THEM

It's the title of an early Joyce Carol Oates novel, possibly her best and deserving a place in the US literary canon.

_THEM_ depicts the chaotic lives of a family living in poverty in the Detroit slums, from the 1930s to the 1967 riots.  Oates draws a vivid portrait of a matriarch, from self-awakening as a naive young mother nagged by regrets at the age of sixteen, to a mature woman whose aspirations and struggles encompass the destinies of her children battling to survive in a perilous world fraught with violence. Poor white trash folks, before that epithet became a thing.

US against THEM is also a binary construct that imposes constraints and limits possibilities.

This imperative to separate people into opposite camps, assigned to one side or the other of an arbitrarily determined divide, is a facile reflex.  Though some sociobiologists would claim that every human brain is instinctually wired to respond in this manner because: survival strategy! I find their arguments oozing with smarminess and confirmation bias.

This polarizing framework is certainly omnipresent throughout history, across varied and numerous ideological and cultural settings.



Demonize, other-wize, isolate, target. 

Blue dot.

And thus, with regard to this ill-advised model that the Liberal Party of Canada is heavily promoting, today's JT speech announces what awaits Canadians in the 2015 election campaign, if THE MIDDLE-CLASS becomes its strategic meme (though it could morph into a much abused trope).

As someone who grew up in a rough-and-tumble mostly francophone area with many immigrants, working class (and working poor) in a town that's now part of Ottawa, I find this ploy repellent.

Though I may seem to be a member of this elusive and more likely, illusive demographic that the Liberal brain-trust is desperately trying to seduce into its camp, it does NOT speak to me. 

When I hear the expression "upward mobility" deployed in JT's speech as though it were an exalted entitlement, I retch.  Meaningful work, a decent salary, a social safety net: those are important elements that should not be available only to those who buy into the "upward mobility" scam, or more accurately, a form of fancy-schmancy Ponzi economic scheme beatified by the likes of Larry Summers and his sycophants.

I think of my daughter, who by virtue of her hard work and personal sacrifices, is now an accomplished physician who gives back to the communities she has pledged to serve and respect.  I really don't think this marketing gimmick will speak to her.

As I do, she may find it repugnant and exclusionary.

THEM is the group that I historically and emotionally identify with, that demographically disregarded and invalidated class that JT and his team discount when the focus becomes exclusively *THE MIDDLE-CLASS*.

THEM includes many many many people, and not only those who have fallen on hard times. We may not be the potential rich donors the PLC is wooing, but we can smell a deliberate shun.  And when we are angered, we vote.

You can't take that to the bank but you can count on it.

As an aside, is the NDP's best shot at challenging the credibility of JT's speech really this? 

Mulcair's communications flaks would do much better to query how much Summers charged the LPC for his tired dog-and-pony show at the convention.  Was the party billed his preferential Wall Street rate - for "friends"?

Conventional.

A message confirming that I could attend the Liberal Party of Canada convention as an accredited blogger arrived without fanfare in my email box a few weeks ago.

This is the program.

First, I was surprised; DAMMIT JANET! has published some very rude posts, justifiably critical of specific LPC actions.

Then ambivalent - did I want to spend four days or so in the febrile, adrenaline-charged environment of a political convention?  I had attended one at the provincial level when I lived in Québec; from my perch as an observer, I noted what ideological hothouses they are.

Which is inexorably, the point of these conventions: to gather the troops, get every one armed - from the grunts to the generals - and in a state of readiness do to battle AGAINST the other parties.

So, I took myself to Montréal, registered, got my media pass, settled into the media room with my spiffy new MacBook all charged up; a wise move since the dozens of yellow extension with NO power bars are somewhat artisanale et broche à foin.  

With one eye on the closed circuit monitor which would eventually transit the feed from Liberal Live, I checked the convention program and saw that Chrystia Freeland and Larry Summers were to have a little chit-chat to *warm* up the crowd for Justin Trudeau welcome speech.

WTF?  Yes, that Larry Summers.

There's much that he has done that is not admirable.

More information about Naomi's reference, and Larry Summers' role in facilitating white collar crime.

As Treasury Secretary under Clinton, Summers played an important role in convincing Congress in 1999 to pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed key portions of the Glass-Steagall Act and allowed commercial banks to get into the mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations game. The measure also created an oversight disaster, with supervision of banking conglomerates split among a host of different government agencies -- agencies that often failed to let each other know what they were doing and what they were uncovering. 

At the signing of the bill, Summers hailed it as "a major step forward to the 21st Century." 

Summers also backed Phil Gramm's other financial time bomb, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed financial derivatives to be traded without any oversight or regulation. So it was on his watch that the credit-default swaps warhead that has blown up our economy was launched. 

Indeed, during a 1998 Senate hearing, Summers testified against the regulation of the derivatives market on the grounds that we could trust Wall Street. "The parties to these kinds of contract," he said, "are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies and most of which are already subject to basic safety and soundness regulation under existing banking and securities laws." 

It would be hard to make assumptions that turned out to be more wrong than Summers' were.

But aside from his association with catastrophically WRONG economic strategies, Summers uttered his Lib14 convention platitudes as though they were the fruit of some arcane lojong that he had cut up into children's bite-sized pieces.  All with the insufferable arrogant delivery that has branded his toxic imprint upon institutions.

So, I voted with my feet and left Le Palais des congrès.

As for the rest of the convention, I've set up some Real Life meetings with women who have chosen the Liberal Party as the route they want to explore to engage politically. One of them is Naomi.  Another is Nancy LeBlanc, also known as the blogger impolitical. I am curious about the path that has brought them to this convention, and what their own personal hope might be.

There are others, too.  Stay tuned.

Weighted medal count

A brief break for the Limpix. We at DJ also celebrate the triumph of our demonic one-eyed overlords.

Big teletubbie is watching you.

Anyway, I wanted to share this awesome economically-weighted medal count with y'all, presented by econ blogger Bill Mitchell. The columns are unfortunately a little misaligned, but if you use the GDP tab and read it carefully, you can see that North Korea is far and away the big winner from these Games. However, if you divide by population, China tops out as it does in raw current gold count...followed by NK. The US is third. By population, we find that Eastern European and Central Asian countries do rather well.

NK is still up there, though.

Overproduction

To me the biggest lesson regarding the continuing and on-going megafail that is the Eurozone is the fact that we have definitive, living proof that is productivity is not a virtue, and that it is indeed possible to over-produce. That leisure and "laziness" have positive merits. When some countries (people) produce more than they consume, it isn't necessarily a sign of individual national (personal) virtue, and it certainly is not reliable evidence even of their own prudence.

Germans in particular were encouraged to produce more than they consumed. Since we live in a world in which the law of conservation of matter holds, this means that there are only two possible destinations for the surplus:

1. The landfill/incineration/midden heap/the sea.
2. Other people.

We haven't yet entirely reached the level of depravity where we'd openly admit to doing (1). So the excess was exported to other people: most importantly, other Europeans. What wasn't exported directly to them were turned into savings that chased investments in, e.g., the Spanish housing sector.

But what was consumed by other Europeans was exactly what the other Europeans in the indebted countries did not produce, or stopped producing. Which makes perfect sense, because subsidized excess production sold from country A to country B means that it's not economical to produce in country B, especially when country B can no longer protect (ECONOMIST ALARM BELLS) itself from country A.

What should happen is that country A eventually increases its consumption, and brings everything back into balance, or country A stops overproducing.

Country A (i.e. Germany and, really, all the other Eurozone surplus countries) is not increasing its relative consumption, even though its goods have been purchased with enormous debt from country B. And the citizens of Germany are coming to the increasingly angry realization that they aren't going to be paid back for what they produced and have now apparently given to the "slackers" in the Euro south. Who, in the meantime, are suffering under massive unemployment and state austerity.

So the (quite literally) trillion-dollar question is, where did all those payments go? What was all that debt created for?

I leave that question as an exercise for the reader.

Canada's Got Young Radicals!

This twelve year old girl has more savvy and brains in her little finger than all the CON MPs, including Cabinet Ministers like idiot Peter Kent.

It's unlikely that you'll see Victoria being exploited by Harper's Politburo for a photo op with PMSHithead - unless they hold her parents and the family pet hostage.

Finance to Greece: elect a new people, or else

I note with some happiness and satisfaction for the future of the human race that the Greek government has decided to put the latest "bailout", handed down from on high by non-Greek politicians in the thrall of big finance, to a referendum. I note with further satisfaction the howls of outrage represented in the "market reaction", and the absolute naked hatred for democracy demonstrated thereby. Exposed and ugly as ever.

Prepare for massive application of shock doctrine tactics to the Greek people. I wouldn't be surprised if the Greeks were eventually to vote yes, even though I am firmly hoping for a no. Make no mistake: the brutal confidence fairy's insatiable thirst for the well-being of the old and the future of the young will not be slaked by another austerity package.

This is the lesson: you cannot have free trade without political union. One is the other. All supranational free trade (protected investment) zones are political unions. Most of them are hidden corporate dictatorships. Now the Greek government---as part of a gamble for the political capital that they would get on a yes, notwithstanding the fact that the situation had become untenable in Athens---has done the unforgivable and exposed this reality. Europe will have to decide whether it is going to implement democracy or abandon the project (or resort to corporatist military coups in noncompliant states...).

I for one am with you, Hellas. Here's hoping that they'll retain the strength to say no, and to force the rest of Europe to stop trying to pass the buck. The truth is, a referendum is far preferable to what would follow if the world is forced to feed the vampire squid another decade.

I don't believe in fairies. Unicorns, maybe. Fairies, no. Especially not confidence fairies.

Harper Wants to Campaign on the Economy?

Nice economy ya got there, Stevie, be a shame if . . .

. . . the Conference Board of Canada rates it 10th among 17 'peer' nations and sinking.

When grading is complete, the Ottawa-based Conference Board said Thursday, Canada will slip to 10th on a list of 17 peer countries in 2010 from sixth in 2009. The Conference Board’s advance rankings have Canada in ninth place in 2011.

Maybe you shouldn't have spent all that dough on gazebos, fake lakes, overtime for useless and/or brutal G20 G8 cops, and your religious cronies.

"Wycliffe Bible Translators slurped up a hefty $495,600 of your money and mine. But that was dwarfed by the $3.2 million awarded to an outfit called Youth For Christ--and, while children living in poverty on a reserve in Attawapiskat have been denied a new school for years, Edmonton's Newman Theological College was recently awarded $4.2 million of Harper's largesse."

Maybe you should have spent stimulus money -- that you didn't want to spend at all -- wisely as other countries did, like on green job creating strategies.

Environmental researchers say the Harper government could have created three times as many jobs if it had invested stimulus funding in climate projects rather than in traditional infrastructure.

An analysis by the Pembina Institute shows that climate-friendly projects tend to be more labour intensive.

It suggests the $16 billion Ottawa spent on building roads, arenas and the like during the recession could have created or maintained almost 240,000 green jobs — instead of the 84,000 the government boasts of.

The study was funded by the British High Commission and relied on Ontario government research into how effective environmental spending is on job creation.

The Conservative government put just eight per cent of its stimulus funding into climate projects — much lower than in other countries.

Yo! Liberals! NDP! The Harper Regime wants to run an election on the economy? Bring it on!!!!!!

Is this Harper-style economics?

Labour organizations and unions should be monitoring this situation in the US and watching these corporations for similar cost-cutting decisions and their impact on Canadian workers.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Andrew Sum, an economics professor and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. “Not only did they throw all these people off the payrolls, they also cut back on the hours of the people who stayed on the job.”

As Professor Sum studied the data coming in from the recession, he realized that the carnage that occurred in the workplace was out of proportion to the economic hit that corporations were taking. While no one questions the severity of the downturn — the worst of the entire post-World War II period — the economic data show that workers to a great extent were shamefully exploited.

The recession officially started in December 2007. From the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2009, real aggregate output in the U.S., as measured by the gross domestic product, fell by about 2.5 percent. But employers cut their payrolls by 6 percent.

In many cases, bosses told panicked workers who were still on the job that they had to take pay cuts or cuts in hours, or both. And raises were out of the question. The staggering job losses and stagnant wages are central reasons why any real recovery has been so difficult.

“They threw out far more workers and hours than they lost output,” said Professor Sum. “Here’s what happened: At the end of the fourth quarter in 2008, you see corporate profits begin to really take off, and they grow by the time you get to the first quarter of 2010 by $572 billion. And over that same time period, wage and salary payments go down by $122 billion.”

If Stevie Spiteful and his cadre of thugs accept the operating principles of corporate greed, it would be another reason why he abolished the long-form census questionnaire. Without solid data for comparison, the long-range impact of such practices on Canadian workers could not be verified.

Buy Nothing Day in the UK

Yes, we know. Buy Nothing Day was started in North America as a responsible and forward-thinking answer to the problems of rampant consumerism, the worst example being "Black Friday", the shopping orgy that is held the day after US Thanksgiving. The HQ and brain trust behind the campaing is Adbusters, an organization based in Vancouver, BC.

But on so many levels, the UK approach resonates more strongly with Canadians, I'd venture to say. For one thing, it's held on the last Saturday of November, when the 'shopping days before Xmas' count-down becomes frenzied and incessant.

Here's one social marketing that the UK genius folks have developed.



More inspired anti-shopping YouTubes here.

From the UK Buy Nothing Day website:

Everything we buy has an impact on the environment. Buy Nothing Day highlights the environmental and ethical consequences of shopping. The developed countries
- only 20% of the world population are consuming over 80% of the earth's natural resources, causing a disproportionate level of environmental damage and an unfair distribution of wealth.

And voluntary responsible consumer simplicity can continue every day of the year if you keep the following in mind.

Ask yourself these simple questions:

Do I need it? How many do I already have? How much will I use it? How long will it last? Could I borrow it from a friend or family member? Am I able to clean and/or maintain it myself? Will I be able to repair it? Am I willing to? Have I researched it to get the best quality for the best price? How will I dispose of it when I'm done using it? Are the resources that went into it renewable or nonrenewable? Is it made from recycled materials, and is it recyclable?

If not shopping today disrupts your schedule and standing in solidarity with the campaign would mean that you're deprived of ciggies, your kitty of litter or your children of milk, pick another way to be a conscientious consumer.

News flash: shopaholism caused by hormonal insufficiency.

Yawn.

From the department of pointless research projects:

Women may be able to blame impulse buys and extravagant shopping on their time of the month, research suggests.

In the 10 days before their periods began women were more likely to go on a spending spree, a study found.

Psychologists believe shopping could be a way for premenstrual women to deal with the negative emotions created by their hormonal changes.

First off - aren't those three sentences basically rephrasing and recycling the same basic information - women are more likely to shop impulsively before their menstrual period starts? That BBC pseudo-news item - illustrated with a photograph of one of the "Sex and the City" gals is found in the health - yes, health section.

The scientific word for shopaholism is oniomania.

Only in the past twenty years has specific and persistent inquiry into the disorder occurred. Although the study of compulsive buying is still in its infancy compared with some of its psychological siblings—alcoholism, eating disorders or drug abuse — there is more and more evidence that it poses a serious and worsening problem, one with significant emotional, social, occupational, and financial consequences. As many as 8.9 percent of the American population may be full-fledged compulsive buyers. (Ridgway, et al., 2008), and the problem is fast becoming a global one.

Oh - so all human beings, including men, are susceptible to this disorder? But some reproductive-age women are more vulnerable at certain times of their hormonal cycle. That would only account for a tiny percentage of impulse buys.

What is the likelihood that research will be conducted to account for the hormonal and biological reasons men make very expensive purchases? About the same time that sentences like these:

Most of the purchases made by the women were for adornment, including jewellery, make-up and high heels. Professor Pine said: "Other researchers have found there is an ornamental effect around the time of ovulation."

no longer appear in supposedly serious news outlets. Now give me that fair-trade dark chocolate bar and nobody gets hurt.

First, kill all the economists ....*

At Canadian Cynic, there's an exercise in compare and contrast. Stevie Harper, during the fall election campaign, did and said pretty much just about anything to get a much lusted-after majority. But now ...?

Remember the advice Stevie offered after his little performance at the Canadian Club in Toronto on October 8th, during an interview with Peter Mansbridge?

Economists may now occupy the most hated professionals niche that once belonged to lawyers. Double whammy if you're an economist AND a politician known for betraying your promises and lying through your teeth.

Update: Accidental Deliberations goes further in demonstrating how for Stevie, it's never about his own professional or personal accountability but, but, but about the Librulz.:

* with apologies to William Shakespeare.