Alt-Perspective

When a Chimpanzee Is Not Just a Chimpanzee

2009-02-19T15:38:00.000-08:00

Protests and outrage abound today in response to the New York Post’s publication of Sean Delonas’ cartoon featuring two policemen shooting a chimpanzee.

In response, New York Post editor-in-chief Col Allan denied the cartoon was racially charged and suggests that critiques of the piece are outlandish by associating protests with the “publicity opportunist,” Al Sharpton:

The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.

Allan’s defense of the cartoon, however, is specious at best, instead mostly reflecting the same racism and ignorance as Delonas’ drawing. By invoking Al Sharpton, the radical and presumably non-credible African-American civil rights figure, as the face of protestations against the cartoon, Allan rather blatantly suggests that anyone who thinks a chimpanzee is more than a chimpanzee is a lunatic.

But, in reality, Delonas’ cartoon represents at least two iconic, racially charged scenes:

* the depiction of African-Americans as ape-like, and
* images of white policemen beating/shooting/lynching African-American men

A Short History of the Representation of African-American’s as Apes

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, cartoons and other imagery depicting African-Americans (as well as Irish and Italian immigrants) with ape-like characteristics became commonplace.

The root of the emergence of these images seems to be a direct response (and refiguring of a dominant, racist paradigm) to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species (1859) and other scientific theories of monogenism (the idea that races—balck, white, and others— have a common, rather than distinct, ancestral origins are thus part of the same race).

The image to the right lampoons, and thus reflects, popular white racial anxieties about apes as ancestors to human beings by joking that the ape would be embarrassed to have Darwin for a descendant.

Challenged by strong scientific evidence to the contrary, racist ideologies that presumed the superiority of whites over blacks and other on the basis of a literal differentiation of races (i.e., that blacks were not actually a part of the human race) gave way to new, evolutionary-friendly paradigms that place whites at the top rung of an evolutionary ladder.

As the cartoon to the right depicts, this new paradigm envisions white, heterosexual men as the pinnacle, exemplary figure of the human, with women, homosexuals, and other races such as blacks and the Irish positioned as less developed and thus closer to the ape origins of the species. In the early 1900s in particular, alongside the development of the theory of eugenics by Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, such images of African-Americans with ape-like features were common.

Allan, the Post editor, seems to suggest that in 2009 a chimpanzee is just a chimpanzee and that, even if there is a legacy of representing African-Americans as monkeys, he and Delonas were unaware of it and shouldn’t be held responsible for it.

I believe, however, that such arguments are disingenuous if not outright lies. This racist imagery is an indelible part of our cultural consciousness and historical legacy. It doesn’t matter whether or not Delonas was directly thinking about the history of the representation of African-Americans as apes when he drew the cartoon. We as viewers and citizens can only see his drawing in this cultural context.

And, given that we have a newly elected black president who was the leading proponent of the stimulus bill, reading Delonas’ cartoon as a racist depiction of the violent slaughter Barack Obama is anything but outlandish.

Giving a Kid the Candy Store: Obama Promises Stricter Executive Compensation Rules

2009-02-04T12:13:00.000-08:00

In an effort to muster public support for more Wall Street giveaways... uh, bailouts... Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner today announced regulations on executive compensation for all banks that will receive federal funds under TARP II. However, the rules specifically exempt restricted stock from the limits.

While this cap may bring down some of the exorbitant salaries in a way, the fact is that most executive compensation isn't made through salary alone. Rather, restricted stock is already precisely the way most companies transfer wealth to executives.

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To give an example, let's say bank executive X's current compensation package includes a $1 million salary, bonuses that are typically in the range of $2 - $10 million, and restricted stock (X already owns 500,000 shares). This year, however X's bank takes on capital from the government under TARP II. So, X faces a salary cut of 50%, plus he can't take a bonus this year because of public outrage (not because he ran the bank into insolvency). But there are no restrictions on how much restricted stock he can receive.

Essentially this means that Obama is forcing the bank execs to defer their compensation for a short or intermediate time frame. Bank board of directors will authorize outrageous sums of restricted stock to make up for the loss in other forms of compensation.

And since Obama is thus far refusing to even consider nationalizing the banks, Obama is effectively telling the bank execs... wink, wink... that he is going to preserve the banks' stocks (and thus executive and shareholder stakes in the company) by not insisting on any reasonable terms in exchange for government funds.

Obama is saying: don't take big salaries. Take down huge chunks of stock at these low prices, and, if you play ball, I will make sure your bank still exists in 2, 5, 10 years and you will make fortunes.

It's like cutting the allowance of a kid for a year because he behaved badly, but giving him enough candy to tide him over for that period and promising that, at the end, he will own the candy story.

Will Wall Street Fatcats Continue to Get a Pass?

2009-02-04T11:59:00.000-08:00

US Attorney General Eric Holder was sworn in yesterday.

He used the occasion to make no promises there will be any prosecutions of bankers on Wall Street for their reckless and greedy actions that have brought the financial system into insolvency:

"We're not going to go on any witch hunts, but to the extent that what this nation is facing is the result of fraud and misconduct, we'll find it and we'll hold people accountable."

I'm so relieved that it is no longer "business as usual" in Washington.

The State of California Is Insolvent: Payments for Disability and Mental Health Services Postponed

2009-02-02T11:21:00.000-08:00

You wouldn't know it from the headlines in California newspapers today, which seem to be most focused on the Superbowl, but California is insolvent, still has not passed a budget to deal with a project $42 billion gap, and has stopped making payments for grants to some of the state's most neediest.

The state legislature again missed their deadline of passing the 2009 budget. This actually happens more years than not due to much stricter requirements for passage than most other states (the passage of the annual budget in California mandates 2/3 approval vote). This means that, even when the state legislature has a strong Democratic majority, Republicans can easily block Democratic budgets, making bipartisanship a necessity that is very difficult to obtain. In good economic times, this process is a nuisance. In poor economic times, and this is definitely the worst period post-WWII, it is a catastrophe.

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Consequences of the Ongoing Lack of a 2009 State Budget

Since the legislature failed to pass a budget on Friday, January 31, California State Controller John Chiang has been forced to stop payments for a wide away of debts and services as of yesterday, February 1, including:

* Cal Grants

* Personal income, bank, and corporation tax refunds

* Department of Social Services/CalWorks (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families - aka TANF - for basic needs, which includes specific Welfare-to-Work requirements and provides supportive services such as childcare)

* Operating costs and salaries of county staff who administer public assistance programs

* and the departments of Developmental Services (for people with disabilities), Mental Health, and Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

In addition, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger went to court (over Chiang's objections) so that he could demand that over 230,000 workers be furloughed for two days each month, which will amount to a pay cut of 9% and means many government facilities like the DMV will also be closed every other Friday, beginning this week (and could continue into 2010).

Chiang also stated that the deferred payments for February (and those going forward) will continue to be delayed each month until the budget is passed.

How the Will the Gap Get Filled?

The state estimates that, if passed in its current form, the federal stimulus package would bring in about $19 billion for the state. However, this doesn't even cover half of the expected $42 billion deficit.

The major problems of the state budget crisis are twofold: 1) the legislature is limited to being able to make cuts to only parts of the general fund (which itself comprises only slightly more than half of the total budget), and 2) the state budget must be balanced every year, i.e. the state is not allowed to run at a deficit the way the federal budget does (and this is largely true of all the states).

With a Republican governor and a solid Republican minority in the legislature, the Republicans are able to block the passage of the budget for as long as the Democrats refuse to make extensive cuts to programs such as social services (which, as the Controller's website emphasizes, are at the bottom of the list funding priorities for the state). And cuts are necessary because tax hikes to raise money to close the budget gap are both easily squashed by the Republicans and politically unpalatable given the state of the economy, even though slashing spending is exactly the wrong thing to do in the midst of a severe recession/depression.

So, the California government remains at a standstill, with Republicans seeking ruthless cuts and Democrats trying somewhat to protect the interests of their base. And the federal government is largely ignoring the problems at the state level across the nation, instead working on a plan to give away trillions to the banks as crucial state and local jobs and services disappear.

Thus the budget crisis is going to go on for a long time, with the sick, poor, disabled, students, and uninsured paying the highest price.

I Am a Highly Offensive Homosexual Pornographer

2009-01-29T04:25:00.000-08:00

Yes, you might know me as a teacher, an academic, or a filmmaker, but the Americans for Truth have discovered the real me.

I have known about this for a while, but seeing that someone clicked through to my site yesterday from americansfortruth.com brought the whole thing back.

The Americans for Truth about Homosexuality appears to have an endless fascination/obsession with all things gay... and they keep no stone unturned to bring their readers up-to-the-minute info on important queer issues and figures. And, unlike many pro-queer sites, they don't stop at covering celebrities and large organizations. They are truly dedicated. Even minor contributors to queer culture and politics such as me have crossed their radar screen.

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Jokes giggles aside, however, this website, which posts an extra warning mid-way through the article - "WARNING: SOME READERS MAY FIND THE REMAINDER OF THIS POST HIGHLY OFFENSIVE" - before mentioning me and one of my films (ok, I guess I actually wasn't done giggling), offers me comfort, solace, and glee that I have managed to personally piss off some good old-fashioned bigots. This is even more satisfying than the Pope declaring trans/gender/queer theory and practices a threat to humanity!

Oh, and isn't it kind of them to provide their readers every possible detail about my "pornographic" film (by the way, there isn't even any nudity in this short documentary) in their article, even as they "urge you NOT to view these perverted websites"? Is it any wonder their readers continue to click through?!?

Now, I am not going to offer some cliched, pop analysis that all homophobes are really repressed homosexuals. Freud, after all, pretty much argues that all strictly straight individuals are repressing original homosexual identifications and desires. He would also say the same about homosexuals - he believed in the original bisexuality of all humans (which was both biological and psychical for him). For Freud, the question of how one comes be heterosexual or homosexual is a problem that can only be explained by analysis. But I digress. (If you want more, see the fascinating first essay of Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). Freud is a great storyteller.)

In other words, I tend to think of such (well, really all) bigots as suffering more from mental illness (anxiety, paranoia, etc.) than repressed homosexuality in the simplistic sense that "they just haven't come out yet."

While we wait for them to get help (seriously, they have ex-gay clinics... we should turn the other cheek and have mental health facilities that would actually help them), feel free to send messages, comments, critiques, prayers, gestures of assistance, etc. to the "president" of Americans for Truth:

LABARBERA, PETER
peterlabarbera@comcast.net
AMERICANS FOR TRUTH
PO Box 5522
Naperville, Illinois 60567-5522
United States
Phone -- 6307177631
Fax -- 6308390799

PS. If you want to see some of my "pornographic" films, I have some online here.

Making the Case for the Nationalization of the US Banking System

2009-01-28T05:40:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned yesterday, NYU economics professor and doom-and-gloom expert Nouriel Roubini has been on a press tour of late arguing that the US banking system is insolvent (and, actually, he is not the only one, just perhaps the most prominent). And the Obama administration clearly knows it, which is why they are considering another round of even bigger giveaways to the major banks.

I'm guessing that some of the reasons why, thus far, Obama is not using the n-word (nationalization) include:

* Nationalization would wipe out billions in shareholder equity and unsecured debt holders. This would effectively punish the bankers and billionaire investors like Warren Buffett, but it could also seriously impact pension funds and university endowments that might still have large investments in the sector.

* Obama's crew is still hanging on to a thread of hope in free-market capitalism.

* Obama's team is afraid of further systemic market collapses like we saw in late 2008.

But Roubini and others are making a compelling case that the cost, which Roubini already places at $8 trillion to date (including implied guarantees), of further bailouts is simply not worth the pretense of maintaining a private banking sector.

In addition, at least one of these reasons appears to be unfounded.

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Brian Gilmartin highlighted some interesting research out of Bespoke Investment Group:

Hypothetically speaking (and we're not saying we expect it), if we were to wake up one day and find that all of the financials in both indices had been nationalized, wiping out the common equity, the S&P 500 would trade 10% lower, and the DJIA would lose 396 points (we lost 330 (last) Tuesday without any companies going to zero).

In other words, the financial stocks have fallen so far in the last year that even if they ALL went to zero, the downside would only be around 10%, or around the exact low of the markets in November 2008.

Such statistics could offer a basis for a compelling case for both the need and the feasibility of nationalization.

But, instead, bank stocks are set to ramp 20-30% today alone on the rumors of the "bad bank" deal reported yesterday, offering some strong anecdotal evidence that Wall Streeters are expecting more large handouts.

Bringing Back the Giveaways: US "Bad Bank" Gaining Steam

2009-01-27T14:39:00.000-08:00

Just hours after newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced new rules to restrict lobbying from the banking industry, CNBC is reporting this afternoon that the Treasury is in talks with industry lobbyists around creating a federal "bad bank" and that a deal may be announced as soon as next week.

Such a move would mean huge giveaways to the banks and their shareholders, undermining the progressive case for bailouts that I argued for last week and making irrelevant Larry Summers' proposed protocols for the Obama administration's oversight of TARP 2.

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Nouriel Roubini pronounced last week that US and European banking systems are effectively insolvent.

But while the obvious, and more progressive and efficient, thing to do is to nationalize the banks, the new Treasury seems as loathe to do so as Hank Paulson's Treasury. (hmmm, is that really such a surprise since Geithner was Paulson's golden boy?) So, instead, we are facing another round of giveaways.

While the details of such a plan have not yet been announced, talk is circulating that a new "bad bank" or aggregator bank will buy up trillions of dollars worth of assets such as bad loans, mortgage credit default swaps and other obscure, illiquid (and possibly worthless) securities at the prices that are already on the banks' balance sheets (or off them, which is where so many of these securities are hiding, helping to obscure the fact that many of the banks are actually insolvent). This would help the banks sidestep the full industry collapse that has thus far been postponed by what Michael Shedlock has called the "Don't Ask, Don't Sell" plan:

The plan boils down to this: Don't Ask - Don't Sell.
* Don't Ask what the asset is worth.
* Don't Sell or you will find out and not like the result.

Thus, being able to sell toxic assets to the US "bad bank" would be a huge boon to the financial industry that would solve the problem of the "Don't Ask, Don't Sell" purgatory. For example:

* There would be no open market for the assets, avoiding the problem of finding out what they are truly worth (which is likely a lot less than what most of the banks are still valuing them at);

* The banks would receive massive amounts of cash that will not be 1) a loan or 2) cost them a tremendous amount in preferred stock that carries high interest rates (this has been the case with past infusions... now the talk is that the banks would only have to issue a small amount of common stock to make up for the difference between what the government is willing to pay for the assets versus what their value is on the banks' books);

* The government might even intentionally overpay for the securities, indeed over-bid even the probably much inflated prices at which the banks are currently valuing the assets.

* Hence, in most likely scenarios, the banks would not have to further write down their losses on these assets due to "mark-to-market" accounting;

* Debt holders and preferred and common stock shareholders would not be wiped out. This also means that the bank execs, who have been given huge compensation packages that include large amounts of stock, will not get wiped out due to their malfeasance;

* Taxpayers/the government will be stuck with all the assets, taking all losses and gains.

The last point in particular is being passed as a good thing by right-wingers and industry-folk. They argue that, at some point in the future, these assets will regain their value and the government is the ideal holder because it can afford however long it takes for that future to arrive.

However, in actuality this is an even worse deal for the government than those that were worked out under TARP 1, as it is much more likely that the securities never recover rather than produce outsized gains. But, because there would be a nominal exchange of assets, the "bad bank" plan will probably pass muster even with many of those who have been decrying the giveaways of the bailouts of 2008.

The "Bad Bank" of the United States: Will Obama Give Away $$ to Banks or Re-structure the Financial Industry?

2009-01-18T01:57:00.000-08:00

I wrote yesterday about the progressive case for bank bailouts.

I should clarify that such a case can only be made if one is looking forward from the quagmire we are in now. Given the hemorrhaging of billions at the largest financial institutions, Obama has virtually no choice but to plan a rescue as the banks have become "to big to fail."

Simply put, that means that they are so large that their failure would effectively cause a landslide that would bury economic system. For example, their investments are spread so wide that liquidating them would kill markets, i.e. if they sold all of their mortgage-backed assets at fire sale prices, all the other banks would have to value their assets at those same prices. This is due to the establishment of "mark-to-market" accounting practices, which were designed to bring more transparency and accuracy to financial accounting. (Watch for this rule to be abandoned, which would be a travesty, as many in the industry have been crying that it is the accounting rule, not the specious value of the "troubled assets," that is the "real" problem with the banks).

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And that is only one of a myriad to ways that the collapse of a Citi would impact the financial system. Indeed, many economists and Wall-Streeters believe that the Federal Reserve's decision to allow Lehman Brothers, which was much much smaller than a Citi, to fail is the direct root cause of the escalation of the economic collapse in the last four months. If Lehman caused a heart attack, the thinking goes, what would happen if Citi, Bank of America, and others failed too?

Obama is not going to let that happen. So bailouts have to happen now. But what form each bailout takes is crucial to determining whether the taxpayer is getting a raw deal, which, it is obvious now, already happened with much of the spending of TARP 1.

Potential Problems with "Bad Banks"

Paul Krugman, my source for all things related to fiscal policy, recently wrote that he is concerned about the ideas circulating about establishing a federal "bad bank" that would purchase distressed assets like mortgage-back securities from the large financial institutions, but that there aren't enough details available yet to determine if such proposals could work.

The same problems that arose with TARP 1, he argues, could emerge with the "bad bank" scenario.

The big question is: would the government be buying the troubled assets at artificially high prices (in other words, paying to much and giving money away to the banks) or at a discount (which could then possibly be profitable)?

And What about Progressive Economic Policy for the Future?

Obama's team needs to already be thinking beyond this crisis to a restructuring of the financial industry. What kind of progressive economic (and maybe anti-trust?) plan could be enacted to make sure that such bailouts are never needed again?

The government could establish regulation and oversight that doesn't allow for institutions, not just banks but also hedge funds and savings and loans etc., to get so large as to be "too big to fail" in the first place. If this were the case, the FDIC would protect depositor accounts as the bank simply failed due to mismanagement and, for the most part, lays the losses squarely on the shoulders of owners and investors, not on the government.

The fact that the large majority of regional banks are in far superior shape right now when compared to the massive Citis and Bank of Americas (because the regional banks had better general risk management and hadn't merged with "investment banks" that caused massive internal trading losses, to give only two examples) is just a small piece of the evidence that lends support to the idea that smaller, local/regional banks are much healthier for the economy.

Tarp 2, The Return: The Progressive Case for Bank Bailouts

2009-01-16T17:53:00.000-08:00

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight is wondering why a number of progressive senators voted to release the second installment of $350 billion under the TARP program while numerous conservative senators voted against it. In a post entitled "Is Tom Coburn a Closet Progressive?", Silver asks:

But which is more likely: that Jeff Merkley, a lifelong progressive, was instantly transformed into an evil corporate zombie the very moment that he took his seat in the Senate? Or that he had been campaigning against the bailout because it was a politically convenient position for him to take? Conversely, is Tom Coburn no longer under the "spell" of corporate America? Or did he perceive an opportunity for demagoguery in his own bid for re-election in 2010?

One problem with such questions, which Silver does address in terms of his skepticism of the rationales of bailout opponents, is that the phrasing of the questions presumes that a progressive stance = anti-bailout and that a conservative position = pro-bailout. Much of these assumptions rest on the notion that bailouts are always structured to be pro-corporation.

In addition, it is important to point out that the abstract concept of approving bank bailouts in order to save the financial system (and therefore prevent systemic economic collapse) does not appear to be a partisan issue, as is evidenced by the Congressional voting patterns when TARP was initially approved.

Thus, the devil is indeed in the details. And the second installment of TARP potentially comes with important conditions that were not attached to the first $350 billion. On top of this, the Obama administration has also been making public statements indicating that the free ride of corporate handouts in previous editions of bailouts is over.

More...Voting Records on TARP 1: Both Democrats and Republicans Shift with the Political Wind

In his post, Silver makes an observation that

the fact that the Republican and Democratic positions on the bailout appear to be so fluid would seem to indicate that it not an issue particularly well described by traditional ideological frameworks like liberal versus conservative.

I agree with this statement wholeheartedly with regard to the original TARP bills passed in the Senate on October 1-3, 2008, which subsequently released the first installment of funds. Many Democrat and Republican congressional reps voted against the bill (140 Democrats voted yes and 95 voted no; 133 Republicans opposed the measure, while 65 approved) the first time it came up on September 29, 2008, largely because of immense voter outpourings of disgust over the notion of a bailout. The populist move then was clearly a "no" vote.

However, when the US stock markets dropped more than 7% in that one day that the measure failed, and later in the week evidence of rising unemployment emerged, that was enough to change many of their minds. In the second House vote on October 3, 2008, 26 Republicans and 33 Democrats switched from no to yes. The numbers show that, at that point, partisanship and issues of liberal and conservative ideology didn't seem to be a priority. Rather, the priority on all sides was to prevent massive bank failure and economic collapse.

Events that Raised Popular Outrage about TARP 1

A lot changed between the passage of TARP 1 and 2. Particular events that became hot-button issues, influencing the stricter mandates on the release of funds in TARP 2, include:

* Citigroup needed to come back for a second bailout (after an initial loan of $25 billion) that resulted in a cash injection of $45 billion and over $300 billion in Federal. The next week Citi bought a Spanish highway operator for $10 billion;

* Bank of America invested $7 billion of the initial TARP funds they received in a Chinese bank (this week they came back for $20 billion more plus backstops of over $100 billion for its Merrill Lynch purchase);

* Widespread criticism emerged over the lack of restrictions on executive salaries, dividend payments, and lending requirements at banks that received TARP funds;

and

* Congress (and the public) became infuriated by the lack of transparency, at both the Treasury and the banks involved, over what exactly happened to the first $350 billion.

How Obama's Stance Regarding Bailouts Differs from Bush

Now, when the Senate voted to release the second installment of $350 billion on Thursday (January 15, 2009), they didn't exactly attach restrictions this time either. Instead, they voted to release the monies to Obama's incoming administration on the basis of a strongly worded letter to Congress on behalf of Harvard economist Larry Summers, Obama's pick for head of the National Economic Council, that addresses most of the concerns raised about TARP 1 and promises:

* no release of additional funds unless personally approved by President Obama in each and every individual case;

* a commitment of $50 to $100 billion explicitly to forestall foreclosures;

* a transparent accounting of all funds spent;

* to focus on using TARP funds to increase the flow of credit;

* to measure and monitor of bank lending;

* to limit executive compensation;

* to preclude the use of government funds to purchase healthy firms;

* that "public assistance to the financial system will be temporary."

Most of these restrictions would actually be seen as anti-corporate/anti-taxpayer-give-away by both Democrats and Republicans, and thus as positive reasons to approve the TARP 2 for Democrats and negative reasons for Republicans to vote no (in addition to the obvious political play of hanging the TARP program around Obama's neck). For example, many conservatives have been actively speaking out against limits on executive compensation since the passage of TARP 1, arguing that such limits would detrimentally affect the ability of firms to recruit and retain "top talent." Additionally, many have expressed concern that forcing banks to lend may put them in the position of taking on too much risk when they are already flirting with under-capitalization.

But actually I have left off perhaps the most important conditions that Summers promised, which are both progressively politically palatable and have been taken very seriously by Wall Street (as evidenced by trading this week).

Summers Vows that the Obama Administration Will End Corporate Profiteering from Government Bailouts

In his letter, Summers vows at the bottom of page two that the Obama administration will "prevent shareholders from being unduly rewarded at taxpayer expense."

This will take the form of forcing firms that have already accepted TARP funds to obtain approval from regulators prior to disbursing dividends. Also, any banks returning for second or third helpings from TARP will have to limit their dividend payout to $0.01 per share, which is a positive step, though actually I think that is still way too much (a $0.01 dividend translates to payouts of at least $54 million for Citigroup shareholders and $64 million for Bank of America shareholders each quarter).

On top of those conditions, there is another huge implication to be read into Summers' statement: that both common stockholders and bondholders could be wiped out by new government investments in troubled firms.

The Bush regime has been very inconsistent in this regard. The virtual nationalization of AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has nearly wiped out common stock shareholders. However, when Citi was bailed out the second time, the Bush government took steps to preserve the share value of the company, and the stock quickly more than doubled.

In the wake of Summers' comments, however, the financial sector has been crushed this week, with Citi and Bank of America (both two-time recipients of TARP monies) stocks dropping almost 50% this week alone. In addition, the second Bank of America bailout did come with some of the restrictions outlined in Summers' letter, including the restriction of dividend payouts to $0.01 per quarter for the next three years.

All this offers some compelling evidence (though not concrete evidence, since it still mostly reflects promises of future action from the Obama administration) that Congress and Wall Street take seriously the potential future consequences of accepting TARP funding and the end of corporate give-aways.

Let me be clear: Even ultra-progressive economists such as Paul Krugman believe that government intervention has been necessary to stabilize the financial system. In other words, the progressive position, if one does not want to see the US enter into another great depression, has to be pro-bailout - but not necessarily pro-bailouts without conditions, restrictions, and oversight.

In this context, Summers' proposals are decidedly not conservative-friendly and might even be considered pro-progressive. I believe this did influence the increase in voting along partisan lines with the passage of TARP 2 (with only 6 Republican senators voting for the measure and 9 Democrats voting against).

To put it another way, the promises of the Obama camp may have dramatically re-aligned progressive and conservative ideologies with regards to bailouts, potentially producing the seeming paradox of Jeff Merkley voting for the measure and Tom Coburn rejecting it.

EDIT: Jeff Merkely expounds his version of the progressive case for TARP 2, emphasizing the Obama administration's promise to commit $50 to $100 billion in mortgage relief.

On Physical and Psychical Violence: Race and Gender in the "LGBT Community"

2009-01-09T00:36:00.001-08:00

Two horrific, excessively violent events in the last month have left communities in the Bay Area reeling: four young men gang raped a lesbian in Richmond, CA and now former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle fatally shot an African-American passenger who was laying prone on his stomach.

I am particularly interested in these events as I wrote my dissertation on violence and gendered/racial trauma. My research, and own personal experiences, have lead me to conclude that such public acts of violence deeply affect the psyches of members of communities/groups who identify with the recipients of such violence. But in truth, it is a recent debate on a local lesbian listerserv, of which I am a member, that has compelled me to address these two acts of violence in relation to each other.

Recently on the listerv, one member commented that she was surprised and disappointed that, after weeks of dozens of messages each day about Proposition 8 during the election season, there had been so few comments on the list about Mehserle shooting of unarmed Oakland resident Oscar Grant. Shortly thereafter, another member posted that the police shooting "isn’t LGBT related at all."

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I am not posting this to call out a particular individual, who, in all fairness, was in no way implying that the shooting is insignificant in the context of her post. Rather, I want to take this as an opportunity to begin a series of discussions/questions about LGBT commitment to broad issues of civil rights versus LGBT appropriation of civil rights agendas.

I am growing seriously concerned that there is a trend in some LGBT communities and larger LGBT public discourse that asserts LGBT activism, especially around marriage, as a civil rights issue - and simultaneous demands of support from ethnic minority communities - without at the same time offering an LGBT organizing committment to anti-racism and other ethnic/racial civil rights issues.

To give an example, which I will discuss further in the next couple of days, I was greatly troubled by a "No on 8" television advertisement that was broadcast prior to the November 4 election on network television that begins with the following voice over narration from actor Samuel L. Jackson:

It wasn't that long ago that discrimination was legal in California. Japanese Americans were confined in internment camps. Armenians couldn't buy a house in the Central Valley. Latinos and African Americans were told who they could and could not marry.
It was a sorry time in our history.

The assumption (outrageous, in my mind) that discrimination is no longer legal in California, that state-sanctioned violence, racism, economic inequality, and housing segregation no longer occurs and is just "a sorry time in our history," reflects a dire lack of knowledge of history and current cultural conditions in the larger "LGBT community," an inability to take seriously the experiences of LGBT people of color who regularly face homo-bi-transphobia and racism, as well as a lack of desire to form alliances with communities of color and participate in contempoary anti-racist organizing (broadly defined).

Public statements by LGBT groups and individuals to the effect that racial discrimination has been long left in the past (and no, Barack Obama is NOT proof that this is true) and that police violence toward African American men is "not an LGBT issue" are intimitely related, and they paint a picture (perhaps rightly so) of organizing by predominantly white middle and upper class LGBT people as being both inured to violence toward people of color and uninterested/unaware of issues facing ethnic/minority communities today.

I am deeply touched by the outpouring in the local lesbian community of grief and support for the Richmond lesbian who was assaulted last month. But dare I suggest that it not be left only to the LGBT women of color, such as those who have spoken up on the listserv, to be stricken by both the gang rape and the police killing?

Well, I will. It is high time that white LGBT people start caring about what happens in other minority communities and forming alliances, especially if we care to have support for our own causes from those very communities.

There is an old, oft-quoted poem by anti-facist Martin Niemöller, which was popular in the 1960s black civil rights movement, that bears repeating:

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

Re-viewing Rodney King: Snippets from My Dissertation

2009-01-08T23:33:00.000-08:00

The BART police officer Johannes Mehserle fatal shooting eight days ago of an unarmed, African-American man who was laying, stomach down, on the pavement of a subway platform - and the subsequent release of videos on the internet taken by onlookers - recalls some eerie similarities to the LAPD police beating of Rodney King in 1991.

I will post again in the next few days to discuss the Mehserle shooting, but in the meantime I want to post a few relevant snippets from my dissertation about the 1991 LAPD case as a primer.

In reporting on the videotaped LAPD attack on Rodney King, newspapers routinely referred to the recorded violence as “the King beating” or “the beating of Rodney King.” I put “the beating of Rodney King” in quotes because it quickly became the commonplace description—in the popular press as well as academic writings such as the introduction to Reading Rodney King (Gooding-Williams 6)—of the brutality that George Holliday captured on videotape from his apartment balcony on March 2, 1991. In the headlines of The Los Angeles Times, for example, the case is most frequently referred to as the “King beating,” “King case,” or "the beating of Rodney King." In this context, Bill Nichols’ observation is significant: “‘The Rodney King trial,’ of course, is a misnomer: Mr. King was never on trial, four members of the LAPD were” (18).

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I emphasize the linguistic framing of the event because of the ways in which the police officers were so commonly removed as active participants in popular discourse. In the phrases “King beating,” or "the beating of Rodney King," the subject who is doing the “beating” is absent—implied rather than named—in the passive-voice construction of the sentence;it literally removes the beaters from the scene, de-emphasizing their role in the beating scene with their absence from the phrase itself. It is as if violence is imagined to have an agency all its own, or as if King is simultaneously beating himself and being beaten.

Such discursive maneuverings offered a prelude to the police officers' defense in the first trial. The initial, public circulation of the tape as evidence—the sense that the officers had indisputably been “caught in the act” of racist police brutality—turned out to not be as clear-cut as it initially appeared. Videographer George Holliday’s comment on the peculiarity of his experience of making the recording of the beating, that it depicted “images more than reality” (Hewitt, Edwards and Matsumoto 83), reflects the fact that the images—and fantasies of violent black masculinity—are always already circulating independently of events themselves. Holliday’s sentiments foreshadowed the problematic role his tape would play as “visible evidence” of the guilt of the police a year later. Numerous media scholars have written about George Holliday’s videotape, the trial, and the uprisings in Los Angeles after the acquittal of the police officers involved in the beating of King (Nichols; Alexander; Gooding-Williams; Tomasulo; Sobchack). Most of these discussions have interrogated prevalent assumptions (in popular discourse, news media, and even the courtroom arguments of the prosecutors of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office) about the status of the tape as offering unmediated access to the event itself.

Nichols, for example, in his discussion of the deployment of the videotape, offers a compelling analysis of the media-savvy rhetorical strategies used by the lawyers for the police officers that muted the impact of the tape on the jury and resulted in the officers’ acquittals in the first trial. Nichols critiques the widespread assumption that the images represent visible evidence, arguing that the tape does not offer self-evident and factual documentation of the events that occurred. Nichols challenges the idea that the Holliday tape “speaks for itself” and that “no interpretive frame is necessary” for the viewer to understand what he/she sees (31).

Read in this context, the tape of LAPD beating of King does not, as Deputy District Attorney Terry White argued at the close of the first trial of the police in Simi Valley, show “conclusively what happened that night” as something “no one can rebut” (Serrano B2). Rather, the mobility of potential spectator (and juror) identification leaves little certainty as to interpretation, especially in the specific historical context of the U.S. in which beating scene occurred.

How is it possible that the jury believed police officers who said that they were scared of King, that King was about to attack them, that, as the juror reported, King was “controlling the whole show with his actions” (Serrano and Wilkenson A1)? In one sense, as Judith Butler argues, “he is hit in exchange for the blows he never delivered, but which he is, by virtue of his blackness, always about to deliver” (19). The subsequent rebellions after the acquittal of the police in 1992 perhaps retroactively confirmed the danger in King’s body (and consequently the dangerous nature of all black male bodies).

The way in which the tape was deconstructed by the defense as visible evidence, during the first trial of the police officers, seems on the surface to run counter to popular assumptions that video and film are mediums for documenting events. From the first Lumiere “actualités” to the present, cinema, especially the documentary, has been invoked and used as a media for documentation of historical events and “reality.” Indeed, the “replication of the historical real,” the impetus to record, preserve, and document, is arguably the primary function of the documentary (Renov 26). However, as Holliday indicates when he describes the events he recorded as “images more than reality,” the relationship between the “reality” of the pro-filmic event and the “images” that are captured (much less the images that are viewed and how they are perceived by a spectator) is never simple.

Works Cited

Alexander, Elizabeth. "‘Can You Be Black and Look at This?’: Reading the Rodney King Video(S)." Public Culture 7 (1994): 77-94.

Butler, Judith. "Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia." Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising. Ed. Robert Gooding-Williams. New York: Rutledge, 1993. 15-22.

Gooding-Williams, Robert. Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Hewitt, Bill, Wayne Edwards, and Nancy Matsumoto. "Trouble: When L.A. Cops Furiously Beat a Black Motorist, They Didn't Know They Were on George Holliday's Candid Camera." People Magazine March 25 1991: 83.

Nichols, Bill. Blurred Boundaries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.

Renov, Michael. "Toward a Poetics of Documentary." Theorizing Documentary. Ed. Michael Renov. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Serrano, Richard A. "Jury Told Video Proves Case against Officers." Los Angeles Times 21-Apr-92: B1.

Serrano, Richard A, and Tracy Wilkenson. "All 4 in King Beating Acquitted." Los Angeles Times 30-Apr-92: A1.

Sobchack, Vivian. The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event. AFI Film Readers. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Tomasulo, Frank P. "'I'll See It When I Believe It': Rodney King and the Prison-House of Video." The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event. Ed. Vivian Sobchack. New York: Routledge, 1996. 69-90.

Crash: On the Likelihood of Outlier Events

2009-01-05T16:42:00.000-08:00

A fascinating article on "Risk Management" in The New York Times has got me thinking.

The article traces the origins of a standard risk management models in the financial sector, known as Value-at-Risk (VaR), and why they failed to predict possibilities that caused the current economic crisis, such as bank under-capitalization and massive derivative losses due to sales of "insurance" on mortgage-backed securities (also known as credit-default swaps).

Would you fly on an airline that had a 99% track record of the flight arriving safely? What if only .1% of their flights crashed? The airline would be out of business. After all, 1% is just one out of a hundred, which, in the grand scheme of things, is not that rare at all, especially when there are millions of potential opportunities to hit that 1%.

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So, what is an acceptable risk when we book a seat on an US carrier? Apparently it is somewhere around .000223% (or roughly 2 out of one million).

What seems apparent is that psychology has everything to do with how we perceive risk. As the author of the Times article sums it up: "People tend not to be able to anticipate a future they have never personally experienced."

People who live on the Gulf coast have experienced a lot of hurricanes. So, mostly, they likely feel like they know how to handle them. Until an outlier like Katrina arrives.

Millions use bridges or rely on levees every day to live in and move about their home region without much thought to their failure, despite decades of warnings about aging US infrastructure from the Army Corps of Engineers, until the Minnesota bridge collapsed and the New Orleans levees broke.

To a traveler who only takes two flights each year, a .000223% chance of crashing seems very likely to not occur, although every time the flight hits turbulence that traveler is probably thinking about the possibility of crashing. Even more so, the airline employees who schedule hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of flights each year know that an accident is a virtual inevitability-- though even they weren't fully prepared for an outlier like 9/11/2001.

Any mother who is told there is 1% chance her unborn child will have a serious genetic disease probably thinks that is way too much risk. A doctor who sees thousands of patients a year knows she will eventually have a patient who suffers from the rare disorder and is going to take a 1% risk seriously.

But apparently a 1% or so chance of a series of events that at some time in the future could cause serious economic carnage was routinely ignored as the financial industry made billions for years, assuming that housing prices only move one way: up. Granted, there would have been a high price for any corporate officer who warned of the possibility of huge losses in credit-default swaps, a concept hedge fund manager Jeremy Grantham labels "career risk":

It’s what I call the Goldman Sachs Effect: Goldman increased its leverage and its profit margins shot into the stratosphere. Eager to keep up, other banks, with less talent and energy than Goldman, copied them with ultimately disastrous consequences. And woe betide the CEO who missed the game and looked like an old fuddy-duddy. The Board would simply kick him out, in the name of protecting the stockholders’ future profits.

Everybody else was doing it. And the VaR models continually affirmed little risk. In fact, significantly less risk than most other assets. Since, as the Times article lays out, most of the models only measured very short term risk and the long term models usually only drew on data from the previous two years, the more housing prices rose, the less likely the risk seemed that they would fall. In the end, the VaR models proved fairly useless in predicting the systemic collapse that occurred before it was too late.

Thus one insurance company, which is in the business that mastered the actuary table, managed to sell over $400 billion worth of un-hedged credit-default swaps (plus g-d knows what else) and has cost the US taxpayer over $150 billion. So far.

Let's not mention all the other financial institutions that have to date cost over $300 billion. Or the fact that none of the financial sectors' shareholders, employees, and managers will have to pay back the billions they pocketed over the past five years.

A Note on My Methodological Approach to Blogging

2009-01-04T01:39:00.001-08:00

Having only recently begun this blog, I feel compelled to discuss my reasons for founding and writing in it. After all, with millions of blogs, news sources, and other sites available to readers (at least while net neutrality still exists), I am probably not alone in wondering what original content I have to offer.

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In considering this question, I looked at blogs I admire, such as those by Paul Krugman and the guys at FiveThirtyEight, and what I saw were clear and consistent methodological approaches to the topics they cover. Paul Krugman brings the perspective of a Nobel prize winning economist to important cultural, political, and policy issues of today; FiveThirtyEight applies the skills of sports statistician fanatic Nate Silver to election polling/vote counting and other political topics. As such, what both blogs have in common is that the writers have particular skills and knowledge that they can combine with readily available information to produce unique and valuable perspectives on timely issues.

So the question then becomes, since I am writing to an assumed audience that does not consist of my friends and family, what particular skills and knowledge do I have to offer? This is a question I have been spending some time considering as I ponder new directions to take in my writing, filmmaking, and immediate career path. Whether or not I obtain an academic position in the near term, I want to bring to bear the skills and knowledge I have obtained from my academic training to whatever I choose to do.

The value of humanities training tends to be widely underrated and undervalued, primarily due to its lack of reliance on quantitative analysis and empiricism (the traits most highly valued of the sciences and, to a lesser degree, the social sciences). But, of course, what the humanities do offer are methodologies for studying qualitative data and intangibles such as "media," "culture," and "texts."

Perhaps the most important, fundamental value I have internalized from my academic training is to never rely on what others have to say about a given "thing" (i.e., a film, a book, a speech, or a criminal complaint). If I am interested in a topic, I wanted to go to the source (or "primary text") to find out details that others may not find to be significant as well as to learn more about the original context.

An obsession with primary texts. From Shakespeare to Darwin to Freud to the 78-page Rod Blagojevich criminal complaint to SEC filings to the Pope's speech denouncing gender theory (and transgenders and homosexuals) in the original Italian, and so on. That is what I have to offer.

I can't promise to get everything or even get everything right, but hopefully it will be interesting and useful to someone.

"Il Papa" Blues: What It's Like to Be Gay in Italy

2008-12-30T09:39:00.000-08:00

For those who are interested in how the Pope and the Catholic church influence gay rights' legislation and hinder LGBT organizing in Italy, I highly recommend a film made some new friends of mine from Italy: Suddenly Last Winter (L'improvvisamente l'anno scorso).

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Suddenly Last Winter is currently screening in English and Italian (with English subtitles) at film festivals worldwide and gives a sense of the current cultural and political landscape for LGBT people in Italy.

The film by Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi has won numerous awards at film festivals in the last year, including a special mention in the prestigious Berlinale Panorama section.

The Full Text of Pope Benedict XVI's Comments about Gender

2008-12-24T16:59:00.000-08:00

For those who are interested, here is a full-text English translation of the Pope's speech.

I am reprinting the passage in which he discusses gender and creationism below:

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Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Credo, the Church cannot and should not confine itself to passing on the message of salvation alone. It has a responsibility for the created order and ought to make this responsibility prevail, even in public. And in so doing, it ought to safeguard not only the earth, water, and air as gifts of creation, belonging to everyone. It ought also to protect man against the destruction of himself. What is necessary is a kind of ecology of man, understood in the correct sense. When the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman and asks that this order of creation be respected, it is not the result of an outdated metaphysic. It is a question here of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation, the devaluation of which leads to the self-destruction of man and therefore to the destruction of the same work of God. That which is often expressed and understood by the term “gender”, results finally in the self-emancipation of man from creation and from the Creator. Man wishes to act alone and to dispose ever and exclusively of that alone which concerns him. But in this way he is living contrary to the truth, he is living contrary to the Spirit Creator. The tropical forests are deserving, yes, of our protection, but man merits no less than the creature, in which there is written a message which does not mean a contradiction of our liberty, but its condition. The great Scholastic theologians have characterised matrimony, the life-long bond between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, instituted by the Creator himself and which Christ – without modifying the message of creation – has incorporated into the history of his covenant with mankind. This forms part of the message that the Church must recover the witness in favour of the Spirit Creator present in nature in its entirety and in a particular way in the nature of man, created in the image of God. Beginning from this perspective, it would be beneficial to read again the Encyclical Humanae Vitae: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sexuality as a consumer entity, the future as opposed to the exclusive pretext of the present, and the nature of man against its manipulation.

The Pope Declares that Humanity Must Be Saved from Gender Theory and Theorists

2008-12-23T18:14:00.000-08:00

Does Rick Warren have more influence than the Pope?

While stories of protests from liberals and LGBT groups have been making headlines here, comments today by Pope Benedict XVI (aka Joseph Ratzinger) have been somewhat inconsistently reported in the US media.

In a speech yesterday given to Catholic dignitaries who have gathered in Rome to celebrate Christmas, Ratzinger focused on a theme of reasserting the story of creation as a "central part of the Christian creed." He emphasized two points: God's creation of the earth and man (in particular, man and woman as distinct sexes). He called heterosexual marriage a "sacrament of creation." And Ratzinger followed by arguing for an "ecology of man" to go alongside an ecology of nature/the planet, in which he likened saving the rain forests to "saving man from himself."

And from what does humanity need rescuing? "Theorists who talk about 'gender'."

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25 years or so after feminist scholars popularized an understanding of "gender" (against and/or alongside the notion of "sex"), it seems that Ratzinger has now come to believe that the very concept of "gender" could lead to the self-destruction of the human race. Gender, he argues, separates man from creation and the Creator. While Ratzinger did not explicitly refer to homosexuality or transexuality in the text of his address, he did denounce the blurring of genders and a "sexuality of consumption," arguing definitively that the essence of humanity is "man and woman."

Ratzinger made these proclamations apparently in response to calls from members of the United Nations' Commission on Human Rights for equal rights for gays, France's proposed decriminalization of homosexuality, and increases in legislation favoring same-sex marriage. In his speech, Ratzinger argued that people such as gender theorists, who lack respect for "the Creator and the language of creationism," would destroy God's work. "We must not only defend the earth, water, and air," he pronounced. "We must also protect man from his own self-destruction."

Using the English word "gender" rather than the Italian translation "genere," Ratzinger was clearly singling out the work of Western academics who write on the topics of gender, queer, and trans theory as well as the lives and practices of queer and trans individuals. One could infer, by situating Ratzinger's comments in the context of the story of creation and a pseudo-scientific ecology of nature/man, that he has labeled even the mere concepts of transexuality and homosexuality as crimes against nature and creationism.

This could also be seen as a radical divergence from the church's supposed stance that homosexuality is not sinful, but that homosexual acts are.

While I will admit to feeling some pleasure at indirectly being cited as a threat to humanity--I mean, how often these days are theorists given credit by anyone outside of academia as having any relevance or influence whatsoever?--this is truly sobering and heart-wrenching for the Italian LGBT people and others who live in much more homo-bi-trans-phobic cultures where the Pope's words still have real power.

EDIT: I have included information about an English full-text translation of the Pope's speech here.

New Direction for the Labor Department: Hilda Solis

2008-12-20T14:45:00.000-08:00

In a move in line with his campaign pledges to back the Employee Free Choice Act and support the rights of workers, President-elect Barack Obama named California Rep. Hilda Solis (D-El Monte) as his nominee for Labor Secretary yesterday.

Solis, who was raised in a union family, is known as an advocate for women and labor (the AFL-CIO rates her voting record in Congress at 100%). If confirmed, Solis will be the most worker-friendly Labor Secretary in decades.

Solis voted in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act (which has passed in the House but is stalled in the Senate), and she has consistently supported measures related to abortion rights, domestic violence prevention, and worker protections, while rejecting free-trade related legislation.

2009 is shaping up to be a potentially very interesting year for labor.

The UAW, the Auto Bailout, and the Employee Free Choice Act

2008-12-19T13:54:00.000-08:00

The most frustrating thing about the endless reporting on the auto industry bailout has been the union bashing. In the congressional hearings that considered providing the Big 3 "bridge loans," congress members, news outlets, and critics of the bailout all seemed to agree that the problem with the US auto industry is really the UAW its negotiated wage and benefits contracts, not poor management or the failure to make cars that people actually want to buy.

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According to Martin Feldstein at the Washington Post, for example:

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler can make excellent cars, but they cannot sell them at prices that are competitive with the prices of cars produced in the United States by Toyota and others or with the prices of cars imported from Europe and Asia. The basic reason is the labor costs imposed by union contracts.

Almost as if these contracts hadn't been negotiated with and agreed to by the management of the Big 3, critics such as Feldstein put almost sole responsibility for the collapse of the US auto industry on the "high" cost of labor. Ignoring issues such as the US auto companies reliance on producing expensive, gas-guzzling SUVs, we are seemingly meant to believe that $72/hour wages and relative labor costs of more than $2000 per car as compared with manufacturers such as Honda and Toyota brought about the downfall of Detroit, with management powerless to do anything about it.

Senate Republicans used such arguments to block bailout legislation unless the UAW immediately acquiesced to stringent demands for wage and benefits decreases. "As far as the failure of last night, it solely lies on UAW," Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) told CNSNews.com regarding the failure of the cloture vote for the bailout legislation on the Senate floor on December 11, 2008.

Obviously trying to strike a death blow to organized labor by going after one of the few remaining union strongholds, Republicans saw this as their opportunity to irreparably damage labor just before the Obama administration comes to power and attempts to pass the Employee Free Choice bill. This piece of legislation will do away with current labor laws that require new unions to obtain a majority registration of workers with the union and have a majority of workers vote to approve the union in a "secret ballot" vote that often takes place months or years after the majority registration has taken place, giving ample time for companies to pressure workers not to approve the union.

Republicans and other anti-union advocates know that if this legislation passes, and Obama has put it on the frunt burner of issues he wants addressed right way, that the removal of the burden of the "secret ballot" will be the biggest boon to organized labor in decades, potentially marking the first uptick in union membership as a percentage of workers since the 1970s.

Republicans see this as a major threat due to labor's consistent backing of Democrats through monetary donations as well as on the ground voter mobilzation. But it is probably Walmart, the biggest union-buster in the US, who has the most to fear.

In the end, however, George W. Bush decided that he didn't want to add the collapse of the auto industry, and the potential loss 2-3 million jobs during the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, to the long list of his presidential failures. So he ordered Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson today to use the TARP funds (which congress set up specifically to rescue the financial industry) to provide just enough loan money to GM and Chrysler for them to survive until Barack Obama is sworn in.