Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: June 2016

Brexit and the European Union: What’s Actually at Stake

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On June 7, 2016

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European Union FlagThe EU is a trash fire. To see what the EU is about, you have only to see what they did to Greece, and what they are doing to the rest of the south.

Insane austerity policies have wrecked economies for no good reason other than a failed ideology and a deep-seated desire to give more money to the already-rich.

The EU may have been created to prevent a future European war, but the austerity policies it is pushing are fueling the rise of Catalonian independence, and of both the far left and the far (a.k.a. fascist) right. Now, I’m ok with the far left, in the European context, because so far all it has meant is Corbyn: A 1960s-style liberal, updated with social concerns.

The rise of the far right is rather more worrisome, however, since these lads tend to be nativists–not more than one step from neo-fascists and often less than that.

Austerity creates economic despair, and economic despair creates the breeding grounds for movements like fascism.

When I was about ten or so, I said to my father, who had grown up in the Great Depression, that I saw very little racism in Vancouver.

“Just wait till times are bad, “he said,” you’ll see plenty of racism then.”

Again, the EU is a trash fire. It started off liberal, in the best sense, and there is still plenty of good it does, but it is currently creating the conditions for a great deal of political violence and even war.

So, does that mean that Brits should vote leave?

Not necessarily. Depends on your pain tolerance.

While the EU is a trash fire, Britain isn’t in the Euro, which is the worst part about the EU. If Corbyn was Prime Minister, I’d say leave. Leave now!

But he isn’t. What the Conservatives will do under Cameron or Boris Johnson (or whomever, there are no “good” options for the next leader if Cameron steps down), is truly horrible. Even worse than what they are already doing.

As for the doomsayers: No, the world will not end if Britain leaves the EU. The fact that economists and pundits are screaming in unison that it will means nothing. Economists are trained seals who say what they are supposed to say. Most of them have been wrong about everything of significance related to the economy for their entire professional lives; why should we believe them now?

It’s all a trash fire. Of course, the people who benefit from the status quo want the status quo to continue and continue to trend the way it has been (which hasn’t been good for most ordinary Britons).

That doesn’t mean you should vote to leave. It doesn’t mean you should vote stay. It means they aren’t credible. What they say should not be listened to as anything but people squealing for the world to stay favorable to them.

If you leave the EU now, things will be worse than staying, not because of economic apocalypse but because the EU does have a fair number of good regulations and laws by which Conservatives will no longer be bound.

If you stay, and someone like Corbyn gets into power, he will be handicapped by the EU in the opposite direction.

International institutions in the age of neoliberalism exist mainly to further neo-liberal policies. This is true of the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, and yes, it is true of the EU.

It’s all a trash fire, because, post-Bretton Woods, it was all changed or designed to be a trash fire (this is especially true of the Euro, which at least Britain dodged). Its purpose is to impoverish developed world workers and transfer money to the rich. I judge its purpose based on its results.

Vote as you will, but understand what is actually at stake.

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Third World Nation: 33 Cities Cheated to Pass Lead Tests

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On June 3, 2016

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And not just small cities, either:

  • Despite warnings of regulators and experts, water departments in at least 33 cities used testing methods over the past decade that could underestimate lead found in drinking water.
  • Officials in two major cities – Philadelphia and Chicago – asked employees to test water safety in their own homes.
  • Two states – Michigan and New Hampshire – advised water departments to give themselves extra time to complete tests so that if lead contamination exceeded federal limits, officials could re-sample and remove results with high lead levels.
  • Some cities denied knowledge of the locations of lead pipes, failed to sample the required number of homes with lead plumbing or refused to release lead pipe maps, claiming it was a security risk.

Straight up cheating was not uncommon:

At least 33 cities across 17 US states have used water testing “cheats” that potentially conceal dangerous levels of lead, a Guardian investigation launched in the wake of the toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan, has found.

Of these cities, 21 used the same water testing methods that prompted criminal charges against three government employees in Flint over their role in one of the worst public health disasters in US history.

Lead poisoning is not a minor health problem. It can chop 20 points off someone’s IQ.

Straight up, this indicates cover-your-assdom from the highest to lowest levels, including regulators. No regulator worth its salt, who is doing their job, could have missed entire States and large cities cheating, because any regulator worth its salt does its own audits and testing. Only a fool believes the results handed to them by internal testing and audits. I’ve been on the internal side of regulation (in the life insurance industry) and companies cannot be trusted. Period.

Once you start concealing, you have to keep concealing. Because if something like lead contamination comes to light, figuring out where it is and why will include figuring out how long the water has been contaminated, how long you should have known about it, and how long you’ve been concealing it.

In many of these cities I’ll bet the concealment has been going on for decades, handed down from generation to generation of bureaucrat. Someone, when it was first discovered, didn’t want to go public and didn’t want to fix it, and from that point, the bureaucracy was locked in to their decision to keep cheating.

This doesn’t mean bureaucracies can’t run such systems; they were created in spite of the great objections of private industry, who also opposed municipal sewage for all they were worth. But it does mean you need to stay on top of it, and be willing to pay and be scrupulously honest about issues which matter.

I hope that those who have covered up are charged, and in cities where this has been going on for a long time, I hope investigators look back as far as necessary to charge those who covered up in the past.

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Is Hypocrisy Preferrable to Honesty?

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On June 2, 2016

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Ok, this.

Right. Now, Bill Clinton, whom some call the “first Black President” signed a crime bill based on the myth of teen (black) superpredators, which included three strikes laws and a huge amount of money for local policing and prisons.

That crime bill was emulated and led directly and indirectly to huge incarceration of blacks, massive-over policing of black communities, and the destruction of black families.

What Bill Clinton DID, which Hillary Clinton supported, was terrible for African Americans. Absolutely devastating.

Now, no question, Donald Trump is saying shit important people aren’t supposed to say. I despise racism, and Donald is saying a lot of racist shit.

But the Clintons did stuff that terribly hurt poor black communities. Now, maybe Bill loved blacks but just happened to accidentally fuck them sideways. That’s certainly possible. I don’t know the man’s soul. But his actions towards blacks were terrible.

I don’t know if honest racism is better, in the sense that it makes racism more socially acceptable. But it does have the simple virtue of being honest and getting it out. American politics has been driven by racism since, well, forever. But there is a hypocritical stream of racist action and rhetoric from Nixon that has never ended.

It was all dog-whistle. Say “welfare moms” and wink, and voters knew you were saying blacks. Welfare Reform was also about punishing blacks (poor whites just got caught in the crossfire).

America’s economic history since the end of the post-war era can be read in racial terms. Blacks came to the city, whites fled to the suburbs, and enough of them switched votes to Republicans (the Reagan Democrats) to elect Reagan, in order to keep their suburban home prices up.

This is all of a piece.

Racism is stupid. It is contemptible. But few politicians have done more harm to blacks than Clinton or Mario Cuomo, the great Liberal governor with his three strikes law.

So I’m not going to get super-worked up that Trump is honestly saying what many think, and the attitudes which “liberal” politicians acted upon.

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