Dollars & Sense talks about media

by Dollars & Sense

Tonight, Wed. Jan 31, 2007, 7pm at encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave, 5th Floor, Boston, MA 02111

David Barsamian and Cynthia Peters: Who's Got Your Back? Alternative and Mainstream Media and the War without End

Panel of questioners: Linda Pinkow of WMBR, John Grebe of WZBC, and Esther Cervantes of Dollars & Sense

With this event, Mass Global Action & IndyMedia look at the antiwar movement and the media. Specifically, it considers the two media options open to the progressive movement: Extensive coverage in the alternative media, and marginal attention from the mainstream media

Going beyond this dichotomy, however, we ask how activists can use both forms media to get bolster the antiwar movement and generate a pro-peace agenda. Our roundtable is composed of longtime organizers who are also media professionals so that we may consider how these media forms interact.

The program is formulated to draw on the expertise of the panel and both the experiences and perspectives of the audience.

This program is organized to ensure that speaker has a chance to provide their perspective while ensuring that a meaningful dialogue can take place between speakers and also with the audience. The program will conclude with an informal reception and light music.

About David Barsamian:
David Barsamian is founder and director of Alternative Radio, the independent award-winning weekly series based in Boulder, Colorado. He is a radio producer, journalist, author and lecturer. He has been working in radio since 1978. His interviews and articles appear regularly in The Progressive and Z Magazine. His latest books are Imperial Ambitions with Noam Chomsky and Speaking of Empire & Resistance with Tariq Ali and Original Zinn with Howard Zinn. His earlier books include Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky; Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire; and The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting.

About Cynthia Peters:
Cynthia Peters is a freelance writer and editor, a part-time worker at the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation, and a full-time mother of two. She writes about a wide range of topics including parenting, marketing, feminism, racism, and gender politics. For a sharp analysis delivered with humor and insight, check out what she has to say about advertising to teens, the pro-capitalist backdrop to "American Girl dolls," the institutions and cultural formulations that define "good" parenting, the trouble with day care, and much more.


Tomorrow, Thu. Feb. 1, 2007, 4pm on WMBR 88.1 FM—Spherio

Esther Cervantes and Liv Gold of the Dollars & Sense collective will discuss media issues and the National Conference for Media Reform with Sarah Olson and Spherio's hosts, Luis Melendez and Kendra Johnson.

Spherio is a forum of exchange bringing together local communities and the academia around issues of cultures, societies, and politics important to our hemisphere.

Labels: event, media, radio, war

 

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1/31/2007 02:16:00 PM 0 comments

 

"The Profits of Escalation" and the Price of Privatization

by Dollars and Sense

In a recent (January 10th) article in Counterpunch, "The Profits of Escalation: Why the US is Not Leaving Iraq," Ismael Hossein-Zadeh exposes the economic interests, beyond oil, that are driving escalation in Iraq. Some highlights:

...

The fact is that not everyone is losing in Iraq. Indeed, while the Bush administration's wars of choice have brought unnecessary death, destruction, and disaster to millions, including many from the Unites States, they have also brought fortunes and prosperity to war profiteers. At the heart of the reluctance to withdraw from Iraq lies the profiteers' unwillingness to give up further fortunes and spoils of war.

Pentagon contractors constitute the overwhelming majority of these profiteers. They include not only the giant manufacturing contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing, but also a complex maze of over 100,000 service contractors and sub-contractors such as private army or security corporations and "reconstruction" firms.[1] These contractors of both deconstruction and "reconstruction," whose profits come mainly from the US treasury, have handsomely profited from the Bush administration's wars of choice.

...

The rise of the fortunes of the major Pentagon contractors can be measured, in part, by the growth of the Pentagon budget since President George W. Bush arrived in the White House: it has grown by more than 50 percent, from nearly $300 billion in 2001 to almost $455 billion in 2007. (These figures do not include the Homeland Security budget, which is $33 billion for the 2007 fiscal year alone, and the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are fast approaching $400 billion.)

Large Pentagon contractors have been the main beneficiaries of this windfall. For example, a 2004 study by The Center for Public Integrity revealed that, for the 1998­2003 period, one percent of the biggest contractors won 80 percent of all defense contracting dollars. The top ten got 38 percent of all the money. Lockheed Martin topped the list at $94 billion, Boeing was second with $81 billion, Raytheon was third (just under $40 billion), followed by Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics with nearly $34 billion each.[2]

...

This is key to an understanding of why the US ruling elite is reluctant to pull US troops out of Iraq. The reluctance or "difficulty" of leaving Iraq stems not so much from pulling 140,000 troops out of that country as it is from pulling out more than 100,000 contractors. As Josh Mitteldorf of the University of Arizona recently put it, "There are a lot of contractors making a fortune and we don't want that money tap turned off, even though it is borrowed money, which our children and grandchildren will have to repay."[13]

It follows that US troops will not be withdrawn from Iraq as long as antiwar voices are not raised beyond the premises and parameters of the official narrative or justification of the war: terrorism, democracy, civil war, stability, human rights, and the like. Antiwar forces need to extricate themselves from the largely diversionary and constraining debate over these secondary issues, and raise public consciousness of the scandalous economic interests that drive the war.

...

Read the full article in Counterpunch.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has recently covered the other side of this profiteering: the shuttering of state-owned industries. Referring to Iraq as "a country that looters have ravaged since 2003"—a phrase that takes on a different meaning in light of Hossein-Zadeh's article—James Glanz of the Times recounts the "insistence by the initial American occupation authority that once [state-owned factories were] closed, vibrant free markets would spring into existence to fill the void," and Iraqis' recent efforts to re-open the factories. Click here (or see below) for the full text of the article. See also early coverage by Dollars & Sense on profiteering in Iraq and the role of oil.

THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ; Aging and Shut, Iraq Factories May Reopen and Mitigate Ills

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: January 18, 2007 [New York Times]

Inside a huge shuttered factory on the gritty western fringes of this outlaw desert town, thousands of ornate porcelain sinks, toilets and other fixtures sit in row after row next to the automated ovens and assembly lines that once churned out the products but lie silent under a thin film of yellow desert dust.

However, neither the fancy ceramics nor the machines appear to be damaged, a miracle that no one can quite explain in one of the most dangerous cities of a country that looters have ravaged since 2003.

Whatever the explanation, some American and Iraqi officials believe that surviving factories like this one—once considered inefficient, government-subsidized behemoths—could present a last chance of sorts for dealing with two problems that have remained stubbornly unsolved since the invasion: Iraq's reconstruction and its insurgency.

The factories, state-owned enterprises under Saddam Hussein's government, would appear to be the unlikeliest of saviors—things like a bus factory in an ethnically riven area south of Baghdad, a tomato paste factory in the Kurdish north, and a second plant in Ramadi that makes floor tiles with silk-screened floral patterns. The factories went dark after the invasion for a variety of reasons, including an insistence by the initial American occupation authority that once they closed, vibrant free markets would spring into existence to fill the void.

But neither those markets nor the expected commercial and social benefits of the $30 billion American-financed reconstruction program have materialized. So a few officials and local leaders are returning to the shuttered plants in hopes of finding a cheaper way to help the economy and perhaps create jobs to attract young men who might otherwise join the insurgency.

The dusty old plants are more evocative of guys with lunch pails than the big thinkers who once believed that expensive American reconstruction projects would remake the face of Iraq. ''Any opportunity to re-employ more people and give the government a chance to get income from these factories is important,'' said Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, an Anbar tribal leader, as he toured the porcelain and tile factories in his flowing black-and-gold robes. ''Especially in this time when Anbar is experiencing terrorism.''

The sheik added, in reference to the idle Iraqis who put the unemployment rate at anywhere from an estimated 30 percent to 60 percent, ''They are normal human beings—they would rather work than make violence.''

In Ramadi on Tuesday, Sheik Sattar and several Iraqi officials, including the Anbar governor and the manager of the ceramics plant, met with Paul A. Brinkley, a senior Pentagon official who, following up on a tip from the American military command, has taken it upon himself to push the revival of state-owned enterprises that he thinks can be restarted with modest financing.

''That factory could be running in a week,'' Mr. Brinkley said just after the visit. ''It's amazing to me in this city, after all that this city has gone through, that a factory with that level of robotic equipment is still in that kind of condition.''

Still, the meeting—in an unheated second-floor conference room within a ransacked office building next to the plant—revealed some of the barriers that this last-ditch effort is likely to face. Those barriers include vast inertia within the Iraqi government bureaucracy and questions about whether even the small amounts of cash needed for the effort will be forthcoming from either Iraqi or American sources.

There are also serious questions on whether officials in the focus of the United States presence in Iraq, within the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, are ready to support factories that were seen as no more than relics of an era that American ingenuity and reconstruction were going to make forever obsolete.

As with so much else in Iraq, there is no clear measure of how extensive the network of state-owned industries is, although the government lists at least 192 companies outside the energy and security sectors. Government and business officials estimate that more than 600,000 employees are still receiving at least some of their salaries, even though almost all of the factories are closed.

After presiding over the collapse of that network in the early days of the war, the United States now appears ready to lend some help to Mr. Brinkley's efforts to revive parts of it. Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Scott, who leads the Joint Contracting Command for Iraq and Afghanistan and is based in Baghdad, said in an interview that he was making a push to use Iraqi companies for supplying things like housing and basic services for the American military here.

General Scott said that although his prime goal was not revitalizing factories, if one of the companies Mr. Brinkley was working with made the right product, it would be given fair consideration. ''It's kind of a version of matchmaking,'' he said.

How far that process will take Mr. Brinkley's effort is unclear. Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, said in a recent interview that he was in favor of using military purchases to give Iraqi companies a boost, but that ultimately the United States would promote private enterprise over government entities. "That's obviously the right thing to do,'' he said. ''The question is, how do you get from here to there?''

But a senior United States official said he believed that at least until recently, officials at the center of American power here, in the Green Zone, had retained their unbending orientation toward privatization. The official said that he asked Americans in the Green Zone why they were buying buses abroad for use in Iraq when a struggling state-owned Iraqi firm in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, was making a similar vehicle.

''The answer was shocking,'' the official said. ''It was, 'We've denied these people access to the global free market for 15 years; I'm not going to go back to them and say that you've got to buy buses from some state-owned enterprise.' ''

During a visit last week to Erbil, in Iraq's Kurdish north, Mr. Brinkley said in a meeting with local officials that when the enterprises ''are laying idle due to our policy of shutting them off, we have an obligation to restore them to the Iraqi people.''

Each of the factories comes with different and highly specific challenges, a fact illustrated by the closed tomato paste factory in Erbil, which Mr. Brinkley also visited. With distribution across Iraq before the invasion, the factory limped along for a while afterward and as recently as 2004 produced 804,210 cans—''without loss of one can due to quality,'' said the plant engineer, Satar S. Mustafa.

Since then, a financial group in Erbil has bought the modest-sized factory, with its shiny chutes, choppers, ovens and other equipment. But the operation is still waiting for what the Erbil group hopes is an American investor, said Azzat M. Othman, who is the group's executive manager and says he worked on Wall Street in various capacities for 25 years before returning home to Kurdistan.

''What we are really looking for is an investor who has an interest in this type of operation,'' said Mr. Othman, who estimates that the factory will generate 100 to 150 jobs.

The porcelain factory is another case entirely. When a worker unlocks a set of big metal doors and slides them back with a boom, a darkened interior perhaps 100 yards in either direction shelters machinery that looks as if it had just been purchased. Half-finished sinks sit in rows along the assembly lines like sculptures left by some artist who intended to return and complete the work with a few strokes of the chisel.

And there is inventory. An assessment by the American occupation officials who shut this factory concluded that it was too small and inefficient to turn a profit in a competitive marketplace, but sinks with paisley and vine patterns look as if they could be sitting on shelves at Home Depot. The toilets are sturdy.

The Iraqis, who intend to keep the plant within the government and say that it could start up again if given an allocation of electricity, insisted that an American take one of the sinks as a sample. It was shoved into one of the armored vehicles belonging to the American military unit that brought the officials here.

But even if everything else here works perfectly, the question hovering over the project is whether the factory will be attacked now that it is associated with Americans. Sheik Sattar, who has already gained fame in Iraq for leading a coalition of Anbar tribes against Al Qaeda, said that would not be a problem.

After all, he said, the factory has remained in good condition until now. ''We protected it,'' he said. Whether the same assurances can be given for the other factories around the country remains to be seen.

Labels: Iraq, privatization, profiteering

 

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1/27/2007 01:02:00 PM 0 comments

 

Governor Patrick Stumbles on Prison Policy

by Dollars and Sense

A letter to the editor by Dollars & Sense co-editor Chris Sturr ran in today's Boston Globe, criticizing Deval Patrick's regressive policy to charge people convicted of crimes a fee as a way to raise money to pay for more police:

THE NEW GOVERNOR'S proposal is a shameful way for him to start out his term. This may play well to the law-and-order crowd that brought us the current prison crisis, but it targets a population that is largely indigent and whose families would bear the burden, as opponents pointed out in your article.

Eliot Spitzer, New York's new governor, started his term in a much more promising way: by ending the contracts allowing phone companies to charge prisoners and their families exorbitant fees for collect calls. While the contracts brought in $16 million for the state in 2005 alone, Spitzer agreed with activists that the practice was exploitative. It inhibited contact between prisoners and their families -- contact that enhances public safety by improving a prisoners' chances of reintegrating once they get out. It also amounted to charging low-income communities for their own relatives' incarceration.

Meanwhile, Patrick starts his term with more of the same punitive and failing criminal justice policies. What is he thinking? We need progressive solutions to Massachusetts' prison crisis.

CHRIS STURR
Boston
The writer is the co-editor of Dollars & Sense magazine.

To see the article Chris co-wrote with D&S collective member Liv Gold on the New York Campaign for Telephone Justice, click here; for an account of the recent activist victory for prisoners in New York, click here.

See also the orignal Globe article on Patrick's proposal, and an excellent critique of the proposal by Globe columnist Eileen McNamara.

Below are the other three letters the Globe ran on the issue--the two other "anti" letters are excellent; the one "pro" letter (the middle one) is pretty mindless ("creative thinking"? puh-leeze!).

Thanks to Lois Ahrens of the Real Cost of Prisons Project for compiling these (and for all her excellent work!).

Making criminals pay

January 21, 2007

AFTER READING about how our new governor will raise $10 million by charging criminals, I have to protest ("Patrick proposes new fee on criminals," Page A1, Jan. 14). That $10 million would be better spent on programs that would eliminate the need for hiring another 250 police officers.

Where does Governor Patrick think these criminals come from? They come mainly from situations where they see no hope, no compassion.

How about if we put that $10 million toward GED programs, mentor programs, after-school programs, or drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs? Or toward hiring more social workers so that they can better serve fragile families who are growing future criminals as we speak?

We can still fine the affluent who pass occasionally through our justice system, but let's not further beat down those who pass through all too often.

LISA MacLEAN
Roslindale


GOV. PATRICK'S resourcefulness and ability to think clearly are evident in the idea of paying for more police with a "safety fee," which would be assessed on every person convicted of a crime. Creative thinking has been missing from politics in Massachusetts for years, and is nonexistent at the national level.

Opponents of the plan are making unnecessary noise about an inconvenience equivalent to a slap on the wrists of criminals. Instead of seeking to take advantage of the good will of the people of Massachusetts, opponents should think again and be grateful for this governor. Patrick's idea is just and sound. I look forward to more of the same from him.

PATRICIA McCARRON
North Andover



GOVERNOR PATRICK'S proposal to impose an additional fee on criminals is deeply disappointing and disturbing. His statement that "it's fair to have people who are at the center of causing and committing crime to help us pay" reminds us how far our views have shifted to the right.

What does it say about our political attitudes if the newly elected Democratic governor of a traditionally liberal state looks to criminal defendants to help solve the state's fiscal problems? Is that not like a new CEO suggesting that low-level employees who are laid off pay a fee to help solve the company's fiscal problems?

With a landslide victory and a mandate for change, Governor Patrick could reshape our attitude about the cost of maintaining our way of life and who should bear it. He could remind us that those who benefit most from our way of life should bear most of the responsibility for its upkeep.

He could flatly state that it is not acceptable to blame the poor and the weak for what is wrong with our world. And he could challenge those of us who share the power to change our world to help him fix what is wrong with it. We elected Patrick to help us make this a better world.

ANTHONY J. CANATA
Holyoke

Labels: Deval Patrick, Eliot Sptizer, prison phone contract, prisons

 

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1/21/2007 05:22:00 PM 0 comments

 

HUD Considers Allowing Public Housing Residents to Wait for Demolitions in Their Own Homes

by Ben Greenberg

US Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin recently met with the US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Alphonso Jackson, to negotiate the possible return of some New Orleans public housing residents to their homes .

In those meetings, Jackson said he would consider reopening more storm-damaged units to low-income people forced from their homes 16 months ago. Many have lived in Texas and elsewhere since the storm, unable to return.

"We're looking at, where possible, to phase in many of these developments," Jackson said recently. "Where we can save units for a period of time, we will do that. But where we can't, we need to bring the units down." ...

Waters, who plans hearings in New Orleans next month on the city's housing shortage, said HUD can begin razing the worst projects while allowing residents to live in those that had less water damage.

Waters is the incoming chair of the subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity for the House Financial Services Committee, which Barney Frank chairs. Without a call for cessation of all demoliton plans and a Congressional investigation, Waters' advocacy may only amount to St. Bernard residents coming home now and getting evicted later, when the public housing demolitions begin.

Elsewhere, Barney Frank was recently heard correctly referring to the New Orleans housing crisis as "ethnic cleansing through inaction." He has also recently been heard taking some clearly progressive economic positions :

[I]t's a problem that we have in America, and it's a problem that is worldwide.... the increasing separation of the well-being of the average citizen from overall economic growth.

[I]t has generally been an accepted fact that economic growth is a good thing and that the rising tide will lift all boats....

The rising tide lifts all boats has always been a problem. If you think about that analogy, the rising tide is a very good idea if you have a boat. But if you are too poor to afford a boat and you are standing tiptoe in the water, the rising tide goes up your nose. And so that's a mistake....

One of the consequences of this separation between economic growth and the well-being of the great majority of citizens is that an increasing number of citizens don't care about economic growth. Not surprising. Not only do they not benefit, but in many cases they get the short-term disruptive effects.

But the question remains: will Barney Frank and Maxine waters stop the ultimate destruction of public housing in New Orleans?

Barney Frank and Maxine Waters need to feel strongly supported by their constituents in taking uncompromising stands for the rights of public housing residents to return to—and keep—their homes.

(Cross-posted on Gulf Coast Fair Housing Network.)

Labels: alphonso jackson, barney frank, hud, katrina, maxine waters, nola, public housing, ray nagin, st. bernard

 

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1/18/2007 02:21:00 AM 0 comments

 

Econamici: The Minimum Wage and the IRS

by Polly Cleveland

January 16, 2007

On January 10, the House voted overwhelmingly to raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25, the increase to be phased in over the next two years. The Senate has yet to vote on the issue.

On January 12, the New York Times published a story by David Cay Johnston that begins, "Top officials at the Internal Revenue Service are pushing agents to prematurely close audits of big companies with agreements to have them pay only a fraction of the additional taxes that could be collected, according to dozens of I.R.S. employees who say that the policy is costing the government billions of dollars a year."

Raise the minimum wage or subvert taxes for the rich. Question: which policy bears more on inequality?

Proponents assert that the minimum wage increase will bring justice to "the people who empty the bedpans, change the bed linens, sweep the floors and do the hardest work of America." Opponents point out that small businesses employ most of the lowest wage workers. A wage increase, they say, will penalize small business owners and increase unemployment of young and low-skill workers. President Bush has made signing an increase conditional on tax breaks for small business.

Opponents' logic is sound. They might even be right about consequences were the increase large enough to bring the minimum wage up to something like a "living wage" of $12 an hour. There's no evidence that the federal minimum wage has ever affected employment, even at its 1968 peak of $1.58--$7.71 in 2006 equivalent dollars, as computed by Economic Policy Institute economists. Opponents also might be right if the minimum wage were easily enforceable. In reality, small businesses often pay their workers off the books, or report fewer hours than actually worked.

A minimum wage increase will indeed help some workers, especially in operations large enough to make enforcement feasible. It will set a norm for higher pay as small businesses grapple with the tradeoff between pay rates and employee turnover. But for all the hoopla, a minimum wage increase won't seriously dent inequality.

The same folks who shed crocodile tears for small business in fact know that enforcement is half the game. It's not just crippled enforcement of corporate income tax. I recently chatted with a very frustrated IRS estate tax examiner: same story. And Treasury officials have admitted making "mistakes" in drafting offshore oil leases, letting oil companies escape billions in royalties. From the Environmental Protection Agency to the Food and Drug Administration, senior officials reinterpret or ignore laws to favor friends at the top.

Unlike the minimum wage, gifts to the top tier do directly affect inequality. The costs--higher taxes, poorer services, and disincentives to hire or invest--must come at someone's expense--in fact at the expense of lower and middle income families, and small to medium businesses. Even the upper middle class increasingly faces the alternative minimum tax, which has become essential to plug the gaping tax gap at the top.

Newly-empowered Democrats face a task more daunting and important than raising the minimum wage. Not only must they undo overt legislation favoring the elite, they must expose and address the thousand administrative subversions of laws protecting ordinary citizens.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

More Econamici

I send Econamici--occasional emails with interesting attachments or links--to friends who are economists or care about economic issues. If you can't follow a link, I can send you the actual article.

Polly Cleveland

 

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1/16/2007 03:14:00 PM 0 comments

 

Media literacy and gay marketing

by Dollars and Sense

On Jan 12, Andrea Quijada of the New Mexico Media Literacy Project hosted one of the best sessions I attended at the National Conference for Media Reform: Introductory Training in Media Literacy. I went in hoping to pick up techniques for the Up Against the Wall Street Journal activity I'm leading at the Dollars & Sense house party in Austin this week (F, Jan 19, 8pm, at 1500 Gregory Street)—and I got plenty. I also got some musings on the media's role in the commercialization of homosexuality.

One of the videos Quijada used in her presentation was a clip from the Showtime series The L Word. Quijada's selection came from an episode in which, as The L Word's writer and executive producer Ilene Chaiken says,

Dana, who in the pilot we've already established would love to have an endorsement deal, ...is closeted in large part because she fears that sponsors aren't exactly clamoring to have big ol' lezzie tennis players tote their product. I wanted to tell a story in which she gets a deal, and she thinks that she has to stay closeted, and she finds out after she's broken up with her girlfriend, that the sponsor knew all along that she was gay—and, in fact, intended to be open about it, and, in fact, even wanted to promote that and get props for sponsoring a gay athlete. In other words, I wanted to tell a story in which Dana loses the girl unnecessarily and then finds out that she didn't have to be closeted at all.

In the clip Quijada chose, one problem remains: the ad is appearing in major magazines, but character hasn't come out to her parents yet. As one of the friend characters says, "Looks like Subaru's going to do it for you."

Quijada opened the discussion by saying that she was uncomfortable with the way the show made Subaru, a corporation, the hero in what we usually think of as a very human story—the coming out story.

Quijada also pointed us to a PlanetOut interview with Chaiken, in which she talks about how she came to cast Subaru as the story's hero.

PlanetOut: We're also really interested in the Subaru story line involving Dana's character. We were wondering—who approached whom about developing that? Did it just come out of an organic process?

Chaiken: I went around and approached every [sporting goods] company we could think of.... They all turned us down.... Most of them said to us "You know, we're totally pro-gay, we love the gays, but we're just not quite willing to go there with you." Now, see, I really wanted it to be a real company. I didn't want to make up some cheesy fictional company. And in desperation, I called Elizabeth Birch, the head of the Human Rights Campaign, and I said, you know, "What do I do here?" ... And Elizabeth told me she ... had a friend, Pam Judarian, whom she was sure would know. So when I finally spoke with Pam, I told her the story I just told you. And she asked me if the story would only work with a sporting goods company. She wanted to know if it would work with a car company. Like Subaru. She told me that if the story could work with Subaru, then she thought she could deliver them. And that was it!"

When Quijada mentioned the Human Rights Campaign connection, I found myself thinking, "Of course it was HRC."

In no way do I mean to be dismissive of the fight for gay rights, but I do have issues with the Human Rights campaign, not least because the organization appropriated for itself and its rather narrow agenda a much broader term—human rights—that is more generally understood to mean things like the rights, no matter where you live, to freedom from political repression, to the basic necessities of life, and to personal security and sovereignty over one's body, as well as the right to marry whomever one wants while living a relatively comfortable life in a consumerist society.

Which brings me to the incident that had me muttering, "Of course it was HRC." It was the day that I turned over one of HRC's fundraising appeals and saw the organization imploring me to support them by buying things from their corporate sponsors: Nike, Shell, and Chase, among others. Nike may support gay rights, but it is also notorious for selling sweatshop-made products. Shell may support gay rights, but it sells a product that contributes to global warming—and it has a horrible human rights record to boot. Chase may support gay rights, but it also supports predatory lenders.

At the same time that HRC was advertising these corporations to me, the organization was also asking me for a direct donation. All I could think about was all the other organizations that are addressing the problems that Nike, Shell, and Chase exacerbate, but lack corporate support and probably need my money more than HRC does: the anti-sweatshop organizations on No Sweat apparel's resources page, Climate Ark's global warming activism links, the organizations that work with the University of Minnesota's Human Rights Resource Center, and the anti-predatory lending organizations listed at the end of Dollars & Sense's recent article on the fringe economy. I threw the HRC appeal in the recycling bin, feeling rather insulted.

In the May/June 2004 issue of Dollars & Sense, co-editor Amy Gluckman explored the de-radicalization of the gay culture. She is also the editor, with The Nation's Betsy Reed, of Homo Economics: Capitalism, Community, and Lesbian and Gay Life,

the first honest account of the tense relationship between gay people and the economy. ... Address[es] issues including the recent economic history of the gay community, the community's response to its changing economic circumstances, and the risks inherent in a narrow definition of liberation. ...Gay consumers are being courted by corporations, gay money is fueling political campaigns, and gay and lesbian neighborhoods are expanding. The essays in Homo Economics warn us however, that contrary to popular stereotypes, only a narrow segment of the gay community is enjoying economic success and the majority of gay men and lesbians actually earn less than straight men and women.

Technorati Tags: gay marketing, media analysis

 

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1/15/2007 05:12:00 PM 0 comments

 

Notes from the road: musings on the nickels and dimes of travel

by Dollars and Sense

I've been on the road for Dollars & Sense for a week and a half now, and it's made me realize a few things about the costs of travel. Not the grand environmental and social costs, which would be fodder for a Dollars & Sense article, but more nitty gritty, blog-worthy stuff.

First: differential hotel pricing. High-end conference hotels have a captive audience, and they know it—and charge accordingly. While in Chicago for the Allied Social Sciences Associations conference, I stayed at the Chicago Hilton Towers. (The re-named Conrad Hilton, where the Chicago police made such a sorry spectacle of themselves by attacking protesters during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.) The Hilton: high prices, haute gauche décor, host to the Labor and Employment Research Association's meetings—and determined to nickel and dime their guests (or their guests' expense accounts) as much as possible. The guest rooms have wireless—available for $3.50 an hour. The package room can receive shipments—for $25 per package. Luggage carts are available—under the supervision of a bellman, who must be tipped.

Cut to Memphis a week later, where I'm attending the National Conference for Media Reform and sharing a cut-rate Comfort Inn room with three other people. It lacks the history of the Chicago Hilton, certainly, but I can't say that the furnishings are any tackier. And its guest rooms offer high-speed internet—wired, but free. Luggage carts are available—for use without a bellman. And there's the free breakfast...

Second: someone is profiting from airport security. I don't mean in a grand corruption sense—though I don't doubt that—but again, by nickels and dimes. The most obvious example: in-flight meals used to be free; now there's a charge. Or, one was once allowed to take drinks through security; now one must buy them in the terminal. And the one that prompted this post: Curbside baggage check used to be free; then it was too dangerous to be allowed; now, American Airlines charges $2 a bag for the service.

Not to mention that not allowing coach passengers use the first class toilets is now considered a security issue, according to onboard announcements. I always did suspect that class was a matter of national security.

And speaking of toilets, I've also had plenty of opportunity to ponder how much water, electricity, and paper public restrooms waste. Auto-flush toilets, push-start and motion-sensing sinks, motion-sensing paper towel dispensers, electric blow dryers... I suspect that the motion-sensing devices are supposed to protect us from germs by allowing us not to touch fixtures, but it just seems like such a waste of resources. (Okay, I guess that was one remark about the environmental costs of travel. Just don't get me started on how I've been eating out all the time.)

Crankily yours,
Esther 

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1/15/2007 01:26:00 AM 2 comments

 

Big Box Stores & the Future of Retail: Tales from the American Economic Association

by Dollars and Sense

So, we've had a highlight from the Allied Social Sciences Associations meetings; now here's a lowlight.

On Jan 7, the American Economics Association hosted a panel called Big Box Stores and the Future of Retail. The presenters confirmed many of the things Dollars & Sense readers already know about Wal-Mart: retail stores come and go, but non-chain stores come and go much faster than big-chain stores; bigger chains build bigger stores that offer more products; big chains lead the retail industry in technology, prices, and (never mentioned) wages; big chains enjoy economies of scope (a more diverse inventory appeals to one-stop shoppers) as well as scale (they can make deals with—maybe even control the behavior of—product suppliers).

The presenters related these facts as though they were revelations, and their tone of naive discovery led to some wonderful quotes. For instance, Justin Wolfers of the Wharton School mused on the issue of why non-chain stores fail at a much faster rate than big-chain stores, "Is it financing—that mega corporations can keep non-profitable stores open a little longer, whereas Mom & Pop are really constrained in a way we never thought of?"
[emphasis added]

Then there was Emek Basker, who made fun of the Chicago activists who this summer convinced their city council to pass an ordinance requiring "stores that occupy more than 90,000 square feet and are part of companies grossing more than $1 billion annually ... to pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour by 2010, according to Erik Eckholm of the NYT. Basker applauded Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's veto of the ordinance, saying, "The people who pushed for the ordinance were confused. Their logic was just 'big chains are bad, so let's go after big chains.' But their ordinance didn't do anything to the big stores that don't belong to big chains."

Her audience met this with appreciative titters, likely thinking, "Those silly activists, confusing scale and scope."

But is it so silly? If, as the panelists (including Basker) were right when they said that big chains build bigger stores that enjoy economies of scope, where is the confusion? Size of store and size of corporation are linked. (It would be interesting to research how many non-chain retailers in Chicago have stores of over 90,000 square feet, and how that compares to the number of big-chain stores that are that large.)

And the Chicago living wage activists weren't "going after" big chains just for the sake of going after them—they targeted big-chain retailers because they know just as well as the panelists do that the big chains lead the retail industry, and getting them to improve their behavior can help smaller retailers improve theirs.

The Chicago living wage activists even thought of a question that never crossed the AEA panelists' minds: who can better afford low wages: workers or Wal-Mart?


Read more about the economic effects of minimum wage and living wage laws:
Measuring the Full Impact of Minimum and Living Wage Laws; Economists' Statement Regarding the Need to Raise the Minimum Wage

Technorati Tags: living wage, Chicago living wage, Wal-Mart, big box

 

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1/15/2007 01:16:00 AM 0 comments

 

Dennis Kucinich at National Conference for Media Reform

by Dollars and Sense

On Friday night, Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) visited the National Conference for Media Reform and issued an open call to citizens to educate him about issues that the new Domestic Policy Subcommittee, which Kucinich is likely to chair, should address in this session of Congress. The subcommittee, Kucinich says, "will be able to consider any domestic issue at all"—not only media reform but also predatory lending, job creation, labor law, work-life balance, health insurance, prison policy.... Visit the congressman's website for details on how to participate.

Kucinich also answered attendees' questions about the plans of the 110th Congress, especially with regard to the occupation of Iraq. A January 11 CCN poll posted on pollingreport.com shows that 54% of Americans want the United States to withdraw all of our troops before January 2008 (another 31% want them out regardless of timeframe. And we have the power to make it happen, Kucinich says. How?

"Call your representatives and tell them to vote against further funding for the war in Iraq."

Kucinich would then ask Congress to appropriate separate money to fund troop withdrawal only.

The Jan 11 CNN poll reports that 54% of Americans back Kucinich's recommendation.

And it looks like a vigorous calling campaign might do the trick. Zachary Coile of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the some other congressional Dems are taking the idea seriously.

Kucinich urges our action with the warning that this is our only chance to force troop withdrawal before Bush leaves office. "If they appropriate those funds, there wil be no withdrawal until Bush is out of office."

Kucinich knows whereof he speaks. In April 1999, he and sixteen other representatives filed suit against then-President Bill Clinton for unconstitutionally waging war in Yugoslavia without the permission of Congress. Although Congress had voted against deploying ground troops to supplement Clinton's bombing campaign and against declaring war, it later appropriated more than twice as much money as Clinton had requested to support the operation. As Jake Tapper reported on Salon.com, then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) "explained this as a way to support our troops, while not necessarily supporting the policy that put them there."

Would-be patriotic Democratic representatives beware Armey's mistake. U.S. District Court Judge Harold H. Greene, who heard Kucinich et al's lawsuit, disagreed—he ruled in Clinton's favor, saying that Congress's approval of the funds implied its approval of the action.

And, as always, it always bears pointing out, as the National Priorities Project does, that there are many better things we could spend Bush's war money on than the pointless destruction of another country.

Kucinich also defended his ongoing opposition to impeaching Bush, saying that, despite the clear evidence of crime and despite the fact that Iraq contributed greatly to the Democrats' November victory, impeachment is not politically viable, but rather counterproductive to ending the war. Kucinich said, "If we move that to the front of the agenda, the whole effort to bring the troops home will be lost. Bush will react by accelerating deployments."

Kucinich failed to answer additional questions as to why he has publicly opposed impeachment since 2002.

Technorati Tags: Dennis Kucinich, Domestic Policy Subcommittee, Iraq appropriations, war appropriations, cost of war, impeachment

 

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1/14/2007 12:08:00 AM 0 comments

 

The Long-Term Costs of Providing Veterans Benefits

by Dollars and Sense

In Soldiers Returning from Iraq and Afghanistan: The Long-Term Costs of Providing Veterans Medical Care and Disability Benefits, Linda Bilmes of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government asks, "President Bush is now asking for more money to spend on recruiting in order to boost the size of the Army and deploy more troops to Iraq. But what about taking care of those same soldiers when they return home as veterans?"

Bilmes presented the paper January 5 at an Allied Social Sciences Associations panel hosted by Economists for Peace and Security, is a follow-up to her February 2006 paper with Joseph Stiglitz, The Economic Costs of the Iraq War: An Appraisal Three Years After the Beginning of the Conflict. That paper estimated that the United States' war in Iraq will eventually cost more than $2 trillion.

Bilmes and Stiglitz believe that making the public more aware of the costs of the war can help end the war. And one way to do that is to make sure that long-term costs, like treating and supporting injured and disabled veterans, are included when the cost of the war is discussed. To leave them out is shady business, says Bilmes. "In this country, no enterprise larger than a corner grocery store is allowed to use cash accounting. But that's what the government is doing. It's not counting accrued costs."

The Bilmes and Stiglitz paper estimated that lifetime benefits (both health care and disability benefits) to U.S. veterans of Iraq would cost between $77 billion and $179 billion. Bilmes says that immediately after she released her paper, leaders of veterans' grooups began calling her to thank her for writing the paper—and also to tell her that they thought her numbers were too low. That feedback prompted her new study.

Bilmes' new research estimates the minimum cost at almost twice the previous study's maximum: $350 billion. This low-end estimate assumes no new deployments (which seems unlikely with the Bush regime in power until 2009), and it assumes that the average benefit will be similar to the average benefit resulting from the first Gulf War—although Department of Defense sources indicate that the rate of serious injury has been much higher. If those assumptions do not hold, Bilmes offers a high-end estimate of $663 billion.

Congress and the Veterans Administration would do well to pay attention to Bilmes' estimates and the concerns of veterans' organizations: in fiscal year 2005, the VA had a budget shortfall of $1 billion, and in FY2006, $2 billion. The Government Accounting Office says that this is because the VA used 2002 (pre-Iraq) figures to estimate its costs for those years.

But even budgeting for the veterans' care costs we know are accruing won't solve the many the problems that the Veterans Administration is experiencing right now—a backlog of between 400,000 and 600,000 claims, and claim processing times that "render care virtually inaccessible," according to VA Undersecretary for Health Frances Murphy. Bilmes suggests that these problems could be solved by changing the VA's claims system—which eventually approves 88% of all claims—so that all claims are automatically approved, with the possibility of a later audit (much the way the IRS works) and by placing the 1000 new employees that the VA has recently requested not in claims processing but in the direct care of veterans. She encourages Iraq veterans and their organizations to turn their activism and political access to these tasks. Unfortunately, although the Bush administration made war with Iraq seem inevitable, making sure that the government pays for the care of its veterans is certain to take work.

FURTHER READING

• Linda Bilmes' Jan 5, 2007 op ed in the LA Times
• Economists for Peace and Security
• Iraq Veterans Against the War
• National Priorities Project cost-of-war counter
• Mark Benjamin's Sticker Shock Over Shell Shock, in Salon, Aug 9, 2005
• Judith Coburn's Stiffing Veterans, in Salon, May 1, 2006

Technorati Tags: cost of war, Iraq veterans, veterans benefits

 

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1/12/2007 06:19:00 PM 2 comments

 

Econ-Atrocity: The 800-Pound Ronald McDonald in the Room

by Dollars and Sense

An Econ-Atrocity, brought to you by the Center for Popular Economics.

Econ-Atrocity: The 800-Pound Ronald McDonald in the Room
By Helen Scharber, CPE Staff Economist
Jan. 4, 2007

When your child’s doctor gives you advice, you’re probably inclined to take it. And if 60,000 doctors gave you advice, ignoring it would be even more difficult to justify. Last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a policy statement advising us to limit advertising to children, citing its adverse effects on health. Yes, banning toy commercials might result in fewer headaches for parents (“Please, please, pleeeeeeease, can I have this new video game I just saw 10 commercials for????”), but the AAP is more concerned with other health issues, such as childhood obesity. Advertising in general—and to children specifically—has reached astonishingly high levels, and as a country, we’d be wise to take the doctors’ orders.

Advertising to kids is not a new phenomenon, but the intensity of it is. According to Juliet Schor, author of Born to Buy, companies spent around $100 million in 1983 on television advertising to kids. A little more than 20 years later, the amount earmarked for child-targeted ads in a variety of media has jumped to at least $12 billion annually. That’s over $150 per boy and girl in the U.S. And it’s not as though kids only see ads for action figures and sugary cereal; the other $240 billion spent on advertising each year ensures that they see ads for all kinds of products, everywhere they go. According to the AAP report, “the average young person views more than 3,000 ads per day on television, on the Internet, on billboards, and in magazines.” Ads are also creeping into schools, where marketers have cleverly placed them in “educational” posters, textbook covers, bathroom stalls, scoreboards, daily news programs, and bus radio programming.

If advertising to children is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, it’s probably because it’s becoming increasingly profitable. Once upon a time, kids didn’t have as much market power as they do today. The AAP report estimates that kids under 12 now spend $25 billion of their own money annually, teenagers spend another $155 billion, and both groups probably influence around $200 billion in parental spending. Not too surprising, considering that 62 percent of parents say their children “actively participate” in car-buying decisions, according to a study by J.D. Power & Associates (see the “Car makers direct more ads at kids” link below.) Marketers are also becoming more aware of the long-term potential of advertising to children. While they may not be the primary market now, they will be someday. And since researchers have found that kids as young as two can express preferences for specific brands, it’s practically never too early to begin instilling brand loyalty.

But while small children have an incredible memory for commercial messages, they may not have developed the cognitive skills necessary to be critical of them. In 2004, the American Psychological Association (APA) also called for setting limits on advertising to kids, citing research that “children under the age of eight are unable to critically comprehend televised advertising messages and are prone to accept advertiser messages as truthful, accurate and unbiased.” Many people take offense at the idea that we might be manipulated by marketing. Aren’t we, after all, intelligent enough to make up our own minds about what to buy? The research cited by the APA, however, shows that children are uniquely vulnerable to manipulation by advertising. Marketers therefore should not be allowed to prey on them in the name of free speech.

Such invasive advertising to children is not only an ethical problem. The American Academy of Pediatrics cited advertising’s effects on health through the promotion of unhealthy eating, drinking and smoking as the main motivation for setting limits. Children’s health issues certainly merit attention. The Center for Disease Control, for example, has found that the prevalence of overweight children (ages 6 to 11) increased from 7 percent in 1980 to about 19 percent in 2004, while the rate among adolescents (ages 12 to 19) jumped from 5 percent to 17 percent. In addition to physical health problems, Schor argues that extensive marketing has negative effects on children’s emotional well being. In her research for Born to Buy, Schor found links between immersion in consumer culture and depression, anxiety, low self esteem and conflicts with parents. The big push to consume can also lead to financial health problems, as many Americans know all too well, with credit card debt among 18- to 24-year-olds doubling over the past decade.

Not even the staunchest critics of marketing to children would argue that advertisements are completely at fault for these trends. Yet, the commercialization of nearly everything is negatively affecting children’s well being in rather profound ways. Why, then, is hardly anyone paying attention to the 800-pound Ronald McDonald in the room? Perhaps it’s because advertising appears to be a necessary evil or a fair tradeoff – maybe little Emma’s school couldn’t afford a soccer team without Coke on the scoreboard, for example. Or perhaps some would argue that parents who don’t approve of the commercial culture should limit their kids’ exposure to it. (See the Kids and Commercialism link below for tips on parenting kids in a commercial culture.) Increasingly invasive marketing techniques make it practically impossible to simply opt out of commercial culture, though. Thus, decisions to limit marketing to children must be made by the country as a whole. Sweden, Norway, Greece, Denmark, and Belgium have already passed laws curbing kid-targeted advertising, and according to 60,000 pediatricians, if we care about the health of our kids, we should too.


Resources

American Association of Pediatrics,
Policy Statement on Children, Adolescents, and Advertising – December 2006.

American Psychological Association,
“Television Advertising Leads to Unhealthy Habits in Childen, says APA Task Force” – February 2004.


Jennifer Saranow, “Car makers direct more ads at kids,” Wall Street Journal, November 9, 2006.

David Burke, “Two-year olds branded by TV advertising”.

Center for a New American Dream, Kids and Commercialism.

Juliet Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, (New York: Scribner, 2004).

Center for Disease Control, Facts about Childhood Overweight.

© 2007 Center for Popular Economics

Econ-Atrocities are the work of their authors and reflect their author's opinions and analyses. CPE does not necessarily endorse any particular idea expressed in these articles.

The Center for Popular Economics is a collective of political economists based in Amherst, Massachusetts. CPE works to demystify economics by providing workshops and educational materials to activists throughout the United States and around the world. If you would like more information about CPE please visit our website.

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1/11/2007 05:28:00 PM 0 comments

 

TCCI’s North Gulfport - Turkey Creek Clean Up

by Ben Greenberg

The following report from the Mississippi Gulf Coast is by Derrick Evans (see "Ground Zero of Someone Else's Future," March/April 2006), founder and director of Turkey Creek Community Initiatives.

By Derrick Evans

Turkey Creek Community Initiatives and its community partners are trying to get MLK Blvd and the rest of North Gulfport EXTREMELY clean in time for Dr. King’s Birthday on Jan 15, as well as for the Jan 27 ribbon-cutting of Turkey Creek-North Gulfport’s very first Unity (green modular) Home on the corner of MLK and Ohio Avenue.

Over 80 volunteers headed out at 8 Monday and Tuesday morning with District 4 Supervisor William Martin’s Harrison County boom trucks and road crews right behind them. The volunteers are from Boston College, U Maryland, Johns Hopkins, Hands On USA, Americorps, and Youth Conservation Corps. Many very appreciative community members have been happily pitching in to do their part. When City of Gulfport “Beautification workers” suddenly appeared at mid-morning on Monday to try their best to keep up, we knew we had gotten something big rolling.

In just two days, we thoroughly cleaned over 75% of the streets and ditches on the west side of Highway 49 in North Gulfport, or approximately 2 square miles. In unprecedented volume, old tires, unaddressed storm debris, and general roadside litter were neatly set alongside the streets to be picked up by county and city knuckle booms, and to be raked and bagged again if necessary. This level of intense cleaning will continue Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 8am to 4pm, with targeted areas to include Forest Heights, Rippy Road, Villa del Rey and any other areas of the lower TC Watershed that our time and manpower will allow.

Forty of the volunteers are guests of TCCI’s volunteer camp at Harrison County’s Hannah Knox and Amos Crouch ballfields (just west of the North Gulfport Middle Schoool). A post-clean-up Fish Fry and Community Celebration will occur on Friday the 12th from 6pm until, and don’t forget the Unity Home ribbon-cutting ceremony on Jan 27 - hosted by the North Gulfport Community Land Trust. Please join us.

(Cross-posted on Hungry Blues and Gulf Coast Fair Housing Network)

 

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1/10/2007 08:52:00 AM 0 comments

 

Dollars & Sense events in Austin

by Dollars and Sense

Dollars & Sense will be hosting two events in Austin in January.

W Jan 17: UT Journalism's Robert Jensen reports back from the National Conference for Media Reform

F Jan 19: house party and Up Against the Wall Street Journal media-bias workshop



You can also find Dollars & Sense people and materials in Chicago Jan 4-7 for the Allied Social Sciences Associations conference (find us at the ICAPE table) and in Memphis Jan 12-14 for the National Conference for Media Reform. 

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1/03/2007 09:36:00 AM 0 comments