Teachers' Retirement Fund and the Financial Crisis

The fund managers claim that they will be able to maintain current benefits but . . .

AUSTIN — The Teacher Retirement System of Texas has seen about a $25 billion market value drop since Sept. 1 in the nation's widening financial meltdown, making additional benefits next year for retirees appear unlikely.

Fund manager Bill Harris says, "These are short term conditions. We are a long-term fund."

I sure hope he's right.

Awareness Test

Creationists Making Gains in Texas

The Discovery Institute is trying to do for Texas what they did for Kansas and tried to to for Dover, Pennsylvania. They are trying to replace the science of evolutionary biology with a new version of "intelligent design." Story in the Houston Chronical.

About those financial markets

This is what happened.
This is what the Bush gang wants to do about it.

As though the chief function of this nation is to shovel money into the insatiable maw of financiers. I don't think we would collapse if these financial houses went under. I think we should build an alternative economic model to this one that has failed so miserably and, in the process, has created the worst income inequality in U.S. history. Tell me this: what is so great about AIG et. al.that they must be saved from themselves?

Birds in her Freezer

A widow in my neighborhood--let's call her Marie--walks her miniature schnauzer twice a day. I made her acquaintance on the street when we were both walking our dogs. She is slightly bent by scoliosis, and the walking helps her. She probably knows more about this neighborhood than anyone else because she talks to people she sees on the street while walking with her dog. She knows the soap opera versions of our private lives and manages to discuss these intimacies with some discretion and taste.

Her husband, before he died, had been a first-rate yard man in addition to his job as curator at one of Houston's most important museums. Their house and lawn literally glowed with sculptured life. A particularly important chore that the husband had previously handled with great competence and sensitivity was the burying of dead birds.

Marie kept pet birds of the smaller sort, finches, lovebirds and such. Inevitably, some died. Recently, a finch died, and the chore that had been handled so competently and sensitively by her husband now fell to her. She simply was not up to the task, so she put the bird in the freezer to keep until she got up enough gumption to bury it properly. A few days later, she picked up an injured sparrow and, failing to nurse it back to health, put it in the freezer along with the finch.

Marie has been without electricity for over a week, and the birds are now decomposing in plastic bags on the porch. Her sister explained to her how dead animals release a gas that permeates plastic. That is why her freezer still reeks even after the birds' removal. Marie's 83-year-old mother had chickens in her deep freeze. The excrescence is still there, and she doesn't know what to do with it. They think she's going to have to throw out the entire freezer. It reminds me of something my wife had told me. The insurance companies, she says, now have an exclusion clause for refrigerators because, after Katrina, so many folks just duct-taped their Fridgidaires shut and put them by the street for pickup. Apparently, you can't clean the stench of rotten flesh out of a warm freezer.

Marie went to the store for baking soda to put in her freezer, and she thought that she might get some for her mother, as well. She was disappointed to find the baking soda shelf bare not only at that supermarket but also at the two others she checked. It seems that Ike's pathway, from Galveston to parts of Kentucky and Ohio, is now a sump of moldering flesh, held partially at bay with boxes of baking soda.

I discussed these things with Marie in the shared and awkward knowledge that I live in air conditioned comfort with Internet access while she hunkers in the dark trying to read by the failing light of what she describes as a Ray-O-Vac.

Update: my mother says coffee grinds are helpful with de-stinking a freezer.

From Houston with Love

First diary

Second diary

Ike's Aftermath

The power went down briefly this morning but has been steady ever since. Internet access is as stable as the power allows. This morning I went to the Central Mkt. at Weslayan and Westheimer. They were well supplied. The cashier who helped me was from Ft. Worth. I remember from a conversation that I had with someone on the Thursday preceding landfall that the Central Mkt. (an H.E.B.) store, would remain open to serve the community. My cashier from Ft. Worth said that the backup generator had failed, and they had only been open since Tuesday. I definitely remember than an H.E.B. on the Southwest Frwy (I59S) was one of the first stores to offer ice. The drive, though short, was tedious without traffic signals but most drivers yielded to each other with at least a modicum of grace. In any case, if you can get to the Central Mkt., you will leave well supplied, as long as you have enough gas to get there and money to spend when you do.

North Houston and Harris County, where most of my students live, has a large population without the money or gas to get to the Central Mkt. The Houston Chronicle Online has a link to information about what supermarkets are open. I didn't test it. I understand that some McDonalds are open, and people are going there for food, air conditioning, and to charge their cellphones and laptops. FEMA PODS look pretty scarce out there, as does electric power. Everyone that I am in contact with is faring OK, and I presume prospects will improve there over time. I hope they improve rapidly.

Open thread for Hist. 1302 students

All sections of HIST 1302, both online and face-to-face, please leave the following information in the comments of this diary: your location; your condition; do you have enough food, water, ice? Do you need help?

Update: LSC closed through the week; will reopen Monday, September 22.

Reflecting on Ike--updated X2

We went into full hunker mode about 8:00 Friday night. We still had electricity but had all electronic components except the TV unplugged. I was able to watch the storm approach on TV until close to midnight when I unplugged it. I was hearing terrible news out of Galveston, and the storm had not even made landfall yet. Ike has been described as a Category 2 hurricane with a Category 4 storm surge. Everyone knows by now the devastation Ike brought to those in the path of this surge. Inland, it was a very bad thunderstorm accompanied by howling and screaming winds; the slamming of limbs into roof and walls; and the occasional sense that all might be coming undone.

In the absence of Internet access Twitter worked perfectly. At any given time, I was able to post text messages to Twitter so that friends and family could keep up with our situation. After I tired of listening the storm howl, I posted a final update, put my earplugs and eye mask in place and went to bed.

At daybreak, I looked outdoors, and saw that the rising water threatened to pour into the passenger side of my car. We were getting rain from the south side of the storm, and the water was rising fast. I managed to move the car.

By seven or so Friday morning, the worst was over. The water was high but it receded quickly.


Some limbs were down.

Trees were snapped.

A neighbor's carport collapsed.



This humble man pitched right in with the cleanup.

Neighbors helping neighbors.

A few hours later, after the water receded, we tried the toilet. It flushed--what a relief! Mayor White put out an order to boil and conserve water, so we adopted the policy of, "yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown flush it down." There were no water problems. One of three main water pumps lost power but it was quickly restored and the pressure was only down for a short time. The order to boil water, however, is still in effect.

We kept the refrigerator and freezer taped shut for the first 24 hours just in case the power was restored quickly. We were pleased that we had gas and water. We spent Saturday cleaning up and listening to the radio. Bad news trickled in from Galveston. Mayor White made public statements that FEMA had assured him that large quantities of relief supplies were staged in forward positions near Houston. White continued, "I fully expect them to honor their commitments and follow through." He sounded skeptical.

Michael Chertoff, Governor Perry, and John Cornyn gave joint press conferences conveying a rehearsed-sounding message about how seamlessly federal, state and local authorities were working together, as opposed to the Katrina fiasco. Saturday was spent assessing need and staging supplies. As the day progressed, it became clear that damage to Galveston and coastal areas was catastrophic.

By Sunday morning, it was time to empty the refrigerator. We had been hoarding ice since Thursday, and there was some left but not enough to keep perishables through the night. This was during the several hours when FEMA supplies were delayed because of the state guys --the same ones who had been yammering on about the "seamless" cooperation--reneged on their commitment to man the FEMA PODS (Points Of Distribution). According to County Judge Ed Emmet, Harris County has 12, 000 volunteers trained to man the PODS, but the state stepped in and said that they would man the PODS. Then they realized that they needed all state assets in the devastated areas. 36 hours after landfall, only one POD was established with ice, water, and MREs. Conventional wisdom seems to be that natural disaster is always followed by some chaos. In this case, it looks like much of the chaos could have been avoided if the city and county guys had been heeded.

Fortunately, a friend who had electricity called, and I was able to get some ice from her. Our neighbor across the street got some ice and a generator from his employer, Fed-Ex. They gave us half a bag of ice. We had to throw out some food but saved most of it into a cooler. Next time, I will lay in three bags of ice in a cooler. Even though most of it will probably melt, enough might last to extend the survival time of perishable foods from 24 to 48 hours. Anyway, I had a small but steady source of ice for as long as I needed. We lost little food, and were luckier than most in this regard. We found pleasant ways to pass the time outdoors.




Monday, we played the waiting game. I showed up for ice at Jane's Monday evening just in time, as luck would have it, for dinner. It felt so civilized to sit at table for a meal with electricity

Our own electricity was restored that night. A cheer went up and down the street.

HISD is closed for the week. Lonestar says we will reopen Wednesday but it looks doubtful. It looks like some of the PODs are working well while others are chaotic. Today, grocery stores are mostly either closed or empty. We have plenty of food, and have transferred perishable back into the fridge.

Update: PODs distribution has been taken over by County Judge Ed Emmet at the request of Mayor White. News reports say that the truckers carrying supplies for the PODS were supposed to get their instructions about where to go with what this morning. When this morning arrived, the state guys or the FEMA guys--whichever ones were supposed to be in charge of the planning--were just getting started. The mayor was very upset, and he and Judge Emmett seem to have intervened with President Bush to take over the PODS logistics.

Update x2
The PODS delivery got clusterf@#$%ed because they were using a computor system that treated all incoming information equally without any knowledge of the specific needs and conditions of individual areas. Furthermore, every time an elected official intervened to request expedited assistance to his own district, that request got counted twice. The result was chaos. Judge Emmett then sat down at a folding table with a clipboard and legal pad, and had all POD requests directed through him. Like I said earlier, they had prepared for this situation. My guess is, we'll find out later that this had been the official disaster plan all along but the state and FEMA guys didn't read it.

Friday Afernoon Ike Update

We are feeling the effects of Ike's outer winds, accompanied by occasional spates of rain. Final preparations are complete. Conditions should begin to deteriorate within the next few hours. I will continue posting updates as long as I can. When the power goes down, we will lose our internet gateway. After that, I will post updates via twitter (username, davidldavis). My mobile connection is working fine now so, for as long I can send text messages, I will keep the updates coming.

It now unlikely that Ike will significantly intensify or change direction. This is very bad news for areas between Galveston and Port Arthur where the effects could be catastrophic. For us, the news is mixed. It is unlikely that we will have significant flooding. The bad news is that Ike will likely subject us to hurricane-force winds for a long time. Because of Ike's great size, high winds will extend 100 miles inland before the storm makes landfall and will not diminish until the eye wall passes.

City service vehicles have been driving around looking for hazards and trying secure them. One worker knocked on the door of a house with a bag of garbage at the curb. Presumably, he asked the resident to put the garbage away. They seem to have all gone home, now.

My future neighbor has a sense of humor:



It was considerate of him to lash down the dumpster full of scrap wood.


And perhaps more important, he moved the outhouse indoors.


When Ike hits, the phone circuits will probably get jammed with calls when we have any service at all. Therefore, if you want to contact me, texting is probably best. A text message will get through when a phone call will not.

This might be my last blog update until Ike passes and power is restored, but who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky.

Ike--Friday morning update

Not much seems to have changed overnight. For one thing, the likelihood of a northern turn that would spare Houston the brunt of the storm has diminished. There is still time for that but not much. Furthermore, the projected intensity of Ike at landfall has been upgraded from 110 mph to 115 mph or a minimum Category 3 hurricane. The eye is expected to pass over downtown Houston. This is bad for downtown, especially Houston's homeless population, many of whom are children, the elderly, veterans and the mentally ill; however, it will not bring the level of destruction one generally associates with more intense hurricanes. The potential 20-foot storm surge will flood much of the coastal plain, including the petro-chemical complex that lines the Houston Ship Channel.

Here is the SLOSH (Sea, Lake and Overland Surges) model for Ike. Note the white star that denotes Houston well outside of the surge.


Below is the wind-field projected for Ike at landfall:


That would put us in the path of tropical-storm force winds of around 50 mph (the windspeeds in the model are listed in kts; conversion table here).

When the eye passes over downtown, wind speeds should look like this:


For us, wind speeds should remain at tropical force. You can see that to the East of us, on the "dirty" side, wind speeds are somewhat higher, peaking around 70 mph. While Ike could shift to the West and put us in the path of the stronger winds this type of movement is not predicted, and even then we would face only minimal hurricane-force winds.

We are forecast to receive about 12.5 inches of rainfall, which will bring some flooding to low-lying areas and add to the damage in those areas affected by the storm surge. However, it is unlikely to flood our neighborhood.



As always look for updates here and, as a last resort, on twitter (still having trouble with mobile updates but I'll get back on top of that).

Hurricane Ike, Thursday night

I just watched a half hour of television news coverage of the hurricane. It was all very frightening with the graphic depictions of potential damage and the repeated imprecations toward people in harm’s way to evacuate. Indeed, Ike’s storm surge is predicted to be heavy, and this is very bad news for anyone close to the gulf or in flood-prone areas inland. My thoughts will be with them, and it is partly for their sake—to keep the roads free for those who really do need to evacuate—that we determined to shelter in place.
The above image displays the evacuation zones, those areas that are low-lying or close enough to the gulf to be affected by the storm surge. I have whited out a small square in the southwestern corner of the 610 (inner) Loop and drawn a crude purple X at roughly the spot where my house is. As you can see, it is well away from the endangered zones. The harsh warnings and dire forecasts are not directed at us. We seem likely to encounter hurricane-force winds but not the destructive winds of a major hurricane. Therefore there is little cause for concern for the personal safety of me or my immediate family.

Hurricane Ike--updated X2

As of now, Hurricane Ike is a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph. The pressure inside the eye is 952 mbs—up from 944 mbs, which suggests that Ike is not organizing quickly. Forecasts are that Ike will strengthen into a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph. There is a 15 percent chance that Ike will strengthen into a Cat. 4. This, of course would be bad news but it is unlikely. Ike is a very large storm so, even in it hits North of Houston, which would spare us the “dirty side” of the storm, it will very likely impact us in terms of high winds, rain and loss of services.

We will ride this one out. We are 50 miles inland, which means that we will not experience any flooding from the surge. Rainfall is expect to range from 6 to 10 inches (feeder bands can add as much as an additional 2 inches per hour). This house didn’t flood during T.S. Allison, and it seems unlikely that Ike will flood our house. We are not in an evacuation zone. We are well supplied with the essentials. We have 14 gallons of drinking water and a 250 gallon reserve. We have lots of canned goods (and a manual opener!), dried foods, soy milk, flashlights, batteries, candles, transistor radio, first aid, etc. This is not our first hurricane, and I’m sure we will be fine, even if it does get rather uncomfortable without air conditioning.

As usual, I will send updates through email, Myspace and, as a last resort, through Twitter (twitter is posting updates from mobile phones slowly, so those updates might lag far behind real time). Ike should make landfall in the early hours of Saturday morning, but conditions will probably begin to deteriorate much earlier. I’ll try to stay in touch. If you need to reach me, you stand a far better chance of getting through with a text message than with a phone call.

Update: for good information on the local scene check out Eric Berger's science blog at the Houston Chronicle online.

Lyrical stories from a tropical paradise

Treat yourself to a Lianga Diary.

Police state? Not quite, but Dissent has been Outlawed

I have been listening to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! for years. She has been one of the few independent voices in a media landscape that has become the playground of corporate shills and an echo chamber for right-wing talking points.

Ironically, Goodman is one of the few journalist reporting on the KGB-like tactics employed by the Minneapolis police and the county Sheriff's Department under the direction of the FBI as they invaded the homes of vegan and leftist groups in Minneapolis in anticipation of the Republican National Convention. These are people who have not broken the law. Their homes were invaded by SWAT teams in full combat gear. They were forced to lie handcuffed on the floor for 45 minutes or more without being charged with a crime or told why. The purpose of these raids is transparent: they are intended to send a message to others who might be planning to exercise their First Amendment right to peaceful assembly.

Amy Goodman has been arrested at the perimeter of the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. Watching her being handcuffed and led into a van reminded me of scenes from Beijing involving would-be protesters at the 2008 Olympics.

Who will report now on the police outrages in Minneapolis? They have silenced an independent voice. It is time now for all our voices to be heard.

New Orleans Floodwall Stuffed with Newspaper.

I kid you not. Watch the video.

Hurricanes and Twitter

When Eduard was threatening Houston, I let my family know that, if conditions deteriorated in Houston, they could get regular updates on Twitter. It never came to that but RenaRF at the Daily Kos has set up a Twitter network for Gustav. This is how it's done.

Spiders in the Mansion

The room is dark,
at odds with itself
and the tumbled clutter it holds.

A low-watt lamp comes wearily to life
and excites a scattering of roaches
within its punumbra.

It doesn’t matter who does what to whom.

The grief is always the same
rivulling across her forehead
making angry puddles on the floor.

David L. Davis

Remembering Ninoy Aquino

from A Lianga Diary

City of Walls

The surge from inside Baghdad:



Hat-tip to panicbean at the Daily Kos

Medical Deportation

The U.S. medical industry treats human bodies like a cash crop but what happens when the crop doesn't pay out?

From the NYTimes.

Luis Aberto Jimenez is one of hundreds of unauthorized immigrant workers in the U.S. deported by hospitals to save money on care. The federal government has not been involved in these deportations. They are private actions directed by hospitals' corporate executives. This practice illustrates the point at which two failed U.S. institutions--immigration and health care--meet to wreak tragedy on the lives and bodies of immigrant workers.

Jimenez sustained multiple fractures and severe brain trauma when he was struck, on his way home from work, by a drunk driver in a stolen van. Martin Memorial Hospital provided life-saving surgery and short-term care, and then sent him to a nursing home. When it became clear that no insurance would pay for his care, the nursing home dumped Jimenez back at the hospital with ulcerated bedsores that required more life-saving surgery. After that, Martin Memorial was unable to find rehabilitative care for Jimenez. Eventually, they contracted with a private company that specializes in repatriating indigent patients to send Mr. Jimenez to his home country of Guatemala. A court battle ensued, and Jimenez was spirited out of the country in the early morning hours just before a court was to issue a decision on a stay to prevent his deportation. Eventually, the medical deportation of Luis Jimenez was ruled improper, and the hospital is facing the likelihood of punitive damages. Jimenez is now living with his ailing mother in Guatemala. He is confined to a bed, his physical condition is rapidly deteriorating, and he is not receiving any rehabilitation or medical care. Mr. Jimenez's situation is not unique.

One Tucson hospital even tried to fly an American citizen, a sick baby whose parents were illegal immigrants, to Mexico last year; the police, summoned by a lawyer to the airport, blocked the flight.

In another case, a hospital

planned to send a comatose, uninsured legal immigrant back to Honduras, until community leaders got lawyers involved. While they were negotiating with the hospital, the patient, Sonia del Cid Iscoa, 34, who has been in the United States for half her life and has seven American-born children, came out of her coma. She is now back in her Phoenix home.

In many such cases, "Repatriation is pretty much a death sentence."

So What?

Imagine two patients lying side-by-side in a hospital, each with identical head injuries that require rehabilitation and long-term care. One patient receives the required care, and the other receives a death sentence. The value of a patient's life is thus determined by his nationality. If his paperwork is in order, he lives; it isn't he dies.

In what moral universe, does this make sense?

Temporary Oasis in a Corporate Wasteland,

an homage to Midori on Melody and the Pier to Forever.

Angelus

What we can learn from Lianga.

Iowa's Apartheid

POSTVILLE, Iowa — When federal immigration agents raided the kosher meatpacking plant here in May and rounded up 389 illegal immigrants, they found more than 20 under-age workers, some as young as 13.

This is the way apartheid works. The government--whether by design or accident--creates a class of disenfranchised laborers without stable communities or a ligitimate means to complain about their conditions. Employers then exploit these workers with a rapaciousness that makes one wonder whether these employers recognized their victims as fully human.

In South Africa, the government set up Bantustans (similar to American Indian reservations) as permanent residences for blacks in unproductive areas where there were no jobs. The people who lived in these Bantustans would then seek employment in cities and mines where they had no legal status and were brutally exploited by their employers. South Africa's government and society thus maintained a highly mobile and vulnerable working class without access to legal remedies for employer wrongdoing in the workplace.

That seems to be the model in Iowa and the rest of the U.S. Labor agents and word-of-mouth stories inform Latin Americans that good-paying jobs are available in the U.S. But our immigration system is designed to deny most of these potential emigrants legal entry or status. So they enter and reside illegally. Then they go to work for outfits like Agriprocessors, Inc. This is what happens:

A Guatemalan named Elmer L. who said he was 16 when he started working on the plant’s killing floors, said he worked 17-hour shifts, six days a week. In an affidavit, he said he was constantly tired and did not have time to do anything but work and sleep. “I was very sad,” he said, “and I felt like I was a slave.”

Others said they were sexually exploited. One immigrant was blindfolded with duct tape and struck with a meat hook. As Elmer later explained to authorities, “They told us they were going to call immigration if we complained.” And that is how it works.

Get the whole story and listen to interviews.

Random Stuff

• What Wordjunky said.

• Treat yourself to a Lianga Diary (an exquisitely written diary from a coastal town in the Philippines).

• Welfare Kings:
  

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Bush administration plan to bolster Fannie Mae (FNM.N) and Freddie Mac (FRE.N) could cost U.S. taxpayers $25 billion, congressional analysts said on Tuesday in a report that triggered debate as Congress moved toward approving a major housing market rescue package.

That's like reimbursing the guy who stole your TV because he couldn't fence it.

• Wamu shares may be downgraded to junk
  

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Washington Mutual Inc, the largest U.S. savings and loan, posted a $3.33 billion second-quarter loss on Tuesday as souring mortgages forced it to set aside more money for loan losses. The thrift's deteriorating health prompted Moody's Investors Service to say it may downgrade Washington Mutual to "junk" status [emphasis added].

"Farming is the New Punk Rock"

Here's Joe at the Emily Street Community Farm in Houston. Staci Davis has more at radical eats.

The Skeleton in Your Closet

At least one-fourth of all American families deal with some form of serious brain disorder. Liz Spikol tells it plain.

Liz Spikol is a senior contributing editor at the Piladelphia Weekly. She manages bipolar disorder with medication. This is her story about electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). At eleven minutes, it is longer than the average Youtube clip but well worth the watch.

The Gaza Curse

Heartbreaking

Phony War, Real Casualties

This is what happens when you militarize the border as part of a phony “war on drugs.”

The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández is a film that points out the risks of using the military as domestic law enforcement — a role that the military, under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, had been prohibited from taking. That changed in 1989, when the George H.W. Bush administration declared drug trafficking a "threat to national security" and authorized the deployment of thousands of troops to the U.S.-Mexican border. In 1997, during the Clinton administration, Esequiel Hernández became the first American killed by U.S. military forces on native soil since the 1970 Kent State shootings. Shortly afterward, the administration suspended all military operations along the border. By January 1999, the U.S. Department of Defense announced a new policy allowing armed groups along the border but only with specific permission from the Secretary of Defense or his deputy. Several years later, in 2006, the George W. Bush administration announced plans to deploy as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border as part of the war on terror and to stem illegal immigration. Find more details on the history of the military's role along the U.S.-Mexican border, please read the Background article in the Special Features section of this website.

Watch a clip.

The wall that is presently being built is likewise phony. In the first place, it will not stretch across the entirety of our 2000-mile border with Mexico. It generally cuts across the property of ordinary people and skips over the property of resorts, the rich and the well-connected. Furthermore, it turns out that most immigrants enter the country—whether legally or illegally—at ports of entry not across shallow portions of the Rio Grande. The wall frankly doesn’t keep many immigrants out. So, what is it for?

One purpose of the wall is to create the impression that the U.S. government is doing something about unauthorized immigration. I believe, however, that there is a deeper purpose. That purpose is to divide “us” from “them.” In the absence of an effective federal policy toward immigration, cities and towns Across the U.S. have been taking matters into their own hands by passing English-only laws, restrictions against renting to undocumented residents and tasking their police officers with customs enforcement. These local measures, however, seem to be directed not just at immigrants but as Hispanics in general. Texas, in particular, has a history of using English-only instruction as a legal basis for racial segregation in schools. In other words, local immigration law is the new Jim Crow.

This can be seen partly as a nativist backlash against demographic changes taking place in our land. Hispanics represent the most rapidly growing ethnic group in our midst, and this growth is reflected in a growing political, economic and cultural presence. Some Americans feel that they need to reassert a national identity they believe is under attack. They assume this national identity to be Anglo-Saxon and will protect that fiction with a fierceness reminiscent of those who believed African American voting rights would lead inevitably to blood in the streets. The wall is, among other things, a national symbol meant to reassure the native-born and non-hispanic that their vision of Anglo-Saxon national identity remains intact. But as the story of Esequiel Hernandez illustrates, phony wars can have real casualties.

Smart Car

Check this out from Great Smoky: Top Green Cars - going green doesn't mean going slow!

Stock Market Disaster

Economist Dr. Ravi Batra, of Southern Methodist University, predicts a stock market disaster in about six months.

He argues that the stock market is in the midst of a historic decline due to an excessive reliance in the U.S. on foreign debt. This debt imbalance is causing the value of the U.S. dollar to fall, leading to rising oil and commodities prices as speculators move money out of dollar investments into commodities, such as oil and food.


Batra believes the federal government, under the Bush administration, will do everything in its power to prop up the market until after the November elections, which will be followed by a somewhat rudderless period during the transition to the new presidential administration. It is during the months between November and February, Batra says, the stock market will plummet.

Acccording to Batra, the predicted steep decline will fall particularly hard on those with fixed incomes and those whose retirement is tied up in private investment, much of which will be seriously depleted as the market falls.

So What?

Alan Greenspan and others have predicted that the recession we are now entering will be the worst since WWII. This is to say that it will be the worst since the Great Depression (but nobody wants to say the D-word). You can think of the Great Depression as a failure in two ways: a failed business model predicated on unregulated markets and vast income inequality; and a breach of the social contract. The unregulated markets of the Great Depression were mainly banks that were involved in a speculative stock market that crashed October 29, 1929. Investors couldn't meet their margin calls, banks couldn't meet their obligations to depositors, and about three-fourths of them closed precipitating a crisis of confidence in national institutions. Today's unregulated markets are the mortgage industry, hedge funds, and credit swaps. Income inequality in greater in the U.S. now than at any other time in history--much greater. Some call this a post-Fordist economy. The Ford plant in Dearborn Michigan was organized around the principle that the workers should be able to afford the cars they were building. When workers can no longer afford to buy the stuff they make, this is called a post-Fordist economy. That's where we were in the Great Depression, and we are really close to being there today. When workers can't afford to buy the stuff they make, that stuff doesn't sell. It collects in warehouses and so the retailers stop ordering from the factories. Then the factories slow down and start laying off workers. This results in even less buying power in the market and so forth. Globalization has spread this phenomenon across the globe, meaning that we now live in a global post-Fordist economy. Ouch!
Likewise, many people see the state of today's civil society as a breach in the social contract. The social contract, simply put, is this: government by consent of the governed. When over 70% of the people feel that the country is going in the wrong direction, that is a problem. When too much time passes without significant change, that is seen as a breach in the social contract. What happens next?
I guess that depends on us.

Spud War

Chile and Peru are arguing over the origins of the potato

Peruvian agronomists, historians and diplomats are chafing at an assertion
by Marigen Hornkohl, Chile’s agriculture minister, who said Monday, “Few
people know that 99 percent of the world’s potatoes have some type of
genetic link to potatoes from Chile.” Peru, where the potato is a source of national pride, could not let such a comment pass. “Obviously the world has known for centuries that the potato is from Peru and that the Peruvian potato saved Europe from hunger,” Foreign Minister José Antonio García Belaúnde told reporters here last week. “The entire world knows this.”

The potato flap is a proxy battle for disputes over issues with higher stakes:

But the celebratory mood gave way to ire over the Chilean minister’s
remarks, reflecting festering tension here over territorial losses to Chile in a
war more than a century ago and more recent soul-searching over Chile’s economic
power at a time when much of Peru, despite its own boom, remains mired in
poverty.
Chile’s use of the name pisco for its brandy also rankles here.
Peruvians say pisco is theirs, as port is Portuguese or Champagne is French. For
evidence they point to the Peruvian city of Pisco, which is surrounded by
vineyards.
Looming over the various disputes is a maritime boundary dispute
in which both countries are squaring off at the International
Court of Justice at The Hague. But passions have rarely run as high as in
recent days as Peru stakes its claim to the potato’s origins.

Chile wins the spud war.

Chileans gain comfort from studies showing that more than 90 percent of
modern potato varieties outside the Andes have a common origin in potatoes once
found in the area around Chiloé Island, in southern Chile. Potatoes from
Chiloé
found their way to Europe, where they were well suited to latitudes
with
relatively long days.
But potato experts here, and there are many,
point to
genetic studies showing that all potatoes currently eaten in the
world
originated more than 10,000 years ago from a single ancestor, Solanum
brevicaule, found on Lake Titicaca’s north shore.

So What?

The potato, of course, was a key ingredient of the Great Biological Exchange, also referred to as the Columbian Exchange. This exchange of food stuffs, peoples, culture and disease led directly to the death of about 45 million indigenous Americans (around 90 percent of the native population) and indirectly to the African slave trade, which largely repopulated areas decimated by European diseases, especially in the Caribbean.