WHO IS R T RANKIN?

Were they the among the worst and most offensive thrash metal bands of the mid 1980s?

You decide.

Click here for MP3 download of their anthem, "Luv and Leather."

Thanks to my buddy, Kevin, for hooking us all up.

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"BLOWBACK" PART TWO
Arabs see more attacks

As after the September 11 attacks, most Arabs said they were appalled by the bloodshed, but urged Washington to rethink the policies they felt were creating the anger and despair which spawned the bombings.

Palestinian columnist Adli Sadek wrote in the al-Hayat al-Jadida daily that the United States could not uproot terror unless it "adopted clean and just policies, quit its greedy ambitions in Iraq, ended its bias towards the killers in the occupied Palestinian land and stopped threatening others".

Others said the United States failed to understand and address the genuine roots of radicalism, such as widespread political and economic malaise.

"As long as the real causes of terrorism are not understood, the Americans will be fighting what they brand as terrorism for a long time to come," the English-language daily Iran News wrote.

Most Americans, taking the President's lead, think that terrorism is the work of "evil doers." Of course, that's a rather cartoonish outlook that reduces al-Qaeda to the level of the the "hordes of Hydra," the single-minded supervillian organization found in Marvel comics, or SPECTRE of the James Bond movies. The reality is that al-Qaeda and their supporters are real live human beings with complicated motivations and sophisticated understandings of the world and the people in it. They certainly do evil things; indeed, they are ruthless killers, a threat to countless lives. That is why we must understand them, rather than simply attacking them. Violence, by itself, will not end terrorism.

The United States (or, more accurately, the US government and US corporations) have screwed over millions of people for decades now. Until the American people realize that terrorism is in response to our government's many misdeeds, we will be doomed to suffer these attacks. US support of Israel's repressive policies toward the Palestinians must end. US support of the corporate raping of the third world and its peoples must end. US support of repressive regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia must end. The US must shift its billions of defense dollars to the business of saving lives and helping people--we must hammer our swords into plowshares and feed the Earth.

Like that's gonna happen anytime soon.

Click here.

Thanks to J. Orlin Grabbe.

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MORE ON IRAQ'S NONEXISTENT WMD'S:
Enron-Like Unreality

And that was the problem with the CIA and DIA: They were a bunch of vulgar empiricists. What the Bush administration wanted, it turns out, was faith-based intelligence. Thus the operation in the Office of Special Plans, headed by neocon Abram Shulsky, was born. Shulsky's shop didn't have agents in the field; indeed, it had just a handful of analysts. But what set them apart from the intelligence agencies was that they relied heavily on information from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) -- an organization of Iraqi exiles whose raison d'etre was to promote the overthrow of Hussein. As both Hersh and Dreyfuss document, a lot of the INC's information on weapons programs and other matters was considered patently absurd by veteran intelligence analysts. But that was the information that served as the basis of the administration's case for war.

Additionally, the New York Times now reports that the administration was told many months before Powell's Security Council speech that the documents purportedly demonstrating Iraq's purchase of uranium from Niger were forgeries.

Apparently, Bush administration intelligence is to intelligence as Fox news is to news. Facts are fine so long as they bolster the president's case. When they don't, they will be suppressed or forgotten, and other, more congenial facts will be found.

As at Enron, there are leading figures in this administration who think that when the real facts don't look so good, it's fine to substitute your own.

I made this Enron comparison, myself, about six weeks ago in my comment under the heading The battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon. It's nice to have an idea validated by a more mainstream writer.

I think it's pretty clear now that even though George W. Bush may claim the title "President," he seems to have as much understanding about what's happening in the White House and the world as Kenny-boy Lay claims to have had about Enron operations and its balance sheets. Rumsfeld and others whisper, Wormtongue-like, into Bush's ear, telling him what is happening and what he needs to do. Bush, tired, wanting to take his afternoon nap, agrees with his advisors, and issues their orders. Maybe Bush really is innocent of war crimes. Maybe he's only guilty of being stupid and weak-willed.

Unless, of course, Bush is more like the alternatively dottering for the cameras, then hard boiled behind the scenes fictional Ronald Reagan, as played by Phil Hartman in the old Saturday Night Live sketch. Are the mispronunciations a brilliant ruse? Is his complete ignorance of numerous important issues feigned? Is Bush the most brilliant statesman and strategist the world has ever seen?

Nah.

Click here to see why.

Thanks to J. Orlin Grabbe for the link.

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Army Ants Have Defied Evolution For 100 Million Years

The common scientific belief has been that army ants originated separately on several continents over millions of years. Now it is found there was no evolution. Using fossil data and the tools of a genetics detective, a Cornell University entomologist has discovered that these ants come from the same point of origin, because since the reign of the dinosaurs, about 100 million years ago, army ants in essence have not changed a bit.

"Biologists have wondered why army ants, whose queens can't fly or get caught up by the wind, are yet so similar around the world. Army ants have evolved only once and that was in the mid-Cretaceous period," says Sean Brady, a Cornell postdoctoral researcher in entomology, whose study was conducted while he was doctoral candidate at the University of California-Davis.

Click here.

I would say that rather than defying evolution, the army ant has simply reached evolutionary perfection. Like the roach.

Damned bugs.

Thanks to J. Orlin Grabbe.

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"BLOWBACK"

Saudi bombing kills at least 7 Americans
Al-Qaida prime suspect, Powell says

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Attackers shot their way into three housing compounds in synchronized strikes in the Saudi capital and then set off multiple suicide car bombs, killing 20 people, including seven Americans, officials reported today.

Authorities also found nine charred bodies believed to be those of the attackers, a Saudi Interior Ministry official said.

The bombings, which took place about 11:30 p.m. Monday, constituted one of the deadliest terror attacks on Americans since Sept. 11, 2001. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the coordinated strike had "the fingerprints of al-Qaida," the group that attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"Terrorism strikes anywhere, everyone," Powell said. "It is a threat to the entire civilized world."

President Bush vowed to hunt down the attackers.

Click here.

A while back I finally got around to watching the movie Brazil. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) for me, I got around to watching it only a few weeks after the infamous terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I actually first saw the film back when I was in college, but it was in a dorm room crammed with talking people on drugs, so I really didn't even get the gist of it. So, after wanting a better and undistracted viewing of Brazil for many years, I finally took a break from watching round the clock TV news coverage of the new "War on Terrorism," and put on the DVD.

It's a great film, of course, but watching it at the time that I did made the experience both frightening and depressing. Brazil depicts ordinary people trying to live their mundane lives in a world of repression and violence. Terrorists are constantly blowing things up which is either in response to, or justifies the police state in which the film takes place--I'm still not sure whether the terrorism or the repression comes first. Perhaps the distinction is unimportant as far as film analysis is concerned: the terrorism and the violent government response to it are, in the film, a never ending cycle. Terrorism causes state violence. State violence causes terrorism. Neither side achieves its goals (whatever they are), but both continue down their paths of destruction.

We are living in Brazil.

The anti-terrorism measures undertaken by the Bush administration have repressed, jailed, and killed hundreds of thousands of people while turning the world against the US. Despite all the carnage, Bush's "War on Terrorism" has seemingly not even dented Al-Qaeda abilities. I am beginning to wonder if the White House even cares. After all, terrorism offers a handy political justification for empire-building wars. Osama bin Laden is far more valuable to the warmongers alive and free, an ever present threat, than in jail or dead.

And as I've written on Real Art many times, Bush's wars are causing more terrorism.

That's right. MORE terrorism. This kind of terrorist attack in Riyadh was predicted by the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA, and the FBI. They call it "blowback. That is, this attack is in retribution for US government actions. Bush knew that this would happen, but he continued to take America down the path of self-destruction. He could have taken some common sense steps that would have lessened the likelihood of more "homicide bombers." That is to say, the way out of this cycle is to conduct foreign policy in terms of economic justice, democracy, cultural respect, and human rights rather than in terms of business interests. Bush chose business interests over the cherished ideals of the American people. More importantly, he chose money and power over human lives. The White House did not plan or carry out these bombings, but it shares some of the responsibility: Bush knowingly fanned the fires of justified Islamic anger toward the US; this both emboldens and strengthens Al-Qaeda.

More attacks are coming.

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HOUSE WALKOUT CONTINUES

Texas blogger, Charles Kuffner at Off the Kuff, provides an Editorial roundup of major Texas newspapers about the Democrat House walkout. The verdict is mostly pro-Democrat which means that Texans' sympathies may very well be with the donkey butts for the first time in my admittedly short memory.

One thing that I realized while reading an email alert that the Texas State Teachers' Association sent me about the walkout is that this political move helps me personally. Republicans are no friends to Texas teachers. They've recently been trying to ram all kinds of anti-teacher bills down the throat of the Texas lege: they already want to cut teacher pay, cut health insurance benefits, lower certification standards, take away personal leave time, and allow principals to fire teachers without reason. So the Democrats are actually helping Texas teachers. That means that the Democrats are actually helping me.

So, to the courageous Neo Killer Bees, I say thanks, guys.

I'm still voting Green whenever I can, however. Maybe if ya'll did something about corporate control, political corruption, polution, civil rights, labor rights, and encroaching religion in the political sphere, I'd try to vote for more of you guys. Until then, my hands are tied. But bravo, anyway!

Anyway, on to the editorial roundup.

Thanks to the all-seeing eye of the mysterious Atrios.

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WOW
Walkout by angry Democrats
halts work at Texas House

Click here.

AUSTIN -- Outnumbered by House Republicans determined to pass a congressional redistricting bill, all but a few Democrats went into hiding today to keep the House from meeting. The House's GOP leader responded by ordering state troopers to find and arrest the missing lawmakers.

The House walkout not only blocked the redistricting bill but also action on all other bills on the calendar. The House cannot convene without at least two-thirds of the membership, or 100 members, present on the House floor under legislative rules.

Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick locked down the House chamber so that lawmakers already present could not leave, then he expressed his disgust with the Democrats.

"It is a disgrace to run and hide," Craddick said. After the roll call, he ordered that missing lawmakers be arrested and brought back to the chamber.

House Democrats said they were taking a stand for fair treatment of the minority party. They blamed U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay, R-Sugar Land, for pushing the Texas House to take up redistricting against the wishes of Democrats and some GOP state lawmakers.

I'm utterly amazed.

Texas Democrats are starting to remember the hardball politics of their spiritual leader, Lyndon Johnson. This is hardball politics. Even though this tactic has been used by Texas Democrats once before, this time, it is on a much larger scale. Redistricting for US Congressional seats is always a hotly contested issue, but it's gotten pretty intense as US House majority whip, Tom DeLay, former bug exterminator from Sugarland, Texas, once again reaches out his scaly tendrils from Washington to interfere in local affairs (he jumped into local politics as recently as a couple of years ago when he personally acted to withhold federal transportation funds from the city of Houston, joining the anti-rail side in the fierce political battle over light rail). Showing the typical Republican contempt for its own pro-local government style of federalism (Republicans always ignore their usual pro-local stance whenever states and municipalities choose to do things that Republicans don't like: medicinal marijuanna, electing Al Gore for president, right to die, etc.), Tom DeLay has intensely lobbied the Texas House of Representatives to redraw districts in such a way that Republicans would gain more seats and expand their slim majority in the US House. At least one hardball Texas Democrat, Austin's Lloyd Doggett, stands to lose his seat.

This is not a terribly difficult issue to understand, but it can get a bit slippery. The long and the short of it is that Republicans want to change district boundaries in order to lump Democrat voters together in fewer districts, rather than spread out among many districts as they are now. In the new Democrat-heavy districts, Democrats would, of course, always win. Overall, however, Republicans have a much better shot at winning more seats--there would be fewer Democratic voters in most of the new districts to vote against Republicans. Republicans are betting that this might heavily alter the 17 to 15 seat advantage that Texas Democrats now enjoy over Texas Republicans in the US House. DeLay says that redistricting in this way would more accurately reflect the will of Texas voters. Democrats say that Republicans are trying to amass more power on the cheap.

Guess who's side I'm on.

Hearing about this highly theatrical, highly effective move by Texas Democratic Representatives has both excited me and put me in a good mood all day long. I try to not be too terribly optimistic, but this walkout gives me some hope. Along with the recent Democratic filibuster in the US Senate, I'm starting to feel like there may be a tidal shift in the works. Will the Democrats now fight back? Has anger replaced paralyzing desperation and fear? ARE THE DEMOCRATS GOING TO GET US SOME DEMOCRACY?

I've got lots of reasons to be skeptical, but I'm going to enjoy this in-your-face victory for at least a day or two longer.

Here are some related story links from the Houston Chronicle:

Some rebel Texas lawmakers surface in Oklahoma town.

Plan took cunning, secrecy and overnight bags.

Walkout in Texas reverberates in Washington.

What they're saying about Democrats' walkout.

List of House Democrats who've walked out

Pick and choose.

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MERCE CUNNINGHAM'S AVANT GARDE DANCE TROUPE

For any viewer, one of the greatest things about Cunningham's dances is that you don't have to "get" anything. Devoid of narrative and emotional trappings, they're about possibility, exploring movement for its own sake. The dancers don't even hear the music when they're learning the steps -- not that it would matter, since the scores are famously uncountable. And when it all comes together, you're free to free associate: even the backdrops encourage your mind to wander. If you can resist the urge to impose meaning onto the movement, the effect is liberating -- especially in an era when so much dance is either a rant, a tragedy or a soul-searching journey.

In the late 80s when I was a student in the University of Texas' Department of Drama, I missed Merce Cunningham because I, in my ignorance, scoffed at dance as an artform and did not realize how cool his avant garde choreography actually is. I missed him this time around in Houston because I had no idea he was going to be here.

Damn.

Read the review. It sounded like a great show. Click here.

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UPDATE: STILL NO WMDs
Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq
Task Force Unable To Find Any Weapons

Leaders of Task Force 75's diverse staff -- biologists, chemists, arms treaty enforcers, nuclear operators, computer and document experts, and special forces troops -- arrived with high hopes of early success. They said they expected to find what Secretary of State Colin L. Powell described at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 -- hundreds of tons of biological and chemical agents, missiles and rockets to deliver the agents, and evidence of an ongoing program to build a nuclear bomb.

Scores of fruitless missions broke that confidence, many task force members said in interviews.

Army Col. Richard McPhee, who will close down the task force next month, said he took seriously U.S. intelligence warnings on the eve of war that Hussein had given "release authority" to subordinates in command of chemical weapons. "We didn't have all these people in [protective] suits" for nothing, he said. But if Iraq thought of using such weapons, "there had to have been something to use. And we haven't found it. . . . Books will be written on that in the intelligence community for a long time."

So, according to this article, either there were no weapons of mass destruction from the beginning, OR invading Iraq caused them to fall into the hands of unknown "looters"--that is, if the weapons existed, the US may very well have caused the situation it wanted to avoid, terrorists posessing WMDs. I don't really think that Saddam had WMDs to begin with, myself. That's not really my point here, though: the Pentagon is cutting way back on it's efforts to find evidence of Iraqi nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. That's basically it. It's really starting to look like the Bush administration has absolutely no interest in validating its war. No WMDs. No al-Qaeda link. Only "liberation" and victory. The whole thing was based on lies and most of the American public militantly supported it.

But there can really be no doubt now. The war against Iraq was about oil and empire. The President and his lieutenants should be tried for war crimes.

Click here.

Thanks to J. Orlin Grabbe.

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MORE FROM FATNOISE
Demented Old Hillbilly Robert Byrd
Shows He's Still Got Some Piss and Vinegar
(at first, it was mostly vinegar...)

My friend, Kevin writes:

Thank god we're nearing an election year. Now people are expected to be "un-patriotic" when it comes to Bush's antics. Here's Sen. Byrd's response to Dubya's Mighty Military Man show...

Here is a sample provided by Kevin:

I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw.

What I heard the president say also disturbed me. It may make for grand theater to describe Saddam Hussein as an ally of al-Qaida or to characterize the fall of Baghdad as a victory in the war on terror, but stirring rhetoric does not necessarily reflect sobering reality. Not one of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers was an Iraqi. In fact, there is not a shred of evidence to link the Sept. 11 attack on the United States to Iraq. There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam was an evil despot who brought great suffering to the Iraqi people, and there is no doubt in my mind that he encouraged and rewarded acts of terrorism against Israel. But his crimes are not those of Osama bin Laden, and bringing Saddam to justice will not bring justice to the victims of 9-11.

And

War is not theater, and victory is not a campaign slogan. I join with the president and all Americans in expressing heartfelt thanks and gratitude to our men and women in uniform for their service to our country, and for the sacrifices that they have made on our behalf. But on this point I differ with the president: I believe that our military forces deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, and not used as stage props to embellish a presidential speech.

Here is a link provided by Kevin.

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FROM FATNOISE

White House press secretary shows little regard for truth

My pal, Kevin, writes:

As a long time student of media manipulation, I found the warmonger-in-chief's recent spectacle/speech to be both disgusting and hilarious. With so many others lambasting him about it this week, it is moving more towards the ridiculous.

ha ha hee hee ho ho.
k

"White House officials advised the press and television networks, falsely, that the carrier was about 100 miles offshore. The officials knew the truth, because they manipulated the television camera angles for fear the coastline might be visible."

Personally, I like to think of it as creating material not for Letterman or Leno, but for the real favorite standup comedian of America, Ari Fleischer. Click here.

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HYPOCRITES

1. Conservative gay moralist, Andrew Sullivan, likes to have promiscuous, unprotected sex:

Beyond the sensationalism of the “bareback” sex revelation, what was most jarring to people who’d received this information was the sheer incongruity between the public persona that many rightly or wrong perceive as Sullivan’s—conservative, moral, devoutly Catholic, marriage-minded, judgmental toward the sexual behavior of politicians and other public figures, and arrogant toward the ghettoized gay scene—and the person depicted on the sites, a gay stereotype more extreme than any of the Village People, someone very much in the gay sexual fast lane, all pumped up and describing his “power glutes,” ravenously eager to hook up but letting prospective partners know that “no fats, no fems” need apply.

This is quite a good article that not only indicts Sullivan as the evil hypocrite that he is, but also manages to give the lowdown on the state of AIDS in the gay community in 2003. BEWARE. This essay contains some rather graphic, but necessary language and ideas. Click here.

Thanks to Eschaton.

2. Conservative straight moralist, William Bennett, likes to gamble so much that he's lost $8 million dollars:

I have always considered Bennett a pompous fraud. I don't even like his looks. He is a reckless moralizer who has forgotten (if indeed he ever knew) the saying about taking the log out of his own eye before worrying about the speck in someone else's. Since Mr. Bennett cannot bear his own imperfections, and cannot change himself, he has decided he should change everyone else. He apparently never learned one of the first rules of a civilized man: mind your own business.

This gloating essay does a pretty good job of explaining how Bennett's fall from grace is about much more than any single individual. Click here.

Thanks to J. Orlin Grabbe.

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CLEVER LIMEYS
Fox News Could Be Booted from Britain

In England, the Independent Television Commission mandates that all television networks follow a standard of "due impartiality." Distributed throughout the U.K. via the Sky Digital satellite service (which, like FNC is owned by Rupert Murdoch), FNC has been the subject of numerous complaints from subscribers troubled by its biased stances.

So does that mean that big butthole Bill O'Reilly will be pushing for "freedom muffins" instead of English muffins? Should we put a little "freedom" on the cue ball instead of "english?" Ban that unAmerican bastard bard, Shakespeare? THE REDCOATS ARE COMING! THE REDCOATS ARE COMING! Click here.

Thanks to my buddy, Michael, for the link.

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Qapla'! Hospital seeks Klingon speaker

This is not April Fool's Day, obviously. So this has to be real, right? Click here.

And just in case you miss the link, click here for info on the glorious Klingon language.

Click here for a picture of my favorite Klingon, Kang from the Star Trek episode "Day of the Dove."

Thanks to fellow geek Atrios.

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UNCHARTED TERRITORY
Fed shifts to rooting for a little inflation

"Deflation is like quicksand. It is very difficult to get out of. So the Fed doesn't want that to happen," said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo.

With deflation, prices fall and consumers stop spending because they think better deals are on the way. That hurts businesses, which are forced to cut prices to woo shoppers. Earnings then tumble. A vicious cycle ensues.

The last time Americans saw deflation was during the Great Depression. Since then, Fed policy-makers have largely focused on fighting inflation.

Of course, the Great Depression was preceded by an economic bubble spurred on by the period of unregulated business, banking, and finance known as the Roaring Twenties. Coincidence: our current recession was preceded by a period of increasing deregulation of business and finance that seemed to heavily contribute to the now burst economic bubble during the Roaring Nineties.

Perhaps this is only a coincidence, but, personally, I think not. Looming deflation is not good news, and that's a major understatement. We're in a fine mess and the blame must fall squarely on the shoulders of the free market fundamentalist cheerleaders at newspapers, in Congress, and in economics departments at colleges and universities throughout the land. Wealth cannot be trusted to police itself--left to its own devices, it will always turn cannibalistic and eat the nation.

I say eat the rich.

Click here to learn more about potential deflation.

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WHITEWATER REVISITED

Stewart was soon followed by Susan Schmidt, the Washington Post reporter who gained notoriety as one of Starr's most pliant outlets. In a question-and-answer session on the Post's Web site, Schmidt spun furiously about the "significant criminal convictions" won by Starr and the issues of "character and honesty" raised by Whitewater. But one question put to Schmidt by a reader encapsulated the confusion and frustration that must be felt by any citizens still paying attention to this story: "Can you tell me precisely what the Clintons are supposed to have done and what the key evidence was?" Schmidt took a pass and quickly logged off. But that plaintive query deserves a candid answer, as do the many other inquiries that seem to have been left unaddressed by the mainstream media -- most of which seems eager to abandon Whitewater as the embarrassment it has been.

The short, accurate reply to the above question is that the supposed offenses of the Clintons kept changing to suit the desire of prosecutors (and some reporters) to keep the scandal alive.

Just in case anybody's forgotten, the Whitewater scandal (you remember, the one that ended up with the bullshit impeachment of President Clinton for lying about a lousy blowjob) was a totally concocted pretext for a multi-million dollar, publicly funded, partisan witch hunt against the Clinton administration. This witch hunt was cheered on and enabled by some of the very same people who are currently ruining our economy, turning the world against us, and helping the Bush administration get away with amazing and evil feats that would have brought down Clinton in a heartbeat.

Here is a well written recap of the maddening affair.

Thanks to Eschaton.

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ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM
CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM
it's all the same...

...Islamic fundamentalism's hatred is driven by a deep fear of modernity. Western modernity, with its scientific world view, stresses secularism and the rights of individuals to choose their own values and life style. This is believed to undermine Islamic authority. It does.

Americans should be able to understand this view. We have a number of Christian fundamentalists fighting modernity.

And some of those Christian fundamentalists are running the White House.

I've been meaning to write some kind essay on this topic, myself, for a while, but Don Post articulates it well and beat me to it. In reality, the clash between religious fundamentalism and modernity is the same thing as the "culture war" that Pat Buchanan spoke on at the Republican National Convention back in 1992. Casting the wars against terrorism and evil dictators in terms of the US versus Islamic extremists simply confuses the overall issue. The entire world, including America, is in a gigantic cultural spasm. Science and reason are under attack around the globe. Dogma, superstition, and rigid fundamentalisms, both secular and religious are on the rise. Whether it's at the end of a gun barrel and under an iron boot, or in a television induced state of hypnotized, air conditioned comfort, it's free thought against mind control. That's the planet Earth in the twenty first century.

It makes me so angry when I think about it. The twentieth century was so damned promising. The most marvelous ideas, concepts birthed in the Renaissance, were coming to fruition, despite all the death and destruction. As the Cold War ended, the 1990s offered the potential for an idyllic Star Trek like future. Justice and freedom from fear. Love and peace. I really do fear that we've totally blown it.

Click here.

While I'm at it, here's some related depressing news about the worldwide strife expected to occur soon when oil supplies are depleted.

Finally, because this is all very much a downer, here's some refreshing Vivaldi to both ease the mind and evoke the Age of Reason.

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BREAKING FROM THE HERD
More on Behavioral Economics

What are the implications of these ideas for policy? According to Mr Marglin, they are profound. What if people cannot even calculate the amount they are willing to pay for a pound of butter or a haircut, or have any idea what prices will be in the future? In such a world, such basic constructs as demand and supply curves—which show the quantities that people and firms would be willing to demand or supply at given prices—lose their meaning. The normal economic calculations of costs and benefits—for example, of the costs created by a tax increase or the imposition of a tariff—depend on estimates of these curves. These calculations, and the policy conclusions that follow from them, may therefore be threatened by the behavioural approach.

This helps unorthodox economists in a range of debates with those in the mainstream. Support for school vouchers, for example, relies crucially on the notion that people know what is best for them, or at any rate for their children. Free trade relies on the benefits that occur to many from lower import duties, set against the costs suffered in the form of lost jobs in industries competing with imports. But if these things cannot be measured, or even theorised about sensibly, the rationale seems to melt away. Mr Marglin would have students read about the travails of unemployed textile workers in the American South who have lost their jobs thanks to NAFTA, rather than wade though econometric studies of the net benefits of the trade agreement to the American and Mexican economies.

Click here.

Thanks to J. Orlin Grabbe.

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AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
A few thoughts

Increasingly, I am hearing white liberal friends of mine speak out against affirmative action. This is disturbing. It means that Americans to the left of the ditch are slowly starting to buy into the conservative mythology. This isn’t surprising due to many factors, chiefly, the mainstream media’s embrace of conservative philosophy as truth.

As far as I can tell, the conservative line of thought (if you want to call it that) goes something like this. Affirmative action had its time and place in American history, but that time has passed. Racism is no longer the problem that it was in this country some thirty years ago, and now affirmative action causes far more problems than it solves. Furthermore, affirmative action is discriminatory toward white people and that’s simply not the American way. America is about equality for all races and it is time to end this blatant discrimination toward whites.

(For those of you who are falling out laughing at this conservative “argument,” I’d be laughing with you if not for the fact that so many otherwise rational individuals buy this point of view lock, stock, and barrel.)

Of course, this conservative point of view is so extraordinarily naïve, I am somewhat amazed that anybody, liberal or conservative, could even consider that it is possibly true. For starters, I will admit straight up that affirmative action is, in fact, discrimination. However, it is a form of discrimination that exists in order to redress longstanding inequities in American society. That is, affirmative action is a “hand up, not a hand out.”

In order to believe that the time for affirmative action has passed, one must also believe that the time of racism has passed in the United States. It has not. I don’t even really think that I need to prove this point because the evidence is as plain as the nose on your (white) face. But just in case you don’t believe me, consider this. African-Americans are wildly over represented in prisons. There are no black CEOs (that I know of) running any Fortune 500 companies. We have never had a black president or vice president. Disenfranchisement of African-Americans is still a reality (there is now a massive amount of evidence about this happening in Florida during the 2000 elections). Black high school graduation rates are still much lower than white graduation rates. Black college diplomas still lag way behind the number of white diplomas. Weird, negative racial stereotypes of African-Americans still dominate television and cinema (find and read Wynton Marsalis’ comments about hip-hop stereotyping or watch Spike Lee’s film, Bamboozled). “Driving while black” is still an offense that will get you pulled over in many states. Killing a white person usually gets a death sentence. Killing a black person does not. Security “officers” often follow around perfectly innocent African-Americans in upscale department stores. Racial hate groups are still active and seemingly growing in number. There is a massive disparity in pay rates between blacks and whites. Whites possess far more wealth than blacks. Redlining is still widely practiced by the banking industry in covert forms.

There is much, much more to ending racism than avoiding the “n-word” or being able to ogle Halle Berry or having a black friend or two. Sadly, most white people, still being segregated from the black reality of America, reduce the ending of racism to this superficial (but nice) threshold of racial equality. Racism still exists. Racism is a big problem. Racism is aided and abetted by federal, state, and local governments. Racism hurts blacks and helps whites.

Affirmative action is discrimination, yes, but it is as nothing compared to the discrimination that African-Americans face every day. I would be perfectly willing to consider some other solutions to longstanding racial disparities in America that do not discriminate on the basis of race, but nobody seems to be offering any.

Are there any?

Yes, but such solutions are simply not feasible in our capitalist, wealth-dominated nation. Public schools need a massive overhaul—I’m talking on the scale of the Pentagon budget. Class sizes need to be lowered to less than ten students; this would mandate building tons of new schools and hiring hundreds of thousands of new teachers (and raising teacher pay would attract much better teachers than the bland bunch of nerds populating faculties now). No child that is in poverty can learn as well or as much as a child that does not have to worry about his next meal or where to live: poverty and the social ills with which it is associated must be eliminated, at least for children. Perhaps overhauling the public schools would make the need for affirmative action at colleges and universities a thing of the past, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Furthermore, the African-American community should have a much-deserved infusion of wealth. That is, blacks throughout the twentieth century have been systematically excluded from the system that has allowed most whites to accrue their own capital assets: home mortgage loans. Redlining has lessened over the years (even though it does still exist), but America also owes a debt to descendent families of the menial labor that helped to build this country. Federal and state governments should pay reparations to blacks, or, at the very least, back wages for slave labor. Spent wisely, this could go a long way toward ending the economic white superiority that is still a part of America and its politics.

To be honest, I would personally prefer the two above-mentioned solutions over affirmative action—they would probably work better and no whiney whites could moan about how they’ve been “discriminated against.” But like I said, I’m not going to hold my breath.

To any white liberals or moderates that buy the conservative mythology about affirmative action, I say this. I will join you in you opposition to affirmative action if you join me in supporting a real fight against poverty, a massive influx of cash to public schools, greatly lowering class sizes, and reparations to the African-American community.

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Affirmative action is clearly an imperfect solution to a vast and complicated injustice in America. But for now, it’s the only solution we’ve got.

Don’t buy the racist, conservative bullshit.

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QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES

HPD crime lab takes another hit:
Shoddy handling, storing of DNA
raise doubts about rape conviction

The unprecedented retesting of DNA evidence processed by HPD began late last year after the audit found widespread problems at the crime lab including a leaky roof, sloppy science and questions about the veracity of the testimony by some lab workers. Police officials are reviewing close to 1,300 completed cases for possible retesting. So far retesting has been ordered in 170 convictions, plus dozens of pending cases.

Of the 16 cases that have been retested so far, Cantrell's and Sutton's results are the second to have contradicted the original findings of the police lab.

Click here.

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