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Indiana

[ 62 ] January 11, 2012 | Erik Loomis

So now that everyone is through with Clown Show 2: We Drop Our r’s Edition, maybe we can get to a story that actually matters.* And I don’t mean Clown Show 3: Confederate Homeland Edition. Instead, maybe we should shift our attention to the Hoosier State, where Governor Mitch Daniels** and the Republican legislature is trying to eviscerate Indiana’s unions by passing a right to work for poverty wages law.

To be precise, what a “right to work” law does is makes it legal for individuals in unionized workplaces to choose to opt out of the union, not paying any dues. But the union is still legally required to provide these non-members full representation. It’s a leech law, allowing workers to suck the blood of union members. It also weakens unions by forcing them to provide services without the resources of union dues.

The minority Democrats are doing everything they can to stop this atrocious law from passing. Both sides are using the example of Oklahoma, the last state to pass a right to work law, in 2001. Oklahoma business has talked up how much the law has helped them, but the Oklahoma economy has not exactly boomed. What it has done is undermine unions, which is pretty much all the plutocrats care about here. What about workers? Didn’t making Oklahoma “business-friendly” bring in the jobs?

“There is no doubt that the law has resulted in job loss and lower wages,” said Jesse Isbell, who worked for 36 years at the Bridgestone-Firestone tire plant in Oklahoma City.

That plant closed in 2006, and he and 1,400 others lost their jobs, he said, even though proponents had said the legislation was what was needed to keep jobs from leaving the state.

“Those jobs went to Mexico and they’re not coming back.”

He blamed that in part on the “right to work” law, saying it led to hard feelings and bad morale.

“The instance of free-loaders using union resources to fight discharge and company discipline created a hostile work environment,” Isbell said. “It affected productivity, profitability and the quality of the operations at our plant.”

He and Kitti Asberry, another United Auto Workers member who lost her General Motors job when the Oklahoma plant closed there in 2005, said jobs coming in have not replaced those lost, and that the wages and benefits are lower.

Ah.

Will Democrats succeed in beating back this law? I tend to doubt it, though there is significant pressure on some Republicans in this reasonably strong union state to vote against it. Moreover, the lack of national pressure suggests the long-time Republican strategy of waiting out short-term Democratic protests, as in Wisconsin, will work in Indiana. By this I mean that liberals protest every now and again but don’t have the day-to-day organizing structure to fight these fires wherever they flare up. Let liberals focus on Wisconsin and conservatives will shift to Indiana and New Hampshire, leaving Wisconsin for a later date.

For whatever reason, even Democracy Now is coming up short on this issue. Instead of being a strong advocate for Indiana labor, it hosted a debate on the issue, allowing a Republican representative to give the 1% side of the story. Can you imagine a union newspaper of the 1930s giving a capitalist equal play? A civil rights newspaper of the 60s allowing a racist equal time? I mean, I know it’s hard for capitalists to get their message out in 2011 and all…..

Indiana should be the next Wisconsin, yet it has received almost no attention. I know our political expectations are lower in Indiana than Wisconsin, but this is war on the working-class that needs to be fought on every front. Instead, we have another 2 million tweets about whatever Rick Santorum said in some meaningless primary debate.

* I’m not entirely saying the Republican Primary doesn’t matter, though on the issues I care about, the differences between the various candidates are almost nil. It’s that the Republican Primary is over so maybe we should talk about something that actually affects people.

** If Daniels had actually run, what would his chances be of winning the nomination at this point? 20%. Fail.

Bard of the 1%

[ 101 ] January 11, 2012 | Erik Loomis

I had missed this Friedman column from last week where he argues that we should throw rural people under the bus on high-speed internet access, instead focusing our resources on ultra-high-speed internet for the top 5%. There is proper outrage over this column, from Daily Yonder and Ann Treacy.

A couple of thoughts:

1. I know the fact that people live in rural areas and small towns is inconvenient for people obsessed with national planning and technological fetishism, but that’s the reality of the United States. You can’t just marginalize these people and their futures by dooming them to second-rate access to resources. I mean, you can, but then you have to deal with endemic poverty, high rates of drug use, domestic violence, and any number of other social problems. Remember too that a very large percentage of the Latino population are rural dwellers because of agricultural work. There are lots of kids moving around from rural place to rural place and if we want them to have a better future, we have to allocate resources to them.

2. Friedman’s 5% fascinates me and is a sign of just how elitist he is. I suppose all Times readers think they are part of that 5% so they aren’t outraged by this. But Friedman quite obviously supports a Gilded Age society where the rich and powerful become more rich and powerful. He’s pushed policies promoting this for years. So it’s not just rural dwellers that don’t get the resources, it’s the urban poor and middle class. I suppose all the wealth generated by the increasingly powerful 5% will trickle down to the plebeians and troglodytes. I mean, isn’t that what’s happened ever since Reagan?

…..Shorter Tom Friedman circa 1937: “Let’s not waste our time providing electricity to rural dwellers. We should focus our technology on cities because that’s where we’ll create the future.” Luckily we had people like Franklin Roosevelt and David Lillenthal and Lyndon Johnson at that time fighting for equitable distribution of resources to people regardless of where they lived.

NAFTA on the Ground

[ 36 ] January 10, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Outstanding piece of journalism by David Bacon, showing how NAFTA has brought North Carolina and Veracruz together, connected by Smithfield Farms trying to screw both places over. Essentially, as North Carolinian outrage over the environmental consequences of giant hog farms grew and as workers sought to unionize the brutal hog disassembly lines, Smithfield used NAFTA to undercut both efforts. Smithfield dumped cheap pork on the Mexican market, undermining Veracruz’s farmers ability to make a living. It then recruited Veracruz workers to enter the U.S. without documents and take low-paying jobs in its packing plants. When those workers started unionizing, Smithfield called INS on itself and had those workers deported. Meanwhile, since local opposition in North Carolina to ever larger hog operations made the company’s continued growth difficult, it began opening gigantic and unregulated hog farms in Veracruz. When local people became sick, the hog plants of North Carolina was one of their only options if they wanted to leave the area.

This is how “free trade” works on the ground. The global 1% may benefit, but most everyone else finds their life more impoverished and more poisonous. From Bacon’s piece:

Smithfield didn’t invent the system of displacement and migration. It took advantage of US trade and immigration policies, and of economic reforms in Mexico. In both countries, however, the company was forced to bend at least slightly in the face of popular resistance. Farmers in Perote Valley have been able to stop swine shed expansion, at least for a while. Migrant Veracruzanos helped organize a union in Tar Heel. Yet these were defensive battles against a system that needs the land and labor of workers but does its best to keep them powerless.

“From the beginning NAFTA was an instrument of displacement,” says Juan Manuel Sandoval, co-founder of the Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade. “The penetration of capital led to the destruction of the traditional economy, especially in agriculture. People had no alternative but to migrate.” Sandoval notes that many US industries are dependent on this army of available labor. “Meatpacking especially depends on a constant flow of workers,” he says. “Mexico has become its labor reserve.”

Raul Delgado Wise, a professor at the University of Zacatecas, charges that “rather than a free-trade agreement, NAFTA can be described as…a mechanism for the provision of cheap labor. Since NAFTA came into force, the migrant factory has exported [millions of] Mexicans to the United States.”

About 11 percent of Mexico’s population lives in the United States, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Their remittances, which were less than $4 billion in 1994 when NAFTA took effect, rose to $10 billion in 2002, and then  $20 billion three years later, according to the Bank of Mexico. Even in the recession, Mexicans sent home $21.13 billion in 2010. Remittances total 3 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product, according to Frank Holmes, investment analyst and CEO of US Global Investors. They are now Mexico’s second-largest source of national income, behind oil.

However, Mexico’s debt payments, mostly to US banks, consume the same percentage of the GDP as remittances. Those remittances, therefore, support families and provide services that were formerly the obligation of the Mexican government. This alone gives the government a vested interest in the continuing labor flow.

For Fausto Limon, the situation is stark: his family’s right to stay in Mexico, on his ranch in the Perote Valley, depends on ending the problems caused by the operation of Granjas Carroll. But he has no money for planting, and he shares the poverty created by meat and corn dumping with farmers throughout Mexico. The trade system that allows this situation to continue will inevitably produce more migrants—if not Limon, then probably his children. The fabric of sustainable rural life at his Rancho del Riego is being pulled apart.

Apple’s Record in China

[ 26 ] January 10, 2012 | Erik Loomis

The Institute of Environmental and Public Health, a Beijing non-profit, has listed Apple as the lowest ranked of the 29 companies it surveyed for issues of responsiveness and transparency of health and environmental concerns in China.

Now it’s hard to say what kind of methodology was used by this group, particularly given what I assume is the hostility of the Chinese government to publicizing this information. Apple’s defenders will say it is being picked on because of its visibility. And possibly this there is some truth to this, not in the big picture but in relation to other corporations. The real issue here is that measuring these factors is nearly impossible because of the complete lack of transparency within supplier companies. That is the responsibility of multinational corporations and governments. Apple, Wal-Mart, and whoever else use contracted suppliers in part to save costs, but also to shield themselves from blame when workers get sick or die or when the factories pollute an entire ecosystem. And yet they are at least as morally and materially guilty as the supply companies since they demand the goods at extremely low prices. Apple could easily step up to the plate, reveal all its suppliers, investigate conditions, ensure healthful workplaces and dignified wages. But then its top executives might have to give up that ivory backscratcher they wanted for Christmas.

You can download the full report on the linked website, but it is in Chinese.

…..But at least Apple workers in China are forced to sign pacts to not commit suicide.

Remembering Paul Motian

[ 2 ] January 10, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Will Layman offers a lovely remembrance of the late, great Paul Motian, whose passing we have talked about here a couple of times.

A couple of months ago, I found the New Left dystopian film “Punishment Park.” In it, Motian provides one of the great soundtracks of all time. Worth a viewing for the soundtrack alone.

The Driest First Week of January in Recorded History

[ 83 ] January 9, 2012 | Erik Loomis

No climate change to be seen here. Nope, nothing at all. Certainly no January wildfires in Montana. Move along everyone, back to your shorts and golf courses on January 9.

Documentaries, Oscar, and Michael Moore

[ 91 ] January 9, 2012 | Erik Loomis

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has decided to place restrictions on documentaries up for the award. Any documentary must be reviewed in the New York Times or Los Angeles Times in order to be considered for the award. The Academy is justifying this in several ways, including that it will cull out documentaries that are really meant for television. Two thoughts.

1. This television argument is pretty meaningless in the days of video on demand. Given that most people don’t live in New York or Los Angeles, we are almost always going to see these films on a TV or computer screen. Moreover, given that passion can (though certainly doesn’t always) create a good documentary if combined with skill and that this can be done on a limited budget, it seems this is an unnecessary rule that obscures the real reason–the voters are too lazy to watch a large number of films.

2. The big mover behind the rule–one Michael Moore! He’s mad that obscure documentaries are winning the award instead of his work. His work is more “culturally significant” so it deserves to win. Just ask him. Michael Moore–standing up for the little man!!!!

Moore is such a charlatan. While he is capable of good work (Sicko primarily), most of his films are exercises in narcissism, purporting to be about everyday Americans when instead they stroke his own Texas-sized ego. Were Moore to have more than a rhetorical relationship with a fair and just America, he’d support a broadly defined award category because it would allow the poor and underfunded filmmaker to get her work out. Instead, he wants to make bank. I suppose in a capitalist film industry this is what filmmakers do, but can we please stop taking Michael Moore seriously as a spokesperson for the 99%?

……This comment thread is very special. The argument against me here is not on the merits of Moore trying to restrict small filmmakers from consideration for Best Documentary. It’s that HE IS ON OUR SIDE SO SHUT UP!!! I’m sorry but this site is not Firedoglake and I am not playing the Glenn Greenwald. This is not tribal warfare where we cover up the bad things people on “our” side do. Moore is totally wrong on the merits of this issue. Yet the only person to address this point was outraged that I would dare use “she” as the pronoun to describe the documentarian shut out of the award process. No doubt I would have heard the same comment if I had used “he.”

Meanwhile, I need to get back to yet another viewing of “Lions for Lambs.” It’s a terrible movie that is essentially made up of college freshmen reading position papers to each other, but Robert Redford IS ON OUR SIDE so I need to promote how awesome he is!

Parking Lots

[ 37 ] January 9, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Michael Kimmelman has a very interesting piece in the Times on taking parking lots seriously as architectural structures and community spaces. There is much to agree with here. The gigantic Wal-Mart parking lot that is at best 25% full on everyday but the days after Thanksgiving and Christmas is an ecological and architectural nightmare. The idea that parking is hard to find in America is almost always absurd; how often does one really have to park more than a few blocks away from your destination, barring you are going to Manhattan? Almost never. We have way too much parking and a century of federal policies backing up the continued paving of America.

So what to do with all this parking? Kimmelman points to a few examples of dead shopping mall parking lots becoming weirdly useful community spaces. But these are extreme exceptions. For every dead mall lot hosting hot dog trucks and farmer markets, there are 100 sitting there with no purpose except for drug transactions and sleeping in your car. Since Kimmelman focuses so heavily on the dead shopping mall, it’s worth examining this a little more. One of the biggest problems with dead shopping malls is the incentive of stores, often big grocery chains, to open ever larger stores nearby from their original store and then sit on the property to keep any competition out. As one example, in Hyde Park, New York, Stop & Shop moved from one big lot and built a larger store a half mile away. Rumors have it that the company is now going to abandon that newer space, go back to the original and build a Super Stop & Shop. While that might solve the current blight that affects this part of that historic town, it just opens up a new dead space. You see this kind of thing around the country. Winco, a Northwest chain, has held onto a space in my home town of Springfield, Oregon for at least 15 years. That whole mall is dead.

That’s a major urban issue that the government needs to deal with. There are concrete possible solutions–heavily penalize corporations that sit on dead malls, encourage them to sell those lands to home or apartment developers to redevelop the spaces into housing within the existing urban footprint, offer to buy up those spaces, tear up the parking lots, and turn them into parks. Any of these ideas are better than allowing the land to sit there with no penalty and no plan for redevelopment.

In the end, we can and probably should take parking lots seriously as community spaces. But they aren’t always very useful community spaces. They might provide a farmers market a decent space, but a park would probably provide a better one. Turning them into bus stops has value, but so does having the buses go to the neighborhoods where people live rather than making them drive there. The hot dog stands are great, but again, placing them in spaces where people actually go is even better. Any model that succeeds in finding something to do with these spaces is completely worth supporting, but far more important is figuring out how to turn the levers of government at all levels into reducing our parking spaces.

The Socratic Method: Not for the 21st Century Student

[ 82 ] January 9, 2012 | Erik Loomis

I usually avoid talking about specific tenure denial cases because they are usually more complicated than stories about them are made out to be. And you have to wonder about a professor who gives up a tenured position for a nontenured position at a lesser school. Still, this story of a business professor at Utah Valley University being denied tenure because he used a version of the Socratic method that included calling on students is quite disturbing. Who can tell how this guy used the method in the classroom, though his department raved about the quality of his teaching. But the idea that any university administration would fire someone because of student complaints that they were called on in class is outrageous.

Moreover, this goes to the problem of relying upon student evaluations in making tenure decisions. Students are not consumers. They are paying for the privilege of having high-quality teachers educate them. Their ability to judge whether they are receiving a quality education is limited by the fact that most don’t have enough knowledge to make that decision. This doesn’t mean there should be student evaluations–if the professor is being inappropriate, not showing up, saying terrible things to students, etc., students need an official mechanism to register complaints. But since so many university administrations today openly accept the consumer model of education, dissatisfied consumers mean there’s a problem. The ultimate goal isn’t to educate people, it’s to keep the consumers paying into the system. So if a professor fails too many students, they have to be eliminated. If a professor calls on students who don’t want to be called upon, they have to be eliminated.

I guess the real solution is to stop caring about teaching, make my classes easy and entertaining rather than stressing content and skill-buidling, and get good evaluations. That’s the model toward which we are moving, especially at public institutions.

Blue State Wolves

[ 40 ] January 6, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Like a lot of environmentalists, I’ve been following wolf reintroductions closely for the past decade or more. The introductions have taken place in 2 areas: Yellowstone and the Gila Mountains of southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona. Both of these places are profoundly conservative and have proven a real impediment for the long-term survival of the wolf in the American West.

The reintroduction of the Mexican gray wolf (which is probably at most a subspecies of the wolves in the rest of North America and may not be genetically different in any meaningful sense) has been a total disaster. The ranchers of Arizona and New Mexico have declared war upon the wolf and they are shot on sight, despite the federal protections. This is “Get the US out of the UN” tin-foil hat country and these people just don’t care. I saw a presentation by a leader of the New Mexico Cattlemen’s Association in about 2004 that argued, quite literally, that wolf reintroduction could not happen because they will eat our children. Given these attitudes, despite yearly infusions of new releases, the wolf population has not been able to grow substantially.

It’s been a lot more successful in the Yellowstone region. This is despite of extremely hostile politicians in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho that would like to take the same strategies as New Mexico and Arizona. But because of the large amount of protected land in northwestern Wyoming with the two national parks and the National Elk Range and because of the huge amount of tourists who flock there to see the wildlife, conservatives have been stymied in their hopes to eradicate the wolf. Here the wolf has thrived and spread. Within a few years, packs were in several parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. They remain threatened in the long-term in these places, especially Idaho and Wyoming, because of widespread hostility. Hunts have developed in these states that remain managed for the present, but who can tell with what vigor the government will enforce environmental regulations, particularly if the nation continues with its ever more conservative bent.

That’s why the continued migration of wolves to the west has been important. A few packs have crossed from Idaho into Oregon. This is hugely important. The ranchers of Wallowa County, Oregon are no more pro-wolf than in Idaho or Arizona, but they are politically overwhelmed by the Democratic Party of this blue state. Local poaching could take place, but the state is likely to vigorously protect the wolves for the long-haul because of the strong environmental leanings of the state.

Still, the migration of one wolf into western Oregon is hugely important. The first wolf west of the Cascades since 1947, this wolf has caught the imagination of environmentalists in Oregon and around the world, building political capital for the long-term existence of the gray wolf in the state. No one knew what it looked like, although it was tagged as a pup which has allowed the public to follow its ramblings. But a hunter’s camera recently caught a picture of the wolf:

It has since crossed the border into California, making it the first wolf in that state since 1924. Of course, it may not stay there. As it continues searching for a mate it won’t find, it may journey east into Nevada, putting it back into hostile red state territory. But that one wolf has headed through is a good sign that future packs, looking for new territory, may move west as well. This can only be good news for its future, as the public is enamored with these beautiful animals. It’s true that animal-human confrontations can be bad for both and increased numbers of wolves will lead to more of this, but these are management problems that can be dealt with. Overall, this is a very positive story and is one more step toward a permanent place for wolves in the American West.

Hipsters in Historical Context

[ 76 ] January 6, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Are hipsters here to stay? Richard Rushfield suggests it may be true.

Hipsterism is the only major trend in American cultural history whose name is used only pejoratively. Punk of course was a term of scorn, but it was gleefully adopted by the tribe themselves. Hippie was also meant as an insult, the beatniks mocking the mini-hipsters with a belittling name. But such was the nature of the 60’s that they actually took the belittling mockery as a compliment. Goth of course was meant as an insult back in the middle ages, the proper severe guardians of the Romanesque and Italianate styles threw the term around to express how gaudy they found all those flying buttresses and foliated capitals, they were downright Gothic, just like something those barbarians up North would do. But I’m not sure that today’s kids in capes and black lipstick are really thinking about that.

May a higher power of your choice help us all.

The Human Face of Our Immigration Policy

[ 32 ] January 6, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Sure glad we deported this guy. Makes America look great too:

Quelino Ojeda Jimenez, who was deported to Mexico by a Chicago-area hospital in 2010, passed away on Sunday. Jimenez, 21, was working as a roofer when he fell four stories and sustained serious injuries that left him quadriplegic.

Chicago’s Advocate Christ Medical Center admitted to transferring Jimenez without his consent to Oaxaca, Mexico shortly after he was “transferred.”

Hospital officials maintained the move was made so he could be closer to home, but Jimenez was still 4 hours away from his parents, sisters, wife and child who live in a remote town and couldn’t afford to see him regularly.