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It's Expensive to be Poor

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:20:27 GMT

Barbaba Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, which is about her experience of living for one year on no more than $7.00 an hour, has come out with a new book of satire, entitled This Land is Their Land, about class in America. One particularly interesting segment was on the hidden costs of being poor, which I found interesting and wanted to share here:

"There are people ... who still confuse poverty with the simple life. No cable TV, no altercations with the maid, no summer home maintenance issues-- just the basics. What they don't know is that it's expensive to be poor. In fact, you, the reader of middling income, could probably not afford it."

For example:

"Poor people are less likely to have bank accounts, which can be expensive for those with low balances, and so they tend to cash their pay checks at check-cashing businesses, which, in the cities surveyed, charged $5 to $50 for a $500 check."

Nate speaking here: Ehrenreich doesn't go into this, but it's also the case that banks are sparse in low-income areas, whereas seedy check-cashing and payday loan places, which charge obscene interest rates, abound. And lest one think this is just a case of bank corporations being smart and staying out of ghettoes (which would, logically, provide an open market for the aforementioned check-cashing shops), the fact is that many of these seedy shops are actually chains owned by large banking companies. Which means it's intentional and predatory: these large companies are locating check cashing shops rather than banks in certain neighborhoods where they can make more money with the former.

"Nationwide, low-income car buyers ... pay 2 percent more for a car than more affluent buyers."

"Low-income drivers pay more for car insurance. In New York, Baltimore, and Hartford, they pay an average of $400 more a year to insure the exact same car and driver risk as wealthier drivers."

Nate speaking here again: Of course, many would interject there that "of course poorer buyers pay more for car loans and insurance, because they're a higher risk due to their income and the neighborhoods they live in. Be that as it may, the point here is not to vilify the companies that charge the higher rates, but simply to point out the hidden costs of being poor, which many of us fail to notice.

"They are more likely to buy their furniture and appliances through pricey rent-to-own businesses. In Wisconsin ... a $200 rent-to-own TV set can cost $700 with the interest included."

"The high cost of poverty was brought home to me within a few days of my entry into low-wage life [as reported in Nickel and Dimed] when, slipping into social worker mode, I chastised a coworker for living in a motel room when it would be much cheaper to rent an apartment. Her response: Where would she get the first month's rent and security deposit it takes to pin down an apartment? The lack of that amount of capital ... condemned her to paying $40 a night at the Day's Inn."

"Then there was the problem of sustenance. I had gone into the project imagining myself preparing vast quantities of cheap, nutritious soups and stews, which I would freeze and heat for dinner each day. But surprise: I didn't have the proverbial pot to pee in, not to mention spices or Tupperware. ...the food situation only got worse when I, too, found myself living in a motel. Lacking a fridge and microwave, I had to get all my food from the nearest convenience store, or, for the big meal of the day, Wendy's or KFC. ... The problem is financial. A double cheeseburger and fries is a lot more expensive than that hypothetical homemade lentil stew."

"If you don't have health insurance, you may end up taking that feverish child to an emergency room, and please don't think of ERs as socialized medicine for the poor. The average cost of a visit is over $1,000, which is more than ten times what a clinic pediatrician would charge."

"So let's have less talk about how the poor should learn to manage their money, and a little more attention to all the ways that money is being systematically siphoned off."

A foray into Israeli/Palestinian issues

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:06:59 GMT

We all know about the tragic suicide bombings and rocket attacks to which Israelis are so often subject. I am deeply troubled by these actions, and condemn them. So, at the outset, i don't want to be accused of being "overly biased in a pro-Palestinian direction". Still, though, I think it's fair, and quite necessary, to point out what Israelis do to Palestinians on a daily basis, because this helps round out the discussion and explain the popular support (in last year's election, at least) for groups like Hamas.

In this post, I will be quoting from a book entitled "Rogue Nation" by the conservative former American diplomat Clyde Prestowitz. He served in the Reagan Administration, and was abroad arguing for American policy in Vietnam before that. I say this at the outset because I don't want to be accused of paying attention only to radical left-wing or anti-American authors. So here goes:

This first segment is from a conversation Prestowitz had with a Palestinian leader:

"Saab Erekat is the Palestinian chief negotiator. A University of California graduate with a Ph.D in economics, he lived for eight years in San Francisco ... [and] he is also the Mayor of Jericho... I [Prestowitz] asked Erekat immediately why the suicide bombings and terrorist attacks couldn't be stopped... His response was deeply troubling. Of course he knew, he said. 'But, Clyde, listen to me. I am supposed to have some authority in Jericho, but I am being made more irrelevant every day. The real head of Jericho is Lieutenant Allon [of Israel] down at the checkpoint. It is he who decides who gets into the city and who gets out, whether an old woman gets to the hospital or not, whether fuel oil comes in or not. And just as he is undermining me, the guys over [at the mosque] are also making me irrelevant by telling the people that Erekat can do nothing for you and only God can help. Let me tell you something about terror attacks. Life on the west bank is hell. Unemployment is near 80 percent in most areas. Half the people are living on $2 a day in hovels and have to wait at checkpoints so the Israeli settlers can have priority. The Israelis complain about suicide bombings, and I agree that they are immoral, but more Palestinians are being killed by Israelis than the reverse. Every time [prime minister] Sharon orders reprisals and assassinations, he created more support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad..."

Prestowitz continues:

"First, outside observers confirm and even strengthen Erekat's comments about the economic and social situation. The leading Isreli newspaper, Ha'aretz, has noted that more than a fourth of Palestinian students are no longer able to go to school, while the UN and other international agencies report $4 billion in Palestinian losses of various kinds in an economy that had a GDP in 1999 of only $3.5 billion. Much of this loss appears to be due to the Israeli army's destruction of orchards or buildings that might provide cover for possible Palestinian attackers near settler roads. ... A second point is that while Israeli-Palestinian interactions in the occupied areas are bound to be irritating under the best of circumstances, they are worsened by the fact that settlers are subject only to Israeli courts, and the Israeli military has broad latitude to sieze land for security purposes. The UN Human Rights Commission found that Palestinians have little hope of restitution from Israeli courts for damages from violence committed by the increasingly militant settlers. They have no hope at all when the damage is done by the military."

"The final point is the complex politics of the Palestinians. Because he has come to symbolize the Palestinian movement, and also because Sharon paints him that way, Arafat is seen by much of the world as a kind of dictator in full control of every Palestinian movement. The truth is otherwise. Arafat is the head of the PLO and the chairman of the Palestinian Authority... He also presides over the Palestinian Parliament, described by Nissim Calderon of Tel Aviv University as the most democratic in the Arab world. But he has at least three powerful challengers. The first is Hamas, a group that ironically was initially created with support from Israeli officials hoping to weaken Arafat. ... Linked to international Muslim groups that run large charities and are amply funded, Hamas in Israel has two arms, a charitable one providing food, medicine, and other help to the poor, and a military one that specializes in suicide bombings. Islamic Jihad is a less well-organized group, but with the same militant Islamic philosophy and the same terrorist modus operandi. Hezbollah is another militant Islamic group. Founded in Lebanon, it has ties to Iran and operates much like Hamas, with both military and charitable arms."

(Prestowitz, Rogue Nation, pp. 204-07)

A good post on the AFA and other groups

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:04:48 GMT

Read this.

Not that all "pro-family" groups are like this. I have been to marriage conferences held by pro-family associations, so I know they do some good in the area of promoting healthy marriages and child-rearing. Still, the most well-known groups (the AFA, Focus on the Family, etc.) do tend to make the most noise on an anti-gay agenda, rather than tackling issues far more pertinent to far more families: the cost of an access to health care, the cost of day care, the health of marriages, etc.

How the media seems subversive (but protects the establishment)

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:01:49 GMT

It often seems that the “liberal” American media is playing the game of “watchdog”, holding the “powers that be” accountable. Often, though media reports actually do the opposite, “manufacturing consent” (to use Chomsky’s phrase) and supporting the position of those in power. Of course, there are exceptions. Documentary filmmakers such as Robert Greenwald occasionally question fundamental assumptions held by those in power, and left-wing magazines like Harper’s and Yes someitmes do the same.

1) “Bush lied”: the War in Iraq: In the American mainstream media, we have a certain, fairly small, range of views expressed about the Bush Administration’s selling and handling of the War in Iraq. On the conservative end, we have the “Bush is valiant, and acted in our best interest” line, somewhere in the middle there’s the “Bush was mistaken” line, and on the extreme liberal end (by mainstream media standards) we hear the “Bush lied” claim.  But none of these assertions question whether we had the right to invade Iraq in the first place, even if Bush had been right about so-called WMDs. Someone from outside the American bubble might justifiably ask why, if we’re so concerned about the spread of so-called WMDs, we refuse to abide by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty by continuing to develop new weapons, or why we seem unconcerned by Israel’s refusal to sign the treaty. Or, to use Israel as an example once again, one might ask why we allowed Israel to flaunt UN resolutions in its occupation of Lebanon, while condemning Saddam Hussein for the same crime-- flaunting the UN.  So the media can accuse Bush of lying all they want, but that will not knock down the biggest lie of all: American exceptionalism. 

2) Using the example of Iraq again: it is interesting that much of the dissent against both Gulf Wars (1990-91 and 2003-present) have centered around whether these were good policies for American interest-- and not whether it was in the interest of the nation of Iraq or the people of the region. Further, the “bad for America’s strategic interests” dissent fails to take into account the fact that Saddam Hussein was a U.S. ally when he committed his worst crimes: Invading Iran unprovoked, putting down rebellions, gassing thousands of Kurds, and on and on. This, it seems, would be the best argument against American self-righteous invasions of Iraq, yet we rarely hear this in the mainstream media. 

3) Nixon, Watergate, and COINTELPRO: (Thanks to Chomsky for revealing this one). Watergate, which we of course all know about, is often thought of as an example of the “media” going after those in power. Really, though, Watergate was an instance of one half of American power (the Republicans) playing dirty against the other half (the Democrats). So it’s unsurprising that the Democratic party was able to use the media to defend itself against the crimes of its opponents. At the same time as Watergate, another program-- COINTELPRO-- was also revealed, and by all accounts it was a much bigger and more damaging use of power than Watergate. However, because Watergate became such a big story, the far bigger story about government overstepping its bounds ended up becoming diminished.

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4) Another example from the Iraq war is the media's insistence on calling it a preemptive war rather than what it is: a preventive war. The difference is not simply semantic. In a preemptive war, one preempts a definite and imminent attack; in preventive war, one attacks a potential enemy, simply on the suspicion that that enemy might theoretically attack, or at least challenge our strategic interests, in the future. That, no matter how you slice it, is what the Iraq invasion was. Even if Bush's claims about so-called WMDs were true, Saddam still would not have been an imminent threat because he had no delivery system capable of even getting near the United States.

And not only does the media wrongly use the term "preemptive" war: they claim, quite often-- at least at the most "liberal" end of the media-- that this is a "new" doctrine that the Bush Administration invented which flies in the face of longstanding American policy. Now, while I'd love to blame Bush for this, I don't think it's fair to let the government as a whole off the hook: after all, this preventive-war policy is pretty old. Among other things, preventive war was what we were gearing up for in the Pacific as early as the late '30s, which is what (among other things, such as sanctions) compelled the Japanese to make a preemptive strike against our massing fleet in Hawaii. And preventive war was what compelled us to enter Vietnam, as well. Those two examples should suffice for now.

Three Thoughts About the "War on Terror"

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:20:06 GMT

The rhetoric supporting the so-called "War on Terror" is quite interesting. Three observations:

1) The whole "War on Terror" is based on two contradictory arguments, in you will: One, which we might call the "idealistic" approach, which envisions the U.S. as a benevolent parent, or maybe shepherd (to use Christian-ese), which wants nothing more than to reach out and help those who are chafing under the strain of tyranny, and to help those people live under democratic rule that works with other nations and respects the rule of law. The second, though-- interestingly enough-- is a perfect contradiction of the first. I'll call it the "cowboy" approach, and it goes something like this: "They've attacked us! Smoke 'em out! Fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em here! Fuck the Geneva Conventions and other constraining U.S. laws: they are antiquated systems that don't work in real life when you're fighting cold-blooded killers, so we're going to respond in kind, international regulations be damned!"

I often see both lines of reasoning used in the same editorials and books: I am reading "Why We Fight" by Bill Bennett, and he uses both-- seemingly unaware that you can't break and uphold the rule of law at the same time. 99% of the world's population outside America and Israel see this, but apparently most Americans don't.

2) It's (sadly) interesting that many of the strongest proponents of the "War on Terror" are also strong proponents of the idea of universal Truth, as opposed to relativism. I say this is interesting because, as previously mentioned, the whole war is based on a fundamental contradiction (that we're spreading democracy and deposing those who flout the Rule of Law, but are not ourselves bound to these frameworks if they get in our way). This leads me to believe that the proponents of the "War on Terror" believe in absolute Truth only in theory, but not in practice (or, at least, not in relationship to America and its allies.)

3) Those shouting the loudest about how "we've got to win, no matter what the cost" are usually the ones who are not directly bearing any of the cost. Sure, some of them are military personnel, but many of them are just Average Joe's who do not have to endure any hardship-- much less death in the family or destruction of their home, like many Iraqis face-- because of this war.

It just strikes me that, of course, the "sacrifices" of this war are "reasonable" if only other people-- Arabs, mostly, who live half a world away-- are making them; therefore, the only people with the right to judge whether the "sacrifice" was worth it are those directly making the sacrifices. Ask the 20-year-old American soldier whose leg was blown off. Ask the Iraqi family that lost their home to a bomb. Ask the Iraqi girl whose father and brothers were hauled off in a nighttime raid because of suspected "terrorism", or the mother whose baby had birth defects because of White Phosphorous.

Beliefs on Anthropogenic Climate Change

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:57:47 GMT

So, we've talked a lot about global climate change on this blog, but it seems that quite often we enter deadlock. So I wonder, and I want to ask anyone who cares to answer:

1) Why do you hold the beliefs you do about anthropogenic climate change? What convinces you either way, or what causes you to feel agnostic or unsure about the science and politics of it?

2) What one (or two, or three) thing(s) would get you to change or reconsider your beliefs? References to individual people are disallowed: in other words, no "if Glenn Beck or Tim Ball changed positions, or if Al Gore became a skeptic" here.

______________________________

Here are my answers, just to get things going:

1) I accept the consensus view because: First, there is a general consensus, even though there are some very vocal skeptics; after all, most generally-accepted scientific theories have a few skeptics. Second, I accept the scientific consensus in every other scientific issue, because this is simply the natural thing to do, given that scientists are highly trained in their fields, and have the built-in self-corrective of peer review and ideological diversity. (Therefore, I think the correct question to ask is not "Why should one accept the consensus?" but "If you are a skeptic, what makes this particular issue different from the thousands of others for which you readily accept the scientific consensus?") And third, because the consensus position makes scientific sense, while every skeptical argument has at this moment been answered.

2) I would consider changing my belief if it turned out that there really weren't a consensus (but the burden of proof is on the skeptics here). Also, I would need to see new evidence, other than the current talking points that currently exist. So far, the skeptics bring up issues, the consensus rebuts them, and the skeptics come back with the same argument, unchanged. If, however, someone-- preferably someone outside the predictable "round table" of skeptics-- came up with rebuttals to the rebuttals-- which they as yet haven't done-- that would be big.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Tue, 27 May 2008 11:55:37 GMT

This cartoon really makes the point. Not to mock, but just to display irony.

A partial response to the Rev. Wright discussion

Fri, 16 May 2008 16:43:17 GMT

I didn't have time to follow the very interesting discussion that was had in response to my last post, but I just want to say-- now that it's through-- that I think this discussion was quite emblematic of the way race is generally discussed in America.

What I mean is that there is a clear difference in the way the different races view racism and race relations in this country. White people, generally speaking-- especially conservatives, but not only them-- tend by and large to see racism as past history, and in terms of the "big" things that happened in our history such as slavery and Jim Crow. Thus they understandably react to black men like Rev. Wright and my friend Pashe by getting defensive: "Why should I pay for things my racial ancestors did?" or "We've made so much progress; we've ended slavery and given you the vote. What else could you want?"

Now, as I said, I think this line of reasoning is quite understandable, and in fact a few years ago I said many of the same things. However, this point of view fails to take into account the current realities of racism experienced by contemporary African Americans. Many of them have seen firsthand neighborhood redlining and the subsequent racial division in home mortgage rates (where African Amercians paid higher interest). They see the forgotten schools and the racial profiling, the "DWB" issues, and it makes them recoil from "mainstream" society. Not to paint with too broad a brush, but I think there's a deep experiential difference in the way whites and blacks talk and feel about race, and I think that in this case it is my own racial group that needs to recognize that there's far more to the story than slavery and Jim Crow.

I notice that African Americans tend to speak of racism in terms of the progress that needs to be made yet, while whites are more likely to reference (sometimes defensively) the progress that's already been made. For instance, I remember Martin Luther King day 2008, in which the Democrats (especially Obama) spoke of the changes King "began", implying that much needs to be done, while the GOP members (I especially remember Romney) spoke of what King "accomplished", implying strongly that we've arrived. Both are right, in a sense; but in this case we whites are probably the ones that need to get less defensive, realizing that we've not been the victims here, and open up to what still needs to be done.

About the best analysis of Rev. Wright to date

Sun, 04 May 2008 13:14:00 GMT

This-- unsurprisingly, given that it's from the always-insightful Bill Moyers-- has got to be the best analysis I've yet heard of Senator Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I don't think anyone should say anything more critical about the man until they've watched this first.

If you can't watch it here for some reason, here's the original YouTube page.

Here is another, if you have time to watch it. Listen to what Rev. Wright actually has to say, not just his sound bites.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Sat, 03 May 2008 19:32:22 GMT

Through my many discussions, there are many ways in which I've gotten to better understand those with whom I disagree, and many times I've changed my views because of this.

One thing I still cannot understand-- having never been able to get a straight answer on the issue-- is this:

How is it permissible, from an objective moral perspective, for one country to take an action while condemning another for taking that same action? For instance, why is it morally permissible for Israel to punish millions of Arabs, such as those in Gaza, for the actions of a few, but not permissible for Arabs to attack Israeli citizens? Or, why is America able to align itself with terrorists or cruel governments like Saudi Arabia when it suits American interests, while other nations get slapped with UN sanctions for doing the same?

This is not a diatribe against America, although some may see it that way. All I'm saying is that these moral double-standards underlie almost every American foreign policy position, and I cannot understand how so many Christians, who supposedly believe in the Golden Rule, can support such positions.

Here are a few responses that will not be allowed into this discussion:

1) "You are unpatriotic (or ungrateful, or whatever)." (This is beside the point).
2) "We are America, protector of freedom around the world, and sometimes you have to do things that seem repugnant in order to serve the greater good." (This rests on the untested assumption that we are really working for the greater good, and not for ourselves.)
3) "We were attacked on 9/11! Desperate times call for desperate measures." (Both #2 and #3 fail to answer the question, "By what moral standard do we take our actions?)
4) "Parents give older children different parameters than their less mature siblings. The same is true with nations." (OK, this makes sense in theory, but it begs two questions: First, by what standard is America "more mature" than other nations? Second, is belligerent unilateral action, defiance of international law, and cavorting with dictators the type of thing a "more mature" nation does?)

______________

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I used to support double-standard-based American actions. But I could never answer the questions I am now posing, which is in large part why I changed my beliefs.)