Al Fresco

As Feng took his evening stroll--a bit later than usual I might add--it was past twilight. Darkness had settled upon his hamlet and in the warm summer night air cicadas could be heard whirring from the elm trees. Water cascaded into the air from sprinklers over well groomed lawns and splashed onto the sidewalks. The starlight from above could be seen.

And as Feng walked he noticed a loosening in his bowels. Hot streaks shot through his intestines, signalling the imminence of diarrheal explosion. Tightening his sphincter, he increased his pace, hoping to make it home. But, alas, he was twelve blocks yet from home. Could he make it? Quickening his pace now, along the main road, puckering his asshole to an airtight seal he moved swiftly now, speedwalking.

But at certain point, a critical point of inflexion, next to a renter's cottage, it was too late. Striding across the close-cropped lawn up against the yew hedge, he dropped his shorts, squatted, and loosed a tremendous explosion of crap. For a long minute, a streaming torrent poured out of his asshole into a great steaming mound. Carlights illuminated him against the verdure, an incongruous sight: a middle aged man in an oxford cloth shirt taking a dump on the lawn of a house in a middle class suburb, al fresco.

A passerby saw him and ignored him. Feng abruptly drew up his shorts and began running, escaping from the scene like a boy completing a prank. Ashamed of himself, Feng collapsed in his cell, alas contemplating the raw animality of his act.

You Were Warned

I recently saw an interview of noted futurist Alvin Toffler by Newt Gingrich on C-Span (http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=192676-1&template=4) Gingrich was discussing Toffler's new book, "Revolutionary Wealth". What struck me most was Gingrich's enthusiasm and interest in Toffler's ideas of the "prosumer economy" described by the NY Times review of Tofflers book as an economy "which involves unpaid work that nevertheless greatly increases quality of life; for example, cooking a lavish meal for friends or much of open-source computer coding." Hmmm. Let us try to fathom what attraction this idea might have to a conservative of Gingrich's disposition.

Could it be that there is a tacit recognition that there's going to be a lot less money to go around in the future? Could it be that there is an interest in persuading people that they are "wealthy" even though they are "money poor"? While I appreciate the gesture in that direction, I am suspicious of Gingrich's motives. For a long time now indices like the Swedish Standard of Living Survey have tried to calculate "well being" in ways other than material wealth. But for an economic conservative of Gingrich's disposition to suddenly take an interest in this kind of measurement of "wealth", invites skepticism and a little creative thinking. I think that the interest this has for economic conservatives is in finding ways to persuade people that their lives possess value over against an economy that is shrinking and extremely dysfunctional.

Economic conservatives like Gingrich know what the future holds. They know, for instance, that peak oil is going to have a devastating effect on the economy. They know, in addition, that the petrodollar hegemony is coming to an end. They know that they US is overstretched in its fiscal commitments (see the Coming Generational Storm). And they know that one of the primary functions of government is to assuage and control social rage. The appeal of Toffler's idea of revolutionary wealth, then, consists in its ability to rhetorically overturn the traditional measures of economic well being that the conservatives have long narrowly focused on, namely income and buying power. When income and buying power no longer matter because the dollar is destroyed by hyperinflation and that real wages put American workers on a par with their Chinese counterparts, the corporate rulers and their political operatives are going to have to find ways to persuade the angry masses that their condition is better than it really is. And that is the genius of Toffler's "revolutionary wealth". Wealth is found in the simple things in life: sunshine, leisure, spare time, all the things that money can't buy. See, you really are wealthy!

The Corruption within the Corruption

Here is a Thomas Frank column that I shamelessly lifted from the NY Times today. I couldn't afford not to have it on the site. Enjoy.

G.O.P. Corruption? Bring In the Conservatives.

By THOMAS FRANK
Published: August 22, 2006
In the lexicon of American business, “cynicism” means doubt about the benevolence of market forces, and it is a vice of special destructiveness. Those who live or work in Washington, however, know another variant of cynicism, a fruitful one, a munificent one, a cynicism that is, in fact, the health of the conservative state. The object of this form of cynicism is “government,” whose helpful or liberating possibilities are to be derided whenever the opportunity presents.

Remember how President Reagan claimed to find terror in the phrase, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”? Or how the humorist P. J. O’Rourke won fame by declaring that even the proceedings of a New England town meeting were a form of thievery?
The true scoffer demands sterner stuff, though, and in the cold light of economic science he can see that government is not merely susceptible to corruption; government is corruption, a vile profaning of the market-most-holy in which some groups contrive to swipe the property of other groups via taxation and regulation. Politicians use the threat of legislation to extort bribes from industry, and even federal quality standards — pure food and so on — are tantamount to theft, since by certifying that any product in a given field won’t kill you, they nullify the reputations for quality and goodness that individual companies in the field have built up at great expense over the years.

The ideas I am describing are basic building blocks of the conservative faith. You can find their traces throughout the movement’s literature. You can hear their echoes in chambers of commerce across the land. But what happens when you elevate to high public office people who actually believe these things — who think that “the public interest” is a joke, that “reform” is a canard, and that every regulatory push is either a quest for monopoly by some company or a quest for bribes by some politician? What happens when the machinery of the state falls into the hands of people who laugh at the function for which it was designed?
The obvious answer is an auctioning-off of public policy in a manner we have not seen since the last full-blown antigovernment regime held office, in the 1920’s. Agencies and commissions are brazenly turned over to campaign contributors; high-ranking officers of Congress throw grander and gaudier fund-raisers even after being arraigned; well-connected middlemen sell access for unprecedented amounts.

What really worries me, though, is that our response to all this may be to burrow deeper into our own cynicism, ultimately reinforcing the gang that owns the patent on cynicism and thus setting us up for another helping of the same. This may not be apparent now, with the identity of the culprits still vivid and the G.O.P. apparently heading for a midterm spanking. Recall, though, that while the short-term effects of the Watergate scandal were jail sentences for several Republicans and the election of many Democrats to Congress in 1974, its long-term effect was the destruction of public faith in government itself and the wave that swept in Ronald Reagan six years later.

In the absence of a theory of corruption that pins the tail squarely on the elephant, this is certainly what will happen again. Conservatives are infinitely better positioned to capitalize on public disillusionment with the political system, regardless of who does the disillusioning. Indeed, the chorus has already started chanting that the real culprit in the current Beltway scandals is the corrupting influence of government, not conservative operatives or their noble doctrine. The problem with G.O.P. miscreants is simply that they’ve been in D.C. so long they’ve "gone native," to use a favorite phrase of the right; they are “becoming cozy with Beltway mores,” in The Wall Street Journal’s telling. If you don’t like the corruption, you must do away with government.

Were he not the main figure in all this, Jack Abramoff would undoubtedly be nodding in agreement with those editorials. A self-described “free-marketeer” who spent his days fighting “government intervention in the economy” and leading the catcalls at Tip O’Neill, he would undoubtedly have seen the political gold beneath the scandals. If, in our revulsion at Abramoff’s crimes, we are induced to accept Abramoff’s politics, it will be K Street’s greatest triumph yet.

Hitler, Cheney, Ahminedjad, whoever 

An Understanding of Middle East Conflict As Seen In a Dream

In the dream I was listening to a lecture by a white haired professor of Hebrew bible that I'd had as an undergraduate. In the q and a period, he was collecting only hand written questions. Mine was the last question to be collected. I just couldn't think of anything to ask and then I slowly wrote it out as follows...

"According to Immanuel Kant knowledge is akin to perception and involves the application of concepts of the understanding to sense data. In your talk you mentioned that Shi'a and Judaism were historical religions. What application of concepts of the understanding will resolve a merely historical conflict? Don't these things have to be worked out historically rather than in the understanding?"

That was the question. Never mind that I bungled in my dream consciousness Kant's account of experience, confusing it with "knowledge". Nevertheless, it does seem like a good question for the white haired professors of middle eastern religions. Don't they see that these conflicts will never be resolved by means of understanding but simply by the long, bloody trail of history?

And I woke up before I heard his reply, unfortunately.

Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006)

The philosopher Murray Bookchin died on July 30th, 2006. Founder of the idea of social ecology, a philosophical position distinguishable from deep ecology by its emphasis on ecological problems as social problems, Bookchin argued that key insights of Marx were transferrable to ecological problems and that the effects of capitalism as a social phenomenon manifested in ecological problems. Bookchin's shrill and combative style helped carve out his place in the ranks of environmental philosophy.

The Distribution of Plenitude

M and I worked the ale spigot at a hospitality booth set aside especially for the pipers at Milwaukee's Irish Fest today. It was volunteer work made possible by my dissertation director, a mutton chopped man of magnanimity who provided us with free tokens and free cheer. There we manned the faucet of ale pouring cup after cup of liquid gold for an endless line of Irish pipers, winking and praising the largesse. It was a rare moment of distributing plenty for this son of Eire. It was from a limitless fount of gold that we poured goblets for the sons of Eire, laughin and winkin their way from the end to the beginning and to the end of the line again. "Thank you, lad" they said to me, each receiving his dispensation as though receiving communion from the Lord Jesus himself. We fed them the drink at the beginning and at the end of their solemn procession around the grounds. The shrill pipes firing up and the drums pounding, the banners waving. Oh, sons and daughters of Celtic shores, may God bless you with cups of liquid gold now and at the end of your rainbow, amen.

The Coming Generational Storm

Lawrence Kotlikoff, professor of Economics at Boston University, describes the coming generational storm in the following paper made available through his website, "Is The US Bankrupt?" http://people.bu.edu/kotlikoff/Is%20the%20United%20States%20Bankrupt.pdf Kotlikoff uses methods of generational accounting to show that current and future expenditures by our government will be unsustainable. We will not be able to remain solvent to our obligations to T-Bill holders and Social Security pensioners, medicare recipients. The net effect will be hyperinflation, astronomical taxation on the young, and eviscerating the entitlement programs themselves.

*Just a note about pessimism and truth. I have often described the concerns for peak oil and the effects of the downward side of that curve on our way of life. Here is an altogether separate set of concerns, equally catastrophic, to be factored into planning for the future. Both of these scenarios are depressing, but they are not "pessimistic". They are accurate accounts of what is to come. Because our society is so thoroughly shaped by consumer preferences, it stands to reason that much of the news--depressing as it actually is--is actually driven by the need to paint more optimistic views of the future than the facts warrant. Human beings cannot take looking at severely bleak depictions of reality before they shut off--or, as the option exists at present, to simply change the channel. But we are approaching a time when these effects will become manifest, not simply living in theoretical projections about the future. Dear Reader, be aware and remember these truths. Don't delude yourself. Don't imagine things will "get better". Prepare now, to the extent that you are able, for a future of perhaps hyperinflation, outrageously high gas and energy prices, and the evisceration of jobs and social safety nets. The empire is stretched to the heft and the fibers are starting to snap. Look whats in the bag and consider why things are unfolding the way they are.

Shilling for Israel

Bad, bad Jihadi! They are irrational, you cannot bargain with them! Thus goes the cry time and again across the punditsphere and out of the whitehouse. "We are at war with Islamic Fascists!" declared the President on a recent flyout at Green Bay. Well, so it is. And so what? Are we to think that you cannot negotiate with these people? That they are not even human? That their interests are nil, that "they" have no rational bargaining position, that diplomacy won't work, that the only thing "they" need to do is, as William Kristol has said, what is expected of them (that is, what we want of them--whatever that is). Enough of this. Enough of our bullying asshole behavior. If the President can't even meet Ahminedjad face to face, can't even meet with Nasrallah, can't even meet with Syriah, can't even have the humility and good will to at least sit down and listen with sincerity to them, what can we expect? Thats right, more war, more "suiciders", etc. Now is the time for diplomacy, for listening, for taking in their concerns with sincerity and with good will. Thats the only way this will get turned around. Holing up in the Whitehouse, the president makes of himself and our country the appearance of a petty little overindulged dandy afraid to get his hands dirty. What price will we pay, shilling for Israel?

Distributive Justice and Senate Bill to Raise Minimimum Wage (and Repeal Estate Tax)

On August 3rd the Senate fell short of the 60 votes needed to end discussion of a bill which includes both a gradual three year increase of the minimum wage AND the repeal of the estate tax which effects two percent of the population. The Washington Post reported that "Republican leaders in Congress have long wanted to eliminate or slash the taxes levied on estates left by wealthy people, but the Senate has repeatedly refused. Hoping to attract enough Democratic support, House leaders last week added a sweetener: the first increase in the federal minimum wage in nine years, plus an extension of several popular tax breaks for businesses. The House passed the complex measure -- dubbed "the trifecta" because of its three main facets -- and sent it to the Senate, which planned to vote before adjourning this weekend for the August break.
Frist agreed to the deal, hoping that several Democrats could not resist a chance to raise the minimum wage, in three phases, to $7.25 an hour from the current $5.15. The bill would also have exempted from taxation all estates worth as much as $5 million -- or $10 million for a married couple -- and applied a 15 percent tax rate to inheritances above that threshold and up to $25 million. The value of estates exceeding $25 million would have been taxed at 30 percent."--Source: Washington Post, Aug. 4th 2006

So, the question is, of course, why not pass this bill? Everybody wins: the poor and the rich! Its got a little bit for everybody....or so it seems. Well, one way to assess this bill is to ask of it whether it is just. Specifically, we apply the concept of distributive justice to it, a concept of fairness in the distribution of goods. Now, clearly, dividing up income is not like dividing up portions of birthday cake. Social inequalities are bound to occur based, if nothing else, on the division of labor. Some labor requires more work or more training and requires more sacrifice, some who own the means of production are simply lucky, and so forth. In a free market there are bound to be inequalities.

The political philosopher John Rawls made it is his life's work to articulate a conception of distributive justice and defend it as a suitable aspect of the public reason of a democratic society such as ours. There are two aspects to his theory:
"1. Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all; and
2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to offices and positions open to allunder condtions of fair equality of opportunity; and second they are to be to the greatest benefit to the least advantaged group. "John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, p. 240
Taxation is a burden that all in society must bear. The government just is the set of institutions which administer the basic structure of society and without which the society would devolve into feudalism with little or no social cooperation amongst the various social classes. Taxation funds the central functions of the government. And since we all benefit from the system of social cooperation that is made possible by the government, it stands to reason that the policies of the government must be reasonable to each citizen in their political equality. We think of citizens as equal stakeholders in the social enterprise. Rawls second of the two principles is called "the difference principle" and speaks to how it is possible to have inequalities which are just and reasonable. One view of political equality is that no inequalities should occur. This is the view of a radical socialism. In a free market capitalist economy such as ours, the ideals of democratic equality have always sat rather uneasily with the gross inequalities that often emerge. So, Rawls theory of distributive justice is one way to mediate between the demands of political equality and the demands of liberty--particularly economic liberty as in the "free market".

So, with regards to the bill that was being debated in which the Republicans were asking for a repeal of the estate tax and then threw in raising the minimum wage, we can ask whether it satisfies the demands of distributive justice. If we look to Rawls' difference principle as a measure of the justice of such a policy we can get a better idea of whether the policy is reasonable and just or not. At first blush, the policy would appear to be acceptable. Recall that social inequalities are permitted provided they are to the advantage of the least fortunate members. So, by eliminating the estate tax for the upper 2% of the population--a net loss of income to the federal government over the course of 10 years estimated at around 286 Billion Dollars--appears to be offset by the interest in raising the minimum wage by 2+ dollars an hour over a three year period. Everybody wins, right?

Not quite. First, the upper two percent are not the employer of the minimum wage worker. The wages do not in any significant degree come out of the people affected by the estate tax. Second, the loss of federal revenue, i.e., the decrease of taxation--especially at a time of record federal deficits and the future insolvency of social security--is a serious consideration and should be apportioned, if at all, only onto the "least fortunate members" and not the most fortunate members. This is due to the fact that the federal government will increase taxes of necessity, but if it has passed legislation that excludes the upper 2% from being taxed on their assets it again falls to the middle and lower income classes to pay for this. A kind of perverse logic of the long tail ensues. Third, even by Rawls own theory, the difference principle was never intended to make the wealthy wealthier and the poor poorer. The pareto optimal difference principle was to increase the share of the least fortunate members up to that point beyond which they would necessarily decrease. Clearly, giving away a tax break to the upper 2% does not in any way increase the fortunes of the least fortunate members. If anything, it shifts the tax burden onto their shoulders now that the rich are excluded from being taxed on their assets. A better solution would be to tax the estates of the rich even more and raise the minimum wages up to the point at which the economy would begin to suffer. We are a long way from that.

So, when we consider the economic justice of the Republicans bill to both raise the minimum wage and to eliminate the estate tax, we can see that it is a far cry from the demands of distributive justice. While it looks like everybody wins, really it is only the rich who win and the poor who must make up the differences yet again. I can think of few more antidemocratic and cynical gestures than to link the fortunes of the poor with the opulence of the rich. Shame on you, Republicans. May you pay for your sins come November.

Sigur Ros from a live performance at the Philadelphia Theater of the Living Arts

M and I saw Sigur Ros a few months ago at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee, a grand old cavernous victorian theater appropriate to the grandeur and glacial largeness of Sigur Ros. It was one of the best shows I've ever seen. This Icelandic band fuses a naturalism with electronica and traditional accompaniments in such a way that it can only be characterized as a genre unto itself. One feels the warmth and intimacy of the human while also being put into close proximity to the divinely natural, shimmering like the battered light off the ocean waves at midday. In this clip you can see the glacial blue light and Jonsi's bowstroke guitar work as the band works their way through three great songs, Ny-Batteri, Svefn-G-Englar, and Olsen Olsen. The crying pathos of Jonsi's vocals seem to express the sorrow of the melting glaciers, the tapped out North Sea oil fields, the decimated cod fisheries, and the harrowing wind of the Icelandic landscape. Amazing. Click line above.

Bonus footage of a great song "Hafsol" at the Glastonbury Music Festival: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejipDNelLp0&search=sigur%20ros%20hafsol%20glastonbury

George Galloway on Sky News

Click on link for video of sky news interview with George Galloway on Hezbollah and Israel. Galloway has such a wonderful celtic style about him. The argument that Hezbollah has a legitimate cause is almost entirely neglected in our pro-Israel news media. Galloway pokes holes in this, speaking to the decades long dispute of which this is just the latest installment. We have for the longest time now portrayed the Arab-Islamic world as a crypto-fascist religious fundamentalist, democracy-hating, west-destroying force. It is well nigh time that we listen to their cause and get our heads out of our greedy, oil addicted, Israel loving asses and open a more serious dialogue with the Islamic world, rather than giving them the muzzle end of the gun as a partner in dialogue.

Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class

Link to e-text of Thorstein Veblen's classic treatment of the theory of the leisure class, published in 1899. Widely understood to be a satire, the treatment of the leisure class by this philosophy phd who retooled himself as one of the major theorists of the institutionalist school of economics is a challenging indictment of just about every social class. Nobody remains unscathed by the critical lens and conceptualizations of Veblen's critique. The last chapter on education--and particularly the place of the humanities in education--had me doubled over with both pain and pleasure. I have never before read Veblen, but am inspired now to look over his oeuvre.

Energy from the Sea

Ny Times article showing floating turbines to harness tidal and riverine currents. An interesting idea that I'm sure we've all thought of. To protect against damage to fish I would add a self-cleaning metal cage around the turbine.

Whipsaw Adjunctivitis

At the adjunct meeting at the local college, 70 or so adjuncts were present. Many middle aged failed academics coming back for one more round of exploitation, a few "younger" exploitees like myself. "I want to begin by thanking you for your work," the dean began, "because we know that you are not doing it for the money..." That got a few uneasy laughs. And so it went. Lists of restrictions and qualifications, concerns for making the learning experience rigorous and relevant and so on, much gladhanding and gratitude, and, at the end of the day, the distribution of work without economic reward, the allocation of loss upon the ranks of the overeducated.

But as I was looking over the huddled masses of adjuncts, I thought that it was really game over. The modern university, in order to survive, requires the exploitation of its teaching workforce. And, this workforce is rapidly approaching that cliff called diminishing marginal returns. The project of academia is overextended. Teachers--teachers not students-- taking net losses, going into debt, to be a part of the game, to be in the classroom. Inspiring for sure. Irrational for certain. Unsustainable without a doubt.

Joseph Tainter in his 1988 book The Collapse of Complex Societies defines social collapse as the sudden (in anthropological time, of course, i.e, 10-100 years) loss of social complexity. The loss of social complexity is precipitated by the diminishing marginal returns on the complexity of social personalities, the level of education, etc. When Rome became overextended in its provinces, the economics of a large centralized bureaucracy became impossible relative to the revenues coming in from the provinces. Likewise, it is not hard to imagine that the american university is rapidly approaching this phase of overextension. And, whats more, we are not even over the hurdle of peak oil and the rapid monetary inflation and unemployment that will ensue as a result. The entitlements of our suburban infrastructure include, of course, access to a rich panoply of universities and colleges. Can this continue?

I think so, however, I think that certain trends will continue to shape the nature of the educational product at the university and the college. First, the bulk of the educational shoppers will be looking for ever more relevant work training. This will mean increases in enrollment in the bureaucratic-technical fields like administration, nursing, etc. The effects of this will be a diminishing commitment to the humanities and the adornment of a "liberal" education. It will become, as it is already, an occasional course for the foolhardy.

Ecological Collapse, Trauma Theory, and Permaculture

Click on link for an informative essay by Lisa Rayner, fusing these three dimensions. A very interesting essay.

Tazer and the Sparrow

In the maw of the cat, the sparrow
playfully mauling the bird
the eyes of the sparrow awake
watching itself be eaten

And I reached down and took the sparrow
in my hands and rescued it
from the jaws of Tazer

Freeing the sparrow on the porch
lightly petting the bird in sympathy
also petting Tazer who caught the sparrow
and would have killed it
"Good work, buddy" I said, "Good work"

A glimpse into the awesome paradoxes of God

Tazer with sparrow 

First Fruits: assorted tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers