or are war and drugs necessarily intertwined symptoms of a social disease (capitalism)?

At least 350,000 American vets are being treated for substance abuse. This article, “It’s easy for soldiers to score heroin in Afghanistan,” argues that a significant number of vets from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are acquiring addictions to heroin. The official military estimates are propagandistically low (0-2%), while expert research on Vietnam vets has shown that about 5% became addicted. Why would the military want to hide these numbers? -> For many reasons… 1) how can you “support the troops” when the troops become drug addicts, and thereby are associated with the types of people who are villified domestically? 2) if the troops image is tarnished in this way, then the friend/enemy distinction breaks down, because the troops are seen as having the enemy within themselves; 3) if we at home identify with the troops, then we would also be inspired to search within ourselves for the source of the world’s problems, rather than blaming and villifying foreign Other as ‘terrorists’… etc.

Before I go into complaining about global capitalism, I would like to congratulate our co-blogger Vijay on his marriage this weekend. It was of course great seeing everyone and I wish the couple many happy years together. Anyway, now on to the revolution:

This weekend we went to Chicago for Vijay’s wedding. On the way their we had a layover in Las Vegas. We sat for an hour next to some slot machines. I have never played slots, but I have always harbored a fantasy that the first time I did I would win some large amount of money. I figured this was my shot, so I went to the machines with a quarter in hand. Sadly, the machines only took bills and a dollar was a little more than I wanted to risk, so I just went back to my seat. A few minutes later some guy let out a whoop…he won $5,000. Which really would have been nice. So I spent the next few minutes wishing I had spent the dollar, because $5,000 would have been nice, really nice. We could have take a trip…or bought some new camera stuff…paid off some bills…

Anyway, today in the New York Times’ continuing series on how a million dollars isn’t what it used to be we learn about a new “working class” millionaire:

Silicon Valley is thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires — nose-to-the-grindstone people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as they find themselves among the fortunate few. Their lives are rich with opportunity; they generally enjoy their jobs. They are amply cushioned against the anxieties and jolts that worry most people living paycheck to paycheck.

May I, on behalf of real working-class people (with their permission, I am certainly not part of the working class), say “fuck you” to these whiny assholes. Among the many insulting things about this article the idea of calling these people “working-class” pretty much takes the cake. Has the Times forgotten what working class means? These people are members of the professional class at best. They are more akin to landed gentry, with large net worth and high salaries they are insulated against the risks the rest of the middle and working classes face every day.
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…is my new favorite band! Check out their song, “cops ain’t shit but hoes and tricks.”

This AP news story does not make the connections, but we should. The privatization of air safety in Brazil, as dictated by neoliberal governance policies, is directly responsible for this crash. Someone should do a study (not just of Brazil, but of all countries that have undergone neoliberal structual adjustment programs prescribed by the World Bank and IMF), a study of how much accidents have increased in frequency since privatization has been implemented in the administration of safety in the transportation, as well as in the workplace. From the AP story:

“It’s been 10 months since the last worst air accident in Brazilian history and now we’ve had an accident worse than that,” said David Fleischer, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia. “If you look at what’s happened since September, the answer is nothing.”

“It was a tragedy foretold,” said political commentator Lucia Hippolito. “The government has done nothing because of administrative inefficiency and simple incompetence.”

It’s good for business!

The Dow closed at a record high for the fourth straight session today. Kudos to the rich! Meanwhile, in poor-people-land, Dozens Massacred in Diyala, 80 Dead in Kirkuk Bombings. As Patrick Cockburn writes, “just another day in Iraq.”

Only a tiny minority of the super-rich dare to speak out against the ideology of the free market, as in this NYT article: The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age. But even those super-rich espouse an anti-democratic, elistist view of politics in their views of how their money should be redistributed - through philanthropies that they control - rather than through taxes (or direct seizure of their property).

The new tycoons oppose raising taxes on their fortunes. Unlike Mr. Crandall, neither Mr. Weill nor Mr. Griffin nor most of the dozen others who were interviewed favor tax rates higher than they are today, although a few would go along with a return to the levels of the Clinton administration. The marginal tax on income then was 39.6 percent, and on capital gains, 20 percent. That was still far below the 70 percent and 39 percent in the late 1970s. Those top rates, in the Bush years, are now 35 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

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“Low price at any cost!” Do we want a government that replicates Wal-Mart’s model of catering to consumers and capital without concern for the negative externalities absorbed by workers, the environment, and other public goods?

From NYT story today -

OSHA Leaves Worker Safety in Hands of Industry
WASHINGTON, April 24 — Seven years ago, a Missouri doctor discovered a troubling pattern at a microwave popcorn plant in the town of Jasper. After an additive was modified to produce a more buttery taste, nine workers came down with a rare, life-threatening disease that was ravaging their lungs.

Puzzled Missouri health authorities turned to two federal agencies in Washington. Scientists at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which investigates the causes of workplace health problems, moved quickly to examine patients, inspect factories and run tests. Within months, they concluded that the workers became ill after exposure to diacetyl, a food-flavoring agent.

But the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, charged with overseeing workplace safety, reacted with far less urgency. It did not step up plant inspections or mandate safety standards for businesses, even as more workers became ill.

On Tuesday, the top official at the agency told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing that it would prepare a safety bulletin and plan to inspect a few dozen of the thousands of food plants that use the additive.

That response reflects OSHA’s practices under the Bush administration, which vowed to limit new rules and roll back what it considered cumbersome regulations that imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers. Across Washington, political appointees — often former officials of the industries they now oversee — have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.

Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.

… (read the rest of the story here)

And a similar case of a government agency failing to perform its duty to the public: the department of education… see this NYT story: Cuomo Says U.S. Is Lax on Student Lenders.

The problem with the Bush administration’s corruption of these agencies seems easy to articulate. If Bush’s OSHA panders to businesses and consumers, they are abandoning the principles on which OSHA was founded: to serve the public good by protecting worker’s health. Likewise for other regulatory agencies, like the EPA: their corruption to serve industry is an abandonment of their mission to serve the public good by protecting the environment. None of these agencies should be guided by principles of serving businesses or consumers. Those are corporate and private interests, not public interests. There are other organizations and associations that already represent their interests, such as consumer advocacy groups and industry associations. The point of public deliberation in a liberal democracy is that each of these groups and organizations should be able to express and argue for their positions. If we actually had a critical public sphere (rather than the manufactured publicity of most mass media), then these arguments would be able to be adjudicated in public on the basis of careful reflection on reasons supported by empirical evidence. When the agencies that are supposed to articulate reasons in favor of protecting workers’ health, the environment, and other public goods, abandon that job and instead become mouthpieces for other, private interests, then they have lost their legitimacy, and hence they have lost the public’s trust in them, and hence the public has a right to revolt and overthrow the part of the government in charge of them. Hence, we should impeach Bush. (cf. Locke, Rousseau)

From Grand Theft Politics: Should Democrats look to video games for inspiration? -

In a new book, _Dream_, NYU media professor and political activist Stephen Duncombe laments that progressives have become … well, tedious. The people who built the New Deal and led the civil rights struggle are now engaging in old-fashioned, top-down political practices.
…
If progressives ever want to set the national agenda, Duncombe insists, they must embrace what he calls dreampolitik, a politics that “embraces the dreams of people and fashions spectacles which give these fantasies form.” With the exception of street activists at the far fringes—he praises Billionaires for Bush, Critical Mass, and Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping—progressives remain convinced that “their sense of superior seriousness will win debates, convince the public, and lead them back into the halls of power.” Talk about fantasy! Witness the last presidential race, when stagecrafted spectacles that associated President Bush with military prowess trumped the sober-sided efforts of John Kerry to win debates and votes.
…
How can progressives invent a political process that figuratively and literally involves us?
Duncombe’s answer is something he calls the “ethical spectacle.” Unlike the unethical kind of spectacle, which conceals a rotten state of affairs, and which demands passivity and acquiescence from spectators, an ethical spectacle promotes progressive ideals of egalitarianism and inclusivity. It models at the level of form what progressive politicians promise in the content of their speeches: demonstrating the ideals of its participants, none of whom are relegated to the role of sign-toting spectator. Duncombe, slipping into hortatory mode, makes some grand predictions about the progressive movement of the future: “Our spectacles will be participatory: dreams the public can mold and shape themselves,” he claims. “And they will be transparent: dreams that one knows are dreams but which still have power to attract and inspire.” This is not a wake-up call—what Duncombe asks of progressives is to dream better.

What do you make of this idea of “ethical spectacles”? I’m confused by this idea. Isn’t the idea of a “participatory spectacle” a contradiction in terms?

Last night, I went to the Minnesota Twins’ opening game. (They won - go Twins!) But through much of the game I felt neauseated by the extreme commercialism of the ballpark. I couldn’t look anywhere without seeing an advertisement for some stupid commodity - sausage, health insurance, beer, trucks, american flags. In reaction to this perhaps “unethical spectacle,” I participated in a little “dreampolitik” in which I imagined every one of the 58,000 people in the audience getting out of their seats, marching out of the Metrodome, walking to the poorest neighborhoods in the city, and talking with the people on welfare, the recent immigrants from Somalia - just getting to know each other, asking how they could help each other make their lives a little better - building a community that could span from the inner city to the suburbs. But that’s just a dream… The most ethical spectacle that really happened, the best part of the game, was when in the ninth inning, a drunken fan ran onto the field, and the crowd cheered him on as he taunted the security guards chasing him around the field, until they tackled him.

This is pretty damn dickish. If you don’t care about the link, here is a summary: circuit city fired their retail employees that made the most (due to performance-based raises) and then generously rehired them at the “market” rate. They saved less then a million dollars doing this. The CEO makes 2.17 million a year.

A year ago Delphi proposed to the union that they accept 39% pay cuts. The CEO who was hired to Delphi around got a three million dollar signing bonus before this move. MORE than the money that would be saved by this kind of pay cut.

The economic gains of the last few years have only benefited a tiny percentage of the population. The distribution of income in the US looks more like feudalism than anything else. But you know, its probably the union’s fault.

The entrepreneurial spirit of the United States is often cited as one of its better qualities. I agree on some level, its great that anyone with an idea can go out and give it a shot. But a side effect of this is that every single conceivable market niche is filled with people trying to live out the american dream of getting rich selling some sort of obscure useless crap:

“Christian perfume,” he said. “It’s a really, really new genre. We’re the first!”

I mean, can’t people do things without trying to figure out a way to monetize them? You want to be a crazy christian, fine. But do you really need to productize crazy christianity?