Category Archives: Social values

Matt Stoller: Elizabeth Warren Versus Barack Obama on Leadership

By Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.  His Twitter feed is @matthewstoller.

Last week, I caught some of the grilling of Elizabeth Warren by GOP Congressmen during the House Oversight Reform Hearing. At one point, a Republican Congressmen asked Warren if she was “running a campaign” to convince people of the validity of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she is in the midst of setting up. The two of them went back and forth, because she didn’t really understand the question. He was trying to peg her as overtly political, using government resources to travel the country and do advocacy. Suddenly, she got the nature of the question, and turned to him and said, pointedly, “I always try to convince people that I’m right.”

There was some laughter in the room, but she wasn’t kidding.

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News International Phone Hacking and the Police Coverup

The widening News International scandal is feeling more and more like Watergate. It’s intriguing to watch witness squirm when they are caught out. The Guardian, and in particular Nick Davies, broke many of the crucial pieces of the sordid tale of News International hacking and coverup payments. This Guardian video is accessible to non-UK viewers. Hat tip Buzz Potamkin:

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Surveillance State Tactics Increasing: Police Starting to Use Facial Recognition Devices

An article in the Wall Street Journal discusses a disturbing new trend: that of local police forces starting to use hand held face recognition devices. The implements allow for a picture taken at up to a five foot distance to be compared to images of individuals with a criminal record. They can also take fingerprints.

The story focuses on the civil liberties aspects, which are troubling enough and we’ll turn to them shortly.

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Doug Smith: The Maximum Wage

By Douglas K. Smith, author of On Value and Values: Thinking Differently About We In An Age Of Me

We face severe and growing income inequality with negative effects on people and the economy. Yet, no surprise, the ‘can’t do’ right wing continues a scorched earth campaign against the minimum wage. These self-promoting haters actually prefer no wages and indentured servitude – for example using prisoners to replace employees and cheerfully promoting ‘internships’ for the unemployed.

They glory in income inequality and wish it to expand instead of contract. Enough of that. They are destroyers of the American Dream.

But people who seek to shrink income inequality — to insure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all and not just some — must now focus as much on the maximum wage as the minimum wage.

So, be it proposed:

“That any enterprise receiving taxpayer funds shall not compensate that enterprise’s highest paid person in an amount greater than twenty-five times what the lowest compensated person receives.”

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News Corp Targeted Former PM Gordon Brown: Hacked Police, Medical Records; Obtained Bank Information

The latest revelations in the widening News International scandal are simply stunning. “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” is apparently as true now as it was in Shakespeare’s day. The idea that a news organization would have the audacity to target a head of state, as News International papers the Sun and the Sunday Times did with Gordon Brown, and not with the usual tools of invective and gossip, but via the theft of personal information, raises the scandal to a whole new level.

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The Pathology of Elite Organizations

Reader EmilianoZ pointed to a key section of a review of the documentary, “Page One: Inside the New York Times,” by Chris Hedges, who worked at the Times for 15 years. This is one of the best short summaries I’ve seen of the Faustian pact elite organizations (at least American ones) expect their members to enter into. From TruthDig:

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Defining Deviancy Away: How the Justice Department Adopted “See No Evil” Approach to Corporate Crime

Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story have a must-read article in the New York Times on an important aspect of our two-tier justice system, in which only little people seem to be subject to the full force of the law. The article describes how, starting with the Bush Administration and continuing under Obama, the Department of Justice decided to exit the business of prosecuting suspected corporate criminals.

This section is stunning:

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Mark Ames: Why the American Right Never Liked V.S. Naipaul

By Mark Ames, author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine. Cross posted from The Exiled.

I’ve often wondered why the American Right has been so quiet about V.S. Naipaul. He’s easily the most talented reactionary writer in the English language–maybe the only living talent left in the right-wing zombiesphere. The American Right devotes an insane amount of resources into manufacturing hagiographies on anyone whom they believe makes them look good–even the Soviets couldn’t compete with today’s American Right when it comes to glorifying their pantheon of degenerate cretins like Ayn Rand, Phyllis Schlafly, Friedrich von Hayek…

I found a few passages that I think explain why they never liked Naipaul much.

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Guest Post: Modern gender roles and ancient farming

By Alberto Alesina, Paola Giuliano, and Nathan Nunn. Cross posted from VoxEU

Gender inequality is an old story. This column presents new evidence to suggest it may be as old as the horse and plough. It says there is a robust negative relationship between historical plough-use and unequal gender roles today. Traditional plough-use is positively correlated with attitudes reflecting gender inequality and negatively correlated with female labour force participation, female firm ownership, and female participation in politics.

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DeLong Illustrates Why We Should Be Scared of Economists

Several readers sent me links to a Brad DeLong post which they took to be a rebuttal to a takedown I did of a recent Ezra Klein piece.

Since DeLong did not link to or mention my post, I doubt his piece had anything to do with mine. But his post is noteworthy for a completely different reason: it illustrates how economists have refused to learn much, if anything, from the crisis.

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Failing Upward, Version 3,452,227 (aka the Wages of Nearly Bringing Down the Global Economy)

Corporate American, and apparently important agencies, much prefer to hire people who’ve had Big Jobsno matter how poorly they’ve performed in them, that are very similar to the one at hand, rather than hire someone who relevant skills and experience but for whom a Big Job would be a step up.

You cannot make this up. From the Banking Times, “Ex-Lehman chief risk officer appointed World Bank treasurer,” hat tip Richard Smith:

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The Social Cost of the Loss of Job Stability and Careers

As much as the rest of the world has chosen to look down on Japan in its post bubble era for its failure to clean up its banking mess and resultant stagnant economy, it has managed its relative decline in status with considerable aplomb. It still has the longest life expectancy in the world, universal health care, not bad unemployment (3% to 5%) and ranks well on other social indicators And now that the US is going down the Japan path, it might behoove us to take heed of their example.

One of the striking difference between the cultures is importance ascribed to job creation.

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