Don's Review: Law, Politics, Science, Philosophy

March 27, 2010

• "It's just business nothing personal..."
  — Mario Puzo
• Michael Corleone: Where does it say that you can't kill a cop?
  Tom Hagen: Come on, Mikey...
  Michael Corleone: Tom, wait a minute. I'm talking about a cop that's mixed up in drugs. I'm talking about a - a - a dishonest cop - a crooked cop who got mixed up in the rackets and got what was coming to him. That's a terrific story. And we have newspaper people on the payroll, don't we, Tom?
  [Tom nods]
  Michael Corleone: And they might like a story like that.
  Tom Hagen: They might, they just might.
  Michael Corleone: [to Sonny] It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business.
• "Tom, don't let anybody kid you. It's all personal, every bit of business. Every piece of shit every man has to eat every day of his life is personal. They call it business. OK. But it's personal as hell. You know where I learned that from? The Don. My old man. The Godfather. If a bolt of lightning hit a friend of his the old man would take it personal. He took my going into the Marines personal. That's what makes him great. The Great Don. He takes everything personal Like God. He knows every feather that falls from the tail of a sparrow or however the hell it goes? Right? And you know something? Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult."
  — Mario Puzo (The Godfather)
• "They made it personal when they shot Pop. It is not business, it's personal."
  — Mario Puzo

            “Nothing personal. It’s just business.”

            But business is personal. There is no way you can separate the personal from the business,even if you are sending unmanned (unhumanned) Predator drones over Pakistan ostensibly to surgically kill terrorist kingpins.

            It’s personal because the men or women in the U.S. pushing the buttons are saving their own lives and the lives of would-be human pilots of fighter or bomber planes. It’s personal because even if that kingpin of terrorism is killed, inevitably 10-12—at least—innocent men, women and children are killed or worse—maimed painfully and horribly for life.

            Layoffs in this Great Recession, now going on two years this coming late summer, are usually worded by corporate royalty as though there’s nothing they can do about it: “We really are beside ourselves with grief at this decision, but we have to eliminate your job. Nothing personal, it’s just business.”

            Then the 10-year, 20-year, 30-year vet, who had been loyal to the company, gets nothing—only an impersonal three-month check to tie him over until his next job (which is guesstimated to take only three months to find). No party. No goldwatch.

            While there for decades he or she made dozens, even hundreds, of contacts for the company in order to do his job. He had lunch with them. He made jokes with them. They even felt enough affection to sometimes give his kids presents, like a guitar or a set of Legos, after hearing about each kid’s talent or hobby.

            Then the lay off.

            The 20-year vet sends good-bye cards to everyone, because he or she is crying openly or on the inside. She gets one or two back. And two or three take her to lunch.

            This lasts one or  two months after the layoff.

            Then nothing. The 20-year vet gets no phone calls, emails, or lunch invitations.

• "Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than the government. It is almost the equal of family.- Don Corleone"
  — Mario Puzo (The Godfather)

• "We are all honorable men here, we do not have to give each other assurances as if we were lawyers."
  — Mario Puzo (The Godfather)

• "A lawyer can steal more money with a brief case than a thousand men with pistols"
  — Mario Puzo

            Was this laid-off person too obnoxious those 20 years? Was he too quiet? Did he make too many gaffes? Did he come only at 9 a.m. and work at the speed of light only until 5 p.m., without offering to work overtime enough? Because he wanted to be with his family? Maybe.

• "Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright."
  — Mario Puzo (The Godfather)
• "A man who is not a father to his children can never be a real man"
  — Mario Puzo

But she is still emotionally tied to life at that entity, which at one time for her beat with 400 hearts and 100 “Hi’s” or “Have a good nights,” each day.

            She asks 10-20 of those 100s of friends to help her find a job or help her with her new one-person job. Eight say yes. But they miss deadlines for articles promised. Then deadlines become extended for months. The laid-off’s new business never gains the proper reputation that their loaned-via-written-articles would have given it. She is the only “expert” who writes for it. And she is considered a “loser,” otherwise wouldn’t the parent company and her bosses have found a way to keep her?

            She sends reminders less and less often. She gets fewer responses.

• "Power wears out those who do not have it."
  — Mario Puzo

            She dreams up having some of them be a new “board of editors” for her new publication. Their answers?:

• I regret that I must decline your invitation to become a member of a board of editors. First, I was a member of a Board of Editors for about four years. I vowed then that I would never become a member of any organization that literally did nothing. We never met, never communicated with one another, and the newspaper never communicated with us. Second, and actually first, I will not suit up as a member of any organization that in any conceivable way might be the target of an action, defamation among others. The only exception I have made is a Committee at the Association of the Bar.

“But in 2003, the corporation wanted you banned and I kept publishing your material, sneaking it in, until they forgot. Can’t you help me by lending your name and reputation by coming on board my do-nothing board of editors?”

• I really dislike sending you this letter. I know what it is to be in your position.
• I wish you and your family good luck, health and happiness.
• Sorry, but I cannot participate.
• I saw this and thought of you. Keep me posted if you get any hits.  Otherwise, I'll continue keeping my eyes open for you.

1. "You cannot say 'no' to the people you love, not often. That's the secret. And then when you do, it has to sound like a 'yes'. Or you have to make them say 'no.' You have to take time and trouble."
   — Mario Puzo (The Godfather)

            Summing up: “Nothing personal, just business.”

            Another person, responding to an email the laid-off person wrote with the heading “No articles. I can no longer profit from you. Nothing personal,” says “Let’s have lunch.” You text back, “If I have lunch with you, will you be on my board of editors?” No response to your “nothing personal, but I don’t need you unless you do business with me” text.

• "Don Vito Corleone to Michael Corleone, "Revenge is a dish that tastes best when served cold"
  — Mario Puzo (The Godfather)

March 6, 2010

I was a hum-drum person

Leading a life apart

When socialism flew in through my window wide

And quickened my hum-drum heart

Socialism flew in through my window

I was so happy then

What is this thing called socialism?
This funny thing called socialism?
Just who can solve its mystery?
Why should it make a fool of Dick Cheney?
I saw it there one wonderful day
It took my heart and wrote my heart a play
That's why I ask the Lord up above in Heaven
What is this thing called socialism?

--Cole Porter, with changes by Steve Homan and apologies to the Porter Estate

It seems so clear that capitalism has failed. But then I speak as a commoner. From the points of view of the elites up above capitalism can still steal their hearts away.

There is a chasm between the elites, which I call the rich and their paid-for, money-addicted government congresspersons, and the peons. After the Crash of 2008, the newspaper I worked for published a banking column saying that capitalism would solve the crisis. I went to the author and to my bosses and asked whether the piece should at least mention the progressive viewpoint that lack of regulations and unbridled greed had caused rampant unemployment and a world mess. They both had more power than me and brushed me aside.

The Great Bailout began, freely tossing around the tax money and lives of worker bees like myself. Nearly two years later, unemployment is still above 11 percent officially and way above 18 percent if you count the discouraged who have given up and the underemployed who have Ph.D.s and are working at Dunkin Donuts.

The U.S. was built by capitalists like Jefferson, Washington, and Hamilton, and topped off at its 20^th century peak by individualists like Neil Armstrong, Ford, Rockefeller, Lewis and Clark, and the Greatest Generation who used the tools its wealth had created to defeat truly atrocious enemies in World War II and to set foot on the moon.

But that was the peak. Then came Vietnam. And the shine was off the Bald Eagles head. Then came a misguided homage to unfettered capitalism begun by Saint Reagan and continued by Bill and W. Now, Obama has tasted the fruits of capitalism (the riches) and has capitulated or has been captured and had his hands tied by what Ike called the military-industrial complex.

We now are a nation by the corporations for the corporations. But as unemployment rises and more and more just folks (read potential serfs) realize that their families may not have food everyday or may not have a warm bed each night, and, certainly, wont have a doctor readily available or a retirement fund, the huddled masses are looking toward the more socialistic and SUCCESSFUL nations such as Canada and those in Scandanavia. And it has become a time to re-examine socialism and take it seriously.

However, the masses in the United States of Stupid have no idea what socialism really is. They gather under the flag and by the polished podiums of mendacious, prideful fools like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and wax poetic about Reagans shining city on the hill.

It will be ever-so-hard to change their minds, even if they cant feed their kids or have to sleep in the rain, catching pneumonia and waiting for hours in ER lines for treatment.

Socialists Get Newfound Attention

But, there are a few people in places youd least suspect who now are taking socialism as noteworthy. For example, the socialist agenda that some conservatives see lurking around every corner, hidden in everything from health insurance reform to stimulus spending to President Obama's policies, exasperates Louisvillian Fred Hicks.

As the leader of a local socialist group in the red state of Kentucky, Hicks says the use of the "S-word" as a political smear is a gross mischaracterization that ignores the reality that socialism remains a lonely movement, with his 40-person group struggling to get more than a dozen people to attend a meeting.

And yet while the term's recent popularity irks Hicks, the retired professor says it's also beginning to have an unexpected result: It's bringing newfound interest and attention to his cause.

"Suddenly there are more people who want to know what it actually is," said Hicks, head of the Committee of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, whose members seek more government regulation of business, health care and wages.

Nationwide, the Democratic Socialists of America partly credits the term's usage with a 64 percent rise in memberships between 2008 and 2009. The party now has nearly 7,000 U.S. members, and the 1,000-member Socialist Party USA has seen new chapters pop up in Kansas and Oklahoma.

Marvin Williams, who heads the Central Indiana chapter of the DSA, said that at a November convention, he noticed an increase in younger attendees, some drawn by "red-baiting" tactics, the practice of accusing people of being communist or socialist because of their liberal views.

"In my age group, I've seen a dramatic rise in the number of people who understand and agree with socialism," even though "getting people to actively participate is tough," said Edward Elam, a 26-year-old computer trainer who started a Young Democratic Socialists chapter at Jefferson Community College in 2007 that has since disbanded.

Elam said socialism doesn't carry the same negative Cold War connotations it did 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, while interest has been further piqued by the recent banking crisis.

"This is a wonderful gift the Republicans are giving us," said Frank Llewellyn, the national director of the DSA. "We've had more attention in the last 12 months than in the last 12 years. But most people don't have a clue what socialism is."

Indeed, there's been no shortage of socialist name-calling, from John McCain's presidential campaign saying that Obama's policies resembled socialism, to the Republican National Committee's resolution calling on Democrats to "stop pushing our country toward socialism" to right-wing radio hosts equating the U.S. economic stimulus program to that of communist Russia.

Catherine Fosl, who directs the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research at the University of Louisville - and who describes herself as a democratic socialist - said the term is still a "powerful epithet" because of nearly a century of anti-communist rhetoric in the United States.

"It's being used by the right to discredit very minor reforms that involve using government," Fosl said. "Obama's positions are less socialistic than FDR's Social Security plan."

Socialism in Kentucky has never gained much of a foothold, despite its history of having strong immigrant-backed branches in Northern Kentucky in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Cold War, Reagan and the demise of communism in the Soviet Union led many activists to splinter into issue-specific social justice groups, said Fosl, who studies left-leaning political movements.

Bryan Reinholdt, a 29-year-old Louisville elementary school teacher, said it was the economic inequalities he noticed in the United States after serving in Iraq in 2005 with the Army that led him to read about, and join, the socialists.

"Socialism can be a dirty word, because it's never been done right. Some people just think of Stalin and totalitarian regimes," he said. Today, Elam, Hicks and others say they're fielding more questions than ever before as the term re-enters America's political lexicon. "The question you get is, what is socialism, or is Obama a socialist?" said Billy Wharton, co-chairman of the Socialist Party USA. "People like to say Obama's a socialist, but he isn't anything close."

There's no precise definition, but Wharton's group wants a $15 minimum hourly wage, 30-hour workweeks, guaranteed employment, single-payer health care, community ownership of corporations, more graduated taxation and state-owned banks.

Some socialists say they don't want to destroy markets or nationalize everything, but they want less-stagnant wages, more regulation, and taxes that fund everyone's health care, education, unemployment insurance and job training.

Fosl said she'd like to see higher minimum wages, guaranteed family-leave time and more government subsidies for housing and higher education. But many view socialism as a perspective, rather than a system they ever see being enacted.

"Here's the thing about socialism," Hicks said. "You can't march on city hall and demand socialism. You can demand single-payer health care, but socialism isn't on the table. And I don't see any point in voting for a third party that gets half a percent of the vote."

Still, he hopes the issues socialists view as important will now get more attention and begin to change people's views. A recent Rasmussen Reports poll found that 53 percent of Americans thought capitalism was better than socialism; 20 percent preferred socialism; and 27 percent were uncertain.

"There's a mistrust of government in this country, so people don't want the government taking charge of health care, banking or even schools," Hicks said. "But hopefully with what's going on nationally, we can keep the idea of real socialism alive." [Parts of this section were taken from 2010 The Courier-Journal]

Socialism Produces Happiness

When you consider that virtually no newspaper, broadcaster, well-funded think tank, teacher, or anybody's boss or commander ever said something nice about socialism, it's remarkable that only 53 percent of us still favor rule by the moneyed class. Perhaps folks are learning how capitalism sacrifices happiness for individual gain.

As Billy Bragg exhorts us in his update of the socialist anthem "The Internationale": "Stand up, all victims of oppression/for tyrants fear your might/Don't cling so hard to your possessions/For you have nothing if you have no rights."

No less a "capitalist tool" than Forbes Magazine let a red cat out of the bag with a recent report that the happiest countries tend to be Scandinavian socialist democracies. High per-capita GDP certainly plays a role in their felicity, but even social democratic New Zealand, with per-capita GDP only 64 percent of the United States', ranks with the 10 democracies above us in the happiness index. They pay high taxes in these pinkotopias, but folks enjoy entitlements like free college, extensive elder care, and 52-week paid maternity leave.

The 2005 poll measured personal reports of enjoyment, pride in achievement and learning, being respected, among other things. Forbes suggests that such happiness derives from family, social and community networks, and a decent work-life balance, noting that the average workweek in Scandinavia is 37 hours.

Nice dream, but how do we get there? Most of these countries dumped capitalist exploitation long ago and instituted mixed economies with socialist ideals. More contemporary models are the 11 Latin America countries pursuing "Socialism in the 21st Century." They too reject top-down Leninism for a system based on participatory democracy and solidarity.

In Ecuador, a broad coalition of indigenous, environmentalists, trade unions, professional organizations, feminists, gay activists, left parties, and students laid the groundwork for transformation. They just re-elected Rafael Correa, their leftist standard-bearer, as president. They fought racism, oligarchs, oil companies, and corrupt politicians for decades.

The economies of Latin America's red 11 are improving, although none of them has instituted a socialist utopia. They are still subject to the slings and arrows of egotism, error, and internecine conflict. But they have overcome the greatest impediments to their advancement, including the U.S.-based bankers who are draining our treasury now. And the civil society they created in the struggle is the guarantor of their democracy.

Before finding the path of progress, many of these countries had lurched from violent paroxysm to confusion and resignation, not unlike what the U.S. currently endures.

For example, our Auto Industry Task Force just bankrupted GM and Chrysler, fired tens of thousands of employees, extorted immense sacrifices from active and retired autoworkers, and is dominated by the investment bankers who absorbed trillions in national wealth to keep themselves rich after destroying the economy.

Instead of seizing plants as our Canadian comrades are doing, or adding "bossnapping" to plant occupations as the French have done, we shake our heads as the union negotiates the terms of surrender.

What could we do with socialism? Well, take banks for starters: take them, so instead of private scams that go broke gambling with money they don't own, they'd become public utilities that finance production, infrastructure, and homes. And treat aging industries like autos: instead of dumping, we'd transform them according to a national plan for green jobs and a healthy environment.

Solidarity is the path as well as the destination of socialism. Solidarity grieves when a worker loses his job or sees her pension slashed. Solidarity cheers when a union wins middle-class pay. Solidarity rejects the greed of insurers as the distributor of healthcare and demands single payer for all.

Solidarity smells the rat who divides white from black, black from gay, native from newcomer, or America from the rest of humanity.

"So come brothers and sisters/For the struggle carries on/The Internationale/Unites the world in Song.

"So comrades come rally/For this is the time and place/The international ideal/Unites the human race." [Parts of this section come from: 2009 The News Journal, by Phillip Bannowsky ]

"Let's talk about socialism. ... I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name. Socialism had a good name in this country. Socialism had Eugene Debs. It had Clarence Darrow. It had Mother Jones. It had Emma Goldman. It had several million people reading socialist newspapers around the country... Socialism basically said, hey, let's have a kinder, gentler society. Let's share things. Let's have an economic system that produces things not because they're profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism because you have to go beyond capitalism."

--Howard Zinn, who passed away earlier this year, taught a simple lesson: Agitate. Agitate. Agitate. But never lose your sense of humor in the process.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate (the) grave evils (of capitalism), namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society."

Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?, 1949

More scholarly definitions follow, many taken from sources on the Internet:

Socialism refers to the various theories of economic organization which advocate either public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources.

Most socialists share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through exploitation, creates an unequal society, does not provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential, and does not utilize technology and resources to their maximum potential nor in the interests of the public.

Many socialists, from Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the founders of early socialism (Utopian Socialism), to Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, advocated for widespread application of modern technology to eliminate the anarchy of capitalist production. They said this would allow for wealth and power to be distributed based on the amount of work expended in production, although there is disagreement among socialists over how and to what extent this can be achieved.

Socialism is not a concrete philosophy of fixed doctrine and program; its branches advocate a degree of social interventionism and economic rationalisation (usually in the form of economic planning), but sometimes oppose each other. A dividing feature of the socialist movement is the split between reformists and revolutionaries on how a socialist economy should be established. Some socialists advocate complete nationalisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange; others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy.

The first advocates of socialism favoured social levelling in order to create a meritocratic or technocratic society based upon individual talent.

After World War II

In 1945, the worlds three great powers met at the Yalta Conference to negotiate an amicable and stable peace. UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill joined USA President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee. With the relative decline of Britain compared to the two superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, however, many viewed the world as "bi-polar" a world with two irreconcilable and antagonistic political and economic systems.

Many termed the Soviet Union "socialist", not least the Soviet Union itself, but also commonly in the USA, China, Eastern Europe, and many parts of the world where Communist Parties had gained a mass base. In addition, scholarly critics of the Soviet Union, such as economist Friedrich Hayek were commonly cited as critics of socialism. This view was not universally shared, particularly in Europe, and especially in Britain, where the Communist Party was very weak.

In 1951, British Health Minister Aneurin Bevan expressed the view that, "It is probably true that Western Europe would have gone socialist after the war if Soviet behaviour had not given it too grim a visage. Soviet Communism and Socialism are not yet sufficiently distinguished in many minds."^[50]

In 1951, the Socialist International was re-founded by the European social democratic parties. It declared: "Communism has split the International Labour Movement and has set back the realisation of Socialism in many countries for decades... Communism falsely claims a share in the Socialist tradition. In fact it has distorted that tradition beyond recognition. It has built up a rigid theology which is incompatible with the critical spirit of Marxism."^[51]

The last quarter of the 20th century marked a period of major crisis for Communists in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, where the growing shortages of housing and consumer goods, combined with the lack of individual rights to assembly and speech, began to disillusion more and more Communist party members. With the rapid collapse of Communist party rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe between 1989 and 1991, the Soviet version of socialism has effectively disappeared as a worldwide political force.

In the postwar years, socialism became increasingly influential throughout the so-called Third World. Countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America frequently adopted socialist economic programmes. In many instances, these nations nationalised industries held by foreign owners. The Soviet Union had become a superpower through its adoption of a planned economy, albeit at enormous human cost. This achievement seemed hugely impressive from the outside, and convinced many nationalists in the former colonies, not necessarily communists or even socialists, of the virtues of state planning and state-guided models of social development. This was later to have important consequences in countries like China, India and Egypt, which tried to import some aspects of the Soviet model.

Social Democracy Adopts Free Market Policies

Many social democratic parties, particularly after the Cold war, adopted neoliberal-based market policies that include privatization, liberalization, deregulation and financialization; resulting in the abandonment of pursuing the development of moderate socialism in favor of market liberalism. Despite the name, these pro-capitalist policies are radically different from the many non-capitalist free-market socialist theories that have existed throughout history.

In 1959, the German Social Democratic Party adopted the Godesberg Program, rejecting class struggle and Marxism. In 1980, with the rise of conservative neoliberal politicians such as Ronald Reagan in the U.S., Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Brian Mulroney, in Canada, the Western, welfare state was attacked from within. Monetarists and neoliberalism attacked social welfare systems as impediments to private entrepreneurship at public expense.

In the 1980s and 1990s, western European socialists were pressured to reconcile their socialist economic programmes with a free-market-based communal European economy. In the U.K., the Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock made a passionate and public attack against the Party's Militant Tendency at a Labour Party conference and repudiated the demands of the defeated striking miners after a year-long strike against pit closures. In the 1990s, released from the Left's pressure, the Labour Party, under Tony Blair, posited policies based upon the free market economy to deliver public services via private contractors.

In 1989, at Stockholm, the 18th Congress of the Socialist International adopted a new Declaration of Principles, saying that

Democratic socialism is an international movement for freedom, social justice, and solidarity. Its goal is to achieve a peaceful world where these basic values can be enhanced and where each individual can live a meaningful life with the full development of his or her personality and talents, and with the guarantee of human and civil rights in a democratic framework of society.

In 1995, the Labour Party re-defined its stance on socialism by re-wording clause IV of its constitution, effectively rejecting socialism by removing any and all references to public, direct worker or municipal ownership of the means of production.

The objectives of the Party of European Socialists, the European Parliament's socialist bloc, are now "to pursue international aims in respect of the principles on which the European Union is based, namely principles of freedom, equality, solidarity, democracy, respect of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and respect for the Rule of Law." As a result, today, the rallying cry of the French Revolution "Egalit, Libert, Fraternit" which overthrew absolutism and ushered capitalism into French society, are promoted as essential socialist values.

In 1995, the British Labour Party revised its political aims: "The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that, by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create, for each of us, the means to realise our true potential, and, for all of us, a community in which power, wealth, and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few."

Socialism in the 21st Century

Those who championed socialism in its various Marxist and class struggle forms sought out other arenas than the parties of social democracy at the turn of the 21st century. Anti-capitalism and anti-globalisation movements rose to prominence particularly through events such as the opposition to the WTO meeting of 1999 in Seattle. Socialist-inspired groups played an important role in these new movements, which nevertheless embraced much broader layers of the population, and were championed by figures such as Noam Chomsky. The 2003 invasion of Iraq led to a significant anti-war movement in which socialists argued their case.

The Financial crisis of 20072010 led to mainstream discussions as to whether "Marx was right". Time magazine ran an article 'Rethinking Marx' and put Karl Marx on the cover of its European edition in a special for the Jan. 28, 2009 Davos meeting. While the mainstream media tended to conclude that Marx was wrong, this was not the view of socialists and left-leaning commentators.

A Globescan BBC poll on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall found that 23% of respondents believe capitalism is "fatally flawed and a different economic system is needed", with that figure rising to 40% of the population in some developed countries such as France; while a majority of respondents including over 50% of Americans believe capitalism "has problems that can be addressed through regulation and reform". Opinions regarding the demise of the Soviet Union are also heavily divided between the developed and developing world, with the latter believing the disintegration of the Soviet Union was a bad thing.

Europe

In Europe, the socialist Left Party in Germany grew in popularity due to dissatisfaction with the increasingly neoliberal policies of the SPD, becoming the fourth biggest party in parliament in the general election on Sept. 27, 2009. Communist candidate Dimitris Christofias won a crucial presidential runoff in Cyprus, defeating his conservative rival with a majority of 53%. In Greece, in the general election on 4 October 2009, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) won the elections with 43.92% of the votes, the Communist KKE got 7.5% and the new Socialist grouping, (Syriza or "Coalition of the Radical Left"), won 4.6% or 361,000 votes.

In the U.K., the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers put forward a slate of candidates in the 2009 European Parliament elections under the banner of No to the EU Yes to Democracy, a broad left-wing alter-globalisation coalition involving socialist groups such as the Socialist Party, aiming to offer an alternative to the "anti-foreigner" and pro-business policies of the UK Independence Party.

In France, the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) candidate in the 2007 presidential election, Olivier Besancenot, received 1,498,581 votes, 4.08%, double that of the Communist candidate. The LCR abolished itself in 2009 to initiate a broad anti-capitalist party, the New Anticapitalist Party, whose stated aim is to "build a new socialist, democratic perspective for the 21st century.

United States

Socialist parties in the United States reached their zenith in the early 20th century, but currently active parties and organizations include the Socialist Party USA, the Socialist Workers Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, which has approximately 10,000 members.

A December 2008 Rasmussen poll found that when asked whether Americans supported a state-managed economy or a free-market economy, 70% preferred free-market capitalism, with only 15% preferring a state-managed economy. An April 2009 Rasmussen Reports poll, conducted during the Financial crisis of 20072010, suggested that there had been a growth of support for socialism in the United States. The poll results stated that 53% of American adults thought capitalism was better than socialism, and that "Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided". The question posed by Rasmussen Reports did not define either capitalism or socialism, allowing for the possibility of confusing socialism with regulated capitalism, or socialism with authoritarian communism.

Reform Versus Revolution

Reformists, such as classical social democrats, believe that a socialist system can be achieved by reforming capitalism. Socialism, in their view, can be reached through the existing political system by reforming private enterprise. Revolutionaries, such as Marxists, Leninists and Trotskyist, believe such methods will fail because the state ultimately acts in the interests of capitalist business interests. They believe that revolution is the only means to establish a new socio-economic system. Marxists do not necessarily define revolution as a violent insurrection, but instead as a thorough and rapid change.

Socialism From Above or Below

Socialism from above refers to the viewpoint that reforms or revolutions for socialism will come from, or be led by, higher status members of society who desire a more rational, efficient economic system. Claude Henri de Saint-Simon believed that socialism would come from engineers, scientists and technicians who want to organize society and the economy in a rational, logical fashion. Social democracy is often advocated by intellectuals and the middle-class, as well as the working class segments of the population. Socialism from below refers to the position that socialism can only come from, and be led by, popular solidarity and political action from the lower classes, such as the working class and lower-middle class. Proponents of socialism from below such as syndicalists, orthodox Marxists and Leninists often liken socialism from above to elitism.

Technocratic Management Versus Democratic Management

The distinction between technocratic/scientific management and democratic management refers to positions on how state institutions and the economy are to be managed. Technocratic organizational management is distinct from bureaucratic and democratic techniques, with the state apparatus being transformed as an administration of economic affairs through technical management as opposed to the administration of people through the creation and enforcement of laws. Some proponents of technocratic socialism include Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, Alexander Bogdanov, Howard Scott and H. G. Wells. They include proponents of economic planning (except those, like the Trotskyists, who tend to emphasize the need for democratic workers control), and socialists inspired by Taylorism. They show a tendency to promote scientific management, whereby technical experts manage institutions and receive their position in society based on a demonstration of their technical expertise or merit, with the aim of creating a rational, effective and stable organization. Although scientific management is based on technocratic organization, elements of democracy can be present in the system, such as having democratically decided social goals that are executed by a technocratic state.

Proponents of democratic management propose workers' self-management: a system whereby management decisions are made democratically, or a manager is elected by all the members of the institution. Groups that promote democratic management include libertarian socialists, social anarchists and syndicalists. Many Trotskyists argue that the destruction of democratic workers' control of the economy through the workers' councils in Russia by Joseph Stalin was a critical juncture in the growth of the bureaucracy, and led to the poor performance of the planned economy in Russia. They demand a democratic plan of production developed through workers' committees.

Allocation of Resources

Resource allocation is the subject of intense debate between market socialists and proponents of planned economies.

Market socialists believe that the market mechanism is either the most efficient or the only viable means of allocating resources and determining what is to be produced. Examples of market socialism include Ricardian socialism, the New Economic Policy and the socialist market economy. Socialist theories that involve the market as the main arbitrator of economic decision-making are sometimes viewed as a temporary, transitional phase between capitalism and a fully planned economy.

Proponents of economic planning argue that the market is inherently irrational and prone to unstable cyclical fluctuations, fails to prioritize production according to a rational plan that conforms to macro-social goals and promotes short-term investment and uncoordinated economic activity. They argue that through either state directed administration or economic planning, the state can allocate resources more effectively than the market.

Proponents of democratic planning reject both state-led planning and the market, instead arguing for inclusive decision-making on what should be produced, with the distribution of the output being based on direct democracy or council democracy. Leon Trotsky held the view that central planners, regardless of their intellectual capacity, operated without the input and participation of the millions of people who participate in the economy and understand/respond to local conditions and changes in the economy would be unable to effectively coordinate all economic activity.

Equality of Opportunity Versus Equality of Outcome

Proponents of equality of opportunity advocate a society in which there are equal opportunities and life chances for all individuals to maximize their potentials and attain positions in society. This would be made possible by equal access to the necessities of life. This position is held by technocratic socialists, Marxists and social democrats. Equality of outcome refers to a state where everyone receives equal amounts of rewards and an equal level of power in decision-making, with the belief that all roles in society are necessary and therefore none should be rewarded more than others. This view is shared by some communal utopian socialists and anarcho-communists.

Criticism

Criticisms of socialism range from claims that socialist economic and political models are inefficient or incompatible with civil liberties to condemnation of specific socialist states. In the economic calculation debate, classical liberal Friedrich Hayek argued that a socialist command economy could not adequately transmit information about prices and productive quotas due to the lack of a price mechanism, and as a result it could not make rational economic decisions. Ludwig von Mises argued that a socialist economy was not possible at all, because of the impossibility of rational pricing of capital goods in a socialist economy since the state is the only owner of the capital goods. Hayek further argued that the social control over distribution of wealth and private property advocated by socialists cannot be achieved without reduced prosperity for the general populace, and a loss of political and economic freedoms

Military Keynesianism

The United States is currently preparing to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan by summer 2010. Military contractors, deeply integrated into the U.S. economy, will continue to prosper and profit from increased military spending resulting from this surge of troops. At a time when unemployment in the domestic economy remains near 10%, it may seem convenient to fall back on the principle of military Keynesianism: War is good for the economy.

John Maynard Keynes, the British economist whose work has once again become popular in the wake of this most recent economic crisis, advocated increased government spending to lift an economy out of recession or depression. When consumers and businesses slow their spending, the government can step in to increase demand for goods and services so that businesses can continue to produce and people can remain employed. This fiscal stimulus could take the form of infrastructure projects, healthcare, education, or other productive endeavors. By this logic, military spending can lift an economy out of recession by creating demand for goods and services provided by military contractors, such as the production of tanks and ammunition or the provision of security services. Advocates of this strategy point not only to the widespread employment created by military spending, but also claim that military spending creates well-paying, stable jobs.

It is true that military spending creates jobs throughout the economy, and that many of those jobs are well-paying. But at a time when our jobless rate is high, infrastructure is crumbling, and global climate change is becoming an increasingly urgent matter, we must ask whether military spending is truly a solution to our economic woes or whether we might be able to create more jobs in productive areas that also help us meet longer-term goals.

It has been shown that dollar per dollar, more jobs are created through spending on clean energy, health care, and education than on the military. Further, it has been shown that more middle-income and well-paying jobs are created in all of these areas. For each $1 billion of spending, over 17,000 jobs would be created in clean energy, close to 20,000 in health care, and over 29,000 in education. That same $1 billion would create only 11,600 jobs as a result of military spending. If we look at well-paying jobs, those that pay over $64,000 per year, these alternative domestic spending areas also outperform military spending. The same $1 billion would create 1,500 well-paying jobs in clean energy and just over 1,000 in the military-clean energy creates 50% more good jobs than military spending. Education, which is labor-intensive and creates many well-paying jobs per dollar of expenditure, creates close to 2,500 jobs paying over $64,000-that's 2.5 times as many as the military.

According to the National Priorities Project, military spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has reached approximately $1 trillion since 2001, not including the cost of the surge of 30,000 troops. In fiscal year 2009, federal government outlays on the military were 17% of all outlays.

Meanwhile, energy, resource conservation, and the environment accounted for only 1% of federal outlays, while education, training, and social services made up only 2%. Military spending is therefore eight to seventeen times as high as federal education- and energy-related spending.

The Obama administration is facing increased pressure to reduce the size of the fiscal deficit and the national debt, both of which have grown partly as a result of military spending. At the same time, there is an urgent need to put people back to work and to move the country toward a low-carbon future. While military Keynesianism offers one strategy for recovering from the recession, it is by no means the most effective, even putting aside the other reasons for objecting to a war economy. By reducing military spending, we can channel some of those savings to clean energy, healthcare, education, and other matters of national and global importance. [This section was written in part by 2010 Dollars & Sense, Heidi Garrett-Peltier is a research fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst].

A Progressive Tax: Correctionism

People don't want to talk about taxes. Most of us are afraid that a tax increase will impact ALL of us. The media shies away from such a controversial topic. Certainly the rich don't want to talk about it. And even lower-income people seem to have this sense that they will be wealthy someday, and government shouldn't interfere with their plans.

So on we go with the cutbacks in train and bus service, and the loss of teachers, the cancellation of after-school programs in low-income areas, reductions in library hours and park services. Plus, of course, increases in state income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, cigarette taxes, utility costs, license fees, parking meter rates

The public rarely hears about one of the major causes of this assault on the middle class.

From 1980 to 2006 the richest 1% of America TRIPLED their after-tax percentage of our nation's total income, while the bottom 90% have seen their share drop over 20%.

That's a TRILLION dollars a year, one-seventh of America's total income, that went to the richest 1% while 90% of us went backwards.

But, many people ask, don't the very rich pay most of the taxes? Just federal income tax. And they pay less than 23% of their incomes in federal income tax. If state and local taxes, social security tax, and excise taxes are included, the lowest-earning half of America pays 24% of their incomes in taxes.

But isn't taxing the rich a form of socialism? Since 1980, if the average working family had received compensation based on its relative contribution to America's prosperity, it would be making an average of $45,000 a year instead of $35,000. Through 30 years of deregulation and financial maneuvering, the richest 1% have taken $10,000 a year from every American family. That's socialism in reverse.

But doesn't "income mobility" explain and mitigate the apparent inequities? In his book, "Intellectuals and Society" (Basic Books, 2009), Thomas Sowell claims that statements about inequality are "confusing statistical categories with flesh-and-blood human beings."

Sowell relies heavily on a 2007 U.S. Treasury Department report about income mobility that states "Among those with the very highest incomes in 1996 the top 1/100 of 1 percent only 25 percent remained in this group in 2005." But he ignores the fact that nearly 9 out of 10 of those in the top 1% remained in the top quintile of earners over those ten years. They may have dropped out of the most elite 1% group, but they remained close. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

But that isn't even the main point. More significantly, our economy allows a tiny percentage of us to take an inordinate amount of money from society, at an increasing rate. Some people may have dropped out of this elite group, but those who have moved in are making even more! The result is a system in which one man (hedge fund manager John Paulson in 2007) can make more money than the total of the salaries of every police officer, firefighter, and public school teacher in Chicago, while another man stands hungry in the cold. And any attempt to fix the system is called socialism.

So what's the solution? Several states have implemented more progressive tax systems. And they have apparently not caused wealthy people to transfer their fortunes out-of-state. A 2008 study by Princeton University determined that "the 'half-millionaire tax,' at least in New Jersey, appears to be an effective and efficient revenue-generation mechanism, having little impact on migration patterns among half-millionaire households." [1] Similarly, little adverse effect of higher taxes was found in Maryland or Oregon. [2] A study by the California Budget Project revealed that the number of high-income households actually grew during periods of higher income tax rates for top earners. [3] Oregon recently passed Measures 66 and 67, which impose modest income tax increases on the wealthiest residents and raise the corporate minimum tax for the first time in 80 years.

President Obama is right to seek a progressive federal tax structure in which the very rich will return some of the money derived from years of deregulation and shrewd financial strategies. We need Congress and the media to support this way of thinking. [Parts written by Paul Buchheit, a faculty member in the School for New Learning at DePaul University].

Goldman Rejects Demands on Pay

It probably will take another crash like the one in summer 2008 before the capitalism-is-god advocates like the banking columnnist at my former paper change their minds. In a recent news story, it remains evident that executives at Goldman Sachs still think of themselves as masters of the universe with commensurate pay. The Groups board rejected demands from shareholders that the firm investigate recent compensation awards, recoup excessive compensation and reform pay practices.

Wall Street's dominant bank, criticized for paying billions of dollars in bonuses soon after the taxpayer bailout of the banking industry, reported the board's decision in a regulatory filing a week or so ago.

Goldman reported the shareholder demands last year and said at the time that its board was considering them. The firm did not name the shareholders who made the demands.

Goldman could not be reached for comment.

Goldman reported a record profit in 2009 and was on pace to pay more than $20 billion in compensation heading into the fourth quarter. But facing public ire, it capped compensation expenses at $16.2 billion for the year.

The firm also paid its top 30 executives all-stock bonuses rather than cash.

Even though Goldman outperformed its biggest rivals in 2009, Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein received a stock bonus valued at $8.9 million, roughly half of what JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) chief Jamie Dimon received.

Feb. 27, 2010

President Obama this week will announce an effort to raise public school standards as part of a plan to upgrade goals of the No Child Left Behind law, an administration official said.

In a speech to the annual meeting of the National Governors Association, Obama is expected to unveil a new requirement for states to develop standards to win a significant portion of No Child Left Behind funds. Once again, however, everyone misses the point that under “We the People...” everyone is equal. What about the kids that have IQs near the bottom of the Bell curve, yet can make valuable contributions to society.

Obama—and most people—do not take into account the unreal complexity of humans’ intelligences. One person may have a lousy memory, like me, but be able to write creatively. I need to take a tape recorder when reporting stories. This adds to the cost because it requires more time for transcription. But management would get more creativity.

It seems like 90 percent of parents in Riverdale, N.Y., where I live want their kids in the “gifted students” program at the elementary schools—ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS!! The kids feel the pressure to excel at the tender age of six. At the same time, those WONDERFUL kids whose intelligence quotients are weak, or who are speech-delayed, are called names by the kids being pushed towards Harvard by overbearing parents. The previous principal in one elementary school once said, “I have great news. Next year we will be able to eliminate a special ed class.”

Now the parents of those special ed students have to pressure their kids to pass the third-grade “graduation” tests and teach them how to deal with being called “stupid.” Yet, those kids 90 percent of the time have an ABOVE AVERAGE talent in something else valuable to society, such as music, memorization, theater, art, working with their hands, and so on. What happens to those kids? The funding “is left behind” for them and they are made to feel inferior. But that’s the American way isn’t it? That’s capitalism isn’t it? That’s evolution isn’t it?

Speech-delayed kids need extra classes that public schools, and, even, private schools at $40,000 a year tuition don’t offer. They may need lessons such as those found in the incomparable book: “Visualizing and Verbalizing” by Nanci Bell (Gander Publishing, San Luis Obispo, Calif. 2007, 2d Ed.).

In one of many, many lessons in the book, a teacher can help the student with “Known Noun Imaging.” What follows is a sample lesson:

Nanci: I’m going to just say a word this time and you tell me what you picture. “Clown.” What does that word make you picture?

Joe: I picture a clown.

Nanci: Right. What does your clown look like?

Joe: Just a regular clown.

Nanci: Hmmm. Does he have clothes on or is he...?

Joe: Interrupting. He has clothes on.

Nanci: Great. Help me know what you are picturing for your clown. Start at the top of his head and go down. Does he have hair, does he have a hat on?

Joe. He has a hat on.

Nanci: What are you picturing for his hat? Is it a little hat or a big floppy hat? Think about your structure words [who, what, when, why, where, and how] and tell me as much detail as you can.

Joe: His hat is little... and black. A little black hat. He has red hair.

Nanci: Great. What are you picturing for his red hair? Is it short and curly or long and stringy?

Joe: It is red and curly. It sticks out on his head.

Nanci: OK. (Gesturing with her hands) Are you picturing it sticking out like this far from his head or this far?

Joe: (Gesturing) This far. Really big.

Nanci: Great. Keep going down the clown. What are you picturing for his face? Are you seeing a white face and a red---?

Joe: (Interrupting with a little excitement in her voice) He has a white face and a big red nose. His nose is big and round too. And he has black lines around his eyes... and a big smile for a mouth. His mouth is red.

Nanci: Wow. Great visualizing. Now I can see that too. Keep going. What is he wearing?

Joe: He has a clown suit on that looks like pajamas and...hmmm...I see red polka dots on the suit. The suit is yellow.

They continue for the rest of the clown and the circus.

Nanci: You’ve done a great job and you’ve created a really good clown. (Putting structure words on the table) Let’s check through the structure words and see if you have everything. Touch the card and quickly tell me again what you pictured.

Joe: Touching the “what” card, I pictured a clown. He was in a circus.

Nanci: Right! (Putting a “magic sticker” on each card.) I think you have them all, ,but let’s see.

Does Obama and do the states have that type of necessary exchange in mind (directly above)? Will there be funding for that? Doubtful. After all, Obama said it openly that this is to help the U.S. compete better in the world.

But I doubt that holding a child back in third grade repeatedly is going to help him. Yet, he could contribute mightily to society, if given a chance, in the future. The child could, as I’ve said, have a perfect memory for melodies, lyrics, and have perfect pitch. He could be a “people person,” valuable in the entertainment world. Or he could simply work well with his hands, having built wonderful structures since age two with Legos and blocks. Does he now become a second-class citizen, with his self-esteem shattered and no place to go? And no money to help him go to that place?

It seems that this is the plan in the U.S. Well, you can’t fight capitalism and competition. The only other choice would be “socialism,” right. And what would the visceral, right wing think of that, huh?

Back to Obama’s move: A key feature of the 2002 law was the use of yearly standardized tests to gauge school progress. Though the law got credit for improving accountability for educators and raising the standards for schoolchildren, it was widely criticized for setting unrealistic goals but not giving schools the money to meet them.

The law was also criticized for letting the 50 states set 50 different standards. The president's move will encourage states to adopt a common set of college and career-ready standards -- most of them higher than what most states currently have.

Obama was one of the chief critics during the presidential campaign, often noting that the problem with No Child Left Behind was that it "left the money behind."

Shortly after taking office, Obama challenged states to come up with standards and measurements that would better prepare public school children for college and careers.

Officials said the president will applaud the governors for joining in a consortium to come up with new reading and math standards that better prepare students for life after graduation.

A 1994 federal law required that each state set standards for what students should know and be able to do in critical subjects, but the law did not require states to consider whether the standards might help prepare students for college and the workplace. Many complain that the standards are too low.

"Over time, this race to the bottom threatens to place American students on a decline in relation to international peers," an administration official said Sunday. "Results on international assessments reveal that, in math, American students lag almost a full year behind students from the top-performing countries. In response to their international comparison results, other countries have raised their standards while we have lowered ours."

We can’t have that can we? Our nation is better than their’s, right?

Feb. 7, 2010

Last week I published in Don’s Review an essay called “The Year of Living Joblessly and Fragilely” (below). In it, I pointed out that having only two nibbles at jobs out of some 1,000 resumes sent over one year has increased my insomnia. It also has not helped my 9-year-old son, who knows that mommy and daddy don’t have much money, and has developed insomnia of his own.

            It now costs my family $350 per month for health insurance just for ME. My wife is covered by her job and my son by Child HealthPlus. But I nearly died in 2004 from severe pneumonia and have heart trouble because of that. I have had to give up my doctor of seven years.

            It is safe to say that being unemployed increases the firing of my stress buttons and the wear-and-tear on my body—even more than having a regular job and a maniac for a boss would have.

            The following story by Rick Wilson, published on Nov. 29, 2009 in the Sunday Gazette Mail (West Virginia) helps demonstrate on the financial meltdown of 2008 has and will hurt people. Wilson is director of the American Friends Service Committee WV Economic Justice Project and publishes a daily blog, goatrope.blogspot.com:

In recent years, a growing body of scientific research indicates that human health and longevity aren't just matters of genes and habits. Rather, they seem to have a lot to do with our relative status or position in society.

The wonky term for this kind of thing is "the social determinants of health," which was recently the topic of a presentation to the West Virginia Legislature by epidemiologist and physician Dr. Camara Jones of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. While the focus of Dr. Jones' presentation was on racial disparities, she said that inequalities and inequities affect the health of all people, regardless of racial or ethnic backgrounds.

A pioneer in this field of research is the British epidemiologist Michael Marmot, who among other things studied English civil servants over a period of decades. Here's the short version of his findings: people higher up the ladder lived longer and were less sick than those lower down, even when we take individual behavior into account.

This was true despite the fact that England has universal health care. Without it, the differences would no doubt have been even worse.

Most of us probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that poor people have shorter and sicker lives than those who are better off, but Marmot found the effect or "social gradient" to be constant throughout the hierarchy. That is, people just below the highest levels tended to have shorter lives and be sicker than those just above them and so on all the way down. Marmot's findings about the social gradient occur among other groups as well.

One interesting study even found that actors who win Academy Awards lived an average four years longer than those who were nominated but didn't win. No wonder they always thank the Academy ...

Part of what seems to be going on is that as social animals, we measure our own well being in terms of those around us. In Marmot's book The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity, he finds two variables that seem to have a great impact on our health and well being: a sense of autonomy or control over one's life and work, and the ability to fully participate in the society in which we live.

In our society, people with higher incomes and education levels tend to have more control and be less subject to shocks and setbacks than those with fewer resources. A car that breaks down, for example, is no big deal if you can afford to fix it and rent another, but it can trigger a disastrous chain of events for low-wage workers. Ditto a family illness, job loss or any of the "thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to," as Hamlet put it.

People with more resources are also more able to fully participate in social activities. For the less fortunate, it's often a struggle to provide decent clothing for school-aged children, let alone pay for extracurricular activities that others take for granted.

It seems that jobs and situations that give people low levels of control and impose high demands and low rewards are particularly toxic for health. Outside of the workplace, such situations might include living in bad housing or in unsafe or toxic neighborhoods or in violent family situations.

These kinds of situations seem to activate the body's stress response, which was designed to deal with short-term threats and dangers but can lead to higher risks of various kinds of diseases when the stress is prolonged or chronic. This can lead to a great susceptibility to such illnesses as diabetes and heart disease as well as greater risk of infectious disease.

A startling finding of this kind of research is that relative deprivation in early life can have lasting impacts on health years later. In one experiment, healthy adults were exposed to two kinds of rhinoviruses, which cause common colds. They were asked a series of questions about their socio-economic status. It turned out that people whose parents owned their homes when they were children were significantly less likely to get sick than those whose parents didn't.

The findings of Marmot and other researchers is pretty sobering in the context of the current recession. Based on solid research, it's sadly safe to say that some people are going to die sooner than they otherwise would have because of it. Marmot's research on jobless workers in Britain found that "people who became unemployed had 20 percent higher mortality than those who remained employed at the same social class level."

He argues that this is because there are two aspects to economic hardships and loss of material resources. The first is "a lack of basic material conditions for life," or what social scientists call absolute poverty. The second is "insufficient resources, private or public, to participate in society," or what is called relative poverty, which has more of an impact than previously imagined. Obviously loss of income is a major blow, but even if an unemployed person has some resources or savings to fall back on, such people still "have worse health than those still employed in the same occupational social class."

Add to the mix the other key factor: being involuntarily unemployed also reduces one's sense of autonomy and control over one's life. Taken together, loss of control and inability to fully participate in society are a recipe for trouble.

That's why policies that create or save jobs or provide basic supports in hard times are particularly important. As a report by the World Health Organization on the social determinants of health put it, "Social justice is a matter of life and death."

            Another story contains science’s verification of the relationship between social status and health. It was written by Naomi Eisenberger of the Department of Psychology at UCLA:

In the 1980s and early 1990s, a puzzle began to emerge among those concerned with health outcomes: why do individuals with higher social status live longer and have better health than those with lower social status? In one of the most compelling demonstrations of this socioeconomic status (SES)-health gradient, Marmot and colleagues (1984) showed that, among approximately 18 000 British civil servants, men in the lowest socioeconomic group had three times the mortality rate (over a 10-year period) than those in the highest group. Moreover, these effects were not confined to those at the very top and very bottom of the SES hierarchy; rather, each step up in occupational status conferred additional health benefits over those a step below, in a graded fashion. Follow-up research has suggested that this relationship does not seem to be solely due to differences in health behaviors (e.g. smoking) or access to health care among different socioeconomic groups (Adler et al., 1994). In addition, subjective social status has been shown to be just as strong, if not a stronger, predictor of health outcomes than objective social status (Singh-Manoux et al., 2005).

To unravel the puzzle of the SES-health gradient, researchers have taken different approaches, including examining the qualities of the social environment that differ by SES (e.g. presence of toxins, noise), the psychological tendencies of those at different SES levels (e.g. perceived control, optimism), the cognitive appraisal strategies that might differ by class (e.g. making more hostile attributions for ambiguous behaviors) or the biological responses to stressors, which may vary as a function of SES (e.g. long-term vs short-term exposure to stressors) (Adler and Snibbe, 2003). In this issue, Gianaros and colleagues (2007) add a novel perspective on exploring the relationship between SES and health by examining neural differences that might occur as a function of perceived social status.

In their paper, Gianaros and colleagues (2007) used structural neuroimaging techniques to investigate, whether certain neural regions vary in size as a function of “perceived social standing,” a self-report measure that captures the subjective perception of being lower in social status. Participants were shown an image of a 10-rung ladder and were asked to mark the rung that corresponds to where they think, they ‘stand’ compared to others in the United States based on income, education and occupational status. The authors found that self-reported social status correlated with gray matter volume in only one region in the entire brain, the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC). Specifically, low perceived social status was associated with reduced gray matter volume in the pACC. These findings remained significant after controlling for demographic, psychological (e.g. depressive symptoms, recent life stress) and conventional SES measures (e.g. income, education).

These findings are important for several reasons. First, the region of the pACC that Gianaros and colleagues identify as varying in size based on perceived social standing is almost exactly the same region that Pezawas and colleagues (2005) identify as varying in size based on the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism. In that study, individuals with a copy of the short (s) allele of the 5HTTLPR gene, who are at heightened risk for anxiety and depression (Hariri and Holmes, 2006), also show significantly reduced gray matter volume in the pACC (and amygdala) compared to those with two copies of the long (l) allele. Thus, both low perceived social status and the s-allele of the 5HTTLPR gene are associated with smaller pACC volumes. The fact that the same neural region correlates with both perceived social status and a serotonin-related gene fits nicely with previous work showing relationships between serotonin levels and social status, such that, in mammals, those with lower serotonergic functioning have lower social status whereas those with higher serotonergic functioning tend to have higher social status (Edwards and Kravitz, 1997).

Second, these findings provide additional insight into the mechanisms that may link social status and health. Identifying a neural region whose size correlates with perceived social standing allows researchers to narrow the realm of possible ways in which social standing links to health and instead, probe the specific computations of this region that may contribute to the SES-health link. Along these lines, recent research has demonstrated a role for the pACC in emotion regulation and cognitive control. For example, increased pACC activity is associated with reductions in amygdala activation (an affect-related neural structure) while viewing emotional faces (Das et al., 2005; Etkin et al., 2006), and patients with damage to the pACC fail to recruit cognitive control during a cognitive conflict task (Di Pellegrino et al., 2007). These findings fit with the suggestion that this region (pACC; Brodmann area 32) is a ‘cingulofrontal transition’ area, which has features of both cingulate cortex and adjacent frontal areas (Vogt et al., 1995). Indeed, in the rhesus monkey, BA 32 is considered to be a part of the prefrontal cortex rather than a part of the cingulate cortex (Vogt et al., 1987), and thus may be more strongly linked with prefrontal regulatory processes.

Based on this, one intriguing possibility is that individuals with higher perceived social status may show better emotion and/or cognitive regulatory processes, possibly resulting in lower levels of stress-related physiological responses and better health outcomes as a result. Additional research would be needed to determine the direction of this relationship as many questions arise from such an association. For instance, do poor regulatory skills lead to lower social standing (e.g. through drops in social standing based on poor impulse control)? Does lower social standing lead to less effective regulatory skills, perhaps because threats, among those with lower social standing are more legitimate and thus need to be attended to rather than regulated?

Last, these findings represent a novel way of probing the SES-health gradient. In the past two decades, the SES-health gradient has been explored primarily by investigating psychological (e.g. cognitive appraisals, perceived control), behavioral (e.g. smoking, drug use), physiological (e.g. physiological stress reactivity) and societal mechanisms (e.g. differential access to health care). With the widespread use of neuroimaging techniques, an additional method of investigation can now be added to this arsenal. The study by Gianaros and colleagues highlights a new way of investigating links between social standing and health and may provide additional insight into this relationship. Indeed, the cognitive neuroscience of health psychology is a wide-open area of investigation that would no doubt benefit from neural investigations such as the present one. This study represents one of the first forays into this emerging area.

Jan. 31, 2010

I felt the one-year anniversary of my Jan. 29, 2009 layoff after nine years of bust-a-gut editing for the New York Law Journal as I felt the one-year anniversary  of my mother’s death in 2004 and of my dad’s death in 2006.

                In 2005 and 2007, I kept waiting for them to call from Minnesota on Saturday mornings as they had since I came to the East Coast in 1983 to seek fame and fortune. Throughout 2009, and now into 2010, I have again waited for a phone call or an email telling me that I’ve been hired as a reporter, editor or proofreader. Since Jan. 29, 2009, I’ve been on24/7 watch. I figured with journalism experience, especially with prestigious media such as the Law Journal and Standard & Poor’s, stretching back to age 15, I, now 55, would get a call.

                Not to be.

                To me this recession should be called the Great Depression II. However, there is no FDR or World War II to pull the country out of it. And I’ve read books that say this is caused because the planet has reached Peak Oil, requiring a devastating shift to a new economic paradigm and endless resource wars. So this financial meltdown could last years or until unspeakable lifestyles of deprivation take hold.

So, as desperate fathers sold apples to get 5 cents to feed their families in 1932, I have bought a shoeshine kit—seriously, a mahogany one. The first place I would set up to shine shoes? On the public patch of sidewalk nearest to Goldman Sachs in lower Manhattan. I’d sit there—a man with a J.D. and 30 years experience in newspaper journalism—with a sign posted nearby saying: “God Bless Goldman Sachs. Shoeshines only $5.”

                Knowing Goldman Sachs has a revolving employment door to the White House, I would not want to offend the people running my nation. I’d want to take their $5 (and, hopefully, huge tips) to keep my wife and nine-year-old son in our third-floor walkup.

                Sitting near Goldman Sachs property—but not on it (God forbid—I’d be renditioned to Egypt, tortured, shredded and sold back to the U.S. as breakfast sausage for my son)—I’d also get away from the slow torture of saying good-bye each morning to my wife and son as she heads out to teach and he heads to third grade. As soon as the door clicks shut, I am left feeling as I did in 1976 when medical  schools turned me down, in 1991 when my girlfriend said she would not adopt a child with me, and in 2004 and 2006.

                In the lonely Monday-Friday mornings, I also have flashbacks to 2004, when I nearly died from pneumonia and lay voiceless and paralyzed while overhearing through the doctor-induced opioid-drug haze my doctors say “He’s got a long road ahead,” “So much  grueling rehab,” “Did you see that new Brad Pitt movie, ‘Troy’?” “Yeh. He is a god,” “Where should we go tonight after work?” “I’m ready for a pizza, one-inch-thick red sauce with onions.”

                My wife has been great during 2009, as she was in 2004, but she has lived near the poverty line all of her life. I’m near the breaking point.

                In one year, I’ve sent out about three resumes per day times 365 days, which equals more than 1,000. Out of those 1,000 so-called chances, I only had two law firms set up interviews for me to be their in-house editor; but they cancelled the meetings after seeing my one-year-old website (too progressive-liberal). I’ve spent $50-$100 per month on those new website job-hunting programs. The only people who’ve called? Predators. What kind of predators? Life and health insurance companies smooth talking me with “I saw your resume on such and such a site. Your qualifications certainly meet our standards. Can we meet this week?”

                But I’ve had health insurance this year only by paying $330 per month to extend my previous insurance via COBRA. When federal subsidies were set to stop Jan. 1, it would have tripled to $950 per month just to cover me (not to cover my wife or son). I had to leave my doctor of seven years and buy $350 per month health insurance from a previously unknown firm.

                So how the hell am I going to go out and sell health or life insurance to the unemployed who don’t have money for food or rent? Especially when I know that Obama and Congress likely will pass a health plan FORCING ALL people to BUY health insurance from the bloated, fat-cat insurance companies—with no public option? If you don’t buy, the government will track you down and penalize you (Be happy you won’t be renditioned to Egypt.).

                I graduated with a 3.70 out of 4 undergraduate GPA and a C average from law school. But I did it through hard work, because my memory stinks compared to those of the people I competed against. My personality is that of a quiet, serious man—a Dilbert—who just wants to do his work and go home to his family. He doesn’t want to stay and chat with his bosses about how to make more money for the owners of the newspaper we’re working for. Since age 18, I’ve always given companies 95-98 percent of what they wanted in my positions. But they always wanted 100 percent or MORE. When I couldn’t stand with the boss and chat about or remember stories from the past issues, I was a dead man walking. I didn’t fit the Law Journal type.

                According to Chris Hedges, who writes a regular column for TruthDig, corporations, which control the levers of power in government and finance, promote and empower the psychologically maimed. Those who lack the capacity for empathy and who embrace the goals of the corporation--personal power and wealth--as the highest good succeed. Those who possess moral autonomy and individuality do not.

And these corporate heads, isolated from the mass of Americans by insular corporate structures and vast personal fortunes, Hedges writes, are no more attuned to the misery, rage and pain they cause than were the courtiers and perfumed fops who populated Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution. They play their games of high finance as if the rest of us do not exist. And it is a game that will kill us.

Now, I’m not saying people at the Law Journal or its corporate owner at the time, Incisive Media, are not attuned to the misery they cause. My boss at the Law Journal took special, personal care of my wife and son when I was sick in 2004. And she was “beside herself” according to reports after having to lay me and two other people off on Jan. 29, 2009. Yet, she signed off on it. She didn’t protest it or say, “If Homan goes, so do I.”

Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, says companies “exist in a pathological world where identity and personal worth are determined solely by the perverted code of the corporation. The corporation decides who has value and who does not, who advances and who is left behind. It rewards the most compliant, craven and manipulative, and discards the losers who can't play the game, those who do not accumulate wealth or status fast enough, or who fail to fully subsume their individuality into the corporate collective. It dominates the internal and external lives of its employees, leaving them without time for family or solitude-without time for self-reflection-and drives them into a state of perpetual nervous exhaustion. It breaks them down, especially in their early years in the firm, a period in which they are humiliated and pressured to work such long hours that many will sleep under their desks. This hazing process, one that is common at corporate newspapers where I worked, including The New York Times, eliminates from the system most of those with backbone, fortitude and dignity.”

I’m not saying Incisive and the Law Journal (now ALM) are as bad as Goldman Sachs and the like, but there are similarities.

“No one thinks in groups. And this is the point,” Hedges writes. “The employees who advance are vacant and supine. They are skilled drones, often possessed of a peculiar kind of analytical intelligence and drive, but morally, emotionally and creatively crippled. Their intellect is narrow and inhibited. They rely on the corporation, as they once relied on their high-priced elite universities and their SAT scores, for validation. They demand that they not be treated as individuals but as members of the great collective of Goldman Sachs or AIG or Citibank. They talk together. They exchange information. They make deals. They compromise. They debate. But they do not think. They do not create. All capacity for intuition, for unstructured thought, for questions of meaning deemed impractical or frivolous by the firm, the qualities that always precede discovery and creation, are banished, as William H. Whyte observed in his book ‘The Organization Man.’ The iron goals of greater and greater profit, order and corporate conformity dominate their squalid belief systems. And by the time these corporate automatons are managing partners or government bureaucrats they cannot distinguish between right and wrong. They are deaf, dumb and blind to the common good.”

This could be why my giving corporations—not just Incisive Media, but Standard & Poor’s and various others since 1983—95 to 98 percent of what they want isn’t enough. Working at the speed of light from 9-5 and then promptly leaving at 5 to go home to your family is frowned upon. Not chatting with the boss is poison. Not having a memory as good as that of the boss is the equivalent of being worthless, nevermind that you may have other fine intellectual qualities.

“These deeply stunted and maladjusted individuals, from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to Robert Rubin to Lawrence Summers to the heads of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America,” Hedges writes, “hold the fate of the nation in their hands. They have access to trillions of taxpayer dollars and are looting the U.S. Treasury to sustain reckless speculation. The financial and corporate system alone validates them. It defines them. It must be served. This is why e-mails from the New York Fed to AIG, telling the bailed-out insurer not to make public the overpaying of Wall Street firms with taxpayer money, were sent when Geithner was in charge of the government agency. These criminals sold the public investments they knew to be trash. They used campaign contributions and lobbyists to turn elected officials into stooges and gut oversight and regulation. They took over retirement savings and pensions and wiped them out. And then they seized some $13 trillion in taxpayer money so they could lend it to us with interest. It is circular theft. This is why we will endure another catastrophic financial collapse. This is why firms like Goldman Sachs are more dangerous to the nation than al-Qaida.”

“How you make money and how you climb the ladder of the corporate structure are irrelevant,” Hedges continues. “Success becomes its own morality. Those who do well in this environment possess the traits often exhibited by psychopaths-superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation, and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. They, like competitors on a reality television program, lie, cheat and betray to climb over those around them and advance. These demented individuals are admired and envied within the firm. They achieve heroic status. The lower-ranking employees are supposed to emulate them. And this makes Goldman Sachs and other speculative financial firms upscale lunatic asylums where the inmates wear Brooks Brothers suits and drink expensive chardonnay. Our problem is that the lunatics have been let out of the asylum. They have been empowered to cannibalize the government on behalf of the corporations that spawned them like mutant carp.”

Speaking not of Incisive Media or the Law Journal of ALM, Hedges continues: “These corporations don't make anything. They don't produce anything. They gamble and bet and speculate. And when they lose vast sums they raid the U.S. Treasury so they can go back and do it again. Never mind that $50 trillion in global wealth was erased between September 2007 and March 2009, including $7 trillion in the U.S. stock market and $6 trillion in the housing market. Never mind that the total amount of retirement and household wealth trashed was $7.5 trillion or that we saw $2 trillion in 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts evaporate. Never mind the $1.9 trillion in traditional defined-benefit plans and the $2.6 trillion in nonpension assets that went up in smoke. Never mind the job losses, the foreclosures and the 35 percent jump in personal and small-business bankruptcies. There are bundles of new money, taken again from us, to make deals and hand out outrageous bonuses. And when these trillions run out they will come back for more until our currency becomes junk. Not that any of these people have thought this through. They are too busy focused on the pathetic, little monuments they are building to themselves and the intricacies of court intrigue.” Again, not necessarily true at Incisive or NYLJ or ALM.

“Those who advance [at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and other investment banks] master the art of looking like they are doing more than they are actually doing. It does not matter who does the most. It matters who can take credit for doing the most. And that often means poaching someone else's work. Friendship becomes a meaningless word. So does compassion. So does honesty. So does truth.”

We will have another crisis, I believe. If you don't fundamentally change the foundation of the banking system you are piling on capital and time into something that is faulty. This does not result in decades of stability. The firms that Hedges speaks of are banking on trading. Nothing has changed. The rest of the consumer economy is continuing to deteriorate. These losses go into banks. You gain on trading and lose on more solid practices. The foundation has not changed. The regulations have evaporated since the late Clinton years.

                Being laid off is crushing to the male ego. In the U.S., despite 40 years of women’s lib, the man is supposed to support his family. At first there is panic when you’re laid off. You get weak knees. Your blood runs cold, like when your parents caught you throwing rocks at cars passing by your house (Don’t ask. I don’t know why.).

                Then there’s shame. Your nine-year-old son—already indoctrinated by our culture to fight, compete, or go for the best grade or job—asks, “Did you lose your job because your boss didn’t like you?”

                The pressure builds despite Obama’s extensions of unemployment insurance. When will they end? You know they will end. What am I doing wrong with my job application process? Should I spend another $300 on a consultant?

You take short walks each morning to “stay in shape” but you can’t jog, because of heart weakness caused by the 2004 pneumonia and your age. You wake up more and more often at 2 a.m. and can’t get back to sleep. You know this is weakening your body each day and ultimately shortening your life.

                You join “networking groups” at $20 per lunch for someone who can only afford $3. You get a free mentor via the group, however, who says “we’ll get you a job in 4-5 months.” Then another mentor who says “in 2-3 months.” Nothing. It must be me. Or my previous firms have blacklisted me. But they swear that by law they can only confirm that I worked there and for what duration. Your paranoia reaches new heights.

                But the predators looking for desperate people on those websites lure you to “cattle-call” interviews in the suburbs or Philadelphia. This means shelling out $60 for train rides here and $150 for rides there. The cattle-call interviews are in a rent-by-the-day, three-room suite at some executive park. The receptionist is 20-something and has hard rock music blasting so loud you have to shout to each other to be heard. No boss is there to tell her to turn it down.

                I was offered one job, and quickly, last February or March. It would have been as a real estate agent in Manhattan. The 25-30-year-old interviewer liked me and thought I could sell a lot of residences because of my age and trustworthy looks on his team. He said, “Can you start Monday?” “Sure.” But then he said we had to go up one flight to meet his boss. “Oh, oh,” I thought. His boss was a 40-something,Type-A maniac,  and took one look at me for five to 10 seconds, never spoke or looked at my resume, and said, “We’ll call you in a couple of hours.”

                They never did. I guess he didn’t want a bald man with a potbelly in his firm, especially when everyone I could see working there was 25-30 and his receptionist all four days I was there wore extremely low-cut blouses.

As the weeks drag into months, and, now, years, you tell everyone who asks: “I have my ups and downs.”

Trouble is, during the downs, you visualize yourself like your parents, on your back, sprouting one-centimeter-deep bedsores and screaming at each touch of a relative or a nurse. Or you see your nine-year-old and aren’t able to talk to him as you die because of a stroke. Or you see things as they would be with NO health insurance—a real possibility—dying in an ER waiting room. Your winter parka zipper breaks and you hand-sew the front in three spots. Now you have to slip it on over your head. An embarrassing and clumsy process. But you can’t afford a $70 parka from Land’s End. You ask MassMutual, who liked you at two interviews and wants you to proceed to become an agent, if they can pay you $15,000 to $20,000 annual base salary during a six-12-month trial period and waive the commission-only payment plan. Nope, they say. “We like to think of our agents as ‘entrepreneurs’ and don’t want to break that incentive to seek customers.” Well, that’s true. But I’ve been out of work for one whole year. How do I feed my family if I fail? I’ve never been a salesman before? “Sorry. Company policy.”

                You read stories about Goldman Sachs executives buying handguns from New Jersey to protect themselves from angry commoners. You understand. You speak with a director at Citigroup, who used to be a friend of yours, and he says Citigroup also has suffered, laying off 50,000 workers. You research it and they were laid off in India. He copies the Obama line that the same workers that created this mess need to be kept on because they are the only ones who understand it and can correct it. He says, “I’ve been working my tush off. Countless weekends and late nights.” Yes, but you and your wife and fivekids are still covered withexcellent heatlh insurance, right? Andyou still can pay the mortgage for your five-bedroom home with the white-picket fence in small-town Westchester, right?

                You read stories about farmers in India committing suicide by the hundreds because they have lost access to seeds needed to plant their meager crops because of the financial meltdown caused by Wall Street. To them, in their culture, however, they feel they must take responsibility for not feeding their family. You understand.

                What if unemployment ends? Will my wife move back with her mother and take my son? Will my son steadily forget me and attach himself to another man as boys are wont to do? Or will she have mercy and find a studio apartment and squeeze us all into it? Will the landlord or police allow such a thing?

                If our little family split, it would never be the same between him mand me. And I’d lose my wife’s companionship and have no one to talk to, except the people at the food banks or in the shelters or on the trains “selling” the free newspaper called “The Onion” as a scam for a few quarters.

Jan. 16, 2010

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a 20th century American Catholic writer. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist and student of comparative religion. After President Dwight Eisenhower’s great prophecy about the military-industrial complex, but before the Cuban Missile Crisis and JFK’s murder, Merton said his greatest fear was “just one misstep into moral depravity.” He said that the control of society by its weapons and corporations would remove moral restraints.

                You can see how Merton’s prophecy ranks as high in impact and accuracy as does that of Ike when you look at the Bush-Cheney’s regime’s embracing of torture. And, now, also when you look at  the U.S. government’s indifference to health care and climate control. With respect to health care, “The Raw Story” reports that roughly 50,000 lives will be lost in the U.S. within two years—the time it takes the mush of a health “reform” to be passed and activated.

                The hard reality is that people like Dick Cheney (“So?”) and the grubworms removing the roots of the middle class by letting thousands die or lose their savings or retirement funds and President Barack Obama and the corporate elite letting hundreds of millions, if not billions, die in the next 50-100 years from global warming is that “they don’t care.”

                Saint Reagan’s infamous “trickle down” theory that tax cuts for corporations and the rich would “trickle down” and help even the poorest in society, when exposed for the sham it is and always was, then takes hold as men like Tom Hanks’ character in “Road to Perdition” begin to steal, rob, kill or join the mafia to feed their families.

                As seen in the former U.S.S.R., collapses can come within one-two years. Who are the richest people in Russia’s new-found “capitalism”—the mafia.

                Joseph Stiglitz on Jan. 13, 2010, in “Mother Jones” wrote:

“It is said  that a near-death experience forces one to reevaluate priorities and values. The global economy has just escaped a near-death experience. The crisis exposed the flaws in the prevailing economic model, but it also exposed flaws in our society. Much has been written about the foolishness of the risks that the financial sector undertook, the devastation that its institutions have brought to the economy, and the fiscal deficits that have resulted. Too little has been written about the underlying moral deficit that has been exposed-a deficit that is larger, and harder to correct.

“One of the lessons of this crisis is that there is a need for collective action, that there is a role for government. But there are others. We allowed markets to blindly shape our economy, but in doing so, they also shaped our society. We should take this opportunity to ask: Are we sure that the way that they have been molding us is what we want?

“We have created a society in which materialism overwhelms moral commitment, in which the rapid growth that we have achieved is not sustainable environmentally or socially, in which we do not act together to address our common needs. Market fundamentalism has eroded any sense of community and has led to rampant exploitation of unwary and unprotected individuals. There has been an erosion of trust-and not just in our financial institutions. It is not too late to close these fissures.

“How the market has altered the way we think is best illustrated by attitudes toward pay. There used to be a social contract about the reasonable division of the gains that arise from acting together within the economy. Within corporations, the pay of the leader might be 10 or 20 times that of the average worker. But something happened 30 years ago, as the era of Thatcher/Reagan was ushered in. There ceased to be any sense of fairness; it was simply how much the executive could appropriate for himself. It became perfectly respectable to call it incentive pay, even when there was little relationship between pay and performance. In the finance sector, when performance is high, pay is high; but when performance is low, pay is still high. The bankers knew-or should have known-that while high leverage might generate high returns in good years, it also exposed the banks to large downside risks. But they also knew that under their contracts, this would not affect their bonuses.

“Exaggerating the virtues of one's wares or claiming greater competency than the evidence warrants is something that one might have expected from many businesses. Far harder to forgive is the moral depravity-the financial sector's exploitation of poor and middle-class Americans. Our financial system discovered that there was money at the bottom of the pyramid and did everything possible to move it toward the top. We are still debating why the regulators didn't stop this. But shouldn't the question also have been: Didn't those engaging in these practices have any moral compunction?

“Sometimes, the financial companies (and other corporations) say that it is not up to them to make the decisions about what is right and wrong. It is up to government. So long as the government hasn't banned the activity, a bank has every obligation to its shareholders to provide financial support for any activity from which it can obtain a good return. The predecessors to JPMorgan Chase helped finance slave purchases. Citibank had no qualms about staying in apartheid South Africa.” [But that is the “just following orders excuse of the ‘good’ Germans” in World War II’s Holocaust.]

I also would like the reader to sample Chris Hedges’ insights from Jan. 11, 2010 in TruthDig.com

“Corporations, which control the levers of power in government and finance, promote and empower the psychologically maimed. Those who lack the capacity for empathy and who embrace the goals of the corporation-personal power and wealth-as the highest good succeed. Those who possess moral autonomy and individuality do not. And these corporate heads, isolated from the mass of Americans by insular corporate structures and vast personal fortunes, are no more attuned to the misery, rage and pain they cause than were the courtiers and perfumed fops who populated Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution. They play their games of high finance as if the rest of us do not exist. And it is a game that will kill us.

“These companies exist in a pathological world where identity and personal worth are determined solely by the perverted code of the corporation. The corporation decides who has value and who does not, who advances and who is left behind. It rewards the most compliant, craven and manipulative, and discards the losers who can't play the game, those who do not accumulate wealth or status fast enough, or who fail to fully subsume their individuality into the corporate collective. It dominates the internal and external lives of its employees, leaving them without time for family or solitude-without time for self-reflection-and drives them into a state of perpetual nervous exhaustion. It breaks them down, especially in their early years in the firm, a period in which they are humiliated and pressured to work such long hours that many will sleep under their desks. This hazing process, one that is common at corporate newspapers where I worked, including The New York Times, eliminates from the system most of those with backbone, fortitude and dignity. 

“No one thinks in groups. And this is the point. The employees who advance are vacant and supine. They are skilled drones, often possessed of a peculiar kind of analytical intelligence and drive, but morally, emotionally and creatively crippled. Their intellect is narrow and inhibited. They rely on the corporation, as they once relied on their high-priced elite universities and their SAT scores, for validation. They demand that they not be treated as individuals but as members of the great collective of Goldman Sachs or AIG or Citibank. They talk together. They exchange information. They make deals. They compromise. They debate. But they do not think. They do not create. All capacity for intuition, for unstructured thought, for questions of meaning deemed impractical or frivolous by the firm, the qualities that always precede discovery and creation, are banished, as William H. Whyte observed in his book "The Organization Man." The iron goals of greater and greater profit, order and corporate conformity dominate their squalid belief systems. And by the time these corporate automatons are managing partners or government bureaucrats they cannot distinguish between right and wrong. They are deaf, dumb and blind to the common good.

“These deeply stunted and maladjusted individuals, from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to Robert Rubin to Lawrence Summers to the heads of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America, hold the fate of the nation in their hands. They have access to trillions of taxpayer dollars and are looting the U.S. Treasury to sustain reckless speculation. The financial and corporate system alone validates them. It defines them. It must be served. This is why e-mails from the New York Fed to AIG, telling the bailed-out insurer not to make public the overpaying of Wall Street firms with taxpayer money, were sent when Geithner was in charge of the government agency. These criminals sold the public investments they knew to be trash. They used campaign contributions and lobbyists to turn elected officials into stooges and gut oversight and regulation. They took over retirement savings and pensions and wiped them out. And then they seized some $13 trillion in taxpayer money so they could lend it to us with interest. It is circular theft. This is why we will endure another catastrophic financial collapse. This is why firms like Goldman Sachs are more dangerous to the nation than al-Qaida.

“’The psychology is about winning, and winning is marked by the level of compensation and bonuses and the power you have within the firm,’ Nomi Prins, the author of ‘It Takes a Pillage’ and a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, told [Hedges] by phone from California. ‘Every investment bank is like a mini-country. The political maneuvering and the differences between individuals who run certain areas and move up the ladder of the company are not necessarily decided by a vote. They move up depending on how close they are to the person [above them]. If that person moves up they move up with them. A certain set of loyalties get created. It is an intense competition all the time. You have trading and doing deals with clients, but the result is to push people up the ladder and to make money.’

“How you make money and how you climb the ladder of the corporate structure are irrelevant. Success becomes its own morality. Those who do well in this environment possess the traits often exhibited by psychopaths-superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation, and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. They, like competitors on a reality television program, lie, cheat and betray to climb over those around them and advance. These demented individuals are admired and envied within the firm. They achieve heroic status. The lower-ranking employees are supposed to emulate them. And this makes Goldman Sachs and other speculative financial firms upscale lunatic asylums where the inmates wear Brooks Brothers suits and drink expensive chardonnay. Our problem is that the lunatics have been let out of the asylum. They have been empowered to cannibalize the government on behalf of the corporations that spawned them like mutant carp.

“These corporations don't make anything. They don't produce anything. They gamble and bet and speculate. And when they lose vast sums they raid the U.S. Treasury so they can go back and do it again. Never mind that $50 trillion in global wealth was erased between September 2007 and March 2009, including $7 trillion in the U.S. stock market and $6 trillion in the housing market. Never mind that the total amount of retirement and household wealth trashed was $7.5 trillion or that we saw $2 trillion in 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts evaporate. Never mind the $1.9 trillion in traditional defined-benefit plans and the $2.6 trillion in nonpension assets that went up in smoke. Never mind the job losses, the foreclosures and the 35 percent jump in personal and small-business bankruptcies. There are bundles of new money, taken again from us, to make deals and hand out outrageous bonuses. And when these trillions run out they will come back for more until our currency becomes junk. Not that any of these people have thought this through. They are too busy focused on the pathetic, little monuments they are building to themselves and the intricacies of court intrigue.

“’There are always internal conversations about taking credit for certain trades and deals,’ Prins said of her time at Goldman Sachs. ‘It is childish, except there is so much money at stake and so much power within the firm at stake. Power in the firm allows you to make money, but it also provides a certain status that everyone looks up to and covets. There can be a period of a month or two at the end of the year where closed-door conversations occur between managers and people who work for them about compensation. In these conversations they go something like: ‘My group did that trade.' ‘I did that trade.' ‘No, that was my money.' ‘No, that was my profit and loss.' ‘That's my client.' ‘I know the other group said that it was their client but actually I had the relationship first.' A lot of these petty conversations go back and forth. All of it to attain money and acquire power and influence within the firm.’

“Those who advance in these institutions master the art of looking like they are doing more than they are actually doing. It does not matter who does the most. It matters who can take credit for doing the most. And that often means poaching someone else's work. Friendship becomes a meaningless word. So does compassion. So does honesty. So does truth. By any standard comprehensible within the tradition of Western civilization these people are illiterate. They cannot recognize the vital relationship between power and morality. They have forgotten, or never knew, that moral traditions are the product of civilization. Existence, for them, boils down to one overriding imperative-me, me, me.

"’You are not thinking whether it is ethical to dump a bunch of loans into the street or repackage them and re-rate them better,’ she said. ‘You are only thinking about getting the deal done. You don't think about how issuing certain securities or structuring certain deals will impact people [around you].’

‘When you are living, competing and winning in an environment where it is all about the money and the power, it creates a dividing line between you and the rest of the world,’ Prins said. ‘You do not bother to look over the dividing line. Your world is on your side of it and the rest of the world is on their side of it. You are not looking at people being kicked out of their homes and being foreclosed. You do not see the crying, the anger and the children in the street because [those in government] decided to give money to bail out Wall Street firms as opposed to renegotiate mortgage principals so people can continue to live their lives. You can be callous about it because it does not impact you. It is not something you notice. You might read about it. But you don't feel it, watch it or go through it. You are detached.’

“Banks are continuing to have hemorrhaging in consumer portfolios including mortgage loans, auto loans, credit card loans and other loans. Bankruptcies are endemic. Toxic assets if properly assessed would mean that many of our largest banks are insolvent. But the profits from the trading revenues and bonuses have climbed back to near-record highs. The sick mentality of the game, the one that created the first worldwide meltdown, dominates the nervous systems of our elite the way cravings overtake heroin addicts. They can't think of anything else. They do not know how. No one goes to Wall Street to further the common good. People go to make money. And money, like power, is a potent narcotic.

"’You don't think you are doing anything wrong,’ Prins said. ‘You are working. You are making money. You are trying to have your bosses like you and pay you. You run things by legal [the company's legal department]. You run things by compliance. You don't believe you are committing a crime. You are just doing what you are doing.’

"’We will have another crisis,’ she lamented. ‘I don't know when, but it is brewing. If you don't fundamentally change the foundation of the banking system you are piling on capital and time into something that is faulty. This does not result in decades of stability. They are banking on trading. Nothing has changed. The rest of the consumer economy is continuing to deteriorate. These losses go into banks. You gain on trading and lose on more solid practices. The foundation has not changed. The regulations are bullshit. The old assets are still crap. The new assets created off the old assets are still crap. The banks are still levering them and still doing the same practices they did before. We will have another liquidity crunch. Banks will again stop trusting their assets and each other. ...  The buying of complex assets will stop, although this time more quickly. People will remember what happened before. You will have a repeat of credit constricting between financial institutions. It is already constricted on the consumer side. The banking system will use up this federal capital and then go back for more.’ 

Modified on Dec. 11, 2009 from initial draft on Sept. 18, 2009

At the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse, most observers were talking about how Richard Fuld Jr, the disgraced ex-CEO, could rehab his reputation and get on with his life. I began a story, on assignment for one of the elite spinmeisters, that went something like this:

Patience and sincere charity.

If Richard Fuld Jr., the disgraced former chief of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., can demonstrate those two virtues over whatever time it takes—and he must remember that HE cannot control the time, he could rehabilitate his reputation. But it would truly be a miracle for him to regain the kind of authority he once had.

In 1730, Benjamin Franklin listed 13 virtues that he felt were an important guide for living. The virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility. Franklin tried to follow these guides in his life, although he often went astray.

But Mr. Fuld, whom CNBC called one of the most incompetent CEOs of all time, needs to choose carefully (focusing on patience and then charity, which was missing from Franklin’s list) and set his goals low. Fuld also must be modest. It may be best for him to become an investment adviser or counselor or a commentator on television or the Internet. It is doubtful that he’ll be able to reach previous heights and do what he did before [be a CEO], with that level of authority.

But he can get back much of his lost respect. It depends on whether he has the will, time and money, and whether he is patient. Those three things WERE mentioned by Franklin. He should invest whatever capital he has into philanthropic organizations and funds and try to do some good. He needs to demonstrate that he can be depended upon. But first, he should “go to Siberia for a while.” None of this is possible overnight.

Reports say that Mr. Fuld, is having a hard time putting the past behind him. Lehman's collapse one year ago turned a Wall Street crisis into a full-blown global panic, capping its chief's transformation from Wall Street prince to pariah. Mr. Fuld, who remained defiantly optimistic about his 158-year-old investment bank's prospects even in its final days, has been haunted since by its demise, say friends and associates. Facing hate mail, regulatory probes and dozens of civil suits over his role in the firm's fall, Mr. Fuld has publicly said he did all he could to save Lehman and has faulted the government for letting his firm fail while rescuing others.

Privately, however, he apologized for his role in Lehman's collapse in an emotional and previously unreported address to employees of a new firm staffed by former Lehman workers in April: "I spent too much time out of the office with clients and trusted other people to manage the risk. I'm sorry. I take responsibility for what happened and have been doing a lot of soul searching." Now, Mr. Fuld needs to do the same in public forums.

Mr. Fuld's world collapsed on Sept. 15, 2008, when Lehman initiated the largest bankruptcy proceedings in U.S. history. The next day, showing up for work as he had for most of the past 40 years, he sold more than two million Lehman shares, according to regulatory filings. Valued at more than $145 million at the beginning of 2008, the shares netted him about $525,000, filings show. At the end of 2008, Mr. Fuld formally resigned his position at Lehman. The executive whose net worth topped $1 billion a few years earlier and commanded $40 million worth of pay and benefits in 2007, now relinquished his $750,000 annual salary, benefits, car and driver.

Mr. Fuld, who once oversaw 25,000 employees, has opened a financial-advisory firm on Manhattan's Third Avenue, with two assistants and an aide. His new Matrix Advisors LLC has received a handful of assignments, he has told people. He has given hours of free advice to a firm run by a former Lehman employee, say people familiar with the matter.

But some potential clients privately say they wouldn't hire Mr. Fuld at this time, worried about the unresolved probes he faces.

However, Mr. Fuld has fertile ground to work with if he avoids blaming the government and making excuses, as hard as that may be. There have been no legal allegations of personal  responsibility, but he still remains a sort of posterchild for the 2008 financial meltdown.

For Mr. Fuld to achieve redemption:

• In public and in private, he must be transparent and apologetic, and offer no excuses. Simply say “this happened on my watch and I’m sorry.”
• He must find an opportunity or two to do something good, such as start a foundation for Lehman employees who were laid off. Also many charities need help managing their assets.
• He could even re-enter the banking world. The only way he would be able to get back somewhat to “even,” at least for his own comfort, is to show that he is still able to work, productively, in the capital markets. But it must be about the future, not the past. Lehman is dead, there’s no going back. To reclaim his reputation, he could show that he still has the ability and expertise—and the connections—to be a player on a global level. In fact, he has been seen with high-profile friends, including IBM Corp. CEO Samuel Palmisano and real-estate magnate Jerry Speyer.
• And, above all, he must be humble.

The trouble is that people with his skill sets are “Type A" for their whole lives. Those kinds of individuals must not expend their pent-up energy poorly. They have to show themselves as in control and “winding-down,” taking their energy and putting it into the community, preferably into something they honestly believe in.

As an example of the kind of pressure Type A persons may feel, California financier Danny Pang died in September 2009 at a Newport Beach hospital. Mr. Pang, 42, had been taken from his Newport Beach home Friday afternoon by paramedics and placed in the cardiac-care unit of the hospital. The police said an autopsy is needed to help determine whether Mr. Pang's death was self-inflicted. Mr. Pang had been under severe pressure in recent months, accused by federal regulators of masterminding a massive international securities fraud and misappropriating millions of dollars for himself. He denied wrongdoing.

On Dec. 3 in The Daily Beast, William D. Cohan updated what had been the beginnings of my story for a totally different publisher. Cohan, a former senior-level M&A banker on Wall Street, is the author of The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co, and his new best seller House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street:

In the months following the collapse of his firm, Dick Fuld, the longtime chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers, did what any self-respecting businessman facing financial ruin would do: He transferred the title of his waterfront home on the tony, exclusive Florida enclave of Jupiter Island into his wife Kathleen’s name for a mere pittance. Now, it seems, the couple is taking their time paying the nearly $212,000 in annual property taxes on the house, although they are still months away from any default for failure to pay.

The transfer of the property to Kathy Fuld made sense, of course, because if Lehman’s forlorn creditors started coming after Fuld for whatever transgressions they perceived him to be responsible for in the wake of the collapse of the firm in September 2008—where shareholders were wiped out and creditors are still hoping to receive pennies on the dollar—at least his Florida home (valued for tax purposes at $13.3 million and probably worth much more) would be safe from their grasp. Florida’s lenient bankruptcy laws make real property beyond the reach of creditors under most circumstances.

Fuld completed the transfer of the property, at 265 South Beach Road, on 3.3 acres of land, facing the Atlantic Ocean, on November 10, 2008, near two months after Lehman collapsed. The Fulds bought the house in rosier times—March 2004—from Jeffrey Gelman, a local real-estate developer, for $13.75 million. (Gelman reportedly sold another home recently on the island, for $5 million, after a tough series of negotiations to someone he thinks was acting on behalf of billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates. He also sold a house recently on the island to singer Celine Dion.)

After the Fulds bought the house from Gelman, they were then responsible for the annual property taxes. In 2004, that tax bill was $154,028.92, or if paid before it was technically due, at the end of March 2005, the taxes would be $147,867, representing a four percent discount for early payment. The Fulds paid the lower, discounted amount by check, on November 27, 2004 and saved them themselves $6,161.

In each of the following years, the Fulds paid the property taxes in November—early—in order to capture the biggest discount since each month that the taxes are unpaid the discount available gets smaller until March, when the full amount is due. (A default is declared if the taxes are not paid by April of the following year.)

On November 15, 2008, despite the collapse of his firm two months earlier and just after the title was transferred into his wife’s name, Fuld’s “independent family office,” located in Albany, New York sent a check for $197,193.75 to the Martin County, Florida tax collector, in Stuart, Florida. He saved himself $8,216 in the process.

So far in 2009, though, the Fulds have not yet paid their taxes, which is out of step for what they have done since they owned the place. The bill, sent to Kathleen Fuld at the couple’s Greenwich, Connecticut home, was for $218,553.76. If the Fulds decide to pay the bill sometime in December, the taxes would be $211,997.15.

The Fulds still should have plenty of money, despite Fuld losing somewhere around $1 billion in paper net worth when his firm collapsed. He still owns his palatial mansion in Greenwich and his elegant spread near Sun Valley, Idaho. In August 2009, the Fulds sold their full-floor 6,200-square-foot apartment on Park Avenue to Glenn Fuhrman, the head of MSD Capital (the investment firm set up by Dell Computer founder Michael S. Dell), for $25.87 million. The Fulds had paid $21 million for the apartment in January 2007 and then gutted and renovated it. They had been seeking $32 million for the apartment.

Last November 2008, the Fulds sold a portion of Kathy’s art collection—some 16 pieces—for $13.5 million, below the low-end of the range they hoped to receive. No matter, though, Christie’s had guaranteed that the Fulds would receive $20 million for this small portion of their larger collection, so it was the auction house that suffered the loss, not the Fulds. Kathy Fuld is on the board of trustees of the Museum of Modern Art.

As for Fuld himself, he is now working at something called Matrix Advisors, at 780 Third Avenue, in Manhattan. Except for several obvious cameos in Andrew Ross Sorkin’s excellent, Too Big Too Fail, Fuld has spoken to the media only once since his fall from grace. That was last September, when Claire Baldwin, an intrepid reporter at Reuters, tracked him down at his house in Ketchum, Idaho.

When Baldwin asked him how he was holding up, he said, “You know Freud in his lifetime was challenged, but you know what he always said, ‘You know what, my mother loves me.’ And you know what, my family loves me and I've got a few close friends who understand what happened and that's all I need.”

He could not be reached for comment on the Daily Beast’s story nor on my meager beginning, which was turned down by the elite spinmeister. At any rate, according to the Daily Beast story above and their sidebar (below), the Fulds appear anything but humble and don’t seem to care at all about rehabbing their reputations.

A sidebar from “The Daily Beast” on how the rich spend their money:

Last week, Kathleen Fuld, wife of Lehman Brothers C.E.O. Dick Fuld, stopped by the Hermès boutique on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue to buy some holiday gifts. As she paid for her purchases, she vetoed the store’s signature orange bag and asked for a plain white one instead.

It’s become a common request, an Hermès employee told The Daily Beast. Sales associates at this temple of good taste have gotten used to passing out plain white shopping bags to clients eager to hide their $10,000 Birkin habits in the current economic environment.

At Hermès and a handful of other exclusive retailers, “secret shopping” has becoming the winter season’s newest trend. Anyone who can still afford, say, the three cashmere throws at $2,225 each that Mrs. Fuld bought when she stopped by the store that day isn’t likely to advertise it. Instead, the city’s most extravagant shoppers are ferrying their purchases home in unmarked bags; delegating delivery to assistants; or manipulating credit card bills to disguise their spending from outsiders—and their spouses.

“We kind of respect it,” says the sales associate, who’s worked at the store for several years and sees a white bag twice a day now, up from once a month in August. Skipping the trademark citrus bag, with its thick paper, brown cord handles, and logo, Hermès’ biggest spenders are “trying to be discreet.”

Indeed. Since the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, Mrs. Fuld has still been a regular client, visiting the boutique once a week and spending $5,000 or $10,000 each time, says the associate. Now, she doesn’t want any one to know. (Through a spokesperson, Mrs. Fuld declined to comment on this article.)

Typically, brown paper bags conceal contraband—alcohol, pornographic magazines. Have luxury goods become the new dirty little secret among the ultra rich?

“People are feeling guilty and they’re feeling confused and they’re feeling like they didn’t earn their money, especially within the financial community,” says Milton Pedraza, C.E.O. of the Luxury Institute, a market research company for purveyors of luxury goods and services.

Pedraza has heard of several retailers offering plain packaging, or shipping in unmarked boxes, including Net-A-Porter, the online designer boutique that traffics in labels such as Chloé, Missoni, and Jimmy Choo. (The company didn’t return a call to confirm.) A quick trip to Tiffany confirmed that the Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan has white bags available too, although a salesperson there said the store has offered them, as an alternative to the classic blue bags, for at least seven years.

In a recent conversation with a top executive at a New York luxury retailer, which Pedraza didn’t identify, the executive observed that sales were down at his stores only partly because no one wanted to splurge. The bigger factor among shoppers of means was that they “don’t want to be seen as consuming luxury,” says Pedraza.

In response, the executive introduced enhanced personal shopping services, where buyers could shop and try on clothes in private rooms in the store, and extended the store’s home delivery policy.

Lucy Ann Barry, who owns an exclusive consignment store on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and offers personal shopping and styling, says stealthy spending by the cosseted clients she shuttles between Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys is nothing new.

“They’re always trying to hide it,” says Barry. “But I’m seeing more stealth maneuvers” since the economy tanked.

A few weeks ago, a female client from the South spent $1,200 on a Gucci snakeskin bag from Barry. “She said, ‘Please ship it with a gift card wishing me a happy birthday, so my husband doesn’t kill me,’” says Barry. “So I didn’t put the invoice in the box. I just put a card that said ‘Happy Birthday, I hope you love the bag!’”

Barry has recently seen women split a purchase among several credit cards—Hermès, for example, will divide a purchase among a maximum of three cards—to avoid a single credit card bill that could give a spouse sticker-shock. She’s had clients pay half in cash, half on a card. Or they pay for part of the item up front, and return to pay the rest later.

Luxury boutiques and department stores are happy to enable such secret shoppers, keeping them afloat in a grim environment for high-end retail.

“Underground shopping has gotten to the point where retailers recognize a need to cut the labels out of the clothing,” says Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst with the NPD Group, a market research firm for the retail industry. Of course, that’s only at the top end of the market. “The lower end wants to keep the label in.”

But back at Hermès, not everyone is orange-bag shy.

“I understand the concept that people don’t want to be seen spending a lot of money,” says Bruce Culmer, a 62-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., in town visiting a friend. Culmer is leaving Hermès with his purchase—three silk ties—proudly swinging in an orange bag.

“People shouldn’t be flaunting what they have. But it’s kind of silly to hide it.”

Barack Obama deserves to be analyzed on his own merits. He deserves the best chance possible. And it seems as though he is fully capable of playing multidimensional chess with all of the world’s problems and then having the solution come to light near the end, like when all the pieces in disarray in a rubric’s cube "magically" come into place at the hands of a master. Or in a "CSI" or "The Mentalist" episode, when the crime is solved in the last five minutes.

But more than one or two championship traits are needed in major league baseball. If the Yankees have great hitting and starting pitching, but lack defense or middle relief pitching, they will not be champions. If Mr. Obama—at this tipping point in world history—has great speaking skills and a near genius IQ, but lacks the uncanny ability of FDR to time his fireside chats both in pace and per crisis or lacks the personality traits of an LBJ to play all of his chips—put his foot down, his career on the line—at the right time, he loses—not only a second term, but the lives of hundreds of millions of people worldwide because of the coming climate change crisis and "life as we know it," as termed by one of the foremost scientists, James Hanson of NASA, who has been predicting climate catastrophe since 1988.

For all of his coolness under pressure and knowledge of the problems at hand, Mr. Obama may be another Herbert Hoover, who, believe it or not—given his infamy as a buffoon—was elected by people who wanted to "let genius have its chance." Hoover understood the problems of the Great Depression that began early in his term, in October 1929. Nearly all the programs or solutions tried between the Crash of ’29 and FDR’s first term, which didn’t begin until 1932 were copied by Roosevelt, but implemented better and harder. Hoover’s measured IQ likely exceeded that of FDR, but FDR had a sixth sense of how the general populace felt, what the political parties could take, when to use his bully pulpit—which should be Obama’s most potent weapon, and when to get down and dirty behind the scenes.

When Franklin Roosevelt took office, he was only 51, not that much older than Obama. But he had a gravitas to his voice, especially on radio, and a patrician’s air. He manipulated the media, not the corporations. Obama cannot manipulate the corporate media but does have a good command of the Internet. But there is a disconnect. No family sits around its computer to listen to one of Obama’s talks, like they used to when FDR gave a talk on the radio. When that happened, the streets were empty; everyone was listening to Roosevelt and was comforted and inspired by him. I’m sure the topic of his talk was discussed at water coolers the next day. Nothing of the sort is happening with Obama’s many Internet-propelled speeches to the nation. No one knows when they are scheduled. No families await his words. No one speaks of his talk at the coffee machine these days.

And that’s what is needed, if it’s not too late already. Obama has to make HIS speeches as highly watched or listened to as those of Roosevelt. It IS a different time altogether. But Obama’s message got through during the election process. He has to USE his bully pulpit and eloquent words. Or none of us, especially Obama in 2012, will be able to live life as we’ve luxuriated in it since 1980.

Feb. 9, 2009

"Sixteen Tons"

Sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford

Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's weak and a back that's strong

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one morning when the sun didn't shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said "Well-a, bless my soul"

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

Being laid off is an expensive proposition.

I was laid off about five months ago. Besides the obvious costs in money, ego, and stress, not just for me, but for my wife and son, there are the hidden costs of what could be called the "little" predators, as opposed to the big predators we have all heard of: banks, Wall Street investment firms, creators of indecipherable derivative debts, subprime mortgages palmed off on the ignorant and desparate-for-the-American-Dream masses, the trillion-dollar bailout of the creators of those derivatives and the predators selling those subprime mortgages.

The little predators are the companies, Web sites, and entrepeneurs who spring up to provide—at a cost, plus hidden cost—resume writing aid, job-search sites, interview skills training, high falutin’ sales jobs where the dangled-in-your-face salary stretches into the hundreds of thousands while the real income is more like the $10 per hour you could get from unemployment.

My recent credit-card bills were jawdropping, as the hidden costs were finally revealed. For extra features on CareerBuilder, where no price is in an obvious place—if anywhere at all—I paid $530 last month and got zero job interviews. The networking service, LinkedIn, charged $200 for services I hadn’t realized I had incurred in my attempts to spread the word that I was available for employment. I DID get interviews to sell all kinds of insurance, however. Of course, I had to have the costs of software and classes upfront, with a promise of repayment in the foggy future. Those costs? $400. And I haven’t even explored the cost of the state of New York licensing exam I must take before making the promised, or inferred, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Also, there was a mediabistro fee of $100 that I hadn’t expected. I have to clarify that I knew I had asked for additional features from mediabistro and CareerBuilder and LinkedIn, but nowhere were the costs displayed, and digging down into the Web sites is not appealing when you’re pressed for time job searching and surviving.

Again, while Wall Street idiots and outright thieves were bailed out, the "coal shovelers" like myself now have to pay $89 a month for a subway pass instead of $81, $2.25 per ride instead of $2.00. It’s easy to push the cost onto the schmuck with no power as long as the cost to him is fairly small, small enough so he won’t take his shovel and storm city hall, the White House, or Capitol Hill, or Wall Street. It’s a death of a thousand cuts. Meanwhile, grocery stores now seem to charge at least $4 for EVERYTHING and McDonald’s "meal deals" in midtown are nearing $8—to eat there! Gracious!

Four of our married friends from church have had to move in with the wife’s parents to avoid paying NYC’s exhorbitant rents.

The comp/severance package my worldwide conglomerate gave me when I was laid off five months ago? Sure looked good, but human resources neglected to tell this coal shoveler that 42 percent of it would be taken out for taxes, because it was not "regular" income.

As the Great Depression II drags on, the prospect of having to move in with a friend or family looms, as do an inability to pay for COBRA health insurance (at $275 per month just for me, not including my wife and child), which would mean my son would not get his Concerta or a speech-delay specialist, and my wife an operation she really should have.

With journalism in newspapers a dying field, salaries for my like aren’t going to rise. In fact, to get into Web site media, many of my associates are "pre-lancing," which is a newly coined word for "free lancing for no money." The idea is to work for free for one week, learn the new Web site media, and get a good reference from the "pre-lance" "employer."

For Obama to change all of this, he will have to be FDR, Lincoln, Kennedy and LBJ rolled into one. He will have to push, shove and DEMAND that changes be made to help the little guy. Even the mighty baseball NY Yankees need the little teams to play, or there would be no games to televise and from which to make the huge TV revenue they thrive on.

People are not getting the message, except those who actually ARE CURRENTLY homeless. On any Friday night, you can still see people ignorant of the world’s crisis, the price of gas, the need to cut back from consumerism. They cruise the main streets of midtown or of any sector in the five boroughs, with the men’s arms hanging out over the convertible’s door as their "arm-candy" Friday night date, snuggles up next to their shoulder. Oblivious to the impending Depression and/or collapse as mentioned as a real possibility in Jared Diamond’s "Collapse."

They blare songs like the following out the convertible’s windows, while I sit in my apartment pounding on my keyboard, sending out resume after resume, like some coal miner shoveling coal and owing my soul to "the company store"—in this case, in the future, the elites of Wall Street, when they make me their serf.

"Little Deuce Coupe"

Sung by The Beach Boys

Little deuce coupe
You don’t know what I got
Little deuce coupe
You don’t know what I got

Well I’m not braggin babe so don’t put me down
But I’ve got the fastest set of wheels in town
When something comes up to me he don’t even try
Cause if I had a set of wings man I know she could fly
She’s my little deuce coupe
You don’t know what I got

Just a little deuce coupe with a flat head mill
But she’ll walk a thunderbird like (she’s) standin still
She’s ported and relieved and she’s stroked and bored.
She’ll do a hundred and forty with the top end floored

She’s my little deuce coupe
You don’t know what I got

She’s got a competition clutch with the four on the floor
And she purrs like a kitten till the lake pipes roar
And if that ain’t enough to make you flip your lid
There’s one more thing, I got the pink slip daddy!

And comin’ off the line when the light turns green
Well she blows ‘em outta the water like you never seen
I get pushed out of shape and its hard to steer
When I get rubber in all four gears

She’s my little deuce coupe
You don’t know what I got
(my little deuce coupe)
(you don’t know what I got)

March 17, 2009

[John Mousel, a 1987 graduate of the University of Minnesota School of Mass Communication, is a New York free-lance writer.]

Society is regressing. Back to the age of lords and serfs. Back, perhaps even, to the age of slavery, when common men and women were treated like chattel. And, sometimes, those common men and women are led to their demise by predatory tactics. Lack of education, insider knowledge, and money to hire lawyers make them easy targets. They try to counter those minuses by uniting, joining a union. But unions aren’t what they were in my daddy’s day, just after World War II. Corporations and the GOP have taken care of that.

Since 1980, poor antitrust enforcement, no-bid contracts and special favors more and more have enhanced corporate power. Major corporations no longer negotiate with workers on a level playing field.

Barack Obama's commitment to helping labor has always been suspect, but his recent giving over of the U.S. car industry to the investment banker Steven Rattner might well turn the president into the last great union buster.

But, I guess, there may be some remaining working-class resistance to the money power that Wall Street and the political parties would like to smash. And right now, Rattner and the Treasury Department task force's biggest target is not the overpaid executive staff at General Motors, but the United Auto Workers union, the country's best mass labor organization. In a few weeks or so, the demands for concessions from the allegedly overpaid and molly-coddled UAW members will rise to levels greater than the ineffective protest over the AIG bonuses.

Right-wingers still whine about "big labor's" supposed huge influence, but campaign contributions reveal more. The finance, insurance and real-estate sector gave Obama just over $38 million in this last campaign, while labor gave only $466,324, according to the research group Open Secrets.

Still, we will hear no end of the selfish autoworkers who dare to demand health insurance, pensions and good wages. Isn't it outrageous that a GM production worker can make $28 an hour, including benefits, and that he or she can retire in some comfort after decades on the assembly line? Isn't it terrible that GM is contractually obliged to take care of its workers?

Yet corporate bosses’ recent public shows of concern for workplace democracy won't stand common sense scrutiny. Would American workers consent to hundreds of millions in bonuses to corporate CEOs who trashed their businesses? Or would workers accept essentially a wage freeze since the mid-1970s even as their productivity increases every year? Not surprisingly, polls show that a majority would like to join independent unions.

One man’s attempt to join a union began in 2002. Let’s call him Bob. Bob’s fellow workers, editors and reporters at New York-based newspapers—which at the time and still are cash cows for the parent company, according to one of their recently (voluntarily) departed leading editors—still believed they’d profit if they unionized.

So, they met every week during lunch hours at the union’s office—a seven-block trek in midtown Manhattan. They even got up at 5 a.m. in order to get to a Manhattan hotel to picket company executives as they entered for a free-breakfast meeting. On other days, the workers walked in front of their regular office building , taking shifts around lunch time, to hand out fliers.

And they got the union! Or did they? Their first three-year contract, signed in October 2003, called only for a raise of $500 a year. Their union dues? Forty dollars per month. You do the math. Their second contract, another $500 raise. Again, the math learned in second-grade in Catholic school 46 years before was all Bob needed.

The rest of the contract? Let’s put it this way, their company’s highest executive in 2007 would say at a party: " I can see you unionizing, here in New York City, but why did you pick such a [crappy] one and settle so [darn] low?"

The first and second three-year contracts included phrases such as:

1. Reductions in Staff: "The Publisher will maintain the unilateral right to implement a reduction in staff for other than disciplinary reasons. Laid-off Employees: the Publisher may retain or recall a less senior Employee whose overall performance is better than that of more senior Employees.

2. Discharge and Discipline: "…the editorial judgment of the Publisher is to remain paramount in all employment decisions…In no event may the arbitrator review the wisdom of or substitute his view for the Publisher’s assessment of editorial quality."

3. No Strike, No Lock Out: "…No strike, sympathy strike or other interruption of normal employment or production shall be engaged in by Employees during the term of this Agreement."

Then, also in 2007, that uppermost executive helped squire a deal with a British upstart. "It’s time our shareholders got a fair return on their money," he told the workers via email. The common worker bees—toddler bees really—were prepped for a move to "fancy" Wall Street digs. A new human resources (HR) director appeared suddenly in an closet-size office at the old building. He looked a baby-faced and innocent, 25 years old at most. He was quiet and efficient—never talking to the worker children. Much the way one pictures Himmler in his office in the late 1930s.

A glimpse of the future came when the workers moved to their new digs—a huge building near Wall Street in which the British parent’s little companies were consolidated into two floors. The workers called the floors "the stockyards." That first day, each wandered into a blindingly white, new-carpet-smelling space the size of two football fields. They rubbed their eyes as they followed the "group leaders’" directions to their cubicles. From his, which Bob shared with another man, he could see 40 "head" of "cattle" to the northern side of the yard and another 40 head—bobbing their heads up and down over their one-foot-high stall walls as they lowered their heads to chew on some more words and then raised them to get cricks out of their necks—on the western side.

Because of the move to the "fancy" digs, half of Bob’s personal and company-related stuff had to be ditched. Now he was in a closet-size cubicle and the new HR director had a corner office with windows. Bob had space for only two photos of his son and wife.

Clearly, this was a place for grinding out the news like so much sausage. And if one "head" of cattle left or was "slaughtered"—the parent corporation just had to assign a young steer to his stall. Careful now! Those young ones bump and buck when first pushed into small spaces. But they’ll get used to it! Save money so the shareholders will be comfortable next time around!

A year before Bob’s company’s sale, in fall 2006, his father died in a hospital bed like a stranded fish gasping for air on a dock. The doctor—and Bob’s siblings—couldn’t euthanize him, like you would a head of beef—even though he had only 3 or 4 days left, at best. So, for those long days, Bob and his siblings watched him gasp for air and roll his eyes back in their sockets like Jack Nicholson in "The Shining." Then the doc prescribed morphine. And Bob’s dad stopped rasping. More morphine. Sleep. More morphine (strictly to ease the pain! Not to let him die with dignity!). Bob kissed his still-warm, but dead, head at 2:30 a.m., finally, one night.

In late 2006, Bob returned to his cubicle at the paper. His dad’s death had given him lung problems—leakage into the lungs’ lining. Two doctors had prescribed surgery. Under this pressure and the recent loss of his dad, both of which Bob’s boss knew fully, Bob inappropriately answered a client’s silly email. His apologies didn’t help. No excuses were accepted from the Brits’ common "children." Bob felt like Oliver Twist.

He soon was ambushed with a "Final Warning" from the newspaper. If he made an "inappropriate" comment again—no matter if someone was holding a surgical scalpel to his neck--he’d be fired immediately. Bob wrote at the time, "I still am not clear on when the implied prior warnings came. If they did come, they did not come in concrete terms, nor in writing, nor were they labeled No. 1, No. 2 and so on. The Final Warning came in the form of an ambush. (My boss) and I had scheduled a meeting in her office to discuss new columnists. Four minutes before that meeting, she sent an email stating ["We are meeting at 11, but another issue has come up and (the publisher) would like to be part of our conversation. So please meet me in his office at 11. Thanks."]

When Bob got to his office, a corporation lawyer and a senior vice president were there and the Final Warning was handed to Bob. Under this intense intimidation, with no time to prepare an answer and no union rep with him, Bob signed it.

In fact, Bob later learned that the union president had been notified by the publisher the evening BEFORE, but neither the union nor the company had warned Bob. With a warning, there would not have been an ambush which, Bob alleges, was set up to increase intimidation, and Bob could have taken the warning and studied it for at least 24 hours, if not a week or a month.

Bob later tried to communicate with his union rep and with the union president himself via the union’s Web site. In that note, Bob wrote that "[the union rep] tells me that [the publisher] called [the union president] yesterday AS A COURTESY and told him that I would be receiving a letter regarding an incident with a customer. How can [my boss] ambush me? How could [the union president] let her?"

Needless to say, the union president never replied to this communication.

It had been just another example of the union and company being in bed with each other and using predatory, intimidating—power—tactics over their chattel.

Despite six years of working full-speed and enduring a three-hour total daily commute, the Final Warning stayed on his record until he was laid off earlier this year, 2009.

The Brits, during the financial meltdown of summer and fall 2008, sent all of two emails. The first, in September, admitted they had purchased some of "those toxic investments you’ve been hearing about." They were "exploring" options that included layoffs in their London office (but not in the U.S.). "Whew! Still able to chew my news with my cattle-mates." The second in October or November said there would be no bonuses ("Bonuses. Some people get bonuses here?") or raises in 2009.

Then silence.

Finally, one fine January morning at 10:30 Bob called his boss to ask if he and she were still "on" to meet about a columnist who had been using only a rival newspaper as a source for his allotted 2,000 words. "Sure. Thanks for reminding me."

At 11:30 that same morning, she called from the HR department, "Can you come to the HR room?"

Himmler, Bob’s boss and Bob sat in Heinrich’s glass-walled office. Himmler pointed his finger in the direction of the gas chambers. A little child was of no use to this camp.

The "Agreement and General Release (‘Agreement’)" shoved in front of Bob’s face included such phrases as:

1. The Company will commence payment as soon as practicable after receipt of a signed copy of this Agreement and your return to the Company of all Company property [no mention of this having to be done without warning and within 30 minutes or that Bob’s computer already had been turned off]…. We cannot process any payments to you until after the seven days [change-of-mind time] have elapsed and you have not revoked your acceptance.

2. You agree not to disparage or make negative references about the Company … to any third party.

3. You covenant to hold all confidential information, whether CONTAINED IN YOUR MEMORY [or elsewhere]…

Bob thought: "They own my mind too?"

Young Himmler stated "we will need a couple of weeks" to do the paperwork and get the money to your account. Meanwhile, Bob’s rent was coming due.

The duress of an ambush and the predatory tactics? Again, as in late 2006, no union rep. (She must have gotten another courtesy call the night before and had made other plans.) Bob later faxed the Agreement to her. She called back and said it was OK for him to sign it. Bob had to pay the Feb. 1 rent in two days. He had no money in savings—nothing, having a special-needs child and heavy medical bills. And he had a few hundred in checking. He knew he needed this comp package in order to pay his $1,680 per month rent on March 1 and keep a roof over his wife and kid.

According to the Agreement, Bob would be getting 14 weeks’ pay in a lump sum in a "couple of weeks," according to Himmler. Close to the March 1 due date, Bob thought. He also thought, "Well, federal and state taxes will take quite a bit out, but I should get about $16,000 minus two or three thousand." He signed and sent by FedEx the Agreement to Himmler.

The Agreement’s wording said he would be getting those weeks’ pay "less lawful deductions." Bob thought that meant the usual taxes. Wrong. He got the lump-sum in the last week of February and it was about $9,000. The government had taken out 42 percent of his earned $16,000 or so! Himmler and the union had given him no more knowledge than "less lawful deductions." On March 1, after the shock of the 42 percent loss, Bob wrote Himmler, asking for an itemization of all deductions. He received a reply from the Brits’ payroll department on March 13, telling him that the compensation or severance pay was NOT regular pay, but was "Supplemental" wages whose tax rates are much higher: federal (25 percent), state (7.35 percent), and city (4 percent)--for a total of 42 percent. This information reached Bob 43 days after his lay-off day.

He believed the company had once again had used ambush and predatory tactics with the full knowledge of the union for which he had been paying $480 a year.

Himmler certainly knew that "supplemental" wages would have 42 percent taken out. His boss knew that. The union knew that. They played him for the ignorant middle-class stooge he was. They preyed upon him, lying by omission.

Thank god Bob and his coworkers had picketed that hotel in freezing temperatures in 2002 and had gotten their union! However, as they shivered in the morning snow, they never realized the union was just waking up inside one of the hotel’s rooms after a cozy night with management.

"Our workers are picketing in front of the hotel."

"So? Let’s go down to the executive dining room for some sausage, eggs, and, perhaps, a morning toast!"

Oct. 31, 2009

At the end of a difficult 12 months at B2B publisher Incisive Media, the company this past September became majority owned by its lending banks and lost control of American Lawyer Media and its 121-year-old flagship daily newspaper for New York lawyers, The New York Law Journal, less than two years after buying it in December 2007 to much hoopla and fanfare.

The “paper of record” for lawyers, which is known worldwide, in its exuberance after Incisive Media dumped loads of debt-created money into it even ditched its comfortable, long-time quarters at 345 Park Avenue South and moved into swank new digs at 120 Broadway, the old Equitable Building.

There was much partying and glad-handing and back-slapping—but no bonuses, except to the top executives, of course. This is America.

These executives, such as Tim Weller, the Andrew Lloyd Webber-like, tycoon-wannabe, and NYLJ’s Bill Pollak, the nice-guy who graduated cum laude from Harvard and is called “Uncle Bill” by his staff, never apologized for the layoffs after they began in London in late 2008 and hit 120 Broadway in January 2009 and did not face the troops or attempt to cut their own monetary rewards to keep some people on staff.

The failure of a lauded deal within less than two years was blamed on just about anything they could think of, including the peons—their staff. In December 2007, Pollak offhandedly mentioned that “the stockholders [in ALM] deserve a decent return on their investment” made years earlier. I guess those investors got all that debt-created cash in December 2007 and the same company right back in their hands in September 2009. That must be why they are called the “elite” and NYLJ lower editors and workers fall into the peon category.

As for Weller, he apparently just wanted to roll the dice to create an empire, kind of like Napoleon trying to conquer Russia. “If only...[it hadn’t snowed so much].” In one of two emails after the late-summer 2008 financial meltdown, Weller did admit that Incisive Media also had been caught buying the same “toxic” investments that hurt the rest of the world’s companies.

A bad sign, in retrospect to this former peon, came during a Weller visit to 120 Broadway around December 2008. Weller bopped around the football-field-size newsroom, but didn’t bother to pretend to care about workers below the level of editor in chief. Perhaps, he knew Russia was too big and he couldn’t look his serfs in their eyes, knowing they’d be walking barefoot through snow within weeks.

All that the peons got were pats on the back, empty speeches, and that “new-car” smell in the office from square yard upon square yard of new carpeting and its required glue. They also got free cupcakes in the shiny new kitchen area and new cubicles, but no warning that the cubicles could just as well have been built by my uncle on his farm in Minnesota by slapping white paint on old fence boards. The floor plan required two people to a cube, with the walls coming up to their chins, and the number of drawers for personal material cut in half. In America now, you see, a corporation has at LEAST as many rights as a human being, likely more. So we sacrificed ALL privacy and personal items and sucked in that new-car smell and accepted our subhuman status as long as that paycheck came.

But Incisor’s (oops, I mean Incisive’s) global CEO and founder (Weller) recently told a UK website that this past September’s takeover by the Bank of Scotland is not a BAD thing. It “is the most optimistic period in the company’s history,” and after nine months of financial talks he’s looking forward to concentrating on making money online, including charging customers for access.

Truly amazing, the land of the elites. I know that in peonville—subhumanville—if a guy, let’s call him ‘Joe,’ had made such mistakes they would have shown up in job reviews as “Joe has had nothing but a long series of gaffes” during his nine years here; that because Joe sent one badly worded email in December 2006, just after his dad died and he awaited news on whether he himself required lung surgery, “he must prove” that he can communicate with clients—never mind those nine years of good will created via phone, email and lunch conversations with NYC’s lawyers. Because of that one email, Joe also got ambushed with a “Final Warning” letter that management would not remove from his file unless he proved “good judgment.” Two years later, Joe told me he had asked if it could be removed. Nope. Still hadn’t proved that he had the good judgment of a Weller or an Uncle Bill.

In further lunch talks, Joe told me he guesses that if he had purchased a company, moved it into remodeled famous NYC building, while going into mountains of toxic debt, he would have gotten a bonus. If he’d laid off 42 people in one month worldwide, giving them three months severance—with 42 percent taken out by the government—in the worst job market since 1930, with no apologies or calls or going-away parties, he would have gotten a raise to Weller’s or Pollak’s positions. In their positions, gaffes and million-dollar blunders are rewarded and “spun” into “good news” that they’ve been “looking forward to.”

Instead, when Joe’s office manager quit in 2006, she wasn’t replaced for nearly two years, so there’d be enough money to give a Christmas bonus to the people who hadn’t sent ANY bad emails in nine years. The rest of us got raises equal to our union dues.

Weller admits the company “overstretched its balance sheet” on two fronts: a leveraged Apax-backed MBO in 2007 and the debt-funded $630 million American Media Lawyer acquisition the same year that left its debt at nine times EBITDA. Weller says: “Yes we have new owners but they are much more long term in their approach (than Apax) as they’re looking to 2013 for a view (on a possible exit).”

• Debt-for-equity: So Incisive was re-financed in a debt-for-equity deal. As Telegraph.co.uk reported, in a recent month’s deal a syndicate of 18 banks plus the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) took on 82.5 percent of shares in the business in return for writing off more than £110 million in debt—the rest is owned by management and Apax, which has seen its investment of more than £100 million written down to a fraction.
• What happens next? “Our focus now is ensure that we accelerate the migration of our content from the print to the online.” Weller says that involves mobile publishing (eight magazines rolled out mobile versions just last month), financial data, communities and online video. Weller has said before that the traditional B2B controlled circulation model is unsustainable, so now he’s “accelerating the process of how we monetise our brands and charge for content, including paywalls”. The options being considered and experimented with are selling content on a pay-per-story model, via subscriptions and—perhaps most appropriately for a niche business audience—corporate site licenses. Some Incisive sites, such as Risk.net are already subscription only, but others like the flagship Investmentweek.co.uk are not. That could be about to change.
• Not just a UK concern. Incisive might have lost a sizeable chunk of itself as ALM was spun off to a separate business, but the would-be tycoon stresses that it’s “not just a UK business” and still has almost 100 North A]merican staff as well as between 70 and 80 in Asia. Ironically, ALM and Incisive have spent untold (and probably uncounted) time and money integrating with each other in the last two years, but will now have to unpick and rebrand themselves in the US. [But there will be NO Final Warning letters for Weller or Pollak! They remain in place. This is similar to the Obama administration in which only the people who created the problem are deemed smart enough to resolve it.]
• No sell-offs needed. In contrast to some public and private B2B publishing rivals, Weller hastens to point out, Incisive acted early to cut costs through magazine closures and redundancies and now doesn’t need to find more savings. “We don’t have loss-making assets in the business. Whilst we’ve had too much debt, the business is still very profitable,” he says. Incisive isn’t ditching its magazines—a subscription to Risk is almost £1,000 a year and is now printed in seven languages—but he accepts that mags have to be more analytical these days.
• Downturn is here to stay: Forget the cautious optimism we’ve heard from the likes of Sir Martin Sorrell of late: “Anyone who thinks 2010 is going to be better than 2009 is kidding themselves and has probably still got their head in the sand,” says Weller [thus proving he has the smarts to remain as head of Incisive Media.]. Media businesses should plan to experience the same volatility and slowed growth of the last nine months for the next 15, though on a brightish note he adds that “at least we know where we are.” [And Joe knows where they are too. He knows that, well, Tim and Uncle Bill are not sleeping on park benches in Madison Square Park. He knows they’re not eating mercury-filled tuna casseroles. He knows they’re not squishing up their $2,000 suits against a man who hasn’t washed in two years on the subway. All that’s pretty clear--even to serfer dude Joe, a man who did nothing but “make a series of gaffes” for nine years at NYLJ.

Apax Partners, which owns 59 percent of Incisive, will take full control of its US-based American Lawyer Media portfolio of magazines, websites and events, which Incisive bought for $630 million (£387 million) in 2007.

Apax in investing another $15 million (£9.2 million) into the spun-out unit as part of a debt restructuring drive - as a result of a debt-for-equity swap with Royal Bank of Sctoland, the unit’s debt falls from $450 million to $300 million, according to FT.com.

The remainder of the company remains with London-listed Incentive, in which Apax retains its 59 percent share - for now, at least…

Turns out that Incisive had breached its banking covenant last December—about the time Weller visited 120 Broadway and wouldn’t look his peons in the face; news of talks to secure an equity bailout emerged in February.

Weller paints his company as a victim of the economic crisis and says “myriad” other companies in the media and elsewhere are going through the same thing. Weller says Incisive remains profitable and expects the business to “bounce back quickly when things turn for the better, as they surely will.” Though quite when Weller expects this to happen is unclear. [For Joe, and the other casualties of January 2009, it remains unclear whether the extension to unemployment insurance will continue, whether they can keep up the $400 a month payments for Cobra health insurance, whether they will be able to get that coveted job behind the counter at Dunkin’ Donuts, whether their wife and kid will get the coveted dry place under the G.W. Bridge this winter when they can’t make the rent.]

Weller’s full memo after the jump:

“All,

You may have seen this morning’s coverage about Incisive Media in the FT which has mentioned that the UK side of the Company is not expected to meet the current tests on its banking covenants. I would like to update you on where we are and to reassure you by explaining what this all means.

Incisive Media, as you know, is a great business with leading brands in its chosen markets but we are currently under revenue pressure due to an unprecedented set of economic circumstances and their impact on our end markets. As a result, the UK 2008 profits dipped below the level agreed with the bank when we took on our loan in 2006 as part of taking the company private.

It is important to note that the issues we face in our markets and with our lenders are no different to those faced by a myriad of other businesses in the current climate (in the media sector and other sectors). It is also important to emphasise that the issues being talked about in the press are purely financing issues centred on the UK Company’s balance sheet and the amount of debt the UK business has. The US has a separate financing agreement. Our businesses continue to be very profitable and cash generative at the operating level. In that sense, it is business as usual and it is important that we remain focused and committed to our day-to-day roles and concentrate on hitting our 2009 budget.

We expect the Group to emerge from these difficulties in a stronger position with a sound platform for future growth as the market recovers and we resolve our financing issues. As James, Bill and I have mentioned before and experienced in the past, the nature of our business means that just as it can suffer in the downturn as advertisers tighten their belts so it will bounce back quickly when things turn for the better, as they surely will.

We are confident that our shareholders and the lenders will be supportive of the Group while it addresses the UK financing issue. We are driving the process pro-actively to get to a satisfactory solution and are working with an experienced advisory team to assist and guide us through the process.

I reiterate again that Incisive Media is a sound business, certainly with challenges, but with everyone working together we will emerge stronger from this.

I will keep you updated as the process moves forward. In the meantime, thank you for your support and continued hard work.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Tim”

In the Incisive Media blowup and the subsequent split, some other interesting details have come out in a memo the North America CEO Bill Pollak sent out to U.S. employees, reprinted below. Among the changes: the U.S. arm will be rebranded as ALM, the original name of the company when it was bought out by Incisive and its backer Apax Partners two years ago (Bruce Wasserstein sold it in the nick of time, that’s for sure).

Meanwhile, WSJ reports that Apax’s losses on this investment is in the region of $150 million, a rarity for the highly regarded PE shop which just bought out Bankrate (NSDQ: RATE) here in U.S. Its 71 percent stake in ALM, worth about $180 million, has been cut to 51 percent worth $129.6 million, the story says; it may increase if the company performs well.

Meanwhile, the memo from Pollak:

“As you may be aware, today the press has reported a restructuring and rebranding of the company. As a result of new agreements signed by our owners and lenders, we will once again become an independent, standalone company, with our own management, board of directors and financing, operating under the ALM brand. While the agreements are pending regulatory approval in the U.K., we expect to make a formal announcement next week.

While we will continue to be majority-owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, our lender, Royal Bank of Scotland, will swap a portion of its existing ALM debt for a 49% equity stake in the company and become a minority owner of ALM.

Although we have a new name and structure, our business positions are fundamentally unchanged. ALM remains the leading provider of current legal news and information in the largest legal marketplace in the world. Despite the severity of the commercial real estate downturn, our publications have retained their leading market share in their sector and GlobeSt.com has strengthened its position as the leading online provider of news and information in that arena.

Coming new product introductions will broaden our reach in the legal information marketplace and our investments in digital technology are already bearing fruit. And, as the media world moves to a greater reliance on paid content and more sophisticated advertising and sponsorship models, ALM is well-positioned for future success.

Incisive Media in the U.K. will continue under the Incisive brand, headed by Tim Weller, and will retain ownership of the ClickZ/SEW/SES businesses, which will no longer report to ALM management. Between now and the end of the year, we will transition the separation of our shared infrastructure and operations from Incisive Media and complete the rebranding of our company as ALM. In addition, we are currently discussing a formal content-sharing agreement with Incisive which will enable us to continue to collaborate with Legal Week and other properties.

I’m sure that many of you may have questions regarding the restructuring and rebranding, and their impact on your job and your customers. To help answer them, I’m attaching an FAQ document covering key issues.

As always, feel free to contact me directly if you have additional questions or issues.

Bill

William L. Pollak
CEO – North America
incisivemedia”

Just to review a bit: Before the post-catastrophe shower of memos, in January 2009, American Lawyer Media laid off 42 staffers across the board. The company also "scaled back" plans to expand the scope of one magazine, and moved another to an all-digital format, according to an internal memo. One insider at the time said all of the laid off people are gone, but a sense of nervousness still pervades the office. “What, lawyers can't afford to buy magazines any more? Cheap bastards.”

"ALM needs to be shamed," wrotes a desperate employee in a blog during the last month or two as he drowned in the stank hellhole that is his office. Read and marvel at the depths to which what was once Steven Brill's prize jewel has sunk:

“OK. I got over, sort of, our furlough week (the unpaid vacation we all had to take). The ever changing company name unnerves, but I'm a peon. As long as the paycheck clears my money could come from the South Carolina GOP and I wouldn't care. But this company has pushed me over the edge today. For some reason I work with men who think it's cool to leave their reading material in the bathroom. As the day moves on the bathroom is filled with printed articles from ESPN and a few newspapers. Occasionally the stuff left is work related. Only occasionally. All of this is left on the floor as if the restroom is the private world of these media giants. And don't get me started about seeing the number of people who walk out without washing their hands!”

“Now I know you probably think I'm some neat freak who counts his paper clips. I'm not (394 in case in you are wondering), but come on! Are we such bottom-feeders we can't respect our co-workers, wash our hands AND throw out our bathroom readings? Are we so ashamed of writing about lawyers (shudder) that we forget courtesy to the person in the next pod?”

Aug. 21, 2009

Global warming, nuclear proliferation, and bioterrorism are a few ways our world as we know it could face apocalypse within decades. For that purpose, I would like to focus on Jared Diamond’s book "Collapse." I tried emailing Mr. Diamond, but got no response. However, I still greatly admire his book and believe it should be required reading from grades K-12, college, grad and professional schools.

As always, I am in a rush, so will try to highlight some of Mr. Diamond’s points today and continue on some other day. I also attach (far below) relevant dispatches to commondreams.org that seem appropriate when discussing "Collapse."

Mr. Diamond cites Joseph Tainter’s reasoning that complex societies are not likely to allow themselves to collapse through failure to manage their environmental resources. Yet, Mr. Diamond says, it is clear from all the cases in "Collapse," including Easter Island and Henderson Island and the Norse Vikings on Iceland that precisely such a failure has happened repeatedly. How did so many societies make such bad mistakes?

The overall reason seems to be a failure of group decision-making, with some additional factors entering therein, such as conflicts of interest and group dynamics.

Mr. Diamond proposes a "road map" of factors, divided "fuzzily into a sequence of four categories.

a group may fail to anticipate a problem

when the problem does arrive, the group may not perceive it. Then,

after they perceive it, they may fail even to try to solve it.

They may try to solve it, but may not succeed.

Going to No. 1: The people may have had no prior experience of such problems. An example, is the mess the British colonists created when they introduced foxes and rabbits into Australia. People tend to forget things amazingly rapidly. In the U.S., for a year or two after the 1973 Gulf oil crisis, Americans bought cars that regularly got 30-40 mpg or ran on diesel fuel. Then we forgot, and the SUV craze took over. Another situation is reasoning by false analogy, as when the French thought World War II would be the same as World War I and spent millions and millions on the Maginot Line, which the motorized Germans simply sped around in 1940-41. Things had changed. No more trench warfare.

No. 2: Failing to perceive.

the origins are literally imperceptible as when nutrients were assumed in the lush grasses of the U.S. Southwest, but they were not the right nutrients for food crops

distant managers. Not being on the scene in Montana, the Seattle-based owners may not perceive they have a weed problem on their forest properties.

The origin is a slow trend, concealed by wide up-and-down fluctuations. Such is the case with the earth’s temperatures. In my home state of Minnesota, the 1960s brought each winter a two-week period when the HIGH for the day was BELOW zero. That seemed to drop off in the 1970s and 80s, but seemed to return, somewhat since 2000. Overall, however, the temps had been, on average, rising.in a jagged line. Diamond says this is called "creeping normalcy." Another similar term is "landscape anmesia." Diamond: "I suspect that landscape amnesia provided part of the answer to my students’ question: ‘What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say as he was doing it?’ We unconsciously imagine a suddend change. More likely the changes in forest cover from year to year would be nearly undetectable; yes, we cut down a few trees, but saplings are starting to grow back. Only the oldest islanders would remember how lush Easter Island had once been.

No. 3: Societies often fail even to attempt to solve a problem once it has been perceived. The reasons are called "rational behavior" but in the context of clashes of interest between peoples. It is called "rational" even though it may be morally reprehensible, in scientist terminology. As in today’s Wall Street bailouts and the preceding Enron and savings and loan debacles, the perpetrators feel safe because they are concentrated and highly motivated by rich rewards, while the losses are spread over large numbers of individuals. That gives us little people little motivation to go to the hassle of fighting back, because each person would receive only a small, distant profit. Another frequent type of rational bad behavior is simply being selfish: It’s good for me. You solve the problem. You are not my worry. It’s not in my yard."

More on this later.

No. 4: Irrational behavior, that is, behavior that is harmful for EVERYONE. This could be "wooden-headedness" "mental stagnation" or "sunk-cost effect" as "we feel reluctant to abandon a policy in which we have already invested heavily" (this could have been LBJ’s situation in his not wanting to be the first president to lose a war). Religious values are a BIG factor here because they are deeply held. For example, Diamond writes, the deforestation of Easter Island had a religious motivation, to make giant statues that were admired. Another: The Greenland Norse, who would not give up their Christian, conservative lifestyle and would not accept innovations and drastic lifestyle changes that would have enabled them to use the Inuit technology to catch fish and other game. As Diamond says so well: "It is painfully difficult to decide whether to abandon one’s core values when they become incompatible with survival. At what point do individuals prefer to DIE than to compromise and live?… All such decisions involve gambles, because one can’t be certain that clinging to core values will be fatal or that abandoning them will ensure survival. The Norse quite apparently decided consciously that they would die as Christian farmers rather than live as Inuit.

That is the crux of the problem facing the whole world today: to know which core values to hold on to and which to discard. Given the news since the Reagan years of Americans’ undeniable selfishness and greed, it seems unlikely that a gifted speaker, who has the bully pulpit, Barack Obama, can ask them to give up their cars and utensils that shake the water out of salad lettuce so you can "save" your delicate skin! Yes. There is such a product!

Again, more on this later.

With the unrelenting news each week of climate change, ongoing resource battles, and the likelihood of more and more used-to-be middle class people becoming unemployed, it seems more and more—to me—that the elites, who have most of the wealth are willing to let millions, likely billions, of poor people in the Third World die in the coming typhoons and droughts. But will these elites then have enough to re-create society in a reasonable form? After a nuclear war? Or a disease plague that can hit rich and poor alike? Do they have another planet they can fly to with their little Einsteins and Miley Cyruses to create another Earth. One that allows them to use and keep their—in their minds—greater talents and, thus, greater worth. The rest of the used-to-be middle class on downwards can just try to survive in a Mad Max, "The Road" (Cormac McCarthy) world.

See this piece, published in March by Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi:

It's over - we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline - a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.

The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history - some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second.

And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste.

Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses).

So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity.

And the worst part about it is that we're still in denial - we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream.

When Geithner announced the new $30 billion bailout, the party line was that poor AIG was just a victim of a lot of shitty luck - bad year for business, you know, what with the financial crisis and all. Edward Liddy, the company's CEO, actually compared it to catching a cold: "The marketplace is a pretty crummy place to be right now," he said. "When the world catches pneumonia, we get it too." In a pathetic attempt at name-dropping, he even whined that AIG was being "consumed by the same issues that are driving house prices down and 401K statements down and Warren Buffet's investment portfolio down."

Liddy made AIG sound like an orphan begging in a soup line, hungry and sick from being left out in someone else's financial weather. He conveniently forgot to mention that AIG had spent more than a decade systematically scheming to evade U.S. and international regulators, or that one of the causes of its "pneumonia" was making colossal, world-sinking $500 billion bets with money it didn't have, in a toxic and completely unregulated derivatives market.

Nor did anyone mention that when AIG finally got up from its seat at the Wall Street casino, broke and busted in the afterdawn light, it owed money all over town - and that a huge chunk of your taxpayer dollars in this particular bailout scam will be going to pay off the other high rollers at its table. Or that this was a casino unique among all casinos, one where middle-class taxpayers cover the bets of billionaires.

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve - "our partners in the government," as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron - a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.

There are plenty of people who have noticed, in recent years, that when they lost their homes to foreclosure or were forced into bankruptcy because of crippling credit-card debt, no one in the government was there to rescue them. But when Goldman Sachs - a company whose average employee still made more than $350,000 last year, even in the midst of a depression - was suddenly faced with the possibility of losing money on the unregulated insurance deals it bought for its insane housing bets, the government was there in an instant to patch the hole. That's the essence of the bailout: rich bankers bailing out rich bankers, using the taxpayers' credit card.

The people who have spent their lives cloistered in this Wall Street community aren't much for sharing information with the great unwashed. Because all of this shit is complicated, because most of us mortals don't know what the hell LIBOR is or how a REIT works or how to use the word "zero coupon bond" in a sentence without sounding stupid - well, then, the people who do speak this idiotic language cannot under any circumstances be bothered to explain it to us and instead spend a lot of time rolling their eyes and asking us to trust them.

That roll of the eyes is a key part of the psychology of Paulsonism. The state is now being asked not just to call off its regulators or give tax breaks or funnel a few contracts to connected companies; it is intervening directly in the economy, for the sole purpose of preserving the influence of the megafirms. In essence, Paulson used the bailout to transform the government into a giant bureaucracy of entitled assholedom, one that would socialize "toxic" risks but keep both the profits and the management of the bailed-out firms in private hands. Moreover, this whole process would be done in secret, away from the prying eyes of NASCAR dads, broke-ass liberals who read translations of French novels, subprime mortgage holders and other such financial losers.

Nonetheless, the lion's share of the bailout money has gone to the larger, so-called "systemically important" banks. "It's like Treasury is picking winners and losers," says one state banking official who asked not to be identified.

This itself is a hugely important political development. In essence, the bailout accelerated the decline of regional community lenders by boosting the political power of their giant national competitors.

Which, when you think about it, is insane: What had brought us to the brink of collapse in the first place was this relentless instinct for building ever-larger megacompanies, passing deregulatory measures to gradually feed all the little fish in the sea to an ever-shrinking pool of Bigger Fish. To fix this problem, the government should have slowly liquidated these monster, too-big-to-fail firms and broken them down to smaller, more manageable companies. Instead, federal regulators closed ranks and used an almost completely secret bailout process to double down on the same faulty, merger-happy thinking that got us here in the first place, creating a constellation of megafirms under government control that are even bigger, more unwieldy and more crammed to the gills with systemic risk.

In essence, Paulson and his cronies turned the federal government into one gigantic, half-opaque holding company, one whose balance sheet includes the world's most appallingly large and risky hedge fund, a controlling stake in a dying insurance giant, huge investments in a group of teetering megabanks, and shares here and there in various auto-finance companies, student loans, and other failing businesses. Like AIG, this new federal holding company is a firm that has no mechanism for auditing itself and is run by leaders who have very little grasp of the daily operations of its disparate subsidiary operations.

In other words, it's AIG's rip-roaringly shitty business model writ almost inconceivably massive - to echo Geithner, a huge, complex global company attached to a very complicated investment bank/hedge fund that's been allowed to build up without adult supervision. How much of what kinds of crap is actually on our balance sheet, and what did we pay for it? When exactly will the rent come due, when will the money run out? Does anyone know what the hell is going on? And on the linear spectrum of capitalism to socialism, where exactly are we now? Is there a dictionary word that even describes what we are now? It would be funny, if it weren't such a nightmare.

As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren't hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system - transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.

The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.

"But wait a minute," you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?"

But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, because You Don't Get It. These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests.

June 2008

Thomas Jefferson once said that if he had to choose between a nation with government and no newspapers, or one with newspapers and no government, he'd always choose the latter. Jefferson, historically one of the harshest critics of newspapers, also said: "Where the press is free, and every man can read, all is safe.".

Journalism reached its peak, perhaps, during and just after Watergate. It’s safe to say that Nixon was brought down by the diligence of Woodward and Bernstein initially, and, then, a slew of other reporters from magazines and TV. They all competed to get the next scoop on the tragicomedy.

Journalism, at that time, came closest to a full-fledged "profession," as medicine and the law have always been regarded. I took journalism classes at the University of Minnesota and a main point of discussion was whether journalism had become a profession with a "code" to follow and with an association to reward and censor its participants.

Somehow, that question of professionalism for gathering news is now nowhere on the radar. It has been shot out of the sky.

The incipient code, which was stillborn sometime in the Reagan era, contained elements that included: objectivity; never failing to at least try to get both sides’ comments (even if it meant writing "Mr. Smith did not return several calls made to his office; quotes from a "common" person on the street on the subject matter. The press (newspapers, TV and radio) came oh-so-close to becoming a true Fourth Estate, contributing to knowledgable discussions among everyone from street vendors to CEOs about all local and national issues. Above all, it came close to giving a voice to the average person, which would have mean real power for the working stiff, which is just not the case in the United States these days.

Jefferson’s philosophy in the United States was accompanied by

legislation ensuring various degrees of freedom of publishing and the press. The depth to which these laws are entrenched go to the heart of our Constitution. The concept of freedom of speech

is often covered by the same laws as freedom of the press, thereby giving equal treatment to media and individuals.

The term Fourth Estate refers both to the

press

as representatives of the common person and to the common people may. The term with respect to the common man seems to go back at least Henry Fielding in 1752 who is quoted as saying: "None of our political writers ... take[s] notice of any more than three estates, namely, Kings, Lords, and Commons ... passing by in silence that very large and powerful body which form the fourth estate in this community ... The Mob."

Jefferson knew that the Fourth Estate was a check on tyranny. He knew it was a hedge against secrecy. And he knew that no democracy could thrive -- or survive, even -- without a bright, shining light on government action.

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPR) states that it is dedicated to the perpetuation of a free press as the cornerstone of our nation and our liberty. To ensure that the concept of self-government outlined by the U.S. Constitution remains a reality into future centuries

Questions about journalism’s status as a profession were valid in the mid-1970s and into the early 80s. But even having to raise those questions in the first place blithely ignores the constitutionally defined role of the press in this nation, and how vital that role is to the strength of democracy.

The SPR does not have the elaborate list of commandments that the lawyer’s New York Lawyer's Code of Professional Responsibility has. It hasn’t items that cover everything from:

DR 2-106: Fees for Legal Services to DR 5-110: Sexual Relations with Clients to DR 8-102

: Statements Concerning Judges and Other Adjudicatory Officers to Disciplinary Rule 9 - Client Funds and Property.

It's not that journalists, especially professional journalists and the so-called mainstream journalists (not the new-breed citizen journalist on the Internet’s Web blogs) don't deserve such vigilance or recognition. Afterall, it is unequivocally true that covering government issues and lack of openness by the government occupies as pivotal a space among press duties as anything else. It's what we, in the news business, do and, indeed, why we exist.

But the Society of Professional Journalists has no disciplinary rules. The SPR has no elaborate code. Anyone can become a mainstream journalist, if they can write. They could have a grade school education or a Ph.D.

As a reporter in the late 1970s and early 80s, I and my buddies loved "beating" the competition to a story and getting the truth behind Minneapolis or Bridgeport, Conn.-area politics. Our motto was "you’re not doing your job (as a reporter) unless someone is mad at you" (for exposing the truth behind his faux program for the common person or for telling the people about his secret, backroom meeting with so and so after the "open" meeting for the public. One time, I walked into a prison block at a Minnesota prison to talk to the inmates. Turns out I didn’t have proper clearance. The warden was mad!! But I got the inmates’ comments on prison conditions.

Former CBS broadcaster Dan Rather, whom I idolized during the Vietnam years and during Watergate— a result of his reputation for asking very tough questions and not being afraid to ask follow-up questions, of powerful people like President Richard Nixon and many others—left CBS in 2006 in the wake of a scandal surrounding questionable documentation for a story accusing President George W. Bush of being absent without leave during his military service. Today, Rather works as a journalist for entrepreneur Mark Cuban's HDNet network.. Rather now says journalism in recent years "has in some ways lost its guts." Rather reportedly said journalists have become lapdogs to power, rather than watchdogs.

He says journalists are giving in to the intimidation by government officials that access will be denied unless given on the officials’ terms only. "By and large, so many journalists have adopted the go-along-to-get-along (attitude)," Rather said. Because of this "access game," journalism has degenerated into a "very perilous state," "In many ways, what we in journalism need is a spine transplant." Says Rather "My role as a member of the press is to be sometimes a check and balance on power."

That’s how we saw it in the late 70s on into the mid and late 80s in Minneapolis and in Milford, a suburb of Bridgeport, Conn. If someone didn’t return phone calls, we’d call someone else to get a reliable source on the record about all issues.

Contrary to today’s apparently ubiquitous practice, we controlled what was "off the record." For public figures who were used to answering reporters’ questions, we published everything they said before they remembered to say "This is off the record!" We never asked them or reminded them that something even could be off the record.

Back then, public figures whom I covered, like Minneapolis Police Chief Anthony Bouza or Milford, Conn., Mayor Alberta Jagoe came to expect and respect our hounding. They answered every phone call. Ms. Jagoe tried to use us at the Bridgeport Post by having a daily 8 a.m. news conference (so she could get the p. 1 headline in that day’s afternoon paper). But we’d dial our phones until our fingers were red trying to get her opponents’ viewpoint into every story. If we couldn’t, we always included a sentence: "Republican alderman so-and-so could not be reached for comment." Then that Republican alderman would get the headline the next day.

Tony Bouza prospered, first as head of three precincts in Harlem, then as NYPD's Bronx Borough Commander from 1973 through 1976, then as head of the New York City Transit Police, and finally as Chief of Police of Minneapolis, Minn., from 1980 until February 1989. He was a regular source for me from 1980-1983 .

In contrast to my coworkers and I controlling what was on and off the record with Jagoe and Bouza, the last decade has given us one of the most interesting looks inside today’s so-called mainstream media. It came as part of the controversy over Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama adviser Samantha Power’s referring to Hillary Clinton as a "monster." One might say the only interesting part is that immediately after Power said it, she tried to proclaim that it was "off the record." Here was Power’s

exact quote

: "She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything."

But the reporter who was interviewing her, Britain’s Gerri Peev of The Scotsman, printed the comment anyway — as she should have, because Peev had never agreed that any parts of the interview would be "off the record," and nobody has the right to demand unilaterally, and after the fact, that journalists keep embarrassing remarks a secret. It’s extremely likely, though, that had Power been speaking to a typical reporter from the American establishment media, her request to keep her comments a secret would have been honored.

MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson had Peev on a recent show and angrily criticized her publication of Power’s remarks. Carlson upbraided Peev for her lack of deference to someone as important as Power, and Peev retorted by pointing out exactly what that attitude reflects about Carlson and the American press generally (via LEXIS; h/t Mike Stark):

CARLSON: What — she wanted it off the record. Typically, the arrangement is if someone you’re interviewing wants a quote off the record, you give it to them off the record. Why didn’t you do that?

PEEV: Are you really that acquiescent in the United States? In the United Kingdom, journalists believe that on or off the record is a principle that’s decided ahead of the interview. If a figure in public life.

CARLSON: Right.

PEEV: Someone who’s ostensibly going to be an advisor to the man who could be the most powerful politician in the world, if she makes a comment and decides it’s a bit too controversial and wants to withdraw it immediately after, unfortunately if the interview is on the record, it has to go ahead.

CARLSON: Right. Well, it’s a little.

PEEV: I didn’t set out in any way, shape.

CARLSON: Right. But I mean, since journalistic standards in Great Britain are so much dramatically lower than they are here, it’s a little much being lectured on journalistic ethics by a reporter from the "Scotsman," but I wonder if you could just explain what you think the effect is on the relationship between the press and the powerful. People don’t talk to you when you go out of your way to hurt them as you did in this piece.

Don’t you think that hurts the rest of us in our effort to get to the truth from the principals in these campaigns?

PEEV: If this is the first time that candid remarks have been published about what one campaign team thinks of the other candidate, then I would argue that your journalists aren’t doing a very good job of getting to the truth. Now I did not go out of my way in any way, shape or form to hurt Miss Power.

Tucker Carlson was unintentionally candid about the subservient role of the American press with regard to "the relationship between the press and the powerful." He openly said a journalist should never do anything that "hurts" the powerful, otherwise the powerful won’t give access to the press any longer. Presumably, the press should only do things that please the powerful so that the powerful keep talking to the press, so that the press in turn can keep pleasing the powerful, in an endless, symbiotic cycle.

But it’s not only Carlson.

This is the

testimony at the Lewis Libby trial of Tim Russert

, Washington Bureau Chief for NBC News: "When I talk to senior government officials on the phone, it’s my own policy — our conversations are confidential. If I want to use anything from that conversation, then I will ask permission."

But that’s how you treat your friends when you’re having an innocent chat, not the people you’re supposed to be holding accountable.

In Minnesota and Connecticut, we taped every conversation (with the public figures’ knowledge) or took copious notes, to serve as our defense against scatter-gun libel suits or verbal intimidation or denial of access. Often times, public officials were so mad at us they wouldn’t speak to us for weeks or months. We, like your typical doctor or lawyer, worked through lunch and/or dinner if the story, competition, and deadline demanded it. That’s very much professional dedication.

In Milford, Conn., the Post, New Haven Register and the Milford Citizen competed in a city of only 50,000. But that type of competition among media outlets—especially newspapers—is long gone. The end came with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, because of which large entertainment companies such as Time Warner, Viacom and Disney have been able to take over many of the country’s news outlets, inserting their own code of ethics and bias into the national news.

Jeff Cohen, who in 1986 founded Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), has said the "news" pushed by the major radio/TV networks and newspapers slants unerringly toward the interests of the five major corporations that own the bulk of them. They bury stories of vital importance while spewing hours and column inches at the mind-deadening likes of Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears.

Their excuse is that they "give the public what it wants" and are "in business to make a profit." But the real profit centers of the corporations that own the CM are not in providing news and information. General Electric, Westinghouse, Disney and the other media-financial-industrial behemoths have too much to lose from an accurate reporting of the true news of the world. To protect their core interests, they are bread-and-circus PR/diversion machines, not real news organizations. And they profit from war-time contracts.

The April 20 New York Times story about how the Pentagon used more than 75 retired military officers with ties to lucrative defense industry contracts, as a way "to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance," shouldn’t be too surprising.

The article, written by Times reporter David Barstow, reveals the manipulations of the Bush PR machine, with Rumsfeld playing the puppet master; propaganda talking points found their way to military "analysts" hired by news networks and then sold to the American public as "independent" observers. Their ties to military contractors were never revealed.

Barstow did the kind of investigative reporting Woodward and Bernstein would have been proud of in the early 1970s. He unveiled the

Pentagon military analyst program

which has been said to be not just unethical but illegal. It violates, for starters, specific restrictions that Congress has been placing in its annual appropriation bills every year since 1951. According to those restrictions, "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."

The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the viewing audience to believe that the broadcasting news organization developed the information. When the television viewing public does not know that the stories they watched on television news programs about the government were in fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer purely factual — the essential fact of attribution is missing.

The Pentagon’s military analyst program was covert did exactly that.

It was covert. As Barstow’s piece states, the 75 retired military officers who were recruited by Donald Rumsfeld and given talking points to deliver on Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and MSNBC were given extraordinary access to White House and Pentagon officials. However, "The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon."

Congress needs to hold hearings and create enforcement mechanisms that will ensure compliance in the future. Currently, no such mechanisms exist. As the Congressional Research Service noted in its 2005 report, "No federal entity is required to monitor agency compliance with the publicity and propaganda statutes. At present, the federal government has what has been termed ‘fire alarm oversight’ of agency expenditures on communications.

If the U.S. Congress had the will to take action, it could create real mechanisms for enforcing the law and ensuring compliance. This is important for reasons that go beyond the issue of whether anyone supports or opposes the current war in Iraq. So long as government agencies are allowed to continue getting away with covert domestic propaganda, the public is left unable to know whether the opinions of "independent" analysts are truly independent. During the Vietnam War, official Pentagon statements became so mistrusted that the term "credibility gap" was coined to describe the distance between official statements and public perceptions. The government’s use of "surrogates" posing as independent experts extends the credibility gap not just to public officials but also to seemingly independent, private citizens and the news media.

The "Mainstream Media," or MSM, can’t even be called that any more. Today’s mass media is Corporate, not Mainstream, and the distinction is critical. Calling the Corporate Media (CM) "mainstream" implies that it speaks for mid-road opinion, and it absolutely does not.

The mainstream of American opinion wants this country out of Iraq. The Corporate Media does not. It refuses to give serious coverage to the devastating human, spiritual and economic costs of the war, and it marginalizes those demanding it end.

The mainstream of American opinion wants national health care. The CM does not.

In the two weeks before April 5, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be inapplicable to "domestic military operations" within the U.S. The U.S. Attorney General appears to have fabricated a key event leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements about surveillance laws and related lawsuits. Barack Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania and had a low score.

Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:

"Yoo and torture" - 102
"Mukasey and 9/11″ — 73
"Yoo and Fourth Amendment" — 16
"Obama and bowling" — 1,043
"Obama and Wright" — More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)
"Obama and patriotism" - 1,607
"Clinton and Lewinsky" — 1,079

Noticeably missing from TV or the newspapers were representatives of the group of Americans who happened to have been right from the get-go about the Iraq War. In this case, of the millions of people who poured into the streets to demonstrate against the coming invasion with an efflorescence of placards that said things too simpleminded (as endless pundits assured American news readers at the time) to take seriously — like "No Blood for Oil," "Don’t Trade Lives for Oil," or ""How did USA’s oil get under Iraq’s sand?"

In Minneapolis and in Milford, we tried to beat the competition. In Minneapolis in 1981-83 there were three TV stations, three major daily papers, several radio stations and several weekly papers.

But, we didn’t try to kill someone’s career. We’d sit with our paper’s lawyers and our managing editor to cut out parts we weren’t sure of or that might be libelous.

And we never took a nickel from a public or private source: no free meals or rides, no free pens, no free candy. We had pride in our incipient profession. We already considered it a profession. We were idealistic and out to defend the little guy against the powerful. We were not necessarily conservatives, but we were mostly college graduates who liked a good fight. We came from middle-class families before the middle class lost the ability (in recent decades) to own a home, pay for college, own a car, and plan for retirement. We felt like underdogs however, and rooted for the underdogs in the World Series or the NBA finals. We mostly were utopians, looking to reform the world and make things better for everyone. It was a kick to help the little guy, uncover a "big shot’s" scheme or simply "beat" our competition to a story.

Bill Moyers, who is a journalist and president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, recently said, "The job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is almost as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place. We journalists are of course obliged to cover the news, but our deeper mission is to uncover the news that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden."

Part of the thrill of being a newspaper person for me was having to become an "instant expert" on the gamut of possible breaking news stories each day. It also was the adrenaline rush of getting that information and writing it clearly while on unbelievable deadlines.

As Moyers says, The job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is almost as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place. We journalists are of course obliged to cover the news, but our deeper mission is to uncover the news that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden."Unless you are willing to fight and re-fight the same battles until you go blue in the face, drive the people you work with nuts going over every last detail to make certain you’ve got it right, and then take all of the slings and arrows directed at you by the powers that be–corporate and political and sometimes journalistic–there is no use even trying. You have to love it and I do." I.F. Stone once said, after years of catching the government’s lies and contradictions, "I have so much fun, I ought to be arrested."

"So it wasn’t courage I counted on," Moyers said, "it was exhilaration and good luck.".

Walter Lippman, famous in the ____________, wrote, "The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis of journalism. Everywhere men and women are conscious that somehow they must deal with questions more intricate than any that church or school had prepared them to understand. Increasingly, they know that they cannot understand them if the facts are not quickly and steadily available. All the sharpest critics of democracy have alleged is true if there is no steady supply of trustworthy and relevant news. Incompetence and aimlessness, corruption and disloyalty, panic and ultimate disaster must come to any people denied an assured access to the facts."

An ominous demonstration of this occurred in one of the most-watched TV debates between Democratic presidential contenders, on April 16, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, just before her win in that primary. It was conducted by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC-TV. No one was happy, except for the Republicans.

On April 17, 2008 in the Philadelphia Daily News, Will Bunch had this to say to the millionaire Gibson and Stephanopoulos: "I’m a Pennsylvanian voter, and so are my neighbors and most of my friends and coworkers. You asked virtually nothing that reflected our everyday issues — trying to fill our gas tanks and save for college at the same time, our crumbling bridges and inadequate mass transit, or the root causes of crime here in Philadelphia. In fact, there almost isn’t enough space — and this is cyberspace, where room is unlimited — to list all the things you could have asked about but did not, from health care to climate change to alternative energy to our policy toward China to the deterioration of Afghanistan to veterans’ benefits to improving education. You ignored virtually everything that just happened in what most historians agree is one of the worst presidencies in American history, including the condoning of torture and the trashing of the Constitution,"

Gibson and Steph asked trivial pop culture questions about Obama’s not wearing a U.S. flag pin and Hillary’s lying about beingunder fire in _________ for the first hour of a two-hour debate.

"You implied," Bunch continued, "throughout the broadcast that you wanted to reflect the concerns of voters in Pennsylvania. Well,

Charlie…could you be any more out of touch with your viewers? Most people aren’t millionaires like you, I learned tonight that you did the same thing in the last debate, that you fretted over that middle-class family that made $200,000 a year

Compare that to perhaps the famous gold-standard of debates in U.S. history: The Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 which were a series of seven debates between

Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, and Stephen A. Douglas, a Democrat, for an Illinois seat in the United States Senate

.

Newspaper coverage of the debates was intense, as major papers from Chicago sent stenographers to create complete texts of each debate. Then newspapers across the nation reprinted the full text of the debates as published by the Chicago papers.

After the election for Senator in Illinois, Lincoln edited the texts of all the debates and had them published in a book. The wide-spread coverage of the original debates and the subsequent popularity of the book led eventually to Lincoln's nomination for

President of the United States by the 1860 Republican National Convention

in Chicago.

Each debate had this format: one candidate spoke for an hour, then the other candidate spoke for an hour and a half, and then the first candidate was allowed a half hour "rejoinder." The candidates alternated speaking first. As the incumbent, Douglas spoke first in four of the debates.

The main theme of the debates was slavery, especially the issue of slavery's expansion into the territories. It was Douglas'

Kansas-Nebraska Act that repealed the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and replaced it with the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which meant that the people of a territory could decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. Lincoln said that popular sovereignty would nationalize and perpetuate slavery. Douglas argued that both Whigs and Democrats believed in popular sovereignty, and that the Compromise of 1850

was an example of this.

Lincoln said that the national policy was to limit the spread of slavery starting with the

Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which banned slavery from a large part of the modern-day Midwest

. Lincoln pointed out that the Compromise of 1850 was just that, a compromise.

At one debate, Lincoln forced Douglas to choose between two options, either of which would damage Douglas' popularity and chances of getting reelected. Lincoln asked Douglas to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision. Douglas responded that the people of a territory could keep slavery out even though the Supreme Court said that the federal government had no authority to exclude slavery, simply by refusing to pass a slave code and other legislation needed to protect slavery. Douglas alienated Southerners with this

Freeport Doctrine

, which damaged his chances of winning the Presidency in 1860.

The papers did report some tabloid-style sensationalized bickering: While denying abolitionist tendencies was effective politics, the African American

abolitionistFrederick Douglass remarked on Lincoln's "entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race." In spite of Lincoln's denial of abolitionist tendencies, Stephen Douglas

charged Lincoln with having an ally in Frederick Douglass in preaching "abolition doctrines." Stephen Douglas said that "the negro" Frederick Douglass told "all the friends of negro equality and negro citizenship to rally as one man around Abraham Lincoln."

And Lincoln used a number of colorful phrases in the debates, such as when he said that one argument by Douglas made a horse chestnut into a chestnut horse, and compared an evasion by Douglas to the sepia cloud from a cuttlefish. Lincoln said that Douglas' Freeport Doctrine was a do-nothing sovereignty that was "as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death."

But one reason the debates are remembered to this day, is the format. The

Lincoln-Douglas debate

format still used in high school and college competition today is named after this series of debates. The format in the Obama-Clinton debate on ABC-TV obviously was grossly different from the original

The Lincoln-Douglas style is known by some debaters as a "value debate" because it is about morals, human rights, and philosophy. It is a style of one-on-one

debate practiced in National Forensic League competitions, and widely used in related debate leagues such as the National Catholic Forensic League, National Educational Debate Association, the National Christian Forensics and Communication Association

, and their related regional organizations.

Unlike policy debate, Lincoln Douglas does not require vast amounts of statistics or other empirical data. The style is a logical debate divided into a central value that the debater claims his case achieves, a value criterion (way to achieve the value), and commonly two to four logically developed contentions that back the value and criterion. The style follows the basic time schedule 6-3-7-3-4-6-3 (minutes, for affirmative construction, cross-examination, negative rebuttal, cross-examination, first affirmative rebuttal, second negative rebuttal, and second affirmative rebuttal).

Thankfully, just as the CM solidifies its power over our mass media outlets, the internet has burst forth as an open, wildly diverse medium for mainstream opinion and actual truth. Its preservation will require what Thomas Jefferson called "eternal vigilance."

That includes restoring the Fairness Doctrine, enacted by a Republican Congress in the 1920s to guarantee balanced opinion on the emerging electronic medium of radio. It means a ban on unified corporate ownership of large fleets of radio, TV and print outlets. It means busting up the monopolies that warp public access to information and opinion.

As Cohen ended his lecture, he did so on a positive note, pointing out that independent journalists are on the rise, attempting to counteract the corporate media’s bias.

"The good news is that the independent media in our country is booming thanks to the Internet — it’s the failures of corporate media that has led millions of independent journalists to start asking questions," he said. "It’s an exciting time, but we have to keep the Internet safe from media conglomerates."

Some worry about anonymity on a lot of Web sites and blogs. It's very easy to attack someone when you don't have to put your name to your complaints.

Modern media, including the creation of Internet-based news sources and the possibility that citizen journalism will greatly expand the field, has made it all but impossible to identify which journalists are notable, in the sense that they could be identified in the past.

But independent collectives or individuals citizen journalists likely will never have the funding to do the research the NYT or (Wpost ) did on the Pentagon’s internal propaganda crime.

The real value of the NYT piece is what it teaches us about investigative journalism. What made the Times piece strong is that it relied on primary source documents — 8,000 pages of Defense Department documents, to be exact. It began as a federal Freedom of Information Act request submitted over two years ago! It wasn’t until the Times sued in federal court, and after several blown court-ordered deadlines, did the documents see the light of day.
And therein lies the crisis of modern journalism: with severe cutbacks in newspaper staffs because of a failing business model, investigative journalism, like the kind Barstow did, is becoming an endangered species.
Sure, bloggers and freelance writers can file Freedom of Information Act requests but you need serious time and resources to get beyond the bureaucratic foot-dragging and stonewalling. How much time and money, including all the legal bills, do you think it cost the NYT to get that story and how many bloggers and free-lancers can afford to take on such labor-intensive work?
Unless this growing void is filled, the American public is heading straight into a pitiful paradox: more breadth and access to news and information (via the internet) but, little, or no depth; a mile wide but an inch deep.
The reaction, or lack thereof, to the Bush propaganda campaign and trend toward having less investigative reporting, depends on what people consider to be "the proper role the news media."

Keeping the Internet neutral and open to all with no separation of access between the rich and masses

in the United States is a contentious issue. Currently there is generally

network neutrality in the United States, meaning that telecommunications companies rarely offer different rates to broadband and dial-up internet consumers based on internet-based content or service type; however, there are no clear legal restrictions against this. Some broadband services, for example Verizon's Fios, block port 80 preventing consumers from running a website on the standard http port unless they upgrade to a "business" account. In recent years, advocates of network neutrality have sought to restrict such changes while publicly criticizing proposed changes by telecommunications companies.

Five abortive attempts have been made at bills with certain network neutrality provisions passed by Congress. In each case, these bills would also have prohibited Internet Service Providers from offering service plans (known as "tiered service") priced according to the user's choice of Quality of Service levels: "[Broadband service providers may] only prioritize...based on the type of content, applications, or services and the level of service purchased by the user, without charge for such prioritization;" is a typical provision.^[2] Other provisions common to the net neutrality discussion were included in the proposed legislative works.

The two proposed versions of "neutrality" legislation to date would prohibit: (1) the "tiering" of broadband through sale of voice- or video-oriented Quality of Service packages; and (2) content- or service-sensitive blocking or censorship on the part of broadband carriers. These bills have been sponsored by Representatives Markey, Sensenbrenner, et al., and Senators Snowe, Dorgan, and Wyden.

Congressman Adam Schiff (D-California), one of the Democrats who voted for the Sensenbrenner-Conyers bill, said: "I think the bill is a blunt instrument, and yet I think it does send a message that it's important to attain jurisdiction for the Justice Department and for antitrust issues."

FCC Chairman Michael Powell in 2004 announced a new set of non-discrimination principles, which he called the principles of "Network Freedom." In a speech at the Silicon Flatirons Symposium in February 2004, Powell stated that consumers must have the following four freedoms:

Freedom to access content.

Freedom to run applications.

Freedom to attach devices.

Freedom to obtain service plan information.^[20]

As remarked upon by David Isenberg,^[21] Chairman Kevin Martin later modified these four freedoms to read:

Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice;

Consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement;

Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; and

Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

On August 5, 2005, the FCC adopted a policy statement stating its adherence to these principles.

Under pressure from the FCC and consumer groups, the broadband operators generally relaxed their most glaring restrictions on network usage.

In the United States, New York has established net neutrality as a telecommunications standard (See 16 NYCRR Part 605).

Much of the push for network neutrality rules comes from the lack of competition in broadband services. For that reason, municipal wireless and other wireless service providers are highly relevant to the debate. If successful, such services would provide a third type of broadband access with the potential to change the competitive landscape. For similar reasons, the feasibility of broadband over powerline services is also important to the network neutrality issue. However, as of the Spring of 2006, deployments beyond cable and DSL service have created little new competition.

Cable companies, in response to this threat, have lobbied Congress for a federal preemption to ban states and municipalities from competing and thereby interfering with interstate commerce. However, there is current Supreme Court precedent for an exception to the Commerce Power of Congress for states as states going into business for their citizens.

Give me Minneapolis and the Bridgeport suburb of Milford just after Watergate.

Those were the days.

.

Sept. 8, 2009

Joe was laid off over seven months ago after 11 years of being a full-speed, 9-5 editor in charge of several pages for a major trade magazine.

Here's how it went down:

At 10:45 a.m., Joe called his boss at the magazine and asked if they were still on that day for a meeting about a columnist who had been using the same source 20 times within the 2,000 words allowed for his column. She said, "Yeah. Definitely. Thanks for reminding me."

No mention of anything out-of-the-ordinary to come that day.

The only previous email from the parent company on layoffs had come in October and said no raises or bonuses in 2009. The parent’s September email had admitted they were in financial trouble because they had lost big because of "toxic investments."

At 11:30 a.m., Joe’s boss called: "Could you come to the HR [human resources--as if they were dealing with human 'coal,' 'water,' or 'oil'] room?"

"Yeah, sure." Being over 50 and having worked on magazines for 29 years, Joe knew what it was about despite there having been no follow-up emails about the parent’s financial woes in the three months since the October email.

The door shut on the glass-walled HR office. Everyone saw Joe walk there alone. Everyone saw him sitting there with the just-out-of-Harvard HR director (ominously hired to the magazine at the time of its acquisition in December 2007 by the parent firm) and Joe’s boss.

Boss: "As you know, we've been making layoffs."

Joe: "No, I didn't know that. There's been no news. This is out of the blue."

Boss: "We've laid off a couple of people, I thought word would get around...At any rate, your position has been eliminated."

The 25-year-old Harvard grad, with no emotion and no glance at Joe’s face: "Effective today. I have a package here with papers to sign and aids in job hunting. You can clear your desk out by 12:05. [It was now 11:35]"

Joe: "I did not hear about layoffs. The last email said no raises or bonuses in 2009. What does this package contain?"

Harvard grad: "It's there."

Joe: "When do I have to sign it?"

Harvard: "It's in there."

Boss: "I think it's 45 days."

Harvard: "It contains two weeks for vacation owed and 11 weeks for your 11 years here. Your health benefits run for three months. Your computer has already been shut off. [There was no mention that 42 percent of the lump-sum check to come, if Joe signed, would be taken out because this isn’t regular pay; it is ‘special’ pay. Nowhere in the comp package will it warn that a higher percentage will go to the government.]"

Joe: "I have a lot of personal files on my computer and in my desk after 11 years here"

Harvard: "We can try to get those to you. We can bring some boxes and have stuff shipped to you."

Joe: "How old are you?"

Harvard: "What difference does that make?"

Joe: [Ignoring the question] "I wish you well with your career." [To his boss:] "You don't have to worry about anything. I have an already-scheduled lunch date with one of our--your--book reviewers. I'll go to that at 12 and come back and finish packing."

Joe stood, picked up the package, turned without a sound and walked back to his cubicle (one he shared ‘Dilbert’-like with an older man also to be laid off later that day. It is one of 40 cubicles you can see as you look south on one side of the huge building and another 40 cubicles you see as you look east).

Joe began to organize his desk. His iMac was black. None of his 20 coworkers said a word. In five minutes, his boss came and said "I'm afraid I have to take your building pass. You can come back from lunch as a visitor."

When Joe got back from his lunch, there were no handshakes while he packed with every eye on him.

Later, he walked dizzily across the street near the World Trade Center hole. The NYPD had [and still has] a 24/7 permanent post of 3-4 squad cars, lights constantly flashing and five to 10 six-foot, six-inch 300-pound officers strolling about in ill-fitting uniforms. The uniforms reminded Joe of Hitler's Brownshirts just before World War II. Their caps barely balanced on their too-big heads, their pants were hitched up to their belly buttons, and their knee-high leather boots are polished black.

He sat at Starbucks to get the dizziness to stop. He wracked his brain for computer files he'd like Harvard to "try" to give back: his novel, the ones about his son's doctor appointments, the ones about his union activity—"Say, where was that union today anyway! Why did I pay $40 a month union dues all those years?"

Joe called Harvard and asked for those files from his computer.

Harvard: "OK. We'll try." Noncomittal. The corporate shark doesn't commit except when going for blood--when feeding.

Joe left his area for good at 1:30 p.m. As he waited for one of the elevators, the whole 20-member crew walked through the elevator landing toward the HR room. "I guess they're going to be 'informed' now," Joe said to himself.

This time, one person waved good-bye and the 20-year veteran kiss-up who sabotaged the union and made it impotent said, "Sorry," as he craned his neck back over the crowd, half looking at Joe. Out of the 20 there, Joe felt in his bones that that kiss-up was the only safe one.

Later Joe learned that on that day, the parent company had laid off 30 people worldwide. He was one of three at his magazine. Him, the other older fellow who shared his cubicle, and a reporter they'd hired only five months before. Why'd they hire that guy in the first place? Because, as Rumsfeld once said, "Things happen."

And because they have power and Joe doesn't. Unions in the U.S. are down since 1960 from 38 percent to 7 percent. The corporate motto now: "We have to make sure the shareholders get a good return on their money."

Joe received a three-month comp package to help him find another job in NYC [Reminder: It already has been over seven months.], where in EACH of the last three months of 2008 similar institutions (who could have used Joe’s editing talents) laid off 20,000 each month.

There is no middle class in NYC, now. There WERE a few protestors on the corner of Wall Street and Broadway that Joe saw as he shuffled home. Maybe the 300-pound officers intimidated others. Maybe the 10 VISIBLE cameras scared them away.

However, since the financial crisis on September 2008, there have been no Vietnam-style protests. There was one brave soul a few weeks before Joe was let go, however, that pointed a sign upwards for the "masters of the universe" in the Wall Street skyscrapers to see. It said: "Jump! You fuckers!"

Joe walked to his car for the one and one-half-hour (each way) ride home. No so-called middle class worker can afford to live in Manhattan.. No affordable housing for those "losers" among the million-dollar apartments for the elite of Wall Street. "Let the inferiors make the trek. We earned our penthouses. We deserve them. We won. They lost."

Joe took one day off to see Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino." It boosted his spirits. Being past 50, he could visualize himself setting up the Wall Street elite gang just as Clint set up the bad guys in the movie, getting his revenge, solving a problem, and getting his final reward all in one memorable moment as he says, "Hail Mary, full of grace..."

The first time Joe had felt this emasculated was when he was rejected by the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1976. They told him that his MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) scores were "inadequate."

In that one moment, his blood ran cold and his knees buckled. He went from a comfortable testosterone level and mother and girl-friend-pleasing routine of working hard and believing that he was going to be a good provider for some lucky potential mother of his children, to a drifter. That summer, he stayed with his college roommate's parents, in the roomie’s old bedroom, as the roomie pursued Peace Corps dreams in Africa.

Joe had sent letter after letter to other med schools asking that he be accepted. He dreamed about receiving another acceptance letter and proudly telling his mother that he was reinstated. Instead, he ended up working in a lab, analyzing for PCBs and pesticides. His backbone, which had just started to grow before the MMPI results, once again was jello, and he spent his free time watching sports in his benefactors' basement. He didn't feel he had enough to offer to any potential girl friend.

Now, years later, after being laid off in January 2009 from the magazine, he again sent out letter after letter, hoping to be reinstated into manhood, so he could keep a roof over the heads of his wife and young son, and food in their mouths--and health insurance. Never mind retirement. Too far away to think about. He also returned to laying around, this time watching his kids' favorite DVDs and TV programs.

He felt emasculated again, just as he did when he was rejected for med school. It was hard for him to do his exercises. He ate more junk food. In short, being laid off was eating away his insides mentally and physically and, research shows, will shorten his life. With the layoff, he says he fully expects to die at age 70, as four of his uncles have. His own dad had a stroke at age 67 and was lucky to live to 82. Of course, in the 1950s, when he was raising Joe and his siblings--with only an 8th-grade education--corporations still gave blue-collar, unskilled workers like him a pension for his retirement, Social Security, and excellent health insurance. His doctors patched him together until a stroke took him at 82.

No one will patch Joe together. Not when he finally has to give up COBRA health insurance because it costs nearly $400 a month, just to cover him, not his wife or child. That’s $4,800 a year that could be used for things like, say, food and rent. His rent now is close to $2,000 a month.

In Business Week’s most recent issue, reporter Esmé E. Deprez writes that for the nearly 15 million Americans currently unemployed, this year's Labor Day holiday may not be a respite from work but another emasculating reminder that, despite so-called glimmers of hope in the U.S. economy, there remains no real chance for men, or women, to rejoin the workforce. The economy has shed some 6.7 million jobs since December 2007, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and some experts fret the U.S. could be in store for a "jobless recovery" in 2010.

Against a backdrop of vanishing paychecks and dwindling savings, despair and depression are rampant, especially among men—long indoctrinated that it is their function to "bring home the bacon," according to a study released on Sept. 3 by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. The study, "The Anguish of Unemployment," is one of the first and most comprehensive of its kind, according to its authors, who say they sought to produce a representative view of unemployed workers' attitudes. The report was conducted through surveys of 1,200 people who are currently unemployed or have been in the past 12 months. The BLS reported last month that the number of people who had been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer rose by 584,000 in July to 5 million, the highest level since 1948 when the data were first collected.

Overwhelming majorities of the survey's respondents said they feel or have experienced anxiety, helplessness, depression, and stress after being without a job. Many said they've experienced sleeping problems and strained relationships and have avoided social situations as a result of their job loss. Still others described diminished hopes of finding employment at older ages, and feelings that advanced degrees are useless or have caused potential employers to think they're overqualified. Some, especially men, said they have questioned their self-identity after they had allowed their professional careers to define them, and some reported difficulty finding credit to begin new businesses.

"We don't tend to look at unemployment as having a psychological effect, just an economic one," co-author Carl Van Horn, a Rutgers professor of public policy, said on Sept. 2 in an interview. Van Horn warns of a silent mental health epidemic, as the jobless face financial, emotional, and social consequences of being unemployed. "For many people, being unemployed is embarrassing."

The randomly selected sample of 1,200 Americans, of which almost 900 were unemployed when the study was conducted in the beginning of August, included people of all ages, races, professions, and income levels. Most of the surveyed workers had lost a permanent position, with only 27% having had a temporary position. The sample was pulled from a 40,000-person database of Knowledge Networks, a survey research company, whose profiles mirrored the Labor Department's definition of the unemployed as those in the workforce seeking employment. The study also includes people without landline telephones and Internet access.

The survey found that 60% of the respondents received no advance warning of their layoff, and 84% received no severance package or other compensation. Just under half, 43%, of those unemployed reported having received unemployment benefits in the past year, which broadly reflects the national average, while 61% described themselves as "very concerned" their benefits would expire before they found a job.

It was the first stint of unemployment for a slim majority (51%) of those surveyed. About half (51%) said the government should be mainly responsible for helping to provide for workers who have been laid off, while one-third thought workers themselves should handle that responsibility. Nearly all of those still unemployed reported that they had cut their spending, while more than half had resorted to dipping into savings or retirement accounts, or borrowing from friends or family. One-quarter said they had missed a mortgage or rent payment because of their unemployment.

Van Horn says the survey's results signify the current downturn's impact will be felt long after the economy rebounds and more Americans find work. "Just as the Great Depression had a big effect, this is a major life-changing experience for people," he says. "It's not like getting over a cold—it's like recovering from serious illness." Long-term unemployment may lead to higher divorce rates, Van Horn speculates.

The American notion of success is often based solely upon the capability of individuals, says Ellie Wegener, director and founder of the Employment Support Center, a Washington-based nonprofit that leads support groups for the unemployed. "It's the backfire of individualism, which this country is great at," she says. "Here your success or your failure depends on you, so when people lose their job, they think it's because they are a failure. They need to regain their self-esteem, or they'll never get a job."

People like Joe have to hide their desperation during the one or two job interviews they get in seven months. Employers won’t hire someone who’s not cool and calm, especially if he’s over 50.