June 29, 2009
Partial July Schedule
Coming up Friday my guest is James K. Galbraith, this time speaking to me from Switzerland. A shorter show than usual, just checking in on the economic headlines. The week following, Friday July 10th, my guest will be Niels Harrit, the lead author of a recent peer-reviewed scientific paper (.pdf) that analyzes trace nano-thermite residue in dust samples collected in lower Manhattan immediately after 9/11 — I'm very curious to see, and have not yet seen, how 9/11 "debunkers" will try to explain the presence of an exotic explosive compound found at the scene of the crime. On Friday, July 17th, my guest will be the absolutely brilliant French intellectual Dr. Jacques Sapir, director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, which so far as I know is the top research establishment in France for the social sciences. Jacques knows a thing or two that the American left might well learn from; without any hesitation I strongly commend this podcast to you. As a footnote, and I'm not quite sure how to interpret this, about 35% of the EP podcast audience is now from outside the U.S. Thanks, you all, old and new listeners alike!
June 28, 2009
Everybody's A Critic
I just don't get it. I've never gotten it. The only thing I found mildly interesting about Michael Jackson was his moonwalk, but that moonwalk shouldn't, for example, merit any of the all-too-common comparisons between him and Fred Astaire. Whereas Fred Astaire could dance divinely and was sensible to an astonishing range of fine emotions, Michael Jackson was typically limited to spastic gestures and he had no couth. None. Whatever talent Jackson may have had when he was young long ago became overshadowed by his perverted, erratic behavior and his self-maiming by repeat plastic surgery. He'd become nothing but an American freak show. What I really don't get is why so many people still fawn over his memory and why so few people are willing to point out that being a mega-famous child molester does not make being a child molester OK. Surely better role models exist? I'm sadly disappointed by all of the bathos.
June 27, 2009
Fake Environmentalism
If you think it's important to cut carbon emissions then you tax carbon. But blackboard "free market" ideologues have come up with an ingenious system of cap and trade that, if implemented, will create a multi-trillion dollar market for non-transparent carbonized financial products. To understand just how unworkable such a scheme is, it's only necessary to know that the Democrats rammed a 1,300 page bill through the U.S. House of Representatives (sic) in the dead of night, with little debate. Not one single member of Congress — I guarantee you — can explain how cap and trade will work in practice. But if you think credit default swaps are a good idea then you're going to love cap and trade.
June 26, 2009
Actions Count
Over at CounterPunch today, Jeffrey St. Clair has an outstanding essay on Mr. Obama's anti-environmental helpers. Which raises the question: Is Mr. Obama basically a decent, intelligent, well-intended person who's inclined to make too many compromises with himself in the face of political pressure, or something else? A preponderance of prima facie evidence — not least from environmental policy — now strongly suggests the latter, that Mr. Obama acts from more malign motives, that he is a consummate double-crosser who's honed his public patter to a perfect pitch, and that he can be counted on to attempt to do the wrong thing. If there's a silver lining here it's that he's also repeatedly demonstrated weakness in the face of determined criticism. To put it bluntly: he's gutless. Progressives will have to take advantage of that whenever the opportunity arises.
June 24, 2009
He May Be Toast
Let me make a flat, unambiguous prediction: If Mr. Obama does not produce a health care reform plan with a true public option, he's toast. He may well be toast in any case, on account of his escalations in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq, and an ever-lengthening list of "Bush-like" and "Bush-plus" policies. But health care is the deal-breaker. It seems to be obvious now to most Americans that the reason we don't have a sensible national health care system is because the monopolistic U.S. health care lobby doesn't want it; less obvious is what the large majority of Americans who favor a public option will do if betrayed by their elected representatives. We're being treated as if we're just plain stupid — maybe we are, but maybe we're not, not yet... the next step being for a lot of people to say that our government is illegitimate. My guess is that that's coming regardless, sooner rather than later if health care isn't fixed.
June 16, 2009
Iran's Gen X
According to the CIA factbook, the median age in Iran is 27, which is relatively young (in the U.S. the median is 36.7, in the UK 40.2, Russia 38.4, China 34.1, and France 39.4). Young, and evidently willing to die in order for their votes to be counted. That's quite a stark contrast with the U.S., where in 2000 the presidential election was clearly stolen and, notwithstanding a few scattered murmurs of disapproval, nobody actually did anything about it.
Ug99
Stem Rust has always been a problem for domesticated wheat crops. Over time, by and large, it had been brought under control. Until now. Ug99, named for Uganda 1999 — where and when this particular strain of Rust was discovered — has the potential to devastate world wide wheat production: perhaps by as much as an 80% reduction. Ug99's natural diffusion already puts Africa and Asia at imminent risk. And sooner or later the rest of the world's wheat crops will become exposed. (One might even suppose that a bio-terrorist could try to bring a container full of Ug99 into the U.S.) So there's a race against time to develop new, resistant varieties of wheat. Hopefully, Washington will spend enough on research to avert a catastrophe.
June 7, 2009
"Chrysler Makes Them, We Just Sell Them"
Back in late January I bought a new 2009 Jeep Wrangler. It has problems. From the get-go the roof — a three piece hard-top with two removable panels that's supposed to emulate a convertible — leaked. I didn't get around to taking it back for repairs until mid-May (somehow, every year from Christmas to Easter I always have way too much to do), and by then I'd discovered a second problem. When warm weather appeared and I first turned on the air conditioning I just got hot air. Thus the saga of my experience with the underbelly of the U.S. automobile industry began...
Continue reading ""Chrysler Makes Them, We Just Sell Them""...
June 3, 2009
Kippers
In the mid-sixties my Dad worked at the U.S. mission to the common market, in Brussels. So the family did lots of traveling around Europe, including a fair number of trips to England. There, I discovered kippers. In later years, however, whenever I would buy a can of kippers, or order kippers in a restaurant, I got something other than the delicacy of memory. Something usually kind of tough, overly salted, maybe even with too many bones. In short, Yuck!
The Coming GM Debacle
It pains me more than I can say to agree with David Brooks. Nor is it a question of the stopped clock being right twice a day. No, this time he's got a genuine, giant nugget of insight: In his Monday column he argues that the GM bailout won't work because it doesn't change — indeed it reinforces — GM's bureaucratic culture of failure.
June 2, 2009
Mr. Coal
OK, no more "benefit of the doubt." Wall Street bailouts get complicated, perhaps it's not reasonable to expect people to understand them. Give health insurers escape hatches from a national program, who'll even notice? Mountaintop removal for coal mining, that's a different story. The world tends to automatically classify people into two groups: those who wish to follow a lofty purpose in life, however imperfectly, and those who grub around in the dirt for advantage. At this point I really don't care what Mr. Obama's speeches sound like: his actions speak louder than his words.
