Tuesday, July 9, 2002
David Watson has posted a helpful reply to my question of how he moved his posts from Radio to Movable Type. Thanks David! Now I just have to find the time to try out those scripts. I wonder if the recent MT upgrade to using SQL databases will change anything? 11:02:27 PM
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Lying, stealing, and cheating: Some business people are saying that the popular opinion of corporate America has reached an all-time low as scandal after scandal reveals the fact that corporate America will literally stop at nothing to make a buck. But what about popular opinion of our very own corporate president, the first President with an MBA, Shrub? Shrub's approval rating is still hanging around 70%. Why? How? As Paul Krugman points out in Succeeding in Business, Bush is a much bigger scoundrel and crook than his immediate predecessor ever was. As we all know, a big chunk of Shrub's personal wealth was earned from an accounting scandal at Harken Energy that was just like what happened at Enron, yet we're supposed to trust him to reform business in this country?
Republicans loved to snipe at Clinton and they did everything they could think of to defame him and get him out of office. The dirtiest dirt they seemed able to find on him, though (at least prior to the Monica thing, which, really is debatable as far as political merit is concerned), was Whitewater. And as Krugman notes:
Oh, and Harken's fake profits were several dozen times as large as the Whitewater land deal [~] though only about one-seventh the cost of the Whitewater investigation.
So basically, if Clinton would have been caught doing what Georgie has done, Clinton would have been impeached. Tell me again why anyone listens to Shrub?
On a related note, in Shocked by Scandals? These are Nothing!, Daniel Akst offers a concise speedboat ride through the history of American business corruption to show that it's nothing new. The reminder is great, and Akst comes to an interesting conclusion:
the idea that regulators or auditors can protect us from our own excesses is absurd. The point is not that corruption is our natural state, or that capitalism will always be crooked. It's caveat emptor. Let the buyer [~] and voter [~] beware. Don't invest in companies with no real businesses. Don't vote for politicians who won't deliver some decent regulation. Don't expect to become rich overnight. Maybe most important, don't forget history.
Maybe so. In a way I agree -- corruption certainly doesn't have to be our "natural" state. However, I'm less sanguine about the possibility that capitalism won't always be crooked. So long as profit is the only value, capitalism will be crooked. Akst is correct that no amount of regulation will stop the corruption of capitalism, because when regulations get tight enough to stop the corruption, we won't have capitalism anymore because profit will no longer be a value in itself. Put that in your pipe and smoke it a while: What would the world be like without the profit motive? Blasphemy!
11:00:39 PM
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According to a study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF):
Earth's population will be forced to colonise two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate. ... The WWF report shames the US for placing the greatest pressure on the environment. It found the average US resident consumes almost double the resources as that of a UK citizen and more than 24 times that of some Africans.
But this is America, dammit! We have a right to consume more per capita than any other nation on the planet and then declare that global warming is a hoax!
This is truly scary stuff. And note: if you're 35 or younger (which I am), the end of the world could easily come in your lifetime,, so it's not like we can afford to remain unconcerned about this. (The pessimist in me predicts the U.S. media will hardly cover this. Yes? No?) [via DayPop]
10:59:41 PM
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While some people dismiss the idea that we need to be asking more serious questions about what prompted the 9-11 attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, Gore Vidal has been ploughing ahead. Here's an example of some of the dots he's connecting:
I was in Guatemala when the CIA was preparing its attack on the Arbenz government [in 1954]. Arbenz, who was a democratically elected president, mildly socialist. His state had no revenues; its biggest income maker was United Fruit Company. So Arbenz put the tiniest of taxes on bananas, and Henry Cabot Lodge got up in the Senate and said the Communists have taken over Guatemala and we must act. He got to Eisenhower, who sent in the CIA, and they overthrew the government. We installed a military dictator, and there's been nothing but bloodshed ever since.
Now, if I were a Guatemalan and I had
the means to drop something on somebody in Washington, or anywhere Americans were, I would be tempted to do it. Especially if I had lost my entire family and seen my country blown to bits because United Fruit didn't want to pay taxes. Now, that's the way we operate. And that's why we got to be so hated.
Why isn't this in the news? Why isn't this part of the Congressional debate about a proper and fair response to the 9-11 attacks and to dealing with "terror" in the world? Why is "terror" only what we, the U.S., don't like?
On a somewhat related note, Matt Welch ponders whether the moratorium on Bush-bashing is over, and concludes that, yes, Viriginia, it just might be. We can only hope. 10:58:44 PM
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