Chin Music

Inevitable inequality?

Thu, 8 Nov 2007 06:57:44 -0800

There seems to be little question that U.S. society is divided into two, perhaps three, economic strata: the have-nots, the haves, and, I’ll add, the have-mores. G.W. Bush jokingly allowed that the latter two formed his “base.” But it’s no joke.
I’m sure that you share my difficulty in trying to grasp the extent of wealth enjoyed by a privileged few. We got a glimpse of what it might be like belonging to the have-mores last Sunday during 60 Minutes. Leslie Stahl interviewed Tom Perkins aboard his yacht, the largest and most expensive in the world.

"Somebody has to have it, right?" Perkins says, laughing. "Why not me?"

Yes, indeed.
Inequality, certainly on the U.S. scale, is not good for you. Studies have shown that it makes us unhealthier than citizens of more egalitarian countries like Sweden and Norway.* Americans experience a double-whammy: tremendous economic inequality combined with no universal health care system.
There is a more insidious consequence of inequality—American style: since we mark our status with toys, like Perkins’s yacht, improving one’s disposition, but not position, is only a purchase away. But inequality has far more serious implications than whether or not I can afford to buy the next version of the iPod.
The economic divisions militate against social cohesion. That is, the differences between and among us are so large that we live in different societies, really. With few exceptions, I have no more in common with the residents of East Hampton, Long Island, than I have with the residents of La Paz, Bolivia. With the former I share the culture of Paris Hilton, a common language, and skin color—I doubt there are very many Blacks and Latinos with property in the 11937 zip code.
We have extremely low voter participation rates in the U.S. I suspect that many Americans don’t bother to cast ballots because they feel disenfranchised; and they probably are. (Fewer than 30 percent of Snohomish County eligible voters participated in last Tuesday’s election.) Governments decide issues for the rich and against the poor, in the manner of politicians’ benefactors. After all, when is the last time you bought a legislator?
There are important people mentioning inequality. The new Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told an audience at Columbia University, “Amid this country's strong economic expansion, many Americans simply aren't feeling the benefits. Their increases in wages are being eaten up by high energy prices and rising healthcare costs, among others.”
Paul Krugman, the Princeton economist and part-time columnist for the New York Times, frequently talks about inequality. Here is a good example (subscription required).

What’s really remarkable, however, is that four years of economic growth have produced essentially no gains for ordinary American workers.
Wages, adjusted for inflation, have stagnated: the real hourly earnings of nonsupervisory workers, the most widely used measure of how typical workers are faring, were no higher in July 2007 than they were in July 2003.

Okay, so there’s inequality. Now what?
The usual prescriptions focus almost exclusively on two things: skills and education. If only more people had both, then inequality would disappear. It’s as if there are all these high-paying jobs out there waiting for qualified workers to fill them. Is this picture correct?
Michael Yates, a retired professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh, offers a different explanation than the typical bromides and shibboleths.

…inequality is a normal feature of capitalist economies, and growing inequality is a natural consequence of capitalism when there is a quiescent working class, as is the case in the United States and much of the world.

When I was attending Berkeley in the ’60s there was much talk about “the system.” Mario Savio gave this advice to students:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

Savio’s “machine” was the university’s governing apparatus. But it is an apt metaphor for our rulers and their controlling devices.
Are Yates and Savio right? Is it true, as Yates argues, that if we really want to eliminate inequality, and also, presumably, poverty, we must abandon capitalism?
Yates, writing in the November 2007 issue of Monthly Review, asserts that it is the nature of the capitalist to exploit labor. Let’s think about this for a moment.
If we assume that being a capitalist (investor, stock owner, etc.) is all about making money, then how is money made? If you are Tom Perkins, you begin your career with an idea for a better mousetrap, persuade people with money to invest in your startup company, produce the device, then market it as far and as wide as possible. If you are lucky, or have indeed offered something that people want and can afford, then you make money.
The key piece in all this is money and those who have it. The better mousetrap doesn’t get engineered and manufactured without money, or capital. Those with money, the capitalists, want to make more of it. They don’t really care what it is you, or Tom Perkins, is making; only that it sells. If you can convince consumers that they need a pet rock, there’s money in it; and, again, that’s what it’s all about.
Still, whatever it is that is being made and sold costs money to manufacture and market. The capitalist makes his/her money on the difference between the price of the unit and its embedded costs. Since the capitalist cannot charge just any price for his/her product (after all, there is a limit on how much people can pay), he or she tends to concentrate on costs—the lower the better.
Each step along the way from converting raw materials (e.g., iron or sand) to the finished product requires labor. Someone has to dig up the material, transport it to a manufacturing facility, process the material, put it in packages, advertise its existence and purported benefits, write the legal documents, secure the insurance, and so on. No matter how mechanized the many processes, humans play a necessary role.
The worker in this scheme is an input, just like energy, land, and raw materials. Well, technically, it’s the amount of human labor embedded in the finished product or service. The capitalist wants to keep the costs of labor as low as possible. Among other things, the worker wants a maximum wage. In theory, these competing desires reach a common point, which becomes “the wage.”
In reality, the capitalist has an advantage over the worker. In today’s global economy, especially, the capitalist can literally search the planet to find the lowest-cost, competent labor. The worker, however, has no such ability. Moreover, few of us are inclined to pack up everything to seek work in distant lands. Besides, we know that wages elsewhere will be lower than they are here; that’s why the capitalist closed the plant in Michigan and opened a new one in Mexico.
Karl Marx called this wage squeeze “exploitation.” He argued that it was central to capitalism’s operation, for the reasons set out above. Yates picks up on this:

…then it follows that the ability to maintain and, when possible, deepen this exploitation will also be central. Employers will be bound to control their workers’ labor as much as possible, to prevent them from being able to interfere with their own exploitation…Employers will be bound as well to do whatever they can to prevent workers from organizing collectively, sine this is the one thing that can throw a monkey wrench [recall Savio] into the drive to accumulate capital. If they [the employers qua capitalist] can divide workers on any basis, they will—by skill [remember the shibboleths], race, gender, religion, or employment. They will also organize themselves politically, using their superior monetary resources and their near-monopoly of society’s productive forces [how many automakers are there in the U.S., or, for that matter, telecommunications companies?], to pressure the state [“our” elected representatives] to control labor, by force if necessary. They will wage ceaseless propaganda in favor of capitalism and against the system’s enemies.

Earlier in his essay Yates writes about the concentrated few in each industry who dominate most, if not all, facets of the economy and culture. This fact, as much as any other, explains inequality. Combined with the systematic exploitation of workers, the nearly moribund labor movement (which John Kenneth Galbraith called a “countervailing force” to capital), and the inexhaustible quest for money—capitalism, U.S.-stye, necessarily delivers inequality. It’s a matter of simple logic; the conclusion follows from the premises.
The apparent answer to the question, Is inequality inevitable?, would be yes—within a U.S.-stye economic system. Other countries, although very much capitalistic, mitigate the more pernicious effects by both redistributing wealth and investing heavily in the public sector—via taxes. Thus, inequality is much lower in Europe than in the U.S. (I have written previously on these matters here, here, and here.)
As a practical matter, I do not see much success in heeding Savio’s advice. Nor would an attempted revolution hold any chance of prevailing; “the system” is just too powerful. I can’t imagine effecting a wholesale replacement of capitalism. For starters, who would join in the effort? Most of us don’t even speak the language; we seem quite satisfied consuming popular culture, from Paris Hilton and YouTube to football and American Idol. Most of us have enough bread to survive, and everything else is a circus.
What may be possible, though, and with the help of a rapidly collapsing economy, is a version of shock and awe in which the dominant economic system is the victim rather than the exploiter. The Great Depression made possible the New Deal reforms and much higher marginal taxes than exist today. Perhaps history is about to repeat itself. The challenge, should any of this unfold, is to ward off the constant and unforgiving threats to what the French called “liberty, equality, and fraternity.” Once achieved, they should never be relinquished.
________
*Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality, by Richard G. Wilkinson. “Health is powerfully affected by social position and by the scale of social and economic differences among the population. In terms of income, the relationship is with relative rather than absolute income levels.”

Post-election ruminations

Wed, 7 Nov 2007 07:34:11 -0800

I am one of those people who indulges in what I’ll call ‘the progressive conceit’: my fellow human beings would behave differently if they knew the facts. And, of course, by “facts” I mean “those things I believe to be true.”
Do we, in this case the tens of thousands who join the freeway goo each morning and late afternoon, really enjoy sitting in our cars that wind up stuck in congested traffic lanes? Well, either there are not enough of those “we” or too many “we’s” are masochists, stupidly so. The costs of funding Proposition 1 are to the hidden costs of congestion as a molecule is to an elephant.
Yet, as I said in my previous post, I was conflicted on this ballot item. I do not favor more roads, which only induce more congestion. Also, roads are all about cars, and we have too many of them. One study, posted by Crosscut, concluded that Proposition 1 would increase carbon emissions, which the planet cannot further abide. Nor, it seems, would it have much alleviated the congestion the measure was supposed to minimize. So I am hardly devastated by the people’s vote on this measure.
But here is what bothers me. We, again, seem incapable of acting boldly and imaginatively to solve problems. We think of only the upfront, explicit costs and almost completely ignore the costs of doing nothing.
You may have seen the article in last Sunday’s Parade magazine about railroads. While Europe and Japan are wholeheartedly embracing high-speed trains to transport citizens from one city to another (and even country to country), we tolerate the freeway goo and now the inanity of flying. I like trains, and it appears that millions of Europeans and Japanese do too. They’re willing to pay for it; we Americans are not. Indeed, we grumble about “subsidizing” the mediocre Amtrak, which is forced to operate on rails designed exclusively for freight cars. While Europeans and Japanese routinely ride aboard trains speeding along the tracks in excess of 200 mph, Americans seem content to sit still in the freeway goo. In the time it takes to travel by train between Lyons, France, and Geneva, Switzerland, Puget Sound motorists cover the morning commute between Everett and Seattle. The former is 124 miles; the latter, about 30. Gosh, in Europe they build train tunnels under the English Channel and even through the Alps.
How does one explain the defeat of the constitutional amendment to remove the super-majority requirement for local school funding?
Surveys routinely demonstrate that Americans supports public schools; they even recognize that the biggest problem schools face is lack of money. Unless we have small children, are an educator, or married to one (yours truly), we probably lack appreciation of the poor physical state of our school buildings.
In Marysville, where my wife teaches, many of the schools are so decrepit and antiquated that limits must be placed on plug load (computers), the water can’t be drunk from the faucets, and there are un-patched holes in classroom walls. Students are jammed into small spaces, and teachers have no room to meet for joint planning functions. Yet, more houses sprout up pouring forth new batches of school children each year.
Opponents of EHJR 4204, who were not formally constituted, argued that the measure would raise property taxes and, besides, most school levies pass. What they neglected to mention was that in many communities, including Marysville, bond measures to fund new schools routinely fail as do levies on first or even second attempts. They receive simple majorities, but not the super majority the state constitution mandates. Often school districts pare down their initial proposals in hopes of currying more favor with the voters on subsequent tries.
And speaking of the constitution, it declares that the state’s foremost obligation is providing public education for the citizens of Washington. One would never know it, judging by our children’s schools.
Meanwhile, Tim Eyman donned his gorilla suit, paid himself and a bunch of initiative gatherers, and put another item on the ballot, this one doing to the legislature what the constitution did to the schools—mandating a super-majority vote to approve taxes and fees. Ironically, his Initiative 960, while passing, failed to gain the support of 60 percent of the voters.
One can see how easy it is for me to descend into the progressive conceit. I imagine, probably erroneously, that people (a) vote against their own interests, (b) fail to understand what those interests are, in particular the alternative cost of perpetuating the status quo, and (c) even if they can articulate their interests, fail to appreciate that a particular ballot measure will advance or undermine those interests. Against this conceit, one could argue that the people largely ignored the opponents of Referendum 67, who attempted to scare voters with threats of higher insurance premiums and “frivolous lawsuits.”
But if we can distill a consistent theme from yesterday’s turnout it is that people are loathe to tax themselves, even though Americans are the least-taxed amongst all western industrial populations. At the same time, we endlessly complain about poor schools, congested freeways, and ineffective legislators. Oh, and there’s always health care.
Meanwhile we’ve got a war to fund. That may cost as much as, if not more than, $2.4 trillion—with a ‘t.’ Why does this country have a boundless wad of money to occupy another country and kill its residents but so few dollars to build good schools and adequate transportation systems?
Perhaps the syndrome is not so much a conceit as self-delusion. Can I at least retain some modicum of hope to counter my profound pessimism? But hope in what? The people?

Long odds

Tue, 6 Nov 2007 12:56:34 -0800

As some of you know, perhaps all too well, I used to play baseball. After failing to make a Little League team at the age of 12, my first and only attempt, I was nevertheless selected to join a Babe Ruth team the following season, where I remained for three years, over which my skills actually declined. In my 16th year, however, I grew taller and evidently stronger, for I made the local American Legion team and, if modesty permits, became a star on the high school baseball team. At least the New York Mets thought so, for they selected me in major league baseball’s first draft. In that year, 1965, Rick Monday was the top pick; I was number 660.
It’s a fair comment, I think, that most boys growing up dream of playing professional sports. In that, I was hardly unusual. So, being drafted, even that far down the list (there were about 800+ total draftees), was a milestone, perhaps a big first step on the way to realizing my dream. How silly of me.
In a fascinating New Yorker article about super agent Scott Boras, we learn a great deal about how major league baseball has changed since the beginning of free agency. But we also come across some facts that will, or should, depress the hell out of young boys nurturing their own dreams of professional stardom. According to Boras, who represents Alex Rodriguez among scores of other big names, “less than one percent of the [minor] league players are going to have a six-year major-league career. And maybe as many as only three or four per cent are going to have a three-year career.”
Before 1976, when the reserve clause was abolished (it tied players to teams as if they were the property of the owner—which they were), the average major league player made $46,000 a year. If a player didn’t like his team’s salary offer, tough. Where else could he go? (As for me, the Mets’s scout, Roy Partee offered the giant sum of $5,000 to sign and a salary of $500 a month to play A-ball in West Virginia, I think.) Averages, of course, are deceiving. Babe Ruth made $100,000 as part of Murderers’ Row; that was back in the late-20s. Yet, even Willie Mays, the greatest of them all in my opinion, extracted the same amount as late as the early 1960s. I’m talking nominal dollars. Richie Allen, who played for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1976, made the astounding salary of $225,000 a year.
Today, the odds against making a career out of playing pro baseball are much higher than they were back in Ruth’s day, because there are a lot more people in the potential labor pool and not that many more teams. But for those who do make it big, like A-Rod, the rewards are astronomical. Boras got him a contract with the Texas Rangers that paid him $25 million a year for 10 years. The owner of that team, Tom Hicks, realized he couldn’t afford to keep Rodriguez, so he traded him to the Yankees. Yet the deal called for him to continue paying $8 million of A-Rod’s annual salary, even though he was playing for a different team. Now that A-Rod has left the Yankees Boras has upped the ante; he wants to land a contract for Rodriguez that is at least $350 million over 10 years. A-Rod is 32.
The minimum major league salary is now $380,000, with the average at $3 million a year. Nice, if a player can last a few years. Yet, very few do. Boras says that just three or four percent of those who make it to the bigs last as long as three years. There are 30 major league teams, each with about 25 players on their rosters. That’s 750 total. There are another 246 minor league clubs. If each has a roster of 25, that would mean 6,150 professional players in the minors. Combined, there are roughly 6,900 players on active rosters. So, a bit more than one out of every 10 professional players is in the big leagues. Boras is suggesting that fewer than 10 minor league players in any given year will go on to have careers in the bigs lasting as long as six years.
The famous UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden liked to talk about “the pyramid of success.” Many young boys (and more than a few girls) dream of playing professional sports. There must be hundreds of thousands of young dreamers, if not millions, across the globe. Many are called but few, very few, are chosen.

Election day

Tue, 6 Nov 2007 10:02:46 -0800

Today is another election. But over half of eligible voters are not expected to cast ballots, despite some very significant issues up for grabs.
Tim Eyman has yet another item on the ballot, Initiative 960. It would require a super majority of the legislature or a vote of the people to raise taxes and fees. The P-I came out against; the Seattle Times and Everett Herald endorsed it. Californians passed a similar measure several years ago; many believe that the state’s budget woes are directly tied to its passage. I voted against Eyman—again.
Ironically, another measure, Amendment 4204, would change the state constitution to permit simple-majority adoption of local school levies. It would place such measures on the same keel as police and fire measures, for example. Will voters approve both the Eyman measure and the amendment? I voted for 4204.
I also voted for all the other state measures, with the exception of prison labor. I’m not sure that I want to help Microsoft and other companies use indentured servants, especially when non-prisoners need work. I know that 8212 is supposed to prevent prison labor from supplanting non-prison workers, but I have little confidence that this provision would be adequately enforced.
Proposition 1 is the mother of all ballot measures. It would provide tens of billions of dollars for transportation projects, including rail and buses. I vacillated on this one. I think it’s sheer folly to invest in more roads; the automobile is the problem not the solution. Nor will the projects identified in the measure reduce congestion in the long run. Indeed, roads definitely fall under the “Field of Dreams” syndrome; more traffic lanes will guarantee more traffic. On the other hand, there’s a lot of money for public transport, which I prefer. Despite the magnitude of the dollar investments, however, even expanded rail won’t make much of a dent in the region’s perpetual goo. David Brewster, writing in Cross Cut, argues that a rejection of this measure will immediately remove any and all possible major transport initiatives off the table for a very long time. I ended up voting in favor of the measure, in large part because of Brewster. But I also like the idea of employing lots of people in family-wage jobs. This is an odd vote on my part, for another reason: I loathe travel, and I probably drive a car fewer miles than most readers. Nor do I take public transport. If I go anywhere, I generally use my feet. You’re right to conclude that I don’t get out much.
In a subsequent post I’ll spend some more time on transportation. It’s obviously a huge issue. But it’s also become quite complicated.

Gasoline prices: how high?

Mon, 5 Nov 2007 08:51:16 -0800

A reader sent a letter to the Everett Herald in response to the paper’s story about rising gas prices. The headline read: “4 bucks a gallon? It's in sight.” The reader argued that the oil companies will make their profits, which means that gasoline prices must rise in the wake of escalating petroleum prices. I concur.
Let’s take a look at world spot prices for petroleum since 1998.
Prices took a roller-coaster ride, but since 2002, they have climbed steadily. This year, crude oil prices have risen sharply and continuously. They are above $90/bbl., with no end in sight.
The Herald article cites a few comparative figures. This past May, when the price of crude oil was around $70/barrel, the price at the pump for gasoline was $3.47/gal. The reader calculated a gross margin of $1.80/gallon. (Each barrel of oil represents 42 gallons of gasoline. Dividing $70 by 42 yields $1.67, the crude oil cost embedded in each gallon of gas. If the retail price of gasoline is $3.47, the gross margin would be $1.80, the difference between the retail price and the embedded cost. Of course there are other costs involved in refining and transporting the product that would shrink the net profit on each gallon of gas sold.) Today, the price of crude is above $95/barrel, or about $2.28 per each retail gallon. If the price at the pump is now $3.19 (from the article), then the gross margin is only half of the May value, or $.90/gal.
Oil company profits have decline in this past quarter as compared with last year. Exxon, the world’s largest oil company, saw its profits decline to $9.41 billion from $10.5 billion the previous year. Keep in mind that these figures represent net profits, so the company is hardly in trouble. But investors, who want nothing more or less than money, are anxious. Exxon’s stock price fell 2.5 percent on the news. Investors like high gross margins; they prefer $1.80 per gallon to half that much.
We should expect pump prices to rise, for several reasons.

the desire to boost profits from current levels;
the huge risks associated with the Iraq war and threats of other conflagrations in the Middle East—which, after all, is home to our oil; and
the inconvenience of diminished supplies of crude petroleum (peak oil).

But prices are sure to be volatile as well as high, if history be any guide. Here’s a look at historical crude oil prices from 1947. What may militate against the pressures to raise prices is an equally inconvenient fact called ‘global warming.’ If we all started getting serious about this mother of all problems, fossil-fuel consumption will plummet. However, I would not bet on this happening any time soon. If you own oil stocks, I see no reason to sell. Such is the world of capitalism.

Withdraw, but when?

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:59:55 -0700

Despite false pretenses for invading and occupying Iraq, the Bush administration argues that withdrawing will “embolden the enemy,” allow al Qaeda a base of operations from which they can control the Middle East, and threaten our security at home. The major Democratic candidates for the Oval Office, whether or not they opposed the war in the first place, balk at bringing troops home. Instead they suggest that the U.S. will have to remain in Iraq for several years. To support their positions they warn of an inevitable bloodbath occasioned by a chaotic civil war—should U.S. forces leave.
The current issue of Mother Jones magazine features a cover story on “The moral dilemma of leaving Iraq.” The editor writes: “Sending in troops without asking ‘and then what?’ was morally bankrupt; so is demanding ‘Troops Out Now’ without planning for what might come next.” This position is tantamount to a physically abusive husband, who had no right to pummel his wife, refusing to leave the relationship because his disfigured spouse depends on him for financial support.
Well, what about the argument that we broke it (Iraq) and now we own it? Does the U.S. have a moral obligation to prevent civil war and societal meltdown in Iraq? Or is this the wrong question?
Writing in the Socialist Worker, Ashley Smith takes on the “moral dilemma” and provides some interesting insights regarding U.S. behavior in Iraq.
On the matter of al Qaeda threats in and from Iraq, Smith answers:

This couldn’t be more wrong. Al-Qaeda is a minority of the resistance. Some U.S. generals estimate it only has some 500 fighters. Most Sunni and all Shia resistance organizations have repeatedly denounced al-Qaeda.

Bush and some Democratic contenders for his office say that if the U.S. were to withdraw al Qaeda would use Iraq as a staging area to wage terrorist attacks against neighboring states and even the U.S. Smith rejects the argument.

“Many people worry that once a large number of suicide terrorists have acted, it is impossible to wind it down,” Robert Pape, the author of a book on suicide bombers, said in an interview with the American Conservative. “The history of the last 20 years, however, shows the opposite. Once occupying forces withdraw from the homeland territory of the terrorists, they often stop--and often on a dime.”

As for civil war but for the U.S. presence, Smith counters that only a strong sense of “nationalism” will unite the factions. Worse, Smith says that the U.S. has actually fomented sectarian violence as part of its overall strategy, which, in my opinion, is to permanently occupy Iraq so as to control its oil. He cites Robert Dreyfuss, writing in Nation magazine:

The Catch-22 of the American occupation is this: Iraqi nationalism is the only political force capable of uniting Sunni and Shiite Arabs and thus putting an end to the sectarian civil war, but for the past four years, the United State has systematically worked to suppress nationalism.
Instead, beginning with Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003, the United States deliberately apportioned political posts using an ethnic- and sectarian-based formula. Since then, U.S. occupation authorities favored separatists...[who want] a separate Shiite enclave in the south, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which are angling for an independent state in Iraq’s north.

“The best chance for dampening the conflict that the U.S. has stoked,” writes Smith, “would be for Iraq to be free of U.S. manipulations.” That seems to be the prevailing view of Iraqis.
According to a September 2007 poll (pdf) by BBC News, almost three-fourths of Iraqis believe that their situation would improve if the U.S. withdrew. Also, a majority of Iraqis approve of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq’s attacks against U.S. troops, but only a small minority subscribe to al Qaeda’s agenda of establishing a Caliphate in the Middle East.
There was a time that we in the U.S. talked about self-determination, the right of indigenous people to govern themselves. To be sure, Saddam Hussein prevented that from occurring in Iraq. But a case could be made that once he was out of the picture, it was up to the Iraqis to build their own nation—or nations—as they saw fit. Smith concludes his essay thusly:

Only Iraqis—not the U.S., UN or any other power—can overcome the catastrophe that the U.S. has caused in Iraq. The damage will not be overdone overnight, but only Iraqis have the right to shape their society and overcome their divisions. The only role for the U.S. government is to pay unconditional reparations for the nightmare it has caused.

Nancy Nurse

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:10:10 -0700

Twenty years ago today my sister Nancy succumbed to a long battle with breast cancer. She was only 39. Her death forever changed our family. As my mother said at the time, parents should never have to bury their children; and my mother never recovered.
When she was 36, Nancy, a registered nurse, insisted on having a mamogram, despite finding nothing from her routine breast exam. The x-ray revealed “abnormalities”; a biopsy showed cancerous cells. The doctors recommended immediate surgery. After several hours, the lead surgeon told my mother that she had “a very sick daughter.”
Nancy became rather clinical about her disease. She volunteered to become the focus of a multidisciplinary study, led by a team of physicians at the UC San Francisco medical center. Her form of cancer was rare, aggressive, and deadly. It was also granular rather than lumpy, and thus undetectable by physical exam. For two and a half years Nancy became something of an expert on breast cancer, and even opened a small consulting business to assist other women with the disease. It did not last long.
In this picture below (circa 1959), Nancy is seated on the couch to the far right. That’s my face turned to the camera in the foreground. As you can tell, we’re opening Christmas gifts—this time at my aunt and uncle’s place in San Francisco.
The photo below shows some happy people—on the occasion of my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary at a posh Italian restaurant (if that’s not an oxymoron), again in San Francisco. Nancy is in the middle on the right, between our sister Liz and our brother John in the back. (John took his own life in 2002.) Nancy appears puffy, of course; she was in the midst of one of her many treatment regimens, which included chemotherapy. She would die the following year, leaving a not-quite-five-year-old daughter and a bewildered husband, who also passed away a few years ago.
Today I am sad.

It’s all about oil

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 10:15:59 -0700

“In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success.”

— Jim Holt, London Review of Books (10/18/2007)

Alan Greenspan wrote in his memoir: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” If true, one finds little evidence in the mainstream media, which focuses on “progress,” “surge,” “insurgency,” and “al Qaeda in Iraq.” But there are signs, if one bothers to look.
Bush suggests that we begin to view the U.S. presence in Iraq in Korean terms. Among other things, that quite clearly implies that troops will be on the ground indefinitely. Then there’s this matter of U.S. bases in Iraq, not to mention the world’s largest embassy, located along the southern border of Baghdad’s Green Zone. It covers 104 acres—about 80 football fields. (William Langewiesche writes about the “mega-bunker of Baghdad” in the Nov. 2007 issue of Vanity Fair magazine.) Why would the U.S. spend so much money and resources building huge permanent bases and airfields (the one in Balad is the second busiest airport on the planet) if Washington were ever serious about withdrawal?
Lying under the sands of Iraq are 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. Some experts believe that there could be as many as 300 more billion barrels of oil to be discovered. With the world’s major economies almost completely dependent on petroleum, Iraq represents the key to continued economic growth—and all that implies.
The headline in the October 18, 2007, issue of the London Review of Books dares to mention the obvious: “It’s the Oil, Stupid.” Author Jim Holt offers several pieces of evidence to support his contention:

permanent military bases in Iraq (five “self-sufficient ‘super-bases’ are in various stages of completion”; each of these is designed to house upwards of 20,000 soldiers);
Bush’s Korea comparison;
the absence of specific withdrawal dates by the major presidential candidates (several lower-tier aspirants, including Kucinich and Ron Paul, have called for immediate withdrawal);
the oil law drafted by the U.S. that gives 17 percent of the proven reserves to the Iraq National Oil Company and the rest, including all of the still-discoverable oil, to western oil conglomerates;
continued hostilities and the threat of “civil war” that provide ongoing rationales for a sustained military presence in Iraq;
the perceived need for the U.S. to extricate itself from Saudi Arabia;
the belief that whoever controls Iraq oil can undermine both OPEC and Venezuela, effectively negating their threats to either increase or decrease production; and
in acquiring Iraq’s oil (or most of it) the U.S. can counteract any Chinese threats against the U.S. economy (our trade deficit with China is a trillion dollars and China owns $400 billion in Treasury bonds) and negate Russia’s energy hold over Europe.

Holt argues that the current “mess” in Iraq is deliberate, and part of the Bush-Cheney overall strategy, details of which may have formed the core of Cheney’s secretive 2001 energy task force.

On the assumption that the Bush-Cheney strategy is oil-centered, the tactics—dissolving the army, de-Baathification, a final “surge” that has hastened internal migration—could scarcely have been more effective. The costs—a few billion dollars a month plus a few dozen American fatalities (a figure that will probably diminish, and which is in any case comparable to the number of US motorcyclists killed because of repealed helmet laws)—are negligible compared to $30 trillion in oil wealth, assured American geopolitical supremacy and cheap gas for voters. In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success.

A nation of laws?

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:30:16 -0700

Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald is “live blogging” this morning’s hearings on G.W. Bush’s nominee for Attorney General. The Senate Judiciary Committee is asking Michael Mukasey about torture, terrorists, and the scope of presidential powers. Here is Greenwald’s reporting of California senator Dianne Feinstein’s questioning:

She focused on Mukasey's ruling (overturned by the Second Circuit) that the President has the power to detain U.S. citizens on U.S. soil without charging them with a crime. Feinstein asked whether Mukasey would advise the President that -- as he ruled -- he does have the power to detain American citizens on U.S. soil with no charges.
Mukasey tried initially to evade the question by claiming (inaccurately) that the Supreme Court in Hamdi ruled that the President does have that power (the Hamdi decision actually held the opposite: that while the President could detain U.S. citizens as "enemy combatants," some basic due process must be provided in order for the accused to prove his innocence. Upon the ruling, the Bush administration released Hamdi rather than prove his guilt).
But worse, as Feinstein pointed out, Hamdi was detained on a battlefield in Afghanistan, not on U.S. soil. So she asked again: would you advise the President that he has the power to detain American citizens on U.S. soil with no charges? This time, forced to answer, Mukasey gave a disturbing, evasive non-answer: he said, in essence, that he is not sure that there is legal authority now to do so given the Second Circuit's reversal of his decision.
To Mukaskey, then, it is an open question whether the President can imprison U.S. citizens, arrested on U.S. soil, with no charges of any kind. Shouldn't that be a rather significant hurdle to his becoming Attorney General, to put it mildly?

The proceedings are a mere formality; the Democrats are expected to join the Republicans in advancing Mukasey’s nomination to the floor of the Senate, where confirmation is all but guaranteed.
To his credit, Mukasey told the committee that he rejected the torture memo (pdf) drafted by Jay Bybee, then assistant attorney general. Bybee had opined that the president has the constitutional authority to torture suspected terrorists. Alberto Gonzales agreed with Bybee.
Last night’s Frontline focused on Dick Cheney’s decades’ long efforts to establish a unitary executive, whose powers exceed those of the other two government branches. At the end of the program, we hear an audio of Cheney clearly stating his ambitions, adding that he intended that the president’s newly acquired powers would be passed on to future occupants of the Oval Office.
While the entire program greatly disturbed me, I was particularly struck by the episode involving and surrounding the urgent visit to ailing John Ashcroft’s hospital room, where the then-attorney general was “near death,” as Jack Goldsmith described his condition. The event has made the rounds on the internet and television, and was a subject of former assistant attorney general James Comey’s congressional testimony; Goldsmith provides details in his new book, The Terror Presidency. We may recall that several lawyers in the Department of Justice and even FBI director, Robert Mueller, threatened to resign if the administration re-authorized a surveillance program they thought unconstitutional. Comey, who was then-acting attorney general, had refused to re-authorize the program. So G.W. Bush signed the authorization himself, which prompted the threat of mass resignations. Bush balked, then agreed to submit the question to Congress, which voted overwhelmingly against the program. Here’s where matters get especially vile. Bush signs Congress’ bill into law, but then, quietly, issues a so-called signing statement, which essentially reaffirmed the president’s authority to supersede the law.
There are three very dark characters behind the push to place the president über alles: Dick Cheney; his current chief of staff, David Addington; and former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer John Yoo (now a member of Boalt Hall School of Law’s faculty—UC Berkeley). Their logic is both simple and frightening. In time of war, it is both immoral and illegal to constrain the authority of the commander in chief. Although there has been no formal declaration of war by Congress, Bush has consistently maintained that the country is “at war” against “the terrorists.” Worse, this “war” is of indefinite duration, which, according to Bush et al., means that the president, in effect, holds dictatorial power in all matters of “security.”
I am not the only one troubled by this pursuit of unlimited authority. Both John Nichols and Bruce Fein, appearing on Bill Moyers’s Journal, have become so exercised by the Bush-Cheney push for power that they demand that Congress immediately impeach both the president and vice-president. As Nichols argues, the Bush and Cheney are anxious to put all sorts of extra-legal authorities into the presidential “toolbox,” which, as Cheney intends, would become a permanent feature of the executive. (You can view the program or read the transcript here.)
In 1974, the House began impeachment hearings against Richard Nixon. Clear and ample evidence was revealed that Nixon had subverted laws. Rather than face almost certain impeachment then conviction in the Senate, Nixon resigned. But not before assuring the American people that he “was not a crook.” We learned later why he could commit so many dastardly acts and still believe that he was “not a crook.” After leaving office he remarked to British interviewer David Frost: “Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.”
That is precisely Dick Cheney’s opinion and why we should all be concerned, if not outraged.

PUD salaries

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:13:28 -0700

You will likely read in tomorrow morning’s newspapers one or more articles on PUD salaries. In brief, by resolution today the board of commissioners substantially increased the general manager’s salary and adopted a new salary grade schedule.
Those receiving increases, some quite significant, will be pleased and a bit richer. Everyone else, both inside and outside the utility, may be pissed.
I’m one of three commissioners who voted in favor of the resolution, and, surprising to me, it was quite easy. Given my previous criticisms of upper-management salaries, what’s different now?
Most obvious, of course, is that I am now a commissioner whereas in the past I was not. I used to work for then-Commissioner Chuck Moon. He proposed to increase the general manager’s salary by what I thought to be a whopping amount. I expressed, insolently, my profound displeasure. I argued that the current occupant of the position did not warrant a pay raise; I also correctly predicted that all other management positions would see a corresponding increase in salary. Chuck told me that he was “paying the position and not the person.” In subsequent years, management salaries continued to climb while most other employees received a relatively modest cost-of-living boost. As a result, the gap between top salaries and the average salary has greatly expanded—although hardly to the extent we find in the private sector.
Today, I agreed to the changes because, unlike Chuck, I am paying the person. I really do believe that our current general manager, Steve Klein, is the best general manager in the utility’s history. He runs circles around all previous occupants, for several reasons:

as an electrical engineer, Steve Klein knows the distribution system, which he managed at the city of Tacoma;
he held various management positions at Tacoma covering the full gamete of electric utility operations;
for several years he served as Tacoma utilities general manager;
he’s had considerable experience working with the Bonneville Power Administration, the PUD’s chief source of power; and
Steve succeeded in weathering the West Coast energy crisis when most other utilities, including the PUD, did not; Tacoma’s rates are back to the region’s lowest.

But what about his accomplishment’s since becoming the PUD’s general manager? Let me offer a list:

with the assistance of an outside consultant, Steve managed to get three independent and strong-willed commissioners to find common ground and work together; prior to his arrival, board meetings were often filled with bitter acrimony;
the PUD has the region’s, if not the country’s, best utility climate change policy; the PUD will meet all future load growth through conservation and renewable resources—there are no fossil-fuel plants in the mix;
Steve has made some excellent hires, filling significant positions (e.g., assistant general manager of power, rates, and transmission management); a few have followed Steve from Tacoma, which is testimony to Steve’s management abilities;
almost immediately after joining the PUD Steve injected himself into regional dialogues and quickly assumed a leadership role; and
unlike previous general managers, Steve thinks strategically, first tying his actions to board policy, then insisting that his staff work from the same page; as a result, the PUD finally has a consistent, well-planned message; and
Steve is results-driven; he wants to get things done.

When I ran for this office I talked about the challenge of meeting load growth. I concluded then that the PUD must do as much conservation as possible and pursue only environmentally friendly generating resources. Guess what? That’s precisely what the utility is doing—with Steve at the helm. I couldn’t be more pleased with this direction, and I’m sure that you agree.
Setting salaries is more art than science. But it’s also about paying attention to the market. The board and the general manager want the PUD to become THE progressive leader in the region, if not the country. To achieve this goal we will need many bright and capable employees, beginning with the general manager. We want to retain the best employees and attract good people to the utility. While the PUD has always been a great place to work, salaries are still important. With the passage of Initiative 937, which obligates utilities to capture all cost-effective conservation, the demand for talented individuals with experience in energy efficiency has suddenly skyrocketed, which means that we have to offer competitive salaries. The same applies to renewable resources. We’re moving aggressively on that front, and we’ve got to have quality employees to make it happen.
But, Dave, what about the rest of the employees? The same logic applies to them. If the PUD finds that it cannot attract or retain competent employees to build and repair lines, we’ll have to adjust salaries. Next year the collective bargaining agreement is up for negotiations. While I am prevented from making promises or even suggestions outside the formal process, my colleagues and I are committed to having the best work force, bar none. We’ll do what it takes to make that happen, too.
I would appreciate your comments and questions.