Lead Poisoning and Empire

aka Pb in D.C.

"The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire; the founder melteth in vain: for the wicked are not plucked away. Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them." Jeremiah, 6:29-30

The contention that "a large number of Roman aristocrats ingested more than enough lead with their foods and drinks each day to put them at risk for lead poisoning" may be correct.

A by-product of silver mining, lead (Pb) was extracted from galena ore (PbS, lead sulfide), which was crushed and smelted (Pliny, XXXIII.95, 159). The lead alloy then was further refined in a furnace made hotter still by blasts of air forced from a bellows. The oxidized lead (PbO, litharge), which was contained in a porous crucible of crushed bone ash, was absorbed, leaving behind a trace amount of silver in a process called "cupellation" (from the cupel used to collect the metal). The lead was recovered by smelting the bone ash again with galena, the lead oxide combining with lead sulfide to form metallic lead and sulfur dioxide (2PbO + PbS = 3Pb + SO2).

Readily abundant, easily malleable, and with a low melting point (low enough, in fact, to melt in a camp fire), lead (plumbum) was ideal for the production of water pipes, which were fabricated by plumbarii (plumbers) from fitted rolled sheets in a variety of diameters (Vitruvius, VIII.6.1ff; Frontinus, XXXVIIff). Such pipes were extensively used but also known by the Romans to be a potential source of soluble lead. How then to reconcile the two realities?

In his treatise on the aqueducts of Rome, Frontinus complains that "the accumulation of deposit, which sometimes hardens into a crust, contracts the channel of the water" (CXXII.1). (Indeed, the aqueduct at Nîmes had an accretion of calcium carbonate that constricted its channel by forty-six centimeters, more than a third of its width.) Rome is situated on calcareous rocks, and the frequent cleaning of such limestone encrustation (which accumulated approximately one millimeter per year) suggests that deposits of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) in the pipes protected against corrosion and insulated against the introduction of lead into the water. Too, the water usually flowed continuously and so would not have been in prolonged contact with lead. And, as well as lead pipes, it would have run through pipes of terracotta. In De Architectura, for instance, Vitruvius, who wrote during the time of Augustus, indicates that the Romans knew of the danger of lead and, consequently, that terracotta was preferred.

"Water conducted through earthen pipes is more wholesome than that through lead; indeed that conveyed in lead must be injurious, because from it white lead [cerussa, cerussite or lead carbonate, PbCO3] is obtained, and this is said to be injurious to the human system. Hence, if what is generated from it is pernicious, there can be no doubt that itself cannot be a wholesome body. This may be verified by observing the workers in lead, who are of a pallid color; for in casting lead, the fumes from it fixing on the different members, and daily burning them, destroy the vigor of the blood; water should therefore on no account be conducted in leaden pipes if we are desirous that it should be wholesome [emphasis added]. That the flavor of that conveyed in earthen pipes is better, is shown at our daily meals, for all those whose tables are furnished with silver vessels, nevertheless use those made of earth, from the purity of the flavor being preserved in them" (VIII.6.10-11).

It is logical, therefore, to assume, because Romans used lead and reported symptoms concomitant with lead poisoning, that they were caused by lead--or, to phrase it another way, that if lead poisoning can have almost any symptom, then any symptom can be attributed to it. While Hippocrates may have known about lead poisoning, we are cautioned that he did not describe it in any of the books which have come down to us.

Water in D.C. Exceeds EPA Lead Limit
Random Tests Last Summer Found High Levels in 4,000 Homes Throughout City
By David Nakamura, Washington Post

Experts Seek Answers On Tainted D.C. Water
Panel to Study Abrupt Rise of Lead Levels in City

By David Nakamura and D'Vera Cohn
Washington Post

A team of chemists, water-quality experts and engineers will gather in Washington this week in an attempt to answer a baffling question on a tight deadline: Why did lead levels in the tap water at thousands of city homes spike above federal safety limits?

Scientists plan to conduct tests to determine whether new chemicals used to treat water for bacteria at the city's two treatment plants have a highly corrosive effect on service lines, allowing lead to dissolve from the pipes. They are especially interested in studying a compound called chloramine, a combination of chlorine and ammonia that the city's water treatment plants began using four years ago. Chlorine produces cancer-causing byproducts, so chloramine has become an increasingly popular alternative at water treatment plants across the country.

The District is among about three dozen water systems nationwide whose lead tests have exceeded the federal safety standard since 2000, according to data supplied by the EPA. Most were in small communities. See my note on Facebook titled Pb in DC.

When Jared Diamond wrote his book on why societies collapse he came to the conclusion that it occurred when elites weren’t experiencing the same things as the majority of the society–when they were isolated from the problems and challenges the society was facing.

For 30 years ordinary Americans haven’t had a raise. And despite all the lies, Americans are beginning to get that.

But for the people in charge the last thirty years have been absolutely wonderful. Seriously, things haven’t been this good since the 1890’s and the 1920’s. Everyone they know–their families, their mistresses and toyboys, their friends–is doing well.

Right from the outset of Collapse, Diamond makes clear that this is not a mere environmentalist's diatribe. He begins by setting the book's main question in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity.

This is the second insanity of the US–that the decision making apparatus in the US is disconnected from the results of their decisions. They make sure they get paid, that they’re wealthy, and let the rest of society go to hell. In the end, of course, most of them will find that the money isn’t theirs, and that what they’ve stolen is worth very little if the US has a real financial crisis.

The third insanity is simpler: it’s the wealth effect. At the end of World War II the US had about half the world’s economy. Admittedly that’s because Europe had been bombed into oblivion, but even when Europe rebuilt the US was still far, far ahead. The US was insanely rich and powerful. See, when you’re rich you can do stupid and unproductive things for a long time. There are plenty of examples of this but the two most obvious ones are the US military and the War on Drugs.

The War on Drugs hasn’t reduced the number of junkies or drugs on the street in any noticeable way. It has increased the US’s prison population to the highest per capita level in the world, however. It has cost hundreds of billions of dollars. It has gutted civil liberties (the war on terror is just the war on drugs on crack, after all). And after 30 years does anyone seriously say “wait, this doesn’t work, it costs billions of dollars and it makes us a society of prisons?” Of course not, if anything people compete to be “tough on crime.” What’s the definition of insanity, again? Doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting different results?

Then there’s the US military. It costs, oh, about as much as everyone else in the world’s military combined. It seems to be at best in a stalemate and probably losing two wars against a bunch of rabble whose total budgets probably wouldn’t equal a tenth of one percent of a US appropriations bill. And it is justified as “defending” America even though there is no nation in the entire world which could invade the US if the US had one tenth the military.

But the US could (not can, they are now unaffordable, but could) afford to have a big shiny military and lots of prisons, so it does. Lots of people get rich off of both of them, lots of rural whites get to lock up uban blacks and lots of communities that wouldn’t exist otherwise get to survive courtesy of the unneeded military bases and prisons which should never have been built.

Insane–believing things that aren’t true.

Insane–decision makers are cut off from the consequences of their decisions and in fact are getting reverse feedback, as things get worse for most Americans and as America gets weaker and poorer, they are the richest they’ve ever been.

Insane–so rich that no one will stop doing things that clearly don’t work and are harmful, because people are making money off the insanity.

All of this is what makes predicting the US so surreal. It’s not just about knowing what the facts are and then thinking “ok, how would people respond to that?” You have to know what the facts are, what the population thinks the facts are, what the elites think the facts are, who’s making money off of it, and then ask yourself if these facts are having any real effect on the elites and if that effect is enough to outweigh the money they’re making off of failure (how many of them have children serving in Iraq? Right, not urgent to fix.)

And then you have to go back to the facts and ask yourself “what effect will these have even if they’re being ignored.” Facts are ugly things, they tend not to go away.

All of which makes the US damn near impenetrable, often enough even to most Americans.

But here’s what I do know–you can get away with being nuts as long as enough people are benefiting from you being insane. When the credit cards are all maxed out, when the relatives have stolen even the furniture, suddenly all the enablers go away and the knee-breakers or the men in white coats pay you a visit. At that point you can live in the real world, or you can go to the asylum.

Which way is the US going? It sure is one hell of a wild ride…

Just When You Thought the Corporate Rip-Off Schemes Couldn't Get Any Worse...

Just When You Thought the Corporate Rip-Off Schemes Couldn't Get Any Worse...

Posted by David Sirota, Open Left at 10:02 AM on May 22, 2009.

Using employees' life insurance policies as a back-door way to pad the boss's salary ... wow.

This month, the Obama administration unveiled a plan to reform the taxes that apply to life insurance. Not surprisingly, the insurance industry freaked out, paushing out its spokesman to say "This is absolutely the wrong time to make it more expensive for families, as well as U.S. businesses, to obtain the security and peace of mind our products provide."

That sounds reasonable, until you read this incredible new report from the Wall Street Journal about how insurance companies use current tax rules not to help "families obtain security and peace of mind" but to help fat-cat executives pad their salaries:

Banks are using a little-known tactic to help pay bonuses, deferred pay and pensions they owe executives: They're holding life-insurance policies on hundreds of thousands of their workers, with themselves as the beneficiaries.

The insurance policies essentially are informal pension funds for executives: Companies deposit money into the contracts, which are like big, nondeductible IRAs, and allocate the cash among investments that grow tax-free. Over time, employers receive tax-free death benefits when employees, former employees and retirees die.

Though not improper, the practice is similar to what is known as "janitors insurance," an insurance-on-employees technique that has long been controversial. Critics say the banks' insurance contracts are a way for companies to create tax breaks for funding executive pensions. And some families have complained that employers shouldn't profit from the deaths of their loved ones.

This is the kind of story that you read and think wow, just when you thought corporate rip-off schemes couldn't get any more shameless ...I mean, using employees' life insurance policies as a back-door way to pad the boss's salary ... wow.

I've (obviously) been critical of the Obama administration in its handling of the financial bailouts, but I think on tax issues, the administration is basically trying to do the right thing. When you look across the news, you see a bunch of big and small efforts to shut down the worst tax loopholes, from the corporate tax haven loopholes to this life insurance loophole. That effort is going to have its predictable critics, but when you read a story like the Wall Street Journal's scoop this week, you see how important it is to ignore those critics.

Tagged as: money, salary, economic rip-off

FBI Blows It: Supposed Terror Plot Against NY Synagogues Is Bogus

FBI Blows It: Supposed Terror Plot Against NY Synagogues Is Bogus

By Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation. Posted May 23, 2009.

Turns out it is really the handiwork of a creepy FBI informant. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not.

By the now, it's maddeningly familiar. A scary terrorist plot is announced. Then it's revealed that the suspects are a hapless bunch of ne'er-do-wells or run-of-the-mill thugs without the slightest connection to any terrorists at all, never mind to Al Qaeda. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: the entire plot is revealed to have been cooked up by a scummy government agent-provocateur.

I've seen this movie before.

In this case, the alleged perps -- Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen -- were losers, ex-cons, drug addicts. Al Qaeda they're not. Without the assistance of the agent who entrapped them, they would never have dreamed of committing political violence, nor would they have had the slightest idea about where to acquire plastic explosives or a Stinger missile. That didn't stop prosecutors from acting as if they'd captured Osama bin Laden himself. Noted the Los Angeles Times:

Prosecutors called it the latest in a string of homegrown terrorism plots hatched after Sept. 11.

"It's hard to envision a more chilling plot," Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric Snyder said in court Thursday. He described all four suspects as "eager to bring death to Jews."

Actually, it's hard to imagine a stupider, less competent, and less important plot. The four losers were ensnared by a creepy FBI agent who hung around the mosque in upstate New York until he found what he was looking for. Here's the New York Timesaccount:

Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, the imam at the mosque where the authorities say the confidential informant first encountered the men, said none of the men were active in the mosque. ...

Mr. Cromitie was there last June, and he met a stranger.

He had no way of knowing that the stranger's path to the mosque began in 2002, when he was arrested on federal charges of identity theft. He was sentenced to five years' probation, and became a confidential informant for the F.B.I. He began showing up at the mosque in Newburgh around 2007, Mr. Muhammad said.

The stranger's behavior aroused the imam's suspicions. He invited other worshipers to meals, and spoke of violence and jihad, so the imam said he steered clear of him.

"There was just something fishy about him," Mr. Muhammad said. Members "believed he was a government agent."

Mr. Muhammad said members of his congregation told him the man he believed was the informant offered at least one of them a substantial amount of money to join his "team."

So a creepy thug buttonholes people at a mosque, foaming at the mouth about violence and jihad? This is law enforcement? Just imagine if someone did this at a local church, or some synagogue. And the imam says the people "believed he was a government agent."

Preying on these losers, none of whom were apparently actual Muslims, the "confidential informant" orchestrated the acquisition of a disabled Stinger missile to shoot down military planes and cooked up a wild scheme about attacking a Jewish center in the Bronx.

It gets even more pathetic:

The only one of the four suspects who appears to have aroused any suspicion was Payen, a Haitian native who attended the Newburgh mosque. Assistant imam Hamid Rashada said his dishevelment and odd behavior disturbed some members, said the assistant imam, Hamid Rashada.

When Payen appeared in court, defense attorney Marilyn Reader described him as "intellectually challenged" and on medication for schizophrenia. The Associated Press said that when he was asked if he understood the proceedings, Payen replied: "Sort of."

Despite the pompous statements from Mayor Bloomberg of New York and other politicians, including Representative Peter King, the whole story is bogus. The four losers may have been inclined to violence, and they may have harbored a virulent strain of anti-Semitism. But it seems that the informant whipped up their violent tendencies and their hatred of Jews, cooked up the plot, incited them, arranged their purchase of weapons, and then had them busted. To ensure that it made headlines, the creepy informant claimed to be representing a Pakistani extremist group, Jaish-e Muhammad, a bona fide terrorist organization. He wasn't, of course.

It is disgusting and outrageous that the FBI is sending provocateurs into mosques.

The headlines reinforce the very fear that Dick Cheney is trying to stir up. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not. As I've written repeatedly, since 9/11 not a single American has even been punched in the nose by an angry Muslim, as far as I can tell. Plot after plot -- the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge! bombing the New York Subways! taking down the Sears Tower! bombing the Prudential building in Newark! -- proved to be utter nonsense.

Elite Colleges Are Promoting a Culture of Selfish, Cutthroat Behavior

Elite Colleges Are Promoting a Culture of Selfish, Cutthroat Behavior and We Are All Paying the Price

By Peter Schmidt, AlterNet. Posted May 23, 2009.

The results are campus environments where disregard for society is socially accepted, where misguided students are encouraged to become worse.

[America's changing values are top down and intrinsic in The Obama Administration's big picture.]

Like many of us, the nation's elite colleges and universities have taken a financial beating over the past year.

Among them, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford all watched their endowments shrink by about 20 percent as a result of investment losses.

Despite all their brainpower, such institutions appear to have failed to learn what every simple farmer knows: you reap what you sow. Elite colleges and professional schools bear a share of the blame for the economic crisis that now plagues them, because it is they who educated and bestowed academic credentials upon many of those who got us into this mess.

It should come as no surprise to them that many on Wall Street and in Washington have proven ethically bankrupt and without regard for people of lesser means, because their admissions policies have done much to ensure such a result.

In determining which applicants they will admit and put on the fast track, most elite higher-education institutions systematically favor people from privileged backgrounds who display selfish, cutthroat behavior. The results are campus environments where disregard for society is socially accepted, where bad people are encouraged to become worse.

Consider, for starters, how most such institutions rely on standardized admissions tests such as the SAT, even though they know perfectly well that the nation's massive test-preparation industry has severely compromised the reliability of such instruments, turning them into tools for measuring, as much as anything, wealth and willingness to seek unfair advantage.

Test-preparation programs make people better test-takers not better prospective students. They raise scores mainly by teaching various test-taking tricks, such as how to quickly spot the "sucker" answers to a multiple-choice question to improve the odds of guessing correctly. Yet many are effective enough to offer those families that can afford their fees -- typically, $500 to $1,000 -- a chance to buy their children enough extra points to transform many from also-rans into shoo-ins.

In turning a blind eye to the widespread tainting of admissions test scores, higher-education institutions argue that they lack better mechanisms for efficiently judging applicants from high schools of sharply varying quality. But many education researchers disagree and say some alternatives to such tests, such as admissions systems that give substantial weight to class rank or samples of each applicant's work, are more reliable predictors of applicants' academic performance.

Moreover, selective colleges have ulterior motives for relying on standardized admissions tests that have nothing to do with academic considerations and everything to do with their bottom lines. The more high-scoring students they admit, the higher their "selectivity" ratings in the college-ranking guides that help determine how many applicants knock on their doors each year.

And not only is sifting through applications based on test scores a lot cheaper than hiring enough people to consider each candidate carefully, but relying on such scores helps skew the process in favor of wealthier applicants, who will not need financial assistance and are likely to donate generously down the road.

If young people find that artificially inflating their test scores isn't enough to get them into a choice college, they always have the option of having someone bribe their way in with a big donation.

Selective colleges are so happy to have their palms greased in such a manner that some make little effort to hide how much they lower the bar for applicants connected to generous alumni and other contributors. To improve their odds of having favors done for them by people in positions of power, many selective higher-education institutions also admit mediocre applicants at the request of state and federal officials.

They let their professors and administrators in on the game by lowering the bar for the children of employees, as a job perk. Despite all of their talk about operating athletics programs to promote sportsmanship, they assure recruited athletes the playing field will be tilted in their favor in the competition for freshman-class seats.

Through such admissions policies, colleges end up giving the nation's high school students crash courses in cynicism. They teach young people that money talks, fairness is for losers, who you know matters more than what you know, and some people are simply entitled to what others may never attain, no matter how hard they work.

Considering how much selective colleges and universities favor applicants who take such lessons to heart, should it surprise anyone that about half of all graduate- and professional-school students admit on surveys to having recently cheated?

Investors take note: MBA candidates have been found to be the biggest cheaters of all, with 56 percent admitting to having cheated in the past year, in a 2006 survey published by the Academy of Management Learning and Education. Many business schools have responded to the latest economic crisis by broadcasting their intent to beef up their ethics classes, but they might as well be promoting sobriety in a bar.

Give George W. Bush credit for this much: He admits to having gotten into Yale through his family connections, and he is quite capable of self-effacing humor. In delivering Yale's 2001 commencement address, he declared: "And to the C students I say, You, too, can be president of the United States."

Although he meant the remark as a joke, he stood as living proof that he was absolutely right, that students who have gotten through the doors of a top college need not perform well there to have other doors opened to them.

Historians of education say the Great Depression shook the nation's faith in its leadership and helped inspire many selective colleges to reform their admissions policies to do more to take in the best students and not just the best-connected.

Our latest economic crisis could inspire similar soul-searching and a renewed emphasis on meritocracy in higher education. But it also could have the opposite effect, prompting selective colleges and universities to even more heavily favor those applicants with cash and connections in an effort to repair their own finances.

If the recent devastation of their endowments should teach such institutions anything, it is that basing their admissions policies on the short-term pursuit of monetary gain is likely to cost them -- and the rest of American society -- dearly down the road.

Peter Schmidt is a senior writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education and the author of Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War Over College Affirmative Action. He blogs about race, class and college access at Color and Money.

On Obama’s Chopping Block: General Motors

On Obama’s Chopping Block: It's The Turn of General Motors

The greatest single attack on American workers since the Great Depression

by Shamus Cooke

Global Research, May 22, 2009

The alarm bells should be ringing day and night about what’s being prepared at General Motors — the ripple effects could produce tidal waves.

The Obama administration has made no secret about its plans for GM: the Chrysler bankruptcy was the “test case,” and now Obama’s Wall Street buddies inside the Auto Task Force plan to replicate it. The vast implications of the Chrysler bankruptcy went unnoticed by the mainstream media, concerned as it was with the convenient hype provided by Swine Flu.

The real swine, however, are those preparing the greatest single attack on American workers since the Great Depression, the precedent of which will reverberate loudly through business-labor relations in the country — that is, if workers at GM and its parts suppliers don’t put a stop to it.

Why was Chrysler so important? Most significant was the fact that workers were scared into accepting large wage and benefit reductions. They were told by the U.A.W. “leaders” that, unless workers conceded to accepting the wages and benefits of non-union workers, bankruptcy would be unavoidable. The workers conceded, and the very next day it was announced that the company was headed towards bankruptcy. It is unimaginable that Gettlefinger and the other U.A.W. leaders did not know this was coming, since they spend considerable time back-slapping with Obama.

This is but one of a long list of treacheries provided by a Gettlefinger-led U.A.W. and his obsession with making GM a better “global competitor.” Just as in 2007, autoworkers were scared into making drastic concessions to “save jobs,” and soon thereafter jobs were slashed by the thousands.

Now, the U.A.W.-owned healthcare fund called VEBA is likely to emerge as the majority share owner of Chrysler, a company whose stock is basically worthless and whose future is cloudy at best. And although the U.A.W. is the majority owner, they will have only one voice on the GM board, ensuring that they’ll be entirely ignored.

Applying this type of “restructuring” to GM is hard to imagine. GM is a global conglomerate with factories and suppliers all over the world — a monster when compared to puny Chrysler. The new sell-out labor contractbeing negotiated between Gettlefinger and Obama on 5/21/09 has yet to be released to the public, though the results have already been leaked, and they would be crushing for GM workers, in a “…deal that would cut [GM’s] labor costs by more than $1 billion a year and reduce its $20 billion pledge to the United Auto Workers to cover health-care obligations [by ten billion]…” (Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2009).

Not only this, but 20,000 more GM jobs would be cut. Dealerships and suppliers all over the world would close as well, producing immediate job losses in the hundreds of thousands, and indirect job losses that are impossible to calculate.

Also, GM will likely be split into two companies: one that will build cars with cheap labor for the world marketplace and the other consisting of factories and machinery that will be sold for scrap metal. Instead of this tremendous productive power being used to create a much more rational mass transit system, the company is downsizing itself, laying off thousands of workers and filling landfills.

After all is said in done, the U.A.W. would have a 39 percent ownership stake in GM, giving Gettlefinger an ownership perspective, with a stake in forcing additional cuts on his members to increase share prices and keep the company competitive. Logic like this is unavoidable if one cannot look beyond the narrow horizons of the market economy, where one can only win on the world marketplace if they race fastest to the bottom.

What was Obama’s reaction to the incredible hardship his labor policy will inevitably produce on workers? This pain was entirely ignored, and instead, Obama attempted to smear a cheap “progressive” gloss over his right-wing labor policies by holding a press conference to gloat over the future of fuel efficient vehicles and electric cars.

Gettlefinger himself shamelessly attended the event, while he and some short-sighted environmentalists fawned over Obama’s every word. No mention was made how Americans would be able to afford these new fuel efficient cars.

And this is the crux of the matter: Obama’s autoworker precedent will encourage other companies to destroy union contracts via bankruptcy; the stage is being set for a colossal attack on the American working class. Already wage cuts are being implemented throughout the U.S., alongside massive unemployment — Obama’s technique is simply a way to hasten the process, so that the speed and scope of the recession is equally matched by reductions in wages and benefits.

The economic crisis has put corporations into “fight or flight” mode. In order for them to stay “viable” on the world market, they are slashing wages and benefits, led by Obama and the Wall Street insiders among his administration. It will take a U.A.W. rank and file upsurge to repel these attacks, aided by workers everywhere, since labor in general now faces incredible challenges. They could demand the nationalization of the auto industry so that workers would be bailed out, not the banks. Then these companies could be retooled in order to produce not only mass transit vehicles but an alternative energy infrastructure that could both save jobs and help save the planet from global warming.

Obama cannot be “pressured” into doing the right thing. He’s surrounded himself with people representing the big corporations and banks, entities that are intrinsically anti-worker. The Democratic Party must also be tossed aside, since their total silence on this most important of issues is one of utter complicity. Labor must now, more than ever, take an independent stance in defending their interests. The fate of the labor movement hangs in the balance.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com

Fear and Looting in America: Krugman Takes on Globalization?

Les Leopold

The Huffington Post

May 23, 2009

"Sooner than most people think, countries that refuse to limit their greenhouse gas emissions will face sanctions, probably in the form of taxes on their exports. They will complain bitterly that this is protectionism, but so what? Globalization doesn't do much good if the globe itself becomes unlivable."http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/opinion/15krugman.html

Paul Krugman argues that China must do something about its carbon emissions or we're all cooked. And he is willing to support carbon taxes on imports to get there, even if it violates free trade rules. This separates him from most economists and columnists who promote globalization at all costs.

The proponents of unfettered globalization look upon "Buy-American" proposals with great disdain. They argue that tariffs merely raise the price of imported goods and in effect subsidize a few workers' jobs. Also, such protectionist tariffs supposedly will lead to retaliatory actions on our exports and thereby cut back the jobs of those who work in export-related industries. So overall, in theory, protectionism hurts more people than it helps, both here and abroad. (In practice, we're losing millions of manufacturing jobs while ballooning our financial sector that turned out to be full of... hot air.)

In addition to climate change, Krugman is willing to make other exceptions as well. For example, he argues that protectionist measures may be necessary to ensure that stimulus money is spent at home. This will also force other countries to improve their stimulus efforts and this will have a positive impact on fighting the recession globally.http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/protectionism-and-stimulus-wonkish/

It would be good if he took the next step: recognizing that dislocated manufacturing workers in the Midwest have their own definition of an "unlivable globe." If you lose your job to low production costs in countries where workers have no unions, no health and safety protection, no environmental controls and where workers may get shot or arrested for organizing, you might question the wonders of free trade. If you lose your job and if you can't provide for your family, global warming may not be your first priority.

Of course, we should embrace Krugman's proposal to tax imports from countries that don't reduce their carbon footprints, assuming that we finally start to do so as well. But we will also have to challenge the alleged blessings of free trade in order to support those who have been creamed by globalized production. In theory, those workers are supposed to find new work in new higher-value industries. In practice they end up, if they're lucky, stocking shelves at Wall Mart. In Denmark, such dislocated workers are given nearly full pay to go back to school for several years to prepare for new jobs. Here, they're on their own. They have a right to ask for tariffs to protect their livelihoods.

But won't new green jobs create a new competitive industrial base? Won't workers be hired to build new wind turbines, solar panels and to construct a new smart electrical grid? Won't we need to manufacture high speed rails and trains in America? Won't we need to manufacture goods to weatherize homes? Surely, this will create more than enough high-paying jobs.

Maybe. It's certainly possible, but right now there is no guarantee such production will take place in the US. Green manufacturing might also go off-shore to take advantage of low-wage labor. Don't be surprised if you see cargo ships carrying giant wind turbine blades chugging into port from around the globe... and belching up a lot of carbon to get here.

We need to a new way to look at protectionism -- one that both protects the globe and that protects jobs. We should use precise boarder adjustment taxes to enhance home-cooked green industries. After all, "Globalization doesn't do much good if the globe itself becomes unlivable," either for the polar bears or for unemployed steelworkers.

Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What we can do about it.(Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009)

Les Leopold

Les Leopold (Oberlin 69, Princeton 75) directs the Labor Inst/Public Health Inst. in NYC.

Posted: May 15, 2009 06:39 PM

The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity

First it was Bush and the Republicans. Now it is Obama and the Democrats. All the rest is is just a diversion.

The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity—and What We Can Do About It

By Les Leopold

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

From the Introduction:

"And then there's the subprime-mortgage puzzle. The financial media has all but concluded the crash was caused by risky mortgages taken out by poor people and deadbeats who couldn't afford them, and issued by reckless lenders who should have known better. About $1.3 trillion worth of such mortgages are out there. Of that, about $300 billion are in default or nearly so…. Please, can someone explain how that amount (about 2 percent of household net worth, could devastate the world's financial system? To date, the taxpayer has put up about $2 trillion in bank bailouts and loan guarantees. Why didn't that take care of the problem long ago? Like some perverse modern-day miracle of fishes and loaves, how did $300 billion of bad debt multiply into trillions of dollars in financial toxic waste? Poor people did all that? In this book I go after these questions -- and I hope the answers will tell us a good deal about our economic woes and what to do about them. At the very least, I hope to contribute modestly to our collective financial literacy. In short, if I can understand this crap, so can you."

*****

"I loved this book. A worms'-eye dissection of the Wall Street crisis from a very sharp and very knowledgeable labor economist. Here's hoping that before the Washington consensus gets set in stone, policymakers will read it and reflect on the havoc the masters of the universe have wreaked on ordinary people."

--Charles Morris, author of The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash and Money, Greed, and Risk: Why Financial Crises and Crashes Happen

“Les Leopold has given an entertaining account of the growth of the derivative market that supported the housing bubble during the last decade, and offers useful recommendations for avoiding the next bubble-and-bust. He is one of the few observers to have understood how today’s crisis has roots going back three decades, and to have seen how it connects to the upward redistribution of income over this period.”

--Dean Baker, Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy

"Les Leopold's book is a cogent, clear, and compelling explanation of how Wall Street's Big Casino wrecked the economy. I might not agree with all of his provocative proposals, but so what? This book is a fun read, despite the sickening scenario it describes."

--Jonathan Alter, Senior Editor and Columnist at Newsweek and author of the bestselling book The Defining Moment: FDR's 100 Days and the Triumph of Hope

"The Looting of America" is a must-read story of how we were all taken to the cleaners by Wall Street. But it also represents how BuzzFlash promotes progressive books and small publishers, like the incomparable Chelsea Green Publishing house in Vermont. Like BuzzFlash, Chelsea Green started with a vision -- in their case sustainable living along with some progressive politics -- and against all odds established a viable, growing independent press. We've come to know them and offer many of their books, promoting progressive life styles, politics and commerce all at the same time.

That is what BuzzFlash is about and makes it -- along with partners in creating a progressive, sustainable future -- a model for online liberal publications and change agents. Or as Cheslea Green phrases it: "The politics & practice of sustainable living."

With that in mind, "The Looting of America" is quickly attracting a lot of attention as it rolls off the Chelsea Green presses. As America was mugged politically in 2000 with the theft of the election, we have been being pickpocketed by Wall Street and corporate America -- through the Republicrats via K Street lobbyist campaign contributions -- for three decades. The Reagan revolution basically began a license to loot hard working Americans and make them like it.

"The Looting of America" reveals the deatails and offers a return to an economic system based on producing products, paying people livable wages, and ending our Wall Street addiction to gambling America's economy away on a financial system that has little basis to real value.

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Obama’s Animal Farm

Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars Equal Peace and Justice

by Prof James Petras

Global Research, May 17, 2009 “The Deltas are psychos…You have to be a certified psychopath to join the Delta Force…”, a US Army colonel from Fort Bragg once told me back in the 1980’s. Now President Obama has elevated the most notorious of the psychopaths, General Stanley McChrystal, to head the US and NATO military command in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s rise to leadership is marked by his central role in directing special operations teams engaged in extrajudicial assassinations, systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy missions. He is the very embodiment of the brutality and gore that accompanies military-driven empire building. Between September 2003 and August 2008, McChrystal directed the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations (JSO) Command which operates special teams in overseas assassinations. The point of the ‘Special Operations’ teams (SOT) is that they do not distinguish between civilian and military oppositions, between activists and their sympathizers and the armed resistance. The SOT specialize in establishing death squads and recruiting and training paramilitary forces to terrorize communities, neighborhoods and social movements opposing US client regimes. The SOT’s ‘counter-terrorism’ is terrorism in reverse, focusing on socio-political groups between US proxies and the armed resistance. McChrystal’s SOT targeted local and national insurgent leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan through commando raids and air strikes. During the last 5 years of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld period the SOT were deeply implicated in the torture of political prisoners and suspects. McChrystal was a special favorite of Rumsfeld and Cheney because he was in charge of the ‘direct action’ forces of the ‘Special Missions Units. ‘Direct Action’ operative are the death-squads and torturers and their only engagement with the local population is to terrorize, and not to propagandize. They engage in ‘propaganda of the dead’, assassinating local leaders to ‘teach’ the locals to obey and submit to the occupation. Obama’s appointment of McChrystal as head reflects a grave new military escalation of his Afghanistan war in the face of the advance of the resistance throughout the country. The deteriorating position of the US is manifest in the tightening circle around all the roads leading in and out of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul as well as the expansion of Taliban control and influence throughout the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Obama’s inability to recruit new NATO reinforcements means that the White House’s only chance to advance its military driven empire is to escalate the number of US troops and to increase the kill ratio among any and all suspected civilians in territories controlled by the Afghan armed resistance. The White House and the Pentagon claim that the appointment of McChrystal was due to the ‘complexities’ of the situation on the ground and the need for a ‘change in strategy’. ‘Complexity’ is a euphemism for the increased mass opposition to the US, complicating traditional carpet ‘bombing and military sweep’ operations. The new strategy practiced by McChrystal involves large scale, long term ‘special operations’ to devastate and kill the local social networks and community leaders, which provide the support system for the armed resistance. Obama’s decision to prevent the release of scores of photographs documenting the torture of prisoners by US troops and ‘interrogators’ (especially under command of the ‘Special Forces’), is directly related to his appointment of McChrystal whose ‘SOT’ forces were highly implicated in widespread torture in Iraq. Equally important, under McChrystal’s command the DELTA, SEAL and Special Operations Teams will have a bigger role in the new ‘counter-insurgency strategy’. Obama’s claim that the publication of these photographs will adversely affect the ‘troops’ has a particular meaning: The graphic exposure of McChrystal’s modus operendi for the past 5 years under President Bush will undermine his effectiveness in carrying out the same operations under Obama. Obama’s decision to re-start the secret ‘military tribunals’ of foreign political prisoners, held at the Guantanamo prison camp, is not merely a replay of the Bush-Cheney policies, which Obama had condemned and vowed to eliminate during his presidential campaign, but part of his larger policy of militarization and coincides with his approval of the major secret police surveillance operations conducted against US citizens. Putting McChrystal in charge of the expanded Afghanistan-Pakistan military operations means putting a notorious practitioner of military terrorism – the torture and assassination of opponents to US policy – at the center of US foreign policy. Obama’s quantitative and qualitative expansion of the US war in South Asia means massive numbers of refugees fleeing the destruction of their farms, homes and villages; tens of thousands of civilian deaths, and eradication of entire communities. All of this will be committed by the Obama Administraton in the quest to ‘empty the lake (displace entire populations) to catch the fish (armed insurgents and activists)’.\ Obama’s restoration of all of the most notorious Bush Era policies and the appointment of Bush’s most brutal commander is based on his total embrace of the ideology of military-driven empire building. Once one believes (as Obama does) that US power and expansion are based on military conquests and counter-insurgency, all other ideological, diplomatic, moral and economic considerations will be subordinated to militarism. By focusing all resources on successful military conquest, scant attention is paid to the costs borne by the people targeted for conquest or to the US treasury and domestic American economy. This has been clear from the start: In the midst of a major recession/depression with millions of Americans losing their employment and homes, President Obama increased the military budget by 4% - taking it beyond $800 billion dollars. Obama’s embrace of militarism is obvious from his decision to expand the Afghan war despite NATO’s refusal to commit any more combat troops. It is obvious in his appointment of the most hard-line and notorious Special Forces General from the Bush-Cheney era to head the military command in subduing Afghanistan and the frontier areas of Pakistan. It is just as George Orwell described in Animal Farm: The Democratic Pigs are now pursuing the same brutal, military policies of their predecessors, the Republican Porkers, only now it is in the name of the people and peace. Orwell might paraphrase the policy of President Barack Obama, as ‘Bigger and bloodier wars equal peace and justice’. James Petras is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The Best Farmland in the U.S. Is Flooded; Most Americans Unconcerned

I just was made aware of the extent of farmland flooding during a recent auto trip I made from northern Michigan into the Heartland between the Illinois River to the Mississippi where the average farm size was in the thousands of acres. Much of that land was either unplowed and not planted since last year because of standing water, where in even the worst of times the water table was less than four feet. Places where even in the driest of time entire residential developments sank into the water tables below. The land with its rich black soil has little other use than farming. Land so rich that the farmland is contracted to major producers such as Green Giant who pay the farm owners without regard to climate conditions. It's a win-win for the farmers who rake in their millions come hell or high water.

While the food supply situation has skated along a knife edge so far this year, with higher prices and many countries experiencing food riots, widespread famine did not take hold. In an incredible move, the Japanese quietly eased rice shortages by releasing portions of their imported rice stockpiles—from giant warehouses in Tokyo—into the system; a welcome but one off blip in the big picture. What happens next time?

Now, this growing season, when yields need to be at record levels to avert disaster, what do we find? Floods or droughts in several of the breadbaskets of the world.

Whatever your plans are, I hope that you’re ready to execute them (or, better yet, are executing them). I’m pretty sure that most people have done nothing, and I don’t know why this continues to amaze me.

How can so many people, even those who should know better, be content to hit the wall without doing anything at all to change course?

The food situation is far off the radar screens of Joe Average. It only becomes a problem after it’s too late to do anything substantive to ameliorate conditions. We’ve already seen food riots, armed escorts for grain deliveries, rationing, sharply higher prices. And still, I’m mostly noticing yawns and drugged gurgles from the herd. Meanwhile, the die is all but cast on this year’s lower crop yields.

Via: Financial Times:

Consumers were warned to expect even sharper increases in global food prices after US officials said that some of the country’s best farmland was facing its worst flooding for 15 years.

Agriculture officials and traders said the damage could push up worldwide corn and soybean prices, which have spiralled in recent days as floods have swamped crops in parts of Iowa, the US’s biggest corn-producing state.

The warning comes at a time when high food prices are already sparking protests across the developing world.

Corn futures in Chicago this week rose to record highs of more than $8 a bushel on fears that up to 5m acres of the crop could be lost, while soybean prices hit a record of $15.93 a bushel.

Tom Jennings, acting director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture, said: “The price of corn and the price of beans could rise more. If we lose a lot of corn the prices will continue to go up.”

The increase in the cost of corn and soybeans – the two main feed crops for farm animals such as cows and chickens – increased the price of live cattle yesterday for the second day in a row, to the highest level in 22 years.

Mr Jennings said that the impact of the heavy rains was “dramatic”.

“According to the emergency reports I’m getting, we’re above what happened in 1993 but we’ll have to see how that tapers off as [the rain water] comes down the river,” he told the Financial Times.

The Mississippi River broke through its levee system in 1993, destroying about 1m acres of crops and causing $20bn of damage.

Lewis Hagedorn, of JPMorgan in Chicago, said that the losses were significant.

“The risk of still-higher agricultural prices remains decisively distributed to the upside amid the fundamental need to ration demand in light of smaller supply,” he said.

Greg Wagner, at Ag Resource in Chicago, added that corn prices could take a pause to assess the weather impact. However, he warned: “Additional price gains are likely as the market is prone to overshoot.”

After weeks of heavy rains and low temperatures, the US Department of Agriculture said that only 57 per cent of the country’s corn crop is in good or excellent condition, considerably less than the 70 per cent registered this time last year.

Local farmers in Illinois said that the bad weather had delayed planting by up to five weeks, which would result in a much reduced crop of corn and soybeans. Some farmers expected their corn production to be down by as much as 50 per cent from last year’s level.

Agriculture traders described the problem graphically, saying that corn plants in Iowa or Illinois should now be reaching almost waist height, but due to the impact of the heavy rains and low temperatures were below knee-height.

They added that expensive nitrogen fertilizer – critical for the plants’ development – has now been washed out from the fields by the rains. For that reason, some farmers are likely to leave their land fallow and, instead, cash in their crop insurance policies, further reducing supply.

All these good old boys will have to use all that anhydrous ammonia to make meth for the city folk.