Fareed: Presidential Pony Show

Presidential Pony Show

Obama needs to lead, not emote.

BY FAREED ZAKARIA

I AGREE WITH VIRTUALLY EVERYONE out there who's complaining on camera and in print that our response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been just terrible. Except that by "our" I don't mean the government's or the country's but ours--the media's. Reporting on a massive technological breakdown that is having huge environmental consequences, our focus over the last week has been on whether the president is offering enough public displays of emotion?

This demand for a show of presi-

dential fury is not coming from a few

obscure people. New York Tirnes colum-

nists want to see Obama angry; the film-

maker Spike Lee is demanding that the

president "go off"; Democratic strate-

gist James Carville wants "rage." Whole

cable shows have been devoted to the

question. One Fox anchorwoman com-

plained about what Obama was wearing

when he visited the Gulf Coast. Reflect-

ing the media frenzy,

the Today show's Matt

Lauer informed the

president that his crit-

ics were saying, "This

is not the time to meet

with experts and advis-

ers, this is the time to

... kick some butt."

Have we gone mad?

We face monumental

engineering challenges:

to plug a hole in the

deep sea, separate oil from water, clean

up the coastline, and restore the gulf.

But let's forget about talking to experts

and seeking technical solutions. That's

for nerds. Let's put on battle fatigues

and kick some butt. Commentators

have been begging for some symbol of

Obama's resolve, as when George W.

Bush stood at the World Trade Center

site after 911 and promised revenge

for the attacks. If the president were

to invade another country would that

show he cared?

The fact is that the federal govern-

ment has a limited capacity to "plug

the damn hole," as Obama reportedly

said in his best effort to muster up some

anger. When Adm. Thad Allen was

urged at a press conference to push

BR the oil company responsible for the

spill, out of the way, he responded with

a question: "[And] replace them with

what? ... To work down there you need

remotely operated vehicles; you need to

do very technical work at 5,ooo feet. You

need equipment and expertise that's not

generally within the ... federal govern-

ment in terms of competency, capability,

or capacity."

The government can help protect and

clean the coastline and coastal waters.

And it has deployed people in force-

17,500 National Guards-

men, plus 20,000 other

people and 1,900 boats

that are helping in the

effort. It's laid out +.a

million feet of boom to

protect the coastline, all

of which adds up to the

largest response to an

environmental disaster

in American history.

What else should the

government do?

Calls for more government are coming from the most unlikely quarters. Carville's wife, Mary Matalin, argues that the cleanup is very much the federal government's responsibility. Yet in

response to the only comparable U.S.

oil disaster in recent history the Erron

Valdez spill, the Georp HINI Bush admin-

istration, for which she worked, specifi-

cally denied that the federal government

bore any responsibfity for the cleanup.

In fact, Ttansportation Secretary Sam-

uel Skinner declared that government

involvement would be'tounterproduc-

tive." Conservatives who have long urged

limits on the federal government are now

suddenly discovering their inner FDRs.

To read and watch the coverage of the

Exon Valdez is to be transported back

to a different time. There was no effort

to implicate Bush in the accident, few

calls for him to emote more, no great

clamor that he magically "do something"

to get the awful images off the television

screen. In fact, he never traveled to see

the oil spill. This time the president has

canceled a trip to Asia, has held more

meetings on this topic than on any oth-

er since the AfPak review, and speaks

almost exclusively about this tragedy.

Government officials hold briefings on

the topic daily, even when these are sim-

ply designed to convey the impression of

action. It is government as theater.

Meanwhile, the unemployment num-

bers are looking grim, the prospect

of contagion from the European debt

crisis grows, our allies in Asia are dis-

heartened, the Taliban remains on the

offensive, and tensions with Iran and

North Korea loom. These are issues

on which the federal government has

specific and unique responsibilities.

But what the hell. The president of the

United States has now trash-talked against the CEO of BP, is wearing more casual clothes, and has announced that he intends to "kick ass." Thank goodness for the free press!

Too Big to Fail

Here's a great article from a prof here at UT:

We are a culture that lives under the illusion that our technological and monetary powers can repair all the damage inflicted by a technological disaster. History has proven that nothing is further from the truth.

The sad fact of the matter is that given the sheer magnitude and severity of the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, there is no quick technological fix or magic monetary wand that can undo much of the harm inflicted on the environment and the coastal population.

While the Obama administration's BP compensation fund is a positive step in the right direction, it cannot completely restore the environment or replace the way of life that many have lost.

President Barack Obama recently promised Gulf Coast residents that the region would be restored to a state better than before the spill. Unfortunately, he made a promise that no one, including his administration can fulfill. It is a promise that will ultimately come to haunt him and his administration. Sadly, such a pledge illustrates all too clearly how out of touch the president and his advisors are to the brutal reality of catastrophes of this magnitude and oil spills in particular.

Previous disasters of lesser magnitude, such as the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, demonstrate quite clearly that this is an impossible pledge to uphold. Decades of robust research demonstrate unequivocally that the harm inflicted by the 1989 spill to both the environment and the residents of coastal, Southcentral Alaska has, to varying degrees, endured for decades. The residual harm of technological disasters in general persists much longer than that most believe. Previous disaster research in general, much of it ironically funded by federal money, strongly suggests that long after the BP funds have been exhausted the harm will persist.

There are many advantages to a compensation fund, but one of the realities that such a fund ignores is that there is non-remedial harm that simply cannot be remedied by money alone. While recognition of this fact does not diminish the many benefits of such a fund, it sadly ignores the true long-term reality of the complex nature of environmental disasters and underscores why we should never place our environment and our nation at risk for short-term energy gains and the private gain of corporations.

Unfortunately, not all human and environmental problems can be reduced to mere monetary terms. After all, how much is a pelican worth - or, for that matter, an entire species? How much is the rich biotic zone of the Gulf of Mexico worth? What quantitative value can we assign this miraculously complex resource? What reductive process can put a price tag on its value?

By the same token, just how much is a way of life, or a culture worth? Are not cultures priceless? Is there a calculation we can assign to the inherent worth of cultures? Are there actuarial tables that can calculate their value? Does anyone really believe financial compensation can restore a culture or a way of life once it is brought to he edge of extinction or it has been destroyed?

As our nation confronts the worst oil spill in our history, we have to reassess how much we are willing to sacrifice for the greed of a few and how much of this planet we want to leave to those who follow after us. Despite the fact that corporate bureaucrats tell us to rely on technological fixes, such fixes seldom exist. In reality there is no amount of money that can restore the Gulf Coast to its former state, or recreate a way of life once it has been sacrificed.

How did we come to be a society that valorizes corporate profit and greed over and above the benefits of long-term sustainability? How did we arrive at the idea that our environment, or our culture, or the cultures of others around the world, can be subordinated to some economic, quantitative formula?

How did we come to invert this equation to the point where it benefits relatively few inhabitants of this planet at the expense of the rest of us?

After all, as a nation we cherish our American way of life, just as other peoples and nations cherish theirs. Indeed, brave men and women have labored and some have died to protect and preserve our way of life. Are we willing to forfeit it for short-term gain or place its future in precarious balance?

In disaster research we talk about "lessons learned" with the hope that politicians, policy makers and environmental polluters will heed the lessons in order to prevent disasters. As the Deepwater Horizon spill sadly demonstrates, too often these lessons are ignored.

As one astute observer said long ago, "Every time there has been a choice between what is best for Big Oil and what is best for the nation, Big Oil has won." Unfortunately, this is more true today than it was four decades ago.

Instead of talking about how huge corporations, or in this case the oil industry, are too big to fail, or saying that "what is good for the oil industry is good for America (or for that matter the world)," why don't we embrace instead the notion that long-term sustainability, the life of our planet and the existence of our species are "too big too fail?"

Gregory V. Button is a University of Tennessee faculty member specializing in disaster research, including research on several major oil spills. He also is director of UT's Program for Disaster Displacement and Human Rights.

Obama + 7 on energy independence

Try this link to watch Jon Stewart review the last 8 president's spills on energy independence. Quite hilarious. Click here. (Also includes proof positive that Nixon was a communist.)

NAFTA and Mexican Immigration

Since Val and I had a few conversations, or possibly I mostly listened while Val talked :), I thought I would read up a little about the immigration woes we have. So I am posting two of the articles.

NAFTA and Mexican Immigration

By Alejandro Portes

Published on: Jul 31, 2006

Alejandro Portes is Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton University. He is the author of some 220 articles and chapters on national development, international migration, Latin American and Caribbean urbanization, and economic sociology. His most recent book, co-authored with Rubén G. Rumbaut, is Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation and Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America (California, 2001).

It was supposed to be the magic wand that took care of immigration. The North American Free Trade Agreement was to make Mexico rich and create enough employment incentives to keep its people at home. It has been anything but. More than ten years after the signing of the treaty, economic growth has been anemic in Mexico, averaging less than 3.5 percent per year or less than 2 percent on a per capita basis since 2000; unemployment is higher than what it was when the treaty was signed; and half of the labor force must eke out a living in invented jobs in the informal economy, a figure ten percent higher than in the pre-NAFTA years. Meanwhile, jobs in the runaway maquiladora industry that left the United States to profit from free trade and cheap labor commonly pay close to the Mexican minimum wage of U.S. $7.00 per day, an amount so small in the now “open” Mexican market as to force people into informal jobs or across the border.

For sure, there have been “winners” in the process: large transnational corporations profit from the abundant labor, slack regulation, and open borders (open, that is, for industrial goods and capital, not people). All kinds of trinkets are produced south of the border with few government controls and with wages one-seventh or less of those on the north side. Meanwhile, Mexico City looks just like Los Angeles, only poorer and more garish, full of Toys R Us, Office Depots, and TGIFs selling goods that all can see, but that only the upper and middle-class—about one-tenth of the population—can afford.

Peasant agriculture has been eviscerated by the arrival of agri-business and the lifting of restrictions on the sale of peasant land. Industrial employment has been eviscerated by the closure of hundreds of plants unable to compete with the transnationals under the new free-for-all trade regime. The response of peasants and workers thus displaced has been clear and consistent: they have headed north in ever greater absolute numbers. Before NAFTA, undocumented Mexican immigration came mainly from four or five Mexican states and a limited number of mostly rural municipalities. Since NAFTA, migrants have originated in all Mexican states, practically all municipalities, and cities as well as towns and villages. A number of formerly vibrant places are now ghost towns, all their able adults having gone abroad; about one-third of all Mexican municipalities have lost population during the last decade, some by half or more. The counterpart of this hollowing out of the Mexican countryside is the growth of the Mexican migrant population in the U.S., much of it undocumented. From a purely regional presence in the west and southwest, it has become a truly national phenomenon. States that had barely a handful of “Hispanics” in 1990 now count a sizable Hispanic population. In Georgia, for example, the Latin-origin population went from 1.7 percent in 1990 to 5.3 percent in 2000, a 312 percent increase due to an inflow of 300,000 persons, overwhelmingly from Mexico. Cities like Charlotte, North Carolina, whose “Hispanics” in 1990 consisted of a few wealthy Cuban and South American professionals, now have upwards of 80,000, mostly undocumented Mexican laborers.

American media commentators and policy pundits attack the migrants themselves for their presence and greater visibility. They are dubbed “law-breakers” and accused of “taking jobs away from Americans.” But this is just another exercise in victim-blaming. Those truly responsible for the situation are the authorities who embraced free markets as a cure for all economic and social ills. Government officials on both sides who promoted and signed the NAFTA treaty were either guilty of shortsightedness for swallowing the ideological pap purveyed by some academic economists about the “magic” of markets (from which these tenured economists are themselves well protected) or of deliberate deceit. Protected by ideological bromides about “open trade” and “trickle-down wealth,” the balance sheets of many corporations and the salaries of their CEOs and CFOs have grown relentlessly healthier. As the decade progressed, they were increasingly able to pay lower wages on both sides of the border; neatly bypass environmental controls and labor protection codes; and market their wares unhindered here and there. By the same token, state and local governments were set to compete with one another to keep or attract a few industrial plants in a futile race to the bottom.

Those who have paid for the corporate successes of NAFTA are the workers, Americans and Mexicans alike. Mexican workers have suffered the double whammy of diminished job prospects and rising prices at home, as their country is transformed into a consumerist society, a Disneyesque world for the few. American workers have suffered the double whammy of lost jobs in runaway industries and new competition from migrant workers displaced by the same economic model under which those industries increasingly profit.

Something needs to be fixed and fast, but we better not look to those economists and Washington think tanks who engineered the present disaster and who still continue to preach open markets as an unmixed blessing.

Immigration (Written in 1993) NAFTA

Immigrationle

November 14, 1993|Walter Russell Mead, Walter Russell Mead, a contributing editor to Opinion, is the author of "Mortal Splendor: The American Empire in Transition" (Houghton Mifflin). He is now working on a book about U.S. foreign policy for the Twentieth Century Fund

NEW ORLEANS — The North American Free Trade Agreement will encourage foreign investment in Mexico and create jobs there. Because Mexicans will have jobs at home, they won't come north looking for work. NAFTA, there fore, will reduce immigration from Mexico to the United States. Right?

Wrong. NAFTA could mean millions of additional immigrants over the next 20 years. This is the conclusion of a study by NAFTA advocate--and Clinton Administration Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner--Doris Meissner. Other studies by pro-NAFTA groups, like the Institute for International Economics, say the same thing: A vote for NAFTA is a vote for more immigration for the rest of this decade, and possibly longer

Why? Think farms. Roughly 24 million Mexicans live in rural areas supporting themselves on small farms. NAFTA will force millions of them off the land faster than it creates jobs for them in Mexico's industries. The net result: Up to 20 million people will leave Mexico's countryside and flood into its cities over the next generation.

But Mexico's cities are full. Jobs are poor-paying and hard to find. Far from absorbing Mexico's surplus rural population, the cities will be sending people north. Considering migration from the countryside and from the cities, tens of millions of Mexicans will be driven by economic pressures to seek work in the United States over the next 30 years.

Many immigrants will be coming whether we have NAFTA or not. But if Meissner's study is correct, ratification of NAFTA means up to 2 million extra immigrants between now and 2013. This is a pro-NAFTA estimate. Anti-NAFTA experts think the total could be higher.

This will be bad news for Mexicans as well as Americans. The flood of dispossessed farmers from the countryside will keep wages low and unemployment high in Mexico's cities despite new investments under NAFTA. The Mexican people, their hopes of better living conditions once again disappointed, will not thank President Carlos Salinas de Gortari for this treaty. Despite heavy propaganda from Mexico's government-controlled press, polls show that support for NAFTA is slipping in Mexico.

But if NAFTA won't control immigration, what can we do? Fortunately, there are alternative approaches to Mexican agriculture that could reduce immigration. Instead of sweeping Mexican farmers off the land, United States needs to be strengthening family farming in Mexico.