End the Current System of Analyzing America By Ethnicity

To start, consider a bit of statistical 'analysis', by way of reference:

Mexico has a per capita gdp/ppp of $ 13,500 a year while the Chinese speaking world is at about $ 7,500 a year. As we know from statistics there is a clear and undeniable relationship between income and IQ. Therefore, either Mexicans work harder, study more, or are innately smarter.

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Of course, this is not a standard view in the United States today. In our corner of the world, our sample bias, Chinese-Americans make about twice what Mexican-Americans do. So we bring another set of stereotypes to the table. But from the global income numbers it seems that ethnicity is masking class issues related to immigration patterns particular to the United States.

Critics of the bracketed analysis would point out the large population of mainland China, the geographic, political and economic difficulties in raising that population out of poverty, the legacy of imperialism, Mexico's proximity to the U.S, or the weakness of IQ as a measure of innate anything. In short, people would point at other factors that complicate said analysis.

Unfortunately, we seem unable to do that when it comes to analyzing our own population.

Such is the intellectual weakness of our continuing obsession with ethnic categorization in an increasingly multi-layered American society. It is silly on one level, but deeply dangerous on another.

First, from a left perspective, it undermines working class solidarity. Go to any Cal campus in the Fall and see how many ethnic-oriented tables and student organizations there are versus labor organizations. Politically speaking for the United States in 2010, this is a complete dead end.

Second, it promotes racial antagonism and and the 'science' of ethnic differences in learning. This undercurrent exists in mainstream educational circles - again, based on our statistical reporting of issues solely along ethnic lines. And based upon a misunderstanding of how sample bias can skew perception.

Third, it is inaccurate and unscientific, which erodes logic and rationality in our broader discourse.

We cling to this way of viewing American society because it worked - 40 years ago - when there was little immigration and less flux in the statistical inputs of our society. The US today is characterized by multiple levels of immigration - skilled , unskilled, from multiple areas of the world, and by ethnic mixing domestically on a scale rarely seen in human history. This tapestry is being thrust into an archaic and brittle system of categorization despite in many cases deep differences in class, culture and educational background. And behind it are political voices who like this way of breaking up society by skin color - most importantly the wealthy who of course are deeply in love with the idea of fracturing working class solidarity.

When statistics obscure rather than illuminate, it's time to use a new model, most especially for those on the left.

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The most obvious example of this is Obama. He is of course 'black', but from a middle class background and attended one of the most elite private high schools in the country. His father was from the political elite of Kenya, highly educated, and hand-picked to immigrate to the United States for those reasons. His mother was also highly educated and had a doctorate degree.

Can Obama's success really tell us anything about the conditions and opportunity for a descendant from slavery who grows up in Detroit ? I don't think so.

Putting the Chinese Consumer on the Western Credit Morphine Drip

One has a feeling this is what 'it' was about all along. Cracking the Chinese banking system for a takeover by the West.

"We are concerned that China is breaking its trade commitments to the United States and other WTO partners, both by favoring its one state-owned financial services firm to the exclusion of American credit- and debit-card companies and by manipulating trade remedy investigations to unfairly restrict exports of American steel," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement.(1)

Or, as better stated over Jesse's:

...The natural benefit of unrestrained globalization is a canard similar in nature to the fallacy of naturally efficient markets.

It suited some people to ignore it then because the arrangement provided cheap goods to the US while depressing the domestic manufacturing sector and working class incomes, while boosting the financial sector and masking monetary inflation and asset bubbles. It was a means of empowering and enriching Wall Street at the expense of the productive economy.

Now that China's currency manipulation does not suit them, they are willing to discuss it, since China is not 'playing ball' with the financial engineers and encouraging domestic consumption and adopting Western bankers as their masters.(2)

How will China respond ? Centralization is essential to maintaining the cohesiveness of the state in a country so large, and with China's historical geographic weaknesses and propensity to factionalize. The repercussions of opening up their financial system would probably push a Beijing-centered China to the point of collapse.

1'U.S. files WTO cases vs. China on steel, services' - Marketwatch
2'China's Mercantilism: Selling Them the Rope' - Jesse Cafe Americain

FDR was Popular with the Working Class and the Poor

From a Survey for the 1936 Election

Car and Phone Ownership: FDR 55 %, Landon 45%
Car, No Phone: FDR 68%, Landon 30 %
Phone, No Car: FDR 69%, Landon 30%
No Car, No Phone: FDR 79%, Landon 19%

I doubt such a survey today would reveal the same contrasts in class. Part of the legacy of the Southern Strategy.
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As a side note, my family's farm did not have electricity until 1948, however, they did buy a brand new Ford in 1945 or so.

Rural electrification took a long time.
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1'Why the 1936 Literary Digest Poll Failed" - Perevill Squire (page 6)

China and the End of Capitalism

The argument is that China represents the last infrastructurally developed reservoir of cheap labor and market growth left in the world, and its now central role in the world economy represents an end stage in the modernizing phase of capitalism. Chinese production has been increasingly overloading the world capitalist system with goods, creating overcapacity on a global scale, with the U.S. running unsustainable trade deficits as the holder of reserve currency and 'consumer of last resort'. The system is overloaded; we have a global crisis of 'over-production' of proportions never before attained.

Two people associated with this view are Robert Brenner of UCLA and Minqi Li of the University of Utah, though their perspectives vary significantly as well; Li focuses quite a bit on ecology both in his book 'China and the Demise of the World Capitalist System' and in this interview.



2'Overproduction not Financial Collapse is the Heart of the Crisis: the US, East Asia, and the World' - Interview with Robert P. Brenner

China and Japan: Naval and Trade Tensions

While World War 2 effectively blew out the European volcano, in Asia national tensions have mostly been suppressed by the long time presence of the 7th Fleet. Despite rapid economic development, there have been only gradual steps towards regional political unity as compared with the EU. This is possibly because of the fundamental weakness in the development strategy, in that it is based on export cartels and not domestic consumption - though domestic consumption and living standards have increased dramatically as a byproduct of export success.

With China now buying Japanese bonds to diversify away from dollars, strengthening the yen and cutting into Japanese-based exporter profits, these two powers are seeing a commensurate rise in territorial disputes over oil and natural gas rich areas in the waters of East Asia.



1'Wary Japan seeks clarity on China military outlay' - Reuters
2'China raises pressure on Japan in sea dispute' - Reuters
3'Wikipedia Commons' - Map Image
4'Look Out for the Diaoyu Islands' - NYT; Kristoff

Agree to Pay Whatever We Charge or Your Family Will Die

All from a catastrophe you had nothing to do with causing. What a country !



Reads:

"(Julio) Locon suffers from 3rd degree burns on his ear and second degree burns on his hand and his back as a result of the explosion. He is concerned about his niece and and sister-in-law who were also burned but have no health insurance. Locon had to sign papers at Seton Medical Center stating he would pay the medical bills if no one else would. He said the center made him sign before they would treat his relatives for burns and a broken arm."

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1San Bruno Fire Photos - San Jose Mercury News

No Excuse For Government Inaction on High Unemployment

Because there is plenty of work to do :

Experts say the nation's 296,000 miles of onshore natural-gas lines routinely suffer breakdowns and failures.

More than 60 percent of the lines are 40 years old or older and almost half were installed in the 1950s and 1960s, according to a recent analysis by the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Bellingham, Wash.

Most of the older pipelines lack anticorrosion coatings that are prevalent in the industry today, said Carl Weimer, executive director of the trust, which was set up following a 1999 explosion that killed three people in Bellingham.

"The industry always says that if you take care of pipelines, they'll last forever," Weimer said. "But what we see over and over again is companies are not doing that and corrosion and other factors are causing failures."(1)

The problem is this work is not sufficiently profitable in the narrow short-term way that private capital measures such things. So, just have government do it through direct hiring.

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1'Crews Search San Bruno Homes After Blast Kills 4' - CBS News

The Fall Will be Very Hard for the White, Western Ruling Class

Example 1: A former German Central Banker who insults the intelligence of Muslims.(1)

Never mind that the Islamic world was light years ahead of the West - most especially the tree worshiping Hun - for most of recorded history.

As Betrand Russell wrote in 'A History of Western Civilization':

"To us, it seems that West-European civilization is civilization, but this is a narrow view. Most of the cultural content of our civilization comes to us from the Eastern Mediterranean, from Greeks and Jews. As for power; Western Europe was dominant from the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome - say, roughly, during the six centuries from 200 B.C. to 400 A.D. After that time (until the Renaissance), no state in Western Europe could compare in power with China, Japan, or the Caliphate."

Yet racism and privilege is so deeply buried in the mind of the Western ruling class, their inevitable fall from absolute power will probably bring the modern world to all out war.

1'Official's views on Muslim immigration divide Germany' - Washington Post

Hungary Pokes a Stick at EU, IMF

If Hungary can get away with this in the debt markets, it will provide further confidence for countries like Greece to split from the Euro mandated austerity.

1'Hungary govt to focus on jobs, econ growth' - Reuters

"Peter Szijjarto also told a news conference that the economic policy of previous Socialist governments -- based on austerity measures -- has failed and the new government planned to create one million new jobs in the next ten years."

2'Europe Finance Ministers Urge Hungary to Resume IMF Negotiations, MTI Says'-Bloomberg

3'Hungarian premier: I am no 'Che Guevara' fighting against banks ' - Earth Times

"Hungary's government has stuck by its "economic autonomy" during its first months in office and will continue to do so, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Tuesday, defending a controversial tax on the banking system."

4'Hungary economy ministry sees no need for new IMF loan agreement' - Budapest Business Journal

5'Hungary warned on pay cap law' - Financial Times

"The European Commission has warned Hungary that it must amend a law capping the pay of national bank employees to avoid infringing the independence of the national bank.

Hungary’s new government passed a law in July capping the salary of public employees at 2m forints ($8,800), requiring Andras Simor, governor of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank, to accept a 75 per cent pay cut"

6'Hungary can finance debts from mkt in 2011-13 -govt' -Reuters

"Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy also reiterated at a business forum that the country's financing deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union will expire in October and the Fidesz government had no intention of seeking a new IMF loan agreement."

Take This Job And Shove It

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From another era. It's no accident this song came on the precipice of the neo-liberal counter revolution, which diminished the expectations and rebelliousness of the American working class. If released today it might be attacked as unpatriotic and certainly ungrateful.

Happy Labor Day 2010.

Tony Blair Foams at the Mouth on Iran

Tony Blair on the BBC:

"I am saying that I think it is wholly unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapons capability and I think we have got to be prepared to confront them, if necessary militarily. I think there is no alternative to that if they continue to develop nuclear weapons. They need to get that message loud and clear."(1)

Martin Wolf, channeling HSBC boss Stephen King:

In King’s view, many western optimists mistakenly think the rise of the west was due to superior institutions, particularly the market, and superior science and technology, particularly in commercial applications. He argues, instead, that the west reached its pinnacle at least as much by rent-seeking or, to put it more bluntly, by plundering the world’s physical and human resources. Meanwhile, other civilisations “were disconnected from the world’s productivity engines through the suppression of ideas, innovations and linkages with other nations, or by the violence meted out to them by the western powers."(2)

There's not much the Western ruling class can do about Iran, absent a nuclear strike that would send their already tattered historical legacy down in flames.
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1'Tony Blair: West should use force if Iran 'continues to develop nuclear weapons'' - UK Guardian
2'Why the west faces a harsher future' - Financial Times; Martin Wolf

Charter Schools are About Union Busting

Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines has moved to shut down a San Fernando Valley charter school over the alleged theft or misuse of as much as $2.7 million by the school's founding principal.

The problems at NEW Academy Canoga Park turned up in an audit released Monday by the inspector general's office of the Los Angeles Unified School District.(1)

Most likely there's a lot of this going on that hasn't been reported. More private interests feeding at the public trough.

The larger reason for the elite push towards charter schools is to weaken the teacher's unions. Charter schools are not unionized, though they pay the prevailing wage. A union's ultimate power comes from the strike, and the ability to shut down the system; if fewer teachers as a percentage of a school district are unionized, it weakens union negotiating power.

1' L.A. Unified moves to close charter school over alleged misuse of $2.7 million' - LA Times; Blume