Thailand jungles mask surprise rise in tiger numbers Guardian
LED bulbs hit 100 watts as federal ban looms Associated Press (hat tip reader Ken). Great. I have grandfathered wiring in my building which fries light bulbs in record time.
Swiss Scientists Design a Turbine to Fit in Human Arteries ieeeSpectrum
L019: Bitcoin P2P Currency: The Most Dangerous Project We’ve Ever Seen LaunchIS
Shale gas environmental concerns Jim Hamilton, Econbrowser (hat tip reader Thomas R). I saw a Canadian academic speak on US and Canadian energy issues last weekend. He said the technology exists to extract shale gas without damage to aquifers, it’s been done in parts of Canada with scarce water supplies, meaning not damaging water resources was a very important development priority. So count on the US to allow operators to focus on profits rather than environment preservation.
The Secret Sharer New Yorker (hat tip reader Thomas R)
Kentucky v. King and Police-Created Exigent Circumstances The Volkh Conspiracy. On a Supreme Court decision that whittles back Fourth Amendment protection a tad further.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn to face fresh sex assault complaint Guardian
The European crisis now threatens the EU itself Jack Barnes (hat tip reader Crocodile Chuck)
China’s central bank is new key player George Magnus Financial Times
The End Of Wall Sreet Accountability: A Response To Roger Lowenstein Daily Bail
HuffPo: HUD IG Finds Servicing Fraud Adam Levitin, Credit Slips
Ally Financial + ING Bank? Richard Alford on Lessons Forgotten at the Greenspan/Bernanke Fed Institutional Risk Analyst
Antidote du jour:
64 comments
Comments are closed.
If your light bulbs are burning up in record time, try using rough service lamps.
http://www.elightbulbs.com/library/rough_service_light_bulbs_from_service_lighting.cfm
In addition to their stronger physical characteristics they are also usually rated at 130 volts + versus the typical 120 to 125 volt which allows for service spikes etc.
On construction sites, sometimes the uneven power quality really tears up the compact fluorescent lighting that they now put into the can (spot) lights. It is possible that an isolation transformer might help. You can find them at amazon, so they are not all that esoteric.
Russell1200 may I add…Power conditioners.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_conditioner
With sensitive electronics its a must, as weakening happens over a period of time and one cannot tell till its to late. Fault identification put to the device and not power supply, repetitive exercise.
Skippy…good luck YS…been there done that.
A voltage regulator is your only real choice. The power has to be stable as it is likely the spike that causes the bulbs to go. An induction transformer is likely to pass the spikes if the power it receives does.
However, LED’s will run on battery power and develop the same amount of light.
The Secret Sharer New Yorker (hat tip reader Thomas R)
“The 9/11 attacks caught the U.S.’s national-security apparatus by surprise. N.S.A. officials were humiliated to learn that the Al Qaeda hijackers had spent their final days, undetected, in a motel in Laurel, Maryland—a few miles outside the N.S.A.’s fortified gates”
Pretty much describes why I have libertarian leanings. I was stationed while I was in the Air Farce at NSA. Beat the Soviets, increase the budget. Miss 9/11, increase the budget. Ask yourself this, “who was demoted or fired for not finding the terrorists?” who by the way, were part of an organization that had declared war on the US, and had made several serious strikes against the US?
But this is how bureacracy works – every employee is hard working and dedicated, except for those who don’t think every employee is hard working and dedicated…(and therefore are undermining the mission of truth, justice and apple pie and should be prosecuted).
Dan
What was Al Qaeda beef.
Whom initially trained them.
What was their original purpose.
What was its wellspring of power.
and yes it was all done to *Beat the Soviets*, at a profit[!] for some and a job to others, you and I got the job part.
Skippy…Why does a son try to murder his father.
Don’t stop with the government. Who was fired at the banks for throwing the global economy into a tailspin? Lloyd and Jamie seem to be doing just fine even though their banks needed all kinds of government largesse and prosecutorial timidity to survive.
Concentrated economic power is a threat to us all as well as State power.
Investigate real libertarianism, not that fake Randian, propertarian nonsense. Check out libcom.org.
“No true libertarian?” That site is down, funnily enough.
Oops, site it up. My bad.
What site are you referring to?
Friends;
What really upsets me was how our hopes of restoring the Republic have been dashed by the present denizen of the White House. The man being persecuted, (not too harsh a term I aver,) for telling ‘truth to power’ had hoped for a reprieve from Obama when the new administration came into office. Instead, what we seem to have gotten is Bush 3. As for the nature of bureaucracies everywhere, a couple of episodes of Yes Minister should suffice. Better yet, that film about Whitehall and Iraq, (“Out of the Loop” ???)
My friends and I used to laugh at any serious consideration of 1984 because there wasn’t any conceivable way to get two way television to work. How wrong we were.
”
denizen of the White House
”
We got 300 million of citizens, but the job goes to a denizen from who knows where, trained, conditioned, educated, and programmed by( who knows )whom/what. Why? None of the 3 x 10^8 wants the job of taking orders from the lobbyists who take orders from the Chicago Mob. None want to take the orders then take the blame for what goes down.
America the Beautiful
!
The liberating response to the military-industrial oligopoly is not libertarianism. Libertarians shy away from anarchy by funding the security apparatus and little else – a done-that that Chaney and the Bushes came relatively close to claiming. The libertarian delusion that a free, rational and isolated being will generate justice and wealth, generates the opposite when left unchecked.
The liberating response is social democracy through proportional voting (1 man/2 votes), defunding defense, upfunding education and culture, and spending heavily on transportation and energy systems that will save a usable fraction of the planet for our children.
If you define freedom as being able to live in air-conditioned splendor in a desert with a swimming pool and a half-acre green lawn, while paying pennies for ground beef in the big box down at the strip mall, then you may have to surrender a certain amount of your freedom for liberation.
The End Of Wall Sreet Accountability: A Response To Roger Lowenstein Daily Bail
Pardon the two comments, but I can’t contain myself. I wouldn’t mind every major financial institution’s CEO, CFO, and board being put in prision for life – but that could be debated. What I find astounding is that someone like Blankfein, who has testified and proven by his testimony that he is either a purjurer or simply doesn’t know what was going on at the company he supposedly ran – it can’t be both. But he is still in charge!
http://bankwatch.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/wallstreetandthefinancialcrisisanatomyofacollapse.pdf
Good point, fresno dan. The main goal of the post was to point out the fundamental flaws in Lowenstein’s argument — he argues against claims that most people aren’t even making in order to conclude (natch) that no one is really accountable.
But that same logic you present can be applied across the board, to both bank execs and people like Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner. Were they just incompetent and clueless (in which case fire them, not (re-)nominate them to high office), or were they lying from fall 2007 through 2008? As you say, it can’t be both.
(Yves, thanks for the link!)
I have posted an FAQ about the No Confidence Protest Vote 2012 over at FDL (http://my.firedoglake.com/matthewj/2011/05/17/faq-answering-common-questions-about-no-confidence-protest-vote-2012/). Please include it in tomorrow’s links. Thanks!
Re: Barnes’ article on EuroCustoms.
I’m no lawyer — not by a long shot — but this stinks of illegality:
“Freedom of movement for workers shall be secured within the Community.” — Art 45 TFEU
It looks to me like one of those ‘rebellious’ moves undertaken in certain countries to appease anti-EU sections of the population.
The reason that they do this is that they know how much of a soft touch the EU courts are when it comes to prosecution. Don’t get me wrong, the Danes will be forced to give this up if it’s as illegal as it appears to be — however, if they’re diplomatic about it they’ll be forced to give it up without even incurring a fine.
So, it’s a win-win. (1) Politicians try to keep ‘dem immugrants’ out. (2) ‘Evil’ EU prevents them from doing it (under law they themselves signed up to… but shhhh) (3) Politicians get away with all this without any real repercussions.
…and the farce that is EuroCycle is ready to begin another day. In short: this stuff happens all the time, definitely not a sign of imminent EuroExplosion.
(P.S. Which is not to say that I don’t think a EuroExplosion is not imminent… it is. But I don’t think this is an indicator)
Should average Europeans be pleased that mass immigration is being used to drive down wages, increase what Marx called the reserve army of labor (i.e, the unemployed), destroy privacy and create a national security state to stop Islamic terrorism, and to further weaken and balkanize social safety nets?
Massive cuts in social spending, combined with an increase in low-wage workers needing social services, greatly reduce per capita social spending. Demonstrating “sensitivity” by creating separate clinics and NGOs for different immigrant groups balkanizes the social services system and further reduces services for indigenous Europeans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour
From an article in the Monthly Review:
As industry grew in the North, a continuous stream of labor was attracted and actively recruited from abroad. Each new wave of immigrants entering the reserve army of labor—the Irish in the 1850s, the Chinese in the western states in the 1870s, the Italians and Eastern Europeans of the early 1900s, and the “undocumented” Latin Americans of the last half century—served simultaneously to put the fear of unemployment in existing workers and to distort consciousness and solidarity with the poison of racism. The African Americans migrating to the North during and after the two world wars and the farmers leaving the land after the Great Depression and Second World War provided additional workers for the reserve army in the United States.
And
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0404magdoff.htm
Should have been block-quoted
http://monthlyreview.org/2004/04/01/disposable-workers-todays-reserve-army-of-labor
Wouldn’t it be easier, considering what it costs to assimliate the immigrants, to brainwash, sorry, urge or give incentives for the working locals to reproduce more, to their own disavantage, with these additional native reserve amry workers?
I’m not saying whether the freedom of movement within the EU is a good thing or a bad thing (although being Irish it might work out rather nicely for me…). I’m just saying that once this is written into EU law — and EU member states have signed up to this law — it becomes pretty much wholly binding on said member states. Hence, most of these attempts to lock down the borders should be read as political posturing.
(P.S. Ha! I just mentioned the ‘Reserve Army of Labour’ on Yves’ post on China. Looks like I’ll have to start wearing the tin-foil hat again…)
Externality,
This is a fascinating subject, probably nowhere more so than within the confines of the Mexican-American community. For there we have individual economic interest pitted against the interest of the “racial” sub-group.
According to the most recent census data released a couple of months ago, the Hispanic population of the United States now tops 50 million. That’s 16.3% of the nation. Furthermore, the Hispanic population is the fastest growing demographic, having increased by 43% since 2000, compared to 9.7% for the nation as a whole.
And if someone were to wake up in the morning and decide he wanted to craft a scheme to slap this rapidly growing bear, he couldn’t have done a better job than what a handful of extremist—-and overtly racist—-anti-immigration groups from Arizona have done. By making the issue all about us vs. them, they have caused Hispanics to circle the wagons in a way never seen before. One has to wonder if this was a case of unintended outcomes or if these extremist anti-immigration groups were put up to this by someone who is more clairvoyant and political savvy than they are.
In 1993 Peter Skerry published one of the finest studies of Mexican-American politics that I have ever read. In Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority he cites extensive polling information in order to try to pin down what he calls “the state of Mexican-American opinion.” There’s an entire section on what Mexican-Americans thought about immigration at that time. He cites dozens of polls, but I thought the following was most insightful:
The most comprehensive poll of Hispanic attitudes about immigration was jointly undertaken in 1983 by V. Lance Tarrance and Associates and Peter D. Hart Research Associates….
[….]
The Tarrance-Hart poll also revealed Hispanics to be less than enthusiastic about the continued immigration of illegals. Fully 57 percent agreed with the proposition:
“Some people say tough restrictions on illegal immigration are the right approach because illegal immigrants take jobs away from American workers and give employers a way to avoid paying decent wages. The U.S. already is having enough problems in meeting the needs of its own people, including disadvantaged and minority citizens, and we cannot afford to have the extra burden of all the people who might want to come to our country.”
More Specifically, 47 percent of Hispanics agreed that “our laws need to be changed to be tougher and more restrictive on illegal immigration and illegal aliens.”
Here again, numerous other surveys have confirmed the thrust of these controversial findings.
Furthermore, in stark contrast to the current anti-immigration brigades of today, who are only opposed to “illegal immigration,”
The Tarrance-Hart poll reported similar uneasiness with regard to legal immigration. Forty-six percent of Hispanics felt the government should admit fewer legal immigrants and refugees each year, and 37 percent even felt there should be fewer legal immigrants from Mexico.
There’s much, much more in Skerry’s book, but I think from this small sampling from the book you can get the general picture.
And in 2009, the state of Mexican-American opinion doesn’t seem to have changed much from what it was in the 1980s:
The immigration issue has receded in importance for Latinos amid their mounting alarm over the economy, according to a nationwide poll released yesterday by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center.
Only 31 percent of Latinos surveyed cited immigration as an “extremely important” priority for the incoming Obama administration, ranking the issue behind not only the economy but education, health care, national security and the environment.
By contrast, 38 percent of Hispanics judged immigration “extremely important” in a similar poll taken in December 2007, several months after an unsuccessful proposal to overhaul the country’s immigration system and offer illegal immigrants a path to citizenship sparked rancorous debate in Congress.
Even then, immigration was ranked only fifth on a list of six possible priorities for Latinos, who make up 15 percent of the population and include both new arrivals and people whose roots in the United States stretch back generations. What has changed most is Latinos’ focus on the economy: Fifty-seven percent now cite it as “extremely important” compared with 43 percent in the December 2007 poll.
▬Economy, Not Immigration, a Top Worry of Latinos
But the state of Mexican-American opinion has all changed now, thanks in no small part to a bunch of virulent, overtly racist extremists from Arizona who have become the most visible face of the immigration debate. A spate of recent polls show a precipitous shift in Mexican-American opinion. Here are a few examples:
► Latinos now view immigration as their leading concern along with the economy in what activists say is a major shift most likely driven by controversy over Arizona’s tough law against illegal immigrants.
Nearly a third of Latinos also believe that racism and prejudice are the central issue in the immigration debate, over national security, job competition and costs of public services for illegal immigrants, according to a national survey released Wednesday.
▬Immigration now a top concern among Latinos, poll shows
► Nearly two-thirds of Latinos in the U.S. think they are being discriminated against, and a plurality think the backlash over illegal immigration is the central driver of such bias.
“More Latinos are seeing discrimination against Hispanics as a major problem,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center, which on Thursday released the results of a nationwide survey of Latinos.
▬Discrimination, illegal immigration major issues for Latinos, poll shows
► In the poll, 61 percent say they favor Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigration law, which would require local and state law enforcement officers to question people about their immigration status if they have reason to suspect a person is in the country illegally. The law would also make it a crime to lack the proper registration documents.
But there’s a divide among white and Latino respondents: 70 percent of whites support the law, versus just 31 percent of Latinos. In fact, 58 percent of Latinos say they strongly oppose it.
That’s not the only chasm between White and Latino America. While 68 percent of Latinos believe that immigration strengthens the United States, just 43 percent of whites think that.
▬On immigration, racial divide runs deep
► When asked what are the most important issues facing the Latino community that Congress and the President should address, respondents ranked immigration, 47% as top priority followed by the economy 44%. Education and health followed with 20% and 12% respectively.
▬ http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/notitas-de-noticias/details/poll-immigration-and-economy-top-concerns-amongst-latinos/5181/
This is a fascinating subject, probably nowhere more so than within the confines of the Mexican-American community. For there we have individual economic interest pitted against the interest of the “racial” sub-group.
According to the most recent census data released a couple of months ago, the Hispanic population of the United States now tops 50 million. That’s 16.3% of the nation. Furthermore, the Hispanic population is the fastest growing demographic, having increased by 43% since 2000, compared to 9.7% for the nation as a whole.
And if someone were to wake up in the morning and decide he wanted to craft a scheme to slap this rapidly growing bear, he couldn’t have done a better job than what a handful of extremist—-and overtly racist—-anti-immigration groups from Arizona have done. By making the issue all about us vs. them, they have caused Hispanics to circle the wagons in a way never seen before. One has to wonder if this was a case of unintended outcomes or if these extremist anti-immigration groups were put up to this by someone who is more clairvoyant and political savvy than they are.
In 1993 Peter Skerry published one of the finest studies of Mexican-American politics that I have ever read. In Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority he cites extensive polling information in order to try to pin down what he calls “the state of Mexican-American opinion.” There’s an entire section on what Mexican-Americans thought about immigration at that time. He cites dozens of polls, but I thought the following was most insightful:
The most comprehensive poll of Hispanic attitudes about immigration was jointly undertaken in 1983 by V. Lance Tarrance and Associates and Peter D. Hart Research Associates….
[….]
The Tarrance-Hart poll also revealed Hispanics to be less than enthusiastic about the continued immigration of illegals. Fully 57 percent agreed with the proposition:
“Some people say tough restrictions on illegal immigration are the right approach because illegal immigrants take jobs away from American workers and give employers a way to avoid paying decent wages. The U.S. already is having enough problems in meeting the needs of its own people, including disadvantaged and minority citizens, and we cannot afford to have the extra burden of all the people who might want to come to our country.”
More Specifically, 47 percent of Hispanics agreed that “our laws need to be changed to be tougher and more restrictive on illegal immigration and illegal aliens.”
Here again, numerous other surveys have confirmed the thrust of these controversial findings.
Furthermore, in stark contrast to the current anti-immigration brigades of today, who are only opposed to “illegal immigration,”
The Tarrance-Hart poll reported similar uneasiness with regard to legal immigration. Forty-six percent of Hispanics felt the government should admit fewer legal immigrants and refugees each year, and 37 percent even felt there should be fewer legal immigrants from Mexico.
There’s much, much more in Skerry’s book, but I think from this small sampling from the book you can get the general picture.
And in 2009, the state of Mexican-American opinion doesn’t seem to have changed much from what it was in the 1980s:
The immigration issue has receded in importance for Latinos amid their mounting alarm over the economy, according to a nationwide poll released yesterday by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center.
Only 31 percent of Latinos surveyed cited immigration as an “extremely important” priority for the incoming Obama administration, ranking the issue behind not only the economy but education, health care, national security and the environment.
By contrast, 38 percent of Hispanics judged immigration “extremely important” in a similar poll taken in December 2007, several months after an unsuccessful proposal to overhaul the country’s immigration system and offer illegal immigrants a path to citizenship sparked rancorous debate in Congress.
Even then, immigration was ranked only fifth on a list of six possible priorities for Latinos, who make up 15 percent of the population and include both new arrivals and people whose roots in the United States stretch back generations. What has changed most is Latinos’ focus on the economy: Fifty-seven percent now cite it as “extremely important” compared with 43 percent in the December 2007 poll.
▬Economy, Not Immigration, a Top Worry of Latinos
But the state of Mexican-American opinion has all changed now, thanks in no small part to a bunch of virulent, overtly racist extremists from Arizona who have become the most visible face of the immigration debate. A spate of recent polls show a precipitous shift in Mexican-American opinion. Here are a few examples:
► Latinos now view immigration as their leading concern along with the economy in what activists say is a major shift most likely driven by controversy over Arizona’s tough law against illegal immigrants.
Nearly a third of Latinos also believe that racism and prejudice are the central issue in the immigration debate, over national security, job competition and costs of public services for illegal immigrants, according to a national survey released Wednesday.
▬Immigration now a top concern among Latinos, poll shows
► Nearly two-thirds of Latinos in the U.S. think they are being discriminated against, and a plurality think the backlash over illegal immigration is the central driver of such bias.
“More Latinos are seeing discrimination against Hispanics as a major problem,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center, which on Thursday released the results of a nationwide survey of Latinos.
▬Discrimination, illegal immigration major issues for Latinos, poll shows
► In the poll, 61 percent say they favor Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigration law, which would require local and state law enforcement officers to question people about their immigration status if they have reason to suspect a person is in the country illegally. The law would also make it a crime to lack the proper registration documents.
But there’s a divide among white and Latino respondents: 70 percent of whites support the law, versus just 31 percent of Latinos. In fact, 58 percent of Latinos say they strongly oppose it.
That’s not the only chasm between White and Latino America. While 68 percent of Latinos believe that immigration strengthens the United States, just 43 percent of whites think that.
▬On immigration, racial divide runs deep
► When asked what are the most important issues facing the Latino community that Congress and the President should address, respondents ranked immigration, 47% as top priority followed by the economy 44%. Education and health followed with 20% and 12% respectively.
▬POLL: Immigration and Economy Top Concerns Amongst Latinos
One has to wonder if this was a case of unintended outcomes or if these extremist anti-immigration groups were put up to this by someone who is more clairvoyant and political savvy than they are.
At least some of the more extreme, ultra-right anti-immigration activists turned out be on the FBI payroll. Hal Turner, for example, ran a website and online radio show that was particularly inflammatory and took part in violent anti-immigration protests. He was also an FBI informant and agent provocateur.
http://www.northjersey.com/news/Records_show_feds_used_ultra-right_radio_host_for_years.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Turner#FBI_Informant
A UC-Irvine researcher has a different explanation: constantly being forced to choose a racial identity on forms, for the Census, etc., has hardened ethnic and racial identities among young Hispanics.
http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=837
Externality,
There’s certainly much to agree with Rumbaut’s article. For instance, when he writes that race is “a pigment of our imagination,” a “subjective phenomenon,” an “ideological construct that links supposedly innate traits of individuals to their place in the social order” I certainly agree.
However, when he writes: “This [“Hispanics” or “Latinos”] is a label developed and legitimized by the state,” I must object.
The labeling of Hispanics was already very much a part of American culture and society way before the state got into labeling Hispanics in the 1960s. The state was merely giving official recognition to something that already existed. And in order to understand why this was necessary, one needs to do no more than watch the PBS documentary film A Class Apart. As the film explains:
Narrator: The treatment of Private Felix Longoria, a war hero killed in the Philippines, became a flashpoint. When his body was returned to his hometown of Three Rivers, Texas, in early 1949, the town’s only funeral parlor refused to hold a memorial service – because, they told Longoria’s widow, “the whites wouldn’t like it.”
Dr Ramiro Casso: This guy gave his life so that we could have the same rights and privileges that are available to everybody, and he couldn’t be buried with the whites because he was brown? What the hell?
Ignacio García: And it it really hits a nerve in the nation in particular with many veteran groups who say how can they not allow him to be buried.
Narrator: For Mexican Americans, the Longoria incident came at a crucial time. Since the twenties, civic organizations such as LULAC – the League of United Latin American Citizens – had begun pushing for civil rights, with some success. Now, emboldened by their war experience and growing political clout, Mexican American activists pressed demands for broader change. After an intense public campaign, Felix Longoria was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Ian Haney-López: And it’s this generation who fought in World War Two who begin to demand civil rights for Mexican Americans. They form important social organizations like the G.I. Forum. These organizations are committed to fighting for equality for Mexican Americans as well as to fighting for pride in Mexican origins.
Narrator: The activists also took their fight to the courts. With the help of lawyers like Gus García and his colleague Carlos Cadena, both veterans, they began to attack the legal foundations of discrimination throughout the Southwest.
García led a team that won a court order curtailing the segregation of Hispanic students in Texas schools. Cadena won a ruling that ended restrictive covenants barring Mexican Americans from buying homes in Anglo neighborhoods. But those victories could only take Mexican Americans so far.
Ian Haney-López: Mexican American lawyers had achieved some successes on the state level, but the bottom line was the local majorities in these states were intent on treating Mexican Americans as second class citizens. If they were to be fully protected, if they were to be regarded as equal with other Americans, they would need to receive the protection of the Constitution. They would need to take their cases to the US Supreme Court.
Narrator: The lawyers faced an uphill battle. They knew that Mexican Americans had been denied the protection of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, an essential weapon for African Americans in their fight against discrimination. Some states had argued that the amendment only barred discrimination by whites against blacks – and by law, Mexican Americans were considered white.
To end the discrimination that stifled their community, they would need to find the right case – one with the potential to redefine the very meaning of the United States Constitution.
There’s also an excellent book by David Montejano called Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 that explains the “culture of discrimination” and the web of labor controls that Hispanics had to contend with after Texas succeeded from Mexico in 1936.
Externality,
Maybe this section from A Class Apart explains a little bit better the need for Hispanics to be labled something other than white:
Narrator: After discussions with Latino civil rights activists, the Hernandez lawyers decided on a bold but risky legal strategy. Arguing for constitutional protection for Mexican Americans, they would emphasize their ambiguous and vulnerable place in America’s racial hierarchy. They would put their very identity on trial.
Ian Haney-López: Mexican Americans were fighting to be treated as if they were white. But the irony here is that the Texas Courts seized on their claim to be white not to treat them fairly but to continue to defend this practice of unfair mistreatment. The Texas courts responded by saying, “So you’re white. That’s fine. Look at the juries. There’s nobody but white persons on the jury. You have no claim of discrimination.” In turn, the Mexican American lawyers had to respond, “We’re white, but we’re a class apart. We’re a distinct class that though white, is being treated as if we’re not white.” And that’s the basis on which they went forward with their litigation in Hernandez v. Texas.
Narrator: The “class apart” theory was as controversial as it was innovative.
Lisa Ramos: I think many Mexican Americans were afraid, “What would happen if we weren’t considered white? How do we know we’re not going to be forced or pushed to identify with the black race, at a time when black people are fundamentally denied so many basic rights.” But there’s also the element of racism, of the belief among some Mexican Americans that blackness is inferior. So there’s an element of racism and there’s an element of fear of Jim Crow segregation.
Narrator: Carlos Cadena took the lead in drafting the Hernandez appeal. Writing a tightly argued legal brief, he elaborated on the novel theory of “a class apart.” He also punctured the state’s legal position – that Mexican Americans were white, and therefore outside the protection of the 14th Amendment – with a few well-placed rhetorical thrusts.“About the only time,” Cadena wrote, “that so-called Mexicans, many of them Texans for seven generations, are covered with the Caucasian cloak, is when it serves the ends of those who would shamelessly deny this large segment of the Texas population their fundamental rights.”
Texas’s high court was not persuaded. The appeal was denied. The next step for the Hernandez lawyers, and a very risky one, was to turn to the United States Supreme Court.
Downsouth,
I had typed up a longer reply, but it sounded too whiny.
All I will say is that Eastern European immigrants received similar treatment from the WASP elite during the 1920s. As recently as the 1980s, popular culture ridiculed and caricatured Eastern Europeans, discrimination in employment and housing persisted, restrictive (but unenforceable) real estate covenants barred ownership by “Slavic and other inferior races,” and people routinely told disparaging “Polish jokes” that lumped together essentially all of Eastern Europe.
Externality,
There’s at least one big difference between Eastern Europeans and the majority of Mexican-Americans: skin color.
If you would have taken the time to watch A Class Apart, you would have learned that Hispanics had been subjected to an ironclad caste system in Texas for well over 100 years. They were not given the choice as to whether they could assimilate or not. Their inferior status was enforced by a rigid social structure built upon race that was impenetrable by even the most talented and gifted of Hispanics. The notion that brown and black people were treated the same in this country as white people is propaganda. It is a lie.
Externality,
If you want to argue that the racial minority perspective has been thoroughly instituitionalized by governmental and foundation elites over the last 40 years, that’s an argument that I believe may have some merit. That, after all, is the argument that Skerry makes. 2011 is not 1950, and Hispanics do not face the discrimination today that they did in 1950. But you need to get your facts straight and refine your argument. I for one place Jim Crow deniers in the same column that I do Holocaust deniers.
First off, I do not deny way that Blacks and Hispanics were treated.
Second, I am darker-skinned than a large number of Hispanics, had a last name that was sometimes mistaken for Hispanic, and yet I was considered a “privileged White” person for the purposes of scholarships, etc. Never mind that my old last name, before it was Americanized, actually meant “emancipated serf” in Slovak and Hungarian. (I am of mixed Polish/Ukrainian/Slovak ancestry)
Third, I am well aware of the discrimination facing Hispanics and other darker-skinned ethnic groups. When I was about 14, my family moved to a subdivision in Missouri populated mostly by WASPs and Jews. A day or so later, the head of the homeowners association knocked on the door, and began a tirade as to how he could not tell whether we were “w*tb*cks from Mexico” or “P*l*cks from Poland,” but in either case there were deed restrictions barring us from owning the house. My family finally had to hire a lawyer to deal with the homeowners associations’ attempts to kick us out of our home; they eventually dropped it after considerable controversy. (By the mid-1980s, deed restrictions of this type were illegal.)
Fourth, it infuriates me the way that the LGBT and HIV/AIDS communities, once very cohesive, have been balkanized by race, ethnicity, etc. largely due to the efforts of the government, liberal elites, and corporate funders.
Externality,
Well I can certainly feel your pain. Given the three propositions—-race doesn’t matter, race does matter, and race is all that matters—-it was my experience that there are entirely too many within the LBGT community who buy into the latter proposition. Furthermore, as Skerry (who with his jet black hair and dark skin definitely looks Hispanic) puts it, Hispanic elites deny “much of the progress their group has made.” At some later point, he adds, “we may come to appreciate the divisive nature of the approach we are now taking.” “Mexican-American politics has fixed on race consciousness and resentments,” he concludes.
But this admission doesn’t give license for the LGBT community to get on its high horse and believe that its shit don’t stink. As Skerry explains, wealthy LGBTs take full advantage of what he calls “elite-network politics.” They contribute generously to the campaigns of Hispanic candidates in “rotten boroughs.” These political units have complacent constituencies which allow these elite-network politicians to carry water for their elite benefactors. Hardly any of these elite LGBT contributors live in these districts. As Skerry demonstrates in the chapter on the state of Mexican-American opinion, gay rights doesn’t poll well amongst a people that is mostly working-class and Catholic. Hispanics for the most part are socially conservative. I think the same thing might be true for Blacks. Could this explain why, when gay issues are put to a popular vote such as California’s Prop 8, they don’t fare well in the Black and Hispanic communities?
So here is how Skerry sees Hispanic elite-network politicians, who mostly work for their wealthy feminist, LBGT and Chicano contributors, lining up on the issues:
Gay rights: strongly for
Abortion rights: strongly for
Increased national defense spending: strongly against
Education and employment: unimportant
Crime and drugs: unimportant
Busing: strongly for
Bilingual education: strongly for
Race consciousness and resentments: strongly for
Affirmative action: strongly for
Open-borders (few or no restrictions on immigration): strongly for
Polls, however, consistently show that the Mexican-American constituents that these elite-network politicians “represent” are either indifferent to these issues or stake out positions diametrically opposed to what the elite-network politicians do.
Wealthy LGBTs have played this elite-network political game masterfully. So a rather strong argument can be made that they have little right to complain about the other issues that comprise the agenda of the elite-network. They must remember that LGBTs are not the only members of this elite-network which the politicians have cobbled together.
Ordinary citizens at least got some benefits from the EU and the Schengen agreement — labor mobility and freedom of travel within the euro area.
By contrast, NAFTA conferred no labor mobility for citizens of its three member states. And the laissez-faire travel regime which used to apply — Americans could roam all over Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean without needing a passport — is gone.
Bureaucratic, ‘your papers please’ borders signify the ominous advance of neofeudalism, which was briefly suspended in Europe, but only intensified in benighted North America. After all, we’ve got serious enemies (why do they hate us?):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/opinion/17tue1.html?_r=1&hp
Neofascism entwined with neofeudalism — we’re on a roll!
Actually NAFTA did provide labor mobility to those with college degrees. There is the TN visa and the equivalent for Mexico where if you have a college degree and an offer letter you can show up at the border and get a TN visa that allows you to work. It just does not apply to other workers. So there is more mobility than before.
There’s labor mobility, for those desperate enough to work illegally (for cheap, without benefits) and to work for a visa (for cheap, with benefits) tying you to a particular employer for years while they draw out your residency application.
(Okay, okay… I know that’s not what you meant.) :-)
Living in the UK which tends to be cool except in summer when it is light 18 hours a day and lightbulbs are not used for long, I often wonder whether low power lightbulbs really do save that much energy. The heat from an incandescent bulb is not wasted; it heats your house and causes thermostatically-controlled heating to work less than it would do otherwise.
In a German-style Passivhaus, a few 100-watt light bulbs could keep you warm in winter without even needing supplementary heating.
But the efficiency of converting fossil fuels to electricity in central power stations is only in the 30 to 40 percent range. Whereas, gas and oil furnaces now offer efficiencies north of 90 percent.
Thus, it’s still preferable to install high efficiency lighting for illumination, and burn fuel directly at two or three times the efficiency for space heating.
Good points Jim; I suppose that electricity transmission takes more energy too.
Yes, transmission losses nick another 6 or 8% of the power between the central station and the home. They can be reduced by using higher voltage.
But the central power station efficiency faces hard thermodynamic limits. To improve it, the generation temperature must rise. But it can only go so high before metals melt. So there’s little prospect of raising central power stations above 30 to 40 percent efficiency in converting thermal to electrical energy.
DeLong/Summers: “Read Minsky”:
http://bit.ly/lKVguz
Why am I reminded of when Krugman said something along these lines a while back? If I remember correctly he started off by covering Minsky in some sort of holy aura — making it sound at once untouchable and fascinating:
“Well, guess what everyone. I’m REALLY reading ‘Stabalizing an Unstable Economy’…” (I’m paraphrasing… so sue me…)
But then he goes on to denigrate the contents of the book — after insulting Minsky’s writing style (which is a fair point, but still…), he says something along the lines of:
“Actually, everything interesting Minsky says could be contained in one chapter. The rest of the book is just a weird attempt to lay out a new conception of Kaleckian dynamics applied to the financial system. Which is OBVIOUSLY wacky and silly… LOOOOOOLZ!!!”
This is the reception Minsky gets from the mainstream. That he was some sort of crank that chanced upon something of interest. That’s why I wouldn’t take boors like DeLong or Summers seriously as they turn Minsky into a fetish — indeed, such is arguably worse than ignoring him altogether…
The main reasons not to take DeLong seriously are:
(1) He’s had positive things to say about the antichrist (Greenspan) on many occasions;
(2) He runs his comment section like a Nazi—deletes non-abusive comments (from both left and right) when he decides he disagrees with them.
Yeah, DeLong seems particularly easy to wind-up. A few people had a wonderful time a while back doing just that when he wrote up a post slagging off that Marxist geographer David Harvey for adhering to an ancient doctrine that didn’t make any sense.
What fun was had pointing out that Harvey had predicted the bubble and DeLong was completely blind — and thus, by most philosophical standards, even though Harvey’s theories were probably incoherent, they were more ‘scientific’ than DeLong’s, in the sense that they had stronger predictive power.
Those comments didn’t last long — but I have no doubt that they wound DeLong up to no end…
Friends;
Off the top of my head I can think of two reasons to delete non abusive comments from any blog site. The first is that the comment is silly and stupid. (Happens to me somewhat.)
The second is that the moderator is worried more about ego issues then truth issues.
Fiends;
Argueably a news heavy day, but, no adulatory coverage of the Trump bowing out of the Replicrat race? Come on now. Let’s not be out Fauxed.
Wouldn’t it funny if they had a Republican primary and no one showed up?
Should that scare us? They’re the ones that understand money?
Maybe this is why. The Asians a making fun of us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXhPqywdEg4&feature=player_embedded
If it’s such a bad deal to loan the US money, why do they do it?
Oh yeah, because if they rebalanced their economy towards internal consumption, that would increase inflation, decrease exports, and give the middle and lower class “ideas.”
Love that animation house, though.
Folks;
When it comes to energy extraction, does anyone here remember Project Ploughshare? Who wants to bet that the energy ‘producers’ try to figure out a way to make these poor people pay to clean up their own water supplies. Just look at the late 90’s consent decree the coastal Missisippi counties had to enter into with the EPA. The whole thing has ended up in a gentrification program covering the Coast. Sort of reminds me of the problem Carmel by the Sea in California had way back when. Then their mayor proposed a solution to the resulting problem that actually fit the problem. Subsequently, all South Central broke loose.
Now this is a EuroExplosion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOOt6g-RkUY
Cheeky brats! They should be studying or, you know, cleaning up some rich dude’s garden for a few Euros…
“Shale gas environmental concerns Jim Hamilton, Econbrowser”
I liked the video were the guy lit his faucet water on fire. So, ok, maybe it can be a problem in places.
Thing is, we are probably gonna need the natural gas if we want to wean off coal and oil, and also ramp down or keep constant nuclear.
So we can choose the right way or wrong way to do it.
The good part is NG is looking cheap enough relative to renewables and other conventional sources, that it could stand some increase in production cost if that is what it takes, and still be the lowest cost source in our energy mix. Then we do need a reliable, storable, base source of energy. This is what will enable use of more intermittent sources like wind and solar.
re: L019: Bitcoin P2P Currency
What a fascinating post. Reads a bit like a science fiction novel, very provocative but doesn’t seem very realistic.
An example of rebel quants at work? Is this another step in the evolution of money… “renegade currencies” (instead of private currencies)? Or an elaborate CON so the people behind this can become filthy rich? An attempt at economic guerilla warfare? An attempt at creating yet another underground economy/black market?
No way. There will be a Federal Livestock Reserve. They will have member ranches all over the country. We will be paid pigs, cows, goats and chickens by our employer. These credits will appear in your PayPal Corral.
The Federal Livestock Reserve will manage the growth of our livestock supply to foster maximum employment and stable meat prices.
It would be safer to put all the pigs and cows at Fort Konx.
The Federal Livestock Reserve simply credits your livestock account in its computer system, out of thin air, to simulate, sorry, stimulate the eoconomy.
Where’s the beef!
I was going to say I’m a vegetarian, but I am not. Besides, I would never admit I have made lots of vegetables suffer, often death by a thousand chews.
Cattle, Chattel and Capitalism… Etymology of Cattle http://www.word-origins.com/definition/cattle.html
Of course. Then the banks will have nationalized all the ranches all for nothing. But then at least the dudes can live there.
Yeah, its interesting all right. I have done some interviews with some of the guys behind it and I’ll post in more detail when I have typed them up……
Verizon sues FCC on data-roaming rulehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/verizon-sues-fcc-on-data-roaming-rule/2011/05/17/AFZgVo5G_blog.html
Range wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_wars
Economics, Time Management, & Space Travel
OK, so, we are experiencing end-of-empire greed, where the best thief wins, temporarily. You’ll have that. The trick is to have the next economy ready to go when the primary agency thieves at the top off the ponzi pyramid start feeling that blade getting close to their necks. You must have real sustainable durable goods orders to max the NPV window, which requires monogamous marriage, which requires intelligence – not a natural state for the cave dwellers, who are lucky to see the end of their own noses.
The corporations run on equations, monkeys typing in data and programs randomly as the integral stages. If you are not on the road, you are being directed by a bunch of monkeys, that take credit if there is an immediate return on your code, and fire you if there is not. In any case, they post an accounting profit and steal what they must from small entrepreneurial firms, through the merger, acquisition, and divestiture process in the dc black hole, which you allow to grow to the necessary proportions, to develop the necessary backlash, to launch the next product into orbit.
If you feed the corporate hacks the data, that’s one integral up. If you introduce new equations, that’s two integrals up. From your perspective, they are living in the past, and you can regulate the black hole system as required, joining, dividing, and building momentum. The reason I use the motor control analogy is because you have to adjust torque at the beginning of the pipeline to pick up the kids, and again and again through the demographic distribution to keep the product coming out of the end of the pipeline.
I use the process control analogy because you are channeling resources with feedback loops, depending upon your design. So, you go into these towns, see what needs to be done, and build models so you are not constantly re-inventing the wheel, building and placing the necessary false-work in your closet, so you can place the necessary bridge pieces to cross any gap as it arises. They see your data months and years after you produce it, and they see your equations decades after you produce them.
At the point of current reversal, in their 20-20 hindsight, when voltage is 0 in the neutral line, the bridge “suddenly” appears, and they cross it, like Lewis and Clark, writing down their “discovery” onto the stack of History. Substantial thrust is required for this next stage, which requires “time” to build, and all the critters understand is money, which allows them to process “stupid” transactions in the interim.
You will not need money when you walk into town because the old-timers will immediately recognize your potential to leverage their relative returns. Your pieces collapse upon departure, which is why I call it false-work. Build a temporary bridge to get your people across, the corporations will set up on it and start charging the cattle a grazing fee (Microsoft, Apple, etc). When the weight becomes excessive, after you have already installed the next set of bridges, far away, BOOM, and you set it up as a cantilever to throw the kids forward, as the apparatus crumbles into the abyss below, which the natural action of the universe is creating. Employ nature as the containment pressure cooker.
The Bank has no real income, is hopelessly in debt, and the planet is now delivering one blow after another, because all of its make-work infrastructure is in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, at the wrong time. Don’t bother with the new bank regulations.
Space travel is the same problem. The infrastructure required must be built in advance, to employ the circuit of black holes. The universe is like money; it’s a simple stupid transaction system for cave dwellers. It’s up to you to make it intelligible. Learn to manage your time more effectively. Efficiency is the height of stupidity. Be the timekeeper.
Bitcoin is pretty silly because it 1) lacks any accountability, it depends on the techno-utopian idea of an unbreakable protocol. 2) it really is just a way for a small private cartel to corner the market in the particular currency, i.e. the people using “GPUs” to make the coins. Also, it will privilege those who can run powerful systems to make the coins. They become the gatekeepers. No different from any other commodity based currency, except this one is based on time and electricity.
Same shit, different day. Leave it to ignorant internet libertarians to try to rediscover how currency works. Almost as funny as when internet libertarians discover politics….gasp….relationships matter?
Asperger’s syndrome, the lot of ’em.
Well, well;
DSK is put on a suicide watch?
What next? Shot while trying to escape?
I did a rough calculation today. Assuming the next financial crisis happens when the DJIA hits 14,000 as it did last time, and given the rate of DJIA increase since the bottom of the last financial crisis is about 190 points a month, that gives us just under 8 more months until the next crisis — January 2012.
If the Dow goes above 14,000, it will prove yet again the aphorism that the market can stay irrational much longer than you can stay solvent.
I know it’s unwise to bet against the stupidity of the herd, but I only have to be right once. They have to be right every day.