What I recieved on Memorial Day.

I received a Memorial Day e-mail message from my Senator. her message shown here in italics is mixed with my comments in normal type.

honoring their sacrifice:
On this Memorial Day, I want to extend a most heartfelt thanks to the brave men and women who have served, and continue to serve, in our Armed Forces.
If you want to thank them then do all you can to bring them home. You would not thank someone by pushing them under a bus, nor would you thank them by sending them off to war.

When they chose to step forward and answer the call of duty and protect our nation,
If it is to protect our nation, what are they doing on the other side of the planet stirring up antagonisms against our nation?

 they and their families sacrificed everything. We should all be thankful for what they do and what they have done.
Why should we be thankful for those who act to destroy countless lives of poor people in countries on the other side of the planet. I don't buy the lies about nation building. If nations are built in a way that benefits their people, this happened in spite of not because of the soldiers we send.

As you may have heard, last week, an Army National Guard unit from Michigan, the 1-126 Calvary of Dowagiac, was hit with two roadside bombs while on patrol in Afghanistan. Ten soldiers were injured, one severely, but thanks to the unit’s courage and selfless heroism, no one was killed.
I have sympathies for anyone wounded in violence, even those who provoke it with their own violence. How many of these 10 were just out of high school?  How were they conned into that racket you call war? And how does becoming fodder for a roadside bomb constitute selfless heroism?

 We have many other Michigan service members who are recovering from the wounds they received while fighting for our country, and my thoughts and prayers go out to them and their families.
I would pray also for their victims.

This is the first Memorial Day in almost a decade that we have not had troops in Iraq.
You have other names for them, advisers and security contractors.

As we continue to bring our soldiers home from Afghanistan, it’s absolutely essential that we honor our commitment to provide them with the very best care and support available.
I have worked in homeless shelters and I know what this country does with its soldiers when it's done with them.

They’ve fought for us, and we need to keep fighting for them
They don't fight for me, I only give them the respect that any human deserves. That includes enough respect to tell them honestly that they are wasting their lives destroying other people lives

For those of you fortunate enough to spend this holiday with your family, I hope you’ll find a quiet moment to remember the troops who've made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our way of life.
What is this “way of life” you wish to protect? Certainly it is not our democracy this war and the tendency towards total war only erodes our democracy. Perhaps it's our addiction to oil. Why would we wish to protect a way of life that is destroying the planet? By “way of life” do you mean that urged to have power and dominate others? Are you perhaps talking about the “way of life” of the power elite and the super-rich?

To our men and women in harm’s way, our prayers are with you. Come home soon, and come home safely.
Asking them nicely will not work to bring them home, you know that. You at least could make a reasonable request to the commander-in-chief, but asking him nicely it's not likely to work either.

Sincerely,

Debbie Stabenow
United States Senator 
Sincerely, we should be outraged at the work of the US military.  "Yankees go home"

A bad immunization decision

Dr Shakeel Afridi  made a very bad immunization decision. Although his decision involved hepatitis vaccination it has implications for polio.

Eradication of polio would be a great human achievement. Only once before have human beings work together successfully to eliminate the disease from our planet. In many ways we are making progress in the efforts to eliminate polio. In January of this year India past the one-year mark for being polio free. So far this year there have only been 60 confirmed cases mostly in the three remaining endemic countries Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Last year at this time there had been 165 cases. 

The original plan was to eliminate polio by the year 2000. A couple of years later the war in Afghanistan made the efforts to eliminate polio all that much more difficult. Successes are often followed by failures.  In 2010 devastating flooding in Pakistan led to major outbreaks.  Many places that have been polio free become reinfected from time to time. Most of the polio cases in Pakistan and Afghanistan are in the border regions between the two countries where infections in the knocked back and forth like a volleyball. 

Although we may be closer than we have ever been to the goal of eliminating polio this last bit may prove to be exceedingly hard. There is a problem of donor fatigue. The budget for the next few years stands at just over $2 billion, nearly $1 billion still need to be raised. The 2012 world polio eradication budget is $270 million short. Even the unfunded $2 billion budget is lacking resources for funding ongoing polio immunization in areas that are vulnerable to reinfection.

Beyond the financial struggle there is the very real challenge of conducting an immunization campaign in a war zone. At times the polio eradication campaign has been seen by some communities as a Western conspiracy. One of the stumbling blocks in Nigeria has been acceptance from some local Islamic leaders. Similarly the Taliban has an uneasy relationship with immunization efforts. Some Taliban have believed that immunization efforts were really a conspiracy to sterilize Muslim populations. Even though both the Taliban and local Islamic leaders in Nigeria have more recently supported immunization campaigns, “immunization efforts” are not always innocent and free of conspiracy.

Dr Shakeel Afridi was recently convicted of espionage by the Pakistani government. Afridi was involved in CIA efforts to look at DNA samples that were acquired from immunization needles in Abbottabad. The target of that search was DNA of children of Osama bin Laden. When the CIA identified that his children were in the area that helped in confirming their belief that they had found the compound where he was dwelling.  Although this DNA search apparently involved giving real hepatitis vaccinations Dr. Afridi acted in a way that violated multiple principles of medical ethics. One might try to justify many of these violations on the grounds of stopping Osama bin Laden. Patient privacy, for instance, is broken for much smaller police investigations. 

What is particularly objectionable, is that this fraudulent campaign has the potential to undermine polio eradication efforts. There has already been some suggestion of fear of immunization by people in tribal regions of Pakistan. The concern these people have is that the immunization campaign may be a front for an effort to track down Taliban leaders. Even a small amount of nonparticipation in the polio eradication campaign could allow the virus to harbor, and later breakout. We need to be vigilant against the possibility of even a small number of cases spreading to other countries and then like dominoes spreading beyond. At this point, such an outbreak could put back the eradication efforts by years, if not even leading to the collapse of the efforts altogether. Political enemies come and go, wars do not eliminate them. On the other hand, if eradicated, polio will not come back. 

Let's do a cost comparison. According to the website “cost of war” the cost of the Afghanistan war is now over 500 billion, so the ratio between the amount spent on this useless war and the amount still needed to eliminate polio, is greater than 500:1. Let's look at it another way, the Center for Defense Information estimates the cost of a team of four drones to be about $120 million (they typically fly in teams of4) a little more than two teams would cover the unmet polio eradication budget needs for 2012.

The CIA's program that used immunization to engage the DNA of children in tracking down and killing their father may have unforeseen ramifications regarding the effort to eliminate polio. The American war machine is not much on apologies, or paying for their mistakes, but in relationship to the Pentagon budget a couple hundred million dollars is hardly anything.

A Couple of Outrageous Proposals Regarding Facebook

With radio news time monopolized by Facebook “going public”a radical idea came to me. I want to raise the question who should own Facebook. We know that “going public” is a euphemism for being up for sale to the general public. But the general public won't be buying Facebook, only those with the resources and inclination will purchase any of the stock, and only those of the 1%, or some fraction of a percent will own any significant amount of the company.

The way I look at it, Facebook has, for better or worse, become the global village. Perhaps this overstates it a bit. Maybe it is the Internet as a whole that deserves to be called the global village, in that case Facebook has at least become the social gathering place at the center of the town, the Zocalo, the Piazza, the Agoura. In referring to the Agoura, that place in ancient Athens that is often translated as “the marketplace” I am referring not to that buying and selling side of the Agoura, but that place for popular assembly and political discussion that was quite important to early Greek democracy.

By its very nature Facebook has to be a monopoly. Sure there are cracks, twitter and Google chrome plus. But Facebook holds the center, and to function well as a digital Agoura a single center is appropriate. As a public service monopoly public ownership is appropriate. To quote Tom Johnson the mayor of Cleveland from 1901 to 1909 

“I believe in the ownership of all public service monopolies for the same reason that I believe in municpal ownership of waterworks, of parks, of schools. I believe in the municipal ownership of these monopolies because if you do not own them, they in turn will own you. They will rule your politics, corrupt your institutions and finally destroy your liberties”

To the extent that Facebook is part of a global village, that village is the municipality that should own Facebook, not its rich and it's investing aristocrats.

So let me suggest two proposals:

One proposal is out right expropriation. Since Facebook is based in the United States this would have to be in action of the United States, or perhaps the state of California. Were I to look for case law I would turn to the laws of eminent domain. If the space is needed for a purpose of greater public good eminent domain allows the state to take control of that space. My argument is that global democratic and full of Facebook is a far greater public good than whatever will come from its private ownership.

Once expropriated, Facebook in this scenario should be turned over to its participating members on a one-person one-vote basis. I imagine that there may be a need for a careful and lengthy constitution writing process. My readers will no doubt have a number of questions and concerns about this proposal. We could spend quite some time on these issues, but for the moment I will concede that the biggest hindrance is that neither the United States legislature nor any legislative body within its boundaries is likely to take such action in any foreseeable future, and even if this were in some way possible we still have a conservative court to contend with.

There is a second path so let me move on to that. Gandhi often spoke of trusteeship. His notion was that wealthy owners should treat their wealth not as private gain, but as something held in trust for the people. Here we can imagine a split between the concepts of ownership and control. At the moment this is already the structure of the company as it moves forward with its IPO. My understanding is that while he will no longer hold the majority shares in Facebook, Mark Zuckerman will retain a majority of the decision-making power for the organization. On the surface this may seem less democratic. But it leaves an opening for a more democratic option. Mr. Zuckerman could give away his power to all the participants of Facebook. This would not necessarily mean, giving away stock he and the other investors could be "trustees". Again great effort would be needed to come up with a fair and truly democratic constitution. I think we are capable of this effort.

Here my readers are likely to think I've clearly gone mad, why would Zuckerman ever give away his power. I myself have often misquoted Frederick Douglass, “power concedes nothing without struggle” but what Douglas said was “power concedes nothing without demand.”  According to Frederick Douglass “it never did and it never will” but that's not exactly true. If we go back to the ancient Greeks, there is a man who freely conceded power and in so doing launched the Athenian democracy. Solon was the king of Athens. A true philosopher King, he decided that the state would be best served by democracy so he turned Athens over to its people and set off to travel around the world. In so doing Solon gave not just Athens, but the world a model of democracy that has shaped all future political this course.

If Mark Zuckerman with or without his new investors could turn over the whole organization to the people who use it he would be doing something of comparable greatness to the act of King Solon. Facebook users now number so many that if it became a democracy it would be the second largest democracy in the world, behind only India. At its present rate of growth, it won't be long until it's participants number more than the population of India. Facebook could emerge as one element of a truly democratic world. Mark Zuckerman, you can be that bold.

Unemployment and a shorter work week.

Economists often talk about unemployment and job growth rates. As we have things set up presently unemployment is a big issue. People's lives get devastated when they lose a job, suicide rates go up, domestic violence increases, unemployment is stressful and from that comes worse physical and mental health. But is this how we have to have things set up?

Let's look at what a job is. Jobs bring with them both positive and negative elements. Some people get to work, they have a dream job, it's what they want to do every day. Other people have to work, some people have to take any job there offered, others persist for years in a job they don't like. I could go on for quite a bit about the negative aspects of work, the alienation, the stress, the drudgery, the exploitation and oppression that can be found in the workplace. That's not the focus of what I'm writing about at the moment.

There are basically three positive aspects of a job. For the individual a job brings income, and meaning. For society or at least the employer, jobs are about productivity, making something or providing a service. For the economist the focus on jobs is about productivity and income. The importance of income may be predicated on the importance of productivity. I will start by discussing productivity and then employment, work as a source of meaning is a very important issue, perhaps the most important issue that we face regarding jobs, but the economists framework should be laid out first. I will take up meaning in a future posts.

Productivity refers to how much one person can get done.  As the productivity of workers goes up this is seen as good for the economy, the economy is more competitive. And all things being equal businesses can make more money. Increased production is how we measure the wealth of the society, and it generally equates increased profits for the business. 

 Unemployment is seen in a negative light because without a job one has less income to spend, and spending is also seen as good for the economy because when you spend you are consuming something that has to be produced. We can add the point that unwanted unemployment is bad for the individual who is unemployed, but this really doesn't seem to be the concern of economists. There are exceptions and for some economists caring about human beings appears to be their central concern. 

Productivity has nearly doubled in the last 50 years. As productivity continues to go up any one person can make more or provide more services than a similar person could have any time in the past. It looks to me like there is an obvious problem here. If society needs a certain amount of something and half the workers are needed to produce that that were needed 50 years ago then the other half would be unemployed. We have solutions to this problem of course, new products and increased consumption. 

At first that doesn't sound so bad. For economists this is how we measure the success of our society, but let's look at it more closely. Once you are well fed more food amounts to obesity and the many health problems that go with it. The increased productivity in everything from housing to cars to consumer goods may make these things readily available but in the process may be helping to destroy the earth.

I'm not saying there's nothing we should be producing more of, I'm all in favor of windmills and solar panels and experiments in algae diesel. Nonetheless in spite of exponential growth in these green areas of the economy the only dip we have seen in carbon emissions since the Kyoto protocol has been due to the global recession in 2008. 

The point is that generally speaking productivity is exceeding our needs. Any economist can tell you that excess production eventually leads to a downturn in the economy. The standard way of downturn takes shape is that people are laid off until inventories are lower.

There is another way that excess productivity could be dealt with. All of us could work less. I'm in favor of the six-hour workday, or the four day work week and as productivity continues to climb our time spent working should be shortened even further. The eight hour work day had become a general standard by the mid-1930s. With productivity more than doubling why can't we work less?

A shorter work week doesn't have to amount to less pay. A strong union movement would be able to win equal pay for less hours. Since we don't have a strong union movement it could come through federal legislation or funding. Since we don't have a worker friendly political system I suppose this isn't likely either. But as they say, power concedes nothing without a struggle, if you don't ask for it you're never going to get it.

International political assassination and its ramifications.

The Roman emperors had to be quite careful to protect themselves from assassination. Assassination was how power politics was conducted in those days. Thanks to illustrious American technology and the glory of American foreign-policy vision, those days are back again. Of course at first assassination by drones hid in the shadows. Now it has been championed by the assistant to the president for homeland security and counter terrorism, John Brennan. In a speech that perhaps should be called the Obama doctrine Brennen presents what he considers to be an ethical justification for the use of drones in killing identified “terrorists”and others who happen to get in the way. His many arguments are at best weak and sloppy and I will not spend time here critiquing each of them. I'm sure others will do an adequate job of that. I want to however pick up on one point, that of precedent.

Brennan states “The United States is the first nation to regularly conduct strikes using remotely piloted aircraft in an armed conflict.  Other nations also possess this technology.  Many more nations are seeking it, and more will succeed in acquiring it. . . . we are establishing precedents that other nations may follow,”

Exactly Mr. Brennan. Let us imagine that an enemy of the United States, a nation, or an organization that the United States is waging war on got a hold of this snazzy technology. Let us imagine that they followed the US precedent. Their targets would be American leaders. The president would no doubt be at the top of the list. Certainly a case could be made by such an enemy that congressional leader funding or promoting the war against them were fair targets. There is nothing in the US drone policy or practice that would prevent this if the shoe were on the other foot.

The American war machine is ugly, and I won't feel more sympathy for the loss of the lives of its American architects and perpetrators then I feel for the innocent Pakistanis or Yemenites who end up as collateral damage to American drone. In fact if drones in the hands of America's enemies ended up killing America's foreign-policy elite one could certainly see this as no more than the chickens coming home to roost. But the political elite know how to share the pain.

The first time a drone kills in America, no doubt someone will be caught unaware, probably the president, although perhaps it will be a second-level politician someone in Congress, the Secretary of State, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the head of the CIA. Then the security will begin to ramp up. If you think the patriot act is bad, imagine the legislation that will pass after an assassination of a significant American political figure. Further erosion of our civil liberties, further militarization of our society, more fear and paranoia.

Americans will pull out technology against technology, and I don't know where in this arms race will end. Perhaps we will eventually all have our own little assassin bugs that can seek out and kill anyone we wish with no way of detecting who was operating it. I for one can imagine some pretty dystopic futures based on the premise that in war assassination is legitimate and that new technology allows us to do it more precisely and efficiently.

 Okay, ultimately I take issue with the premise that any warfare is legitimate, and I have mixed feelings about efforts to make war "nice". Nonetheless we do have an option. We don't have to go down this road. Drones could be banned by international law in the same way that atomic, biological and chemical warfare has been banned. I suspect that if there were a president who could promote and achieve such a treaty it might be someone like Obama. Here is a great tragedy, because Obama is not about to push for such a treaty. He likes his robotic planes.

We need not new technology, but a new mindset.