Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has published an extensive report on the 20 most corrupt members of Congress. Fortunately, none of our Mississippi representatives or senators made the list, for which we are all grateful. All but one are enablers, however, and the enablers bear much of the blame for creating an atmosphere that sanctions the corrupt practices that are now coming to light.

Tags: Frist, Burns, corruption

Thomas Palley has posted a particularly interesting essay on labor's globalization dilemma. According to Palley, the language of neoliberalism has become the lingua franca of economists throughout the world, providing economists with both capital-friendly framing and a set of assumptions about how the global economy works that put labor at a disadvantage in the battle of ideas. It is difficult, if not impossible, to advocate for labor-friendly policies in Neoliberalspeak.

Pally proposes an alternative metaphor—the box:

The box describes how workers are being boxed in and squeezed from all sides by today’s corporate inspired economic order. The box has four sides: globalization, less than full employment, small government, and labor market flexibility. These four sides describe the neo-liberal policy paradigm, which puts workers under continuous economic pressure that none can escape.

The four sides of Palley's box all describe the same thing, only from different angles.

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• Globalization creates a worldwide labor market in which workers bid against each other for work. American workers are thus drawn into competition with Chinese workers earning miniscule wages compared to the minimum wage in the U.S.
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• Less than full employment creates a game of musical chairs for workers that guarantees insecurity for individual workers and dampens demands for higher wages.
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• A truly democratic government would look to the interests of the majority of its citizens, who happen to be the workers. A small government, no matter how democratic, will lack the power to protect those interests, to the benefit of the owners of capital. It also pits public workers against private workers.
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• Finally, labor market flexibility is furthered by globalization, in that a worldwide labor market, combined with little or no legal or regulatory protection of jobs, guarantees that capital, in its quest to drive down labor cost, is able to hire and fire with without regard to social cost.
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In addition to providing a common frame for labor-oriented communication, Palley points out that this vision of labor's dilemma makes it easy to identify and critique the anti-labor policies that both Republicans and Democrats have implemented over the past two decades, such as NAFTA, the WTO and the massive tax cuts for the most wealthy. Most people nowadays have been conditioned to believe that their economic difficulties are the result of either universal economic laws or their own personal inadequacies, rather that the predictable outcome of deliberate decisions by political elites to shift wealth and income from the bottom two-thirds of the population to the top one percent.

We've seen all these things in Mississippi for years. From antebellum times, the power elite in this state has been unremittingly hostile to labor rights and determined to keep wages as close to subsistence level as possible. The state bases its economic development program on low wages, labor flexibility, underemployment, and weak or nonexistent labor unions. The results are predictable: poverty, ignorance, and the shortest life expectancy and highest infant mortality in the nation.

Tags: Palley, capital, labor, economics, NAFTA, WTO, neoliberal, Mississippi

A Princeton professor decided to find out how difficult it would be to infect a Diebold touchscreen voting machine with a virus that would alter the results. As it turned out, it was remarkably easy. Click on the arrow below to see the clip. This story by way of the Daily Kos.

Some time ago, I wrote a proposal for an electronic voting system that could be kept honest. It consisted of a card with a barcode and a number drawn from a fishbowl and swiped through the voting machine. The voter gets a printed ballot to keep containing the serial number of the card he swiped through the voting machine. He then goes home and checks his vote over the Internet using the number on his ballot which only he knows. The entire election database would be downloadable, thus allowing totals and subtotals to be independently verified.

Even though there are drawbacks to allowing a voter to have a copy of his ballot, it seems to me that it is the only way the system can be kept honest.


Tags: Diebold, touchscreen

The JP is trying another blog design to make the hyperlinks more visible.

If you live in the Jackson area, come to the Mississippi Symphony concert tonight. The orchestra will be playing The Pines of Rome by Respighi, the Schumann Cello Concerto, and Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture, plus a couple of other numbers. It's at Thalia Mara Hall at 7:30. Even if you don't like classical music I can almost promise that you will enjoy this concert. If you liked John Williams's music to Star Wars, then you like symphonic music. Be there. Disclosure: I play in the symphony.

You are roughly 6 times as likely to die from influenza than from a terrorist attack, says Wired Magazine. You are roughly 16 times as likely to die walking down the street than from being killed by a terrorist. True, 9/11 was a deed of awesome depravity, but it didn't change the strategic balance or threaten the United States like the Soviet Union once did. The fear is manufactured by ruthless men and women to scare us into doing what they want, like invading Iraq and submitting to limitations on our constitutional freedoms.

As to what really happened on 9/11, the Jackson Progressive came to disbelieve a long time ago what the Bush administration has been telling us.

Now the highly respected publisher, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, has published Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9-11 (Westminster John Knox) by David Ray Griffin, who accuses the Bush administration of orchestrating the attack for political ends. The web has been abuzz for years with conspiracy talk, but it appears that 9-11 skepticism is hitting the mainstream. If the Democrats take over the Congress this fall, they will have the opportunity of a lifetime to launch a real investigation into the origin of the attacks.

We can best honor the dead by insisting upon a thorough investigation of how and why they died.

As you are aware, former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami is visiting the U.S. in a private capacity, even though little of his visit is being reported by the MSM. UK reporter Robert Fisk provides a detailed summary of one of Khatami's speeches.

Khatami's very presence in the U.S. is something of a surprise, as I would never have expected the Bush administration to grant permission for the visit of a former "Evil Axis" president under any circumstances. The fact that he attempted to liberalize Iran while president would have no weight with the neocons or the oil people in Washington; they employ democratic language to justify their authoritarian behavior much as Bill Clinton used the language of liberalism to further the conservative agenda of the Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC). Foreign governments who attend to the needs of their people are an obstacle to U.S. corporations in their quest for easy profits, and so are disfavored by the elites and the politicians of both parties that serve those elites.

This we know:

- Khatami is here with the blessings of both Washington and Tehran;

- He is no Chalabi or Palavi, but a highly respected philosopher-scholar, both inside and outside Iran and among both Sunni and Shiite moslems;

- He is highly critical of U.S. foreign policy and the Bush administration;

- His language is not that of a fanatic, but well-reasoned, almost friendly.

Khatami will undoubtedly meet with one or more representatives from the Whitehouse to discuss the relationship between the U.S. and Iran. He will likely return to Iran carrying a message of such sensitivity that it cannot be sent through the normal channels.

My guess (for what it's worth) is that it has finally dawned on Washington that to attack Iran carries unacceptable risks, and that it has painted itself into a corner with its campaign to demonize Iran. The Bushites are therefore looking for a face-saving way to declare success without having to go through with their threats. I predict that the figleaf will involve renewed inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities to which the U.S. and Iran can agree. If this is true, it will be good news. Iran is years away from building a bomb and the time to deal with that will be when the U.S. is in a better military and diplomatic posture.