Serfs of Arkansas: The latest post on the Vegan Protest Fuel page, entitled Veganism + Economic Justice, focuses on the horrible working conditions at meatpacking plants and slaughterhouses.  Indeed.  Today D&S collective member Bryan Snyder alerted us to a new American Prospect article by Monica Potts, The Serfs of Arkansas, about immigrant workers raising chickens for Tyson in Arkansas as “21st-century sharecroppers”.

(3) The Times Ignores the Left, Again: In January we reported here about how, in the wake of the Tucson shootings, New York Times political analyst Matt Bai called socialism an “enemy,” alongside totalitarianism, against which Americans would be justified in taking up arms. (This was in an analysis piece that was supposedly chiding Sarah Palin and others on the right for incendiary language!)

Today Times economic analyst David Leonhardt, whom I like a whole lot better than Bai, had an Economix blog post that didn’t implicitly advocate armed resistance against leftists, but did eradicate them in its own way.  He did so via the usual mainstream-media conflation of “liberals” with “the left,” as if there were no one to the left of liberals.  Commenting on blog posts at Marginal Revolution (one on the blind-spots of left-wing economists, and one on the blind-spots of right-wing economists), and on a liberal response to the first list, Leonhardt suggests that the left (“liberal”) economists are less likely to share the blind-spots of rank-and-file liberals, whereas right (“conservative”) economists are likely to share the blind-spots of rank-and-file conservatives.

Now I appreciate that Leonhardt is siding with the liberals here, insofar as he’s suggesting that conservative economists tend to be ideologues whereas liberal economists can escape the ideological blinders of their side of the spectrum.

But we might ask: what spectrum?  In one sense, Leonhardt is showing how narrow the spectrum is in the discipline of economics.  In another sense, by conflating “liberals” and “the left,” he’s making it seem as if the only way to disagree with, or have views more subtle or nuanced than, liberal ideology is to be more conservative.  Here’s the note I wrote him:

Re: your latest Economix post (Economic Blind Spots, Left and Right):

I found the post as confusing as I find any political discussion that conflates “liberals” with “the left” (when lots of left economists consider themselves left of liberal, and “liberal” anywhere else in the world besides the United States means free-market and pro-capitalist).

In this case, that conflation reveals a moderate bias–the conviction that the truth must lie somewhere in the middle of the liberal/conservative spectrum. Here is your explanation of the fact that “liberal”/”left-wing” economists don’t share the blind spots of many “liberal”/”left-wing” non-economists, where as conservative economists tend to share conservative blind spots:  “The difference, I think, is that conservative economists’ blind spots overlap more with general conservative blind spots than is the case for liberal economists and liberal blind spots. That’s not a value judgment so much as an observation: liberal economists tend to be more economically conservative than average liberals.”

You assume that if “liberal” economists disagree with “liberal” biases, that must mean they tend to be more conservative.  I think that may be the case for truly liberal economists (on the left end of the pro-capitalist spectrum), which is to say that much of the economics profession is really conservative, or to put it another way, there is not much to distinguish the conservatives from the liberals. But other non-conservative economists–the true left economists–disagree with liberal orthodoxy because they are to its left.  You seem to assume that to take a more nuanced view of these questions (about the value of education, the decline of manufacturing, the consequences of economic growth, etc.) than the average liberal does is to take a more conservative view, but it could equally be the case that the nuanced (and accurate) view could be left of liberal.

If you conflate “left” and “liberal,” though, you can’t even entertain that possibility.

I wish I had more time to look at the particular issues on the “liberal” list, but just by scanning the list, I am sure that the left economists who write for D&S have views more nuanced than many of the “mistaken” or “blind-spot” views on the list, while they are hardly to the right of them!  Just to give one example: on the loss of manufacturing jobs, Arthur MacEwan’s recent article takes a much more nuanced view than the one mentioned at Marginal Revolution. But Arthur’s view is not thereby more conservative! Any reader feedback on any of the other issues would be appreciated.)

–Chris Sturr

Egypt Will Rise--Mubarak Must Go

(1) More Links on Egypt: I promised more links;  here they are:
—The latest from Middle East Report online, Into Egypt’s Uncharted Territory.
—On the economic basis of the uprising, by the excellent Nomi Prins, at Alternet: The Egyptian Uprising Is a Direct Response to Ruthless Global Capitalism.

—From the excellent Bill Fletcher, at ZSpace, A Spark Becomes a Flame: Uprisings Shake the Arab World.

—An interesting perspective from Turkey, which is also seeing labor unrest; hat-tip to Marco: Walking like an Egyptian; Acting Like Turkey

I’ll keep passing on interesting links; please send in anything particularly interesting that you come across.

(2) Reagan Centennial: I have blissfully missed any of the celebrations and/or white-washing of Ronald Reagan and his legacy, not being much of a TV viewer. Here are some nice left critiques of the celebrations:

—From the Real News Network, a whole series of videos critical of Reagan and his legacy; check out especially an interview with left economist Michael Hudson, Reaganomics Sucked Wealth up, Did Not Trickle It down. Also look for interviews with Yves Smith and Bill Black.

—From John Dolan at The Exiled, Reagan’s Cheshire Snarl, kind of a memoir—nicely written, personal memoir of growing up in Reagan’s California.

—Dean Baker has a piece at Common Dreams, The Real Effect of “Reaganomics”.

(3) Unemployment: Friday’s jobs report for January was pretty dismal, with non-farm payroll only adding 36,000 jobs, not enough to keep up with population growth.  The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report came out today, showing little change in the rate of job openings.  (See John Miller and Jeannette Wicks-Lim’s article in the current issue of Dollars & Sense, Unemployment: A Skills Deficit or a Jobs Deficit? for (among other things) an analysis of how to interpret JOLTS and the other data series that economists and business reporters routinely misread.

A case in point: check out how confused the New York Times article on the unemployment report is. The article trots out the notion (critiqued by John and Jeannette) that the dismal jobs situation is the result of a mismatch between job openings and workers’ skills, claiming that employers are seeking to hire people with college degrees.  But then the authors quote a recent job-seeker, but the point he is making undermines the claim that the new jobs require college degrees:

Michael Bove, who recently secured a job in San Antonio helping sports teams work with ticketing software a year after he was laid off as a manager with a soccer team in Houston, said he could not imagine what it would be like to search for a job if he did not have his college degree.

“You hear stories of the people who are in their mid-40s or early 50s that have been working 20 or 25 years as bank branch managers or I.T. people and have all this experience but now they’re out there competing for entry-level positions that in the past might go to someone who doesn’t have a college degree,” Mr. Bove, 30, said. “Now companies can pick and choose who they want.”

That employers are being picky–holding out for people with college degrees when they would never have waited around for such candidates for jobs like these in earlier economic conditions–suggests a lack of demand rather than a lack of skills. If there were enough demand that employers had to hire, and do so quickly, they’d be scrambling and hiring whoever they could get.

Meanwhile, a recent article at CNNMoney, Jobs Are Back, but the Pay Stinks, is also at odds with the Times‘s conclusions:

Overall, 55% of the jobs growth forecasted in the 30 fastest-growing occupations identified by BLS, are considered to be low- or very low-wage.

The greater number of low-wage jobs shouldn’t be a surprise, said Kristina J. Bartsch, chief of occupational outlook for BLS, simply because higher-wage occupations are always going to be in the minority. Some of the jobs projected to enjoy the fastest pace of growth are very high-wage.

For example, network systems and data communications analyst jobs are projected to increase by more than 50%, but they are still only a small portion of the workforce.

“By and large, occupations that are more high skill, and have high wages, are fast growing,” she said. “They’re just not as huge as waiters and waitresses.”

So the Times is right that the unemployment rate is higher for people without college degrees, but it turns out that the jobs being created for them are low wage–not surprising in this era of intensified union-busting, pressure for wage concessions, export of higher-paying blue-collar manufacturing jobs.

One last thing: Hat-tip to Geert Dhondt for the poster at the top of this post.

Rampart St., New Orleans, late afternoon December 12th

(1) Tax Deal Endangers Social Security: From Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, an interesting analysis of the payroll-tax-holiday provision of the White House’s compromise on taxes–one of the things they got in exchange for caving in to Republicans on the Bush-era tax-cuts [<--I'm starting to dislike this phrase, as it becomes more and more apparent that we're still in the "Bush era"]. The issue is whether it will be politically possible to increase the payroll tax in 2012, when this holiday expires.  Read Hartmann’s HuffPo article here.

(2) Appeal from UFE on the Estate Tax: Our pals and next-door neighbors at United for a Fair Economy have put out an “action alert” to ask Pelosi and other House members to push for a strong estate tax provision as part of the compromise.  Find details about whom to contact and what to say here.

(3) Dan DiMaggio is Everywhere: Dan DiMaggio, who wrote this article for us about temp workers in Minneapolis (a version of which will appear in our Jan/Feb 2010 issue),  and who wrote a terrific article in Monthly Review about the people (including Dan) who grade all those standardized tests (that article is now online, here), has a great satirical piece on TruthOut, A Modest Proposal to Transition to a “Cater-to-the-Rich” Economy. His starting point is a ridiculous suggestion by economist Andrew Caplin of NYU that the route to economic recovery is to bite the bullet and recognize that economic inequality is here to stay, and adopt a “cater to the rich” approach–that is, the rest of us can succeed by knowing what the rich need and finding ways to meet those needs.  (I did notice, though, that the New York Times article that quoted Caplin also quoted three left economists–Theresa Ghilarducci, Jamie Galbraith, and Gar Alperovitz–all three of whom have written for D&S. Pretty impressive.)

And most recently, Dan had a letter to the editor in yesterday’s New York Times, about a proposal to videotape teachers.  Dan’s question: where are they going to find the “educational professionals” to analyze the resulting data? Answer: the same pool of low-wage workers that currently grade standardized tests.

More soon.

–Chris Sturr

Part of the problem is that the charges are a bit murky, and the Swedish law in question is a bit murky.  It was initially widely reported that the charge was not for nonconsensual sex of any kind–and therefore not for rape, including date rape–but rather for something called “sex by surprise”–when a woman finds out after the fact that a man didn’t use a condom when he said he would (or something like that–the point is that at first it appeared that the charges against Assange were pretty minor, and for something that is a minor crime under Swedish law, but not a crime at all in most countries).  More recently it looks like the charges are more serious, and are a matter of date rape (i.e., rape–nonconsensual sex). And of course, whatever the charges, we don’t know one way or the other whether Assange is guilty.

The best thing I’ve read (and I’m not spending a lot of time looking through everything that’s been written already!) was this comment on Wolf’s article, critical of Wolf and others who appear to be minimizing the charges:

The most messed up part of this whole story: The fact that people are more interested in discrediting the women who brought up the charges as well as the charges themselves instead of realizing the political magnitude of the fact that issues rape and sexual assault are most probably being manipulated in order to detain someone for their political actions. That and the fact that people just can’t believe Julian Assange could be capable of sexual assault.

In a later post, the same poster says:

Julian Assange’s charges, whether real or fabricated, have been treated more seriously than just about any other sexual assault case in history and this seems clearly tied to his associatio­n with Wikileaks. Which is effed up. It’s effed up that sexual assault has been used as such a blatant red herring to haraung someone into custody who would have otherwise got off relatively easy–at least one of the charges, the punishment in Sweden is merely a $700 fine-in what seems to be a pretty obvious attempt to detain someone for exposing the dirty little secrets of some very powerful government­s, the U.S., namely.

The comments section after Wolf’s article has a bunch of other interesting-looking links.

–Chris Sturr

The House that Set off the National Furor over Faulty Foreclosures

(1) The House that Set off the National Furor over Faulty Foreclosures:  That’s how a great article in last Thursday’s New York Times describes the house in the photo above, owned by Nicolle Bradbury.  Everyone should read this article in full. As I have mentioned in an earlier post, the national media can’t seem to decide whether the big mortgage lenders were “sloppy” and made “mistakes,” or committed fraud.  This article makes it look a lot more like fraud, when a “robo-signer” processes 400 foreclosures in a day, claiming to have checked titles and other documents.

The basics:  Nicolle Bradbury bought this house for $75K, but after a couple of years lost her job (as an employment counselor, even!), and could no longer afford her payments of $474/month.  She has two teenage kids.  The mortgage is owned by Fannie Mae–which has since been nationalized–and serviced by GMAC–which is now 90% owned by the government as a result of the bailout.  They have spent several years trying to foreclose on Bradbury and evict her.  (According to the Times, Fannie Mae and GMAC “have now most likely spent more to dislodge Mrs. Bradbury than her house is worth.”) But in the final hour of the foreclosure proceedings, Bradbury got some help from a retired lawyer named Thomas A. Cox, who noticed irregularities in the paperwork.  He had stumbled on the phenomenon of “robo-signing” and falsification or fabrication of documents, which have been central to what is being called “Foreclosuregate”.

Here’s a part of the article that struck me:

The tragedy of foreclosure is that some homeowners may be able to stay where they are if their lenders are more interested in modification than eviction. Without a job, Mrs. Bradbury is not one of them. Her family, including her 14-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son, lives on welfare and food stamps.

“A lot of people say we just want a free ride,” Mrs. Bradbury said. “That’s not it. I’ve worked since I was 14. I’m not lazy. I’m just trying to keep us together. If we lost the house, my family would have to break up.”

It has been two years since she last paid the mortgage, which surprises even her lawyers.

“Had GMAC followed the legal requirements, she would have lost her home a long time ago,” acknowledged Geoffrey S. Lewis, another lawyer handling her case.

So:  here’s someone who loses her job, and the government, in the form of Fannie Mae and GMAC, thinks the best approach is to try to take her home away from her and her kids. Shouldn’t the government try to give her some job training, pay for a public works program in her area, give her a grant to fix her pickup truck so she can go look for work, anything?  But instead they try to kick her out of her home.  What’s incredible is that this story is told over and over across the country.

The other great bit is this deposition Cox takes from the robo-signer, someone named Jeffrey Stephan, and what Cox spelled out in a court filing:

“When Stephan says in an affidavit that he has personal knowledge of the facts stated in his affidavits, he doesn’t. When he says that he has custody and control of the loan documents, he doesn’t. When he says that he is attaching ‘a true and accurate’ copy of a note or a mortgage, he has no idea if that is so, because he does not look at the exhibits. When he makes any other statement of fact, he has no idea if it is true. When the notary says that Stephan appeared before him or her, he didn’t.”

This guy Cox is a real hero, as is Bradbury, as far as I’m concerned.

Read the whole article (really).

(2) Cheery article about freelancers in USAToday: Hat-tip to our business manager Paul Piwko for alerting me to this ridiculous article about how great “freelancers” (i.e. hyper-flexible casual workers) are–for employers.  One employer is quoted thus: “You don’t have to worry about someone coming late to work, and they hate you, and about all the payroll taxes and health insurance.” Those pesky benefits–so nice to be free of them.  We are happy that one of the very few dissenting voices quoted in the article is D&S Associate and UMass-Boston econ prof Randy Albelda, who pointed out the public costs of this trend:  “workers who lack jobless benefits could be forced to go on food stamps while those who defer health services could incur more serious problems that raise the premiums of others who have insurance.”

Read the whole article.

(3) Those ultra-flexible temps: We just posted a great article by a former student of mine, Dan DiMaggio, about his recent experience temping in Minneapolis, The Jobs Crisis and the Art of Flexible Labor:

On Sunday, October 3, an ad in the Star Tribune from the temp agency ProStaff advertised 300 immediate call-center positions. By Wednesday they had upped this number, hiring 550 unemployed and underemployed Twin Cities residents to fill these jobs. The majority were people of color, including hundreds of African Americans–no surprise given that as of 2009 African-American unemployment (20.4%) in the Twin Cities stood at three times that of whites (6.6%). We were promised work through October 22, with the caveat that we must be “flexible flexible flexible.”

In the middle of the night Thursday, after four hours of training and one day of work, we all received a dreaded phone call: our jobs were gone. No one had been calling the call center about the class action settlement we were hired to take questions about. So just like that, over 500 people were returned to the ranks of the jobless.

Read the rest of the article.

(4) The expanding government sector? Though I don’t have time to comment, I’d like to note the discussion in the econ blogosphere about whether government spending has expanded as much as the right-wing-nuts claim it has.  Two key links:  The “Ever-Expanding” Government Sector, Illustrated, at Econobrowser (great graphs!), and Big Spender Update, from Paul Krugman’s blog (which has comments on the Econobrowser post, but links to earlier stuff by Krugman on this topic).

That’s all for now–I hope to post more frequently once I’m done working on our November/December issue and several new editions of our books.

–Chris Sturr

Elvis on TV

(1) Follow-up on yesterday’s post:  If you didn’t get your fill of the controversy about the whiny U. of Chicago law professor, check out two more good posts today from Brad DeLong, here and here.  The second one has a bunch of links to other commentary on the affair. The New Rule for the Internets DeLong cites is particularly funny (main rule–If you make six figures, you’re not allowed to claim you’re poor on the Internets).

(2) I promised a report on the Marty Peretz/Harvard controversy, so here it is:  Last spring I got an invite to the 50th anniversary celebration of the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, the undergraduate program at Harvard where I taught for four years.  The celebration happened last Saturday, and I attended most of the events.

A couple of weeks ago, though, I saw this article in the New York Times, about a controversy that had arisen around Marty Peretz, editor of The New Republic, who was to be honored at one of the Social Studies events.  Apparently, Peretz, who has a track record of saying horrible racist things, often stemming from his virulent pro-Israel stance (which many blame for ruining TNR), had made some nasty Islamophobic remarks on his blog, including questioning whether Muslims deserve free speech, and claiming that Muslim life is cheap, “especially to Muslims.” He later backed down from the former claim (though not for the latter, which he defended as simply a statement of fact). See his apology for the “embarrassing sentence” about free speech here. (It seems as if a critical column by Nicholas Kristoff prompted his apology.) Later, on Yom Kippur, Peretz made a further statement of atonement.

Anyhow, I found out about all this in the NYT article, which went on to say that Peretz’s statements were putting Harvard and Social Studies in a difficult spot, since former students of Peretz had taken up a collection of some $500K to endow a research fund for Social Studies undergraduates.  The fund would be named for Peretz, and he would be honored for his teaching at the 50th anniversary events.  Meanwhile, activists on and off campus (including from within Social Studies, I later found out) were pressing Harvard and Social Studies to reject the money.

The event at which Peretz was to be honored was a luncheon honoring all the former “Head Tutors” of the program (Peretz held this position in the 70s).  On the original program for the anniversary events, two speakers were listed–Robert Paul Wolff (who was the first Head Tutor) and Peretz.  After all the controversy arose, the department put out a revised program, in which Wolff was listed as the speaker.

I went to the luncheon, and was proud to be among a group of Social Studies tutors and former tutors who walked out when Peretz spoke (briefly–each of about seven head tutors spoke).  Robert Paul Wolff was indeed the main speaker, and he was fantastic.  I have always known him as the author of In Defense of Anarchism; he’s also a philosopher who taught at UMass Amherst for many years.  D&S collective member Larry Peterson, who was our chief blogger at the depths of the financial crisis, studies with Wolff in the 80s and always spoke of him highly.

Anyhow, Wolff gave a beautiful speech honoring Social Studies and its history, with an emphasis on its radical roots, and ended with a brief but sharp denunciation of Peretz in which he, beautifully, quoted from Capital vol. I. The passage he quoted was the one about how money is the universal commodity, and from the point of view of exchange, it doesn’t matter what the source of a particular pile of money is–it is as good as any other money. In this context Marx uses the Latin phrase, “pecunia non olet,” “money doesn’t stink.”  Wolff explained the origin of the phrase (details here), in a tax on urinals levied by the emperor Nero.  Supposedly when when “[Nero's successor] Vespasian’s son Titus complained to him about the disgusting nature of the tax, his father held up a gold coin and told him, ‘Non olet!’ (‘It doesn’t stink!’).” Wolff’s lesson: with respect to the money donated in honor of Islamophobe Peretz, Harvard is taking Vespasian’s “imperial” position, but Wolff wanted to go on record that in this case, this money does stink.

As I said, I wasn’t there for Peretz’s short remarks, but I heard that he made some comment (presumably alluding to Wolff, and maybe to Brad DeLong (see below)) about some professors saying things in order to get applause.  So much for atonement…

The controversy cast something of a shadow over the celebration–the issue came up at all of the events–but in the end, the fact that protesters held up signs outside all the events and pressed the issue during question periods, and even some of the speakers–not just Wolff–criticized Peretz, redeemed the celebration, in my view. I was also pleased to find out that the Social Studies administration, staff, and a majority of tutors and students, were against honoring Peretz; it was apparently the “Standing Committee” (the senior faculty) who refused to back down. You’d think that having tenure would give you some backbone, but on the other hand, you probably have to sell out to get tenure in the first place.

Two of former students of Peretz, including E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and someone named Jamie Gorelick, whom I hadn’t heard of but who is clearly a big shot, spoke at an afternoon panel;  they were apparently among the people who organized the Peretz honor. In the question period, people asked them (again) how they could honor Peretz; they insisted that they were honoring his teaching, not all of his views.  He has always had views that we disagree with, they said.  What seems ridiculous to me about this defense is the idea that the things Peretz wrote (and he has a long track record of saying horribly racist things, so this was not just some anomalous “embarrassing sentence”) are just “views”, as if he believed in supply-side economics or astrology or something. In the current Islamophobic climate, in which people are getting attacked and killed, this is more than just a “view” or even bigotry.  One wonders what Peretz would have to say to get people to back off, or does his excellent teaching give him a permanent free pass? One can surmise that the Standing Committee didn’t want to piss off major donors–presumably the folks donating to the research fund shell out even more for the alma mater at other times of the year.

The speaker who came off worst, in my view, was Michael Walzer, the liberal political theorist from Princeton.  At one point in the same question period he asked whether the people who were piling on Peretz had read every blog post and footnote of every member of the Social Studies standing committee (as if there might be others with equally abhorrent views).  There was a collective groan, and some heckling, from an audience that otherwise really didn’t seem to want to dwell on the Peretz affair. Peretz and Walzer (and Dionne and Gorelick) are all old pals, which underlined for me the extent to which this was all about cronyism and personal loyalty.

As I said, Robert Paul Wolff was the highlight of the celebration for me.  He apparently agonized in advance, on his blog, about whether to even attend the event (read about it here;  there are several other posts on his blog that relate to the controversy).  I am really glad he decided to attend.  Another highlight of the proceedings, apparently, was Brad DeLong’s comments in the morning session, which I missed.  He was brave enough to criticize Peretz.  Here’s the draft of the speech (from his blog), but people who attended the session gave a different account of what he said.  Apparently he said something to the effect that you want to cut people slack for saying dumb things, but when you read Peretz’s comments, the only reasonable reaction is, “What the frickety frack?”  (That version was on his blog, I swear, a few days ago, but I can’t find it now. Maybe he took it down because he thought it was too silly, but I thought it was great.)

–Chris Sturr