42 results
8 - Make it easy to join a union
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 63-70
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
On Valentine’s Day 2014 Volkswagen offered a sweetheart deal to the United Automobile Workers (UAW) union: Please come represent workers at our assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Pressured by its German unions, Volkswagen offered its American workers a German-style works council through which workers could participate in decision-making at the plant. Volkswagen executives reassured their workers that unionization would not affect the future of the plant and quietly but clearly supported a pro-union vote.
The Chattanooga workers voted no by a margin of 712-626.
Clearly, unions are not very popular in Tennessee. Still, the UAW and the American union movement have some reason to be hopeful. Unions polled better in Tennessee in 2014 than President Obama did in 2012. Obama won just 39% in the state’s votes in the 2012 election, whereas the UAW managed 47% of Volkswagen workers’ votes in 2014. Maybe that’s not so bad for a bunch of out-of-towners from Detroit.
The really strange thing about the UAW defeat is not that it lost the union representation vote but that in the union representation campaign it faced many of the same opponents as President Obama faced in the general election. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, Tennessee’s junior US Senator Bob Corker, and ubiquitous Washington insider Grover Norquist all vociferously opposed the unionization of Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant. After the UAW’s defeat, Tennessee’s senior US Senator Lamar Alexander weighed in to remind everyone that Tennessee workers “have decided in almost every case that they are better off union-free. The UAW may not like this, but that is the right of employees in a right-to-work state like Tennessee. Tennessee’s political establishment played a full court press against union representation in Chattonooga.
Why are big-time, nationally prominent state politicians like Haslam, Corker, and Alexander getting involved in a local workplace decision about the union representation of a small number of workers at a single automobile plant? Politicians don’t usually try to influence other private workplace decisions at private companies. Their involvement is even more (rhetorically) mysterious considering that Tennessee is, as Senator Alexander says, a “right-to-work” state. You would think that the right to work would include a right to be left alone in your workplace to make your own decisions about union representation. Sadly, no. Living in a “right-to-work” state doesn’t even give you a right to work.
Introduction
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 1-6
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Change is random; progress moves in one direction. Every generation in American politics debates a set of core principles that once agreed are agreed for all time. Free speech was guaranteed in the 18th century. Slavery was outlawed in the 19th century. Women got the vote in the 20th century. None of these core principles will ever be revisited. They are taken for granted by all politicians, left and right.
This book suggests 16 core policies that together form a progressive political agenda for the 21st century. These 16 policies should be on every progressive’s list for the 2016 US elections (and beyond) because they reflect principles that no reasonable person of the future will question. Many of the positions taken in this book may appear ambitious or even utopian today, but when our grandchildren look back from the 22nd century they will seem as obvious as free speech, the end of slavery, and votes for women.
The book is thus designed as a kind of progressive field manual for the 2016 US elections. It presents only straightforward and easy-to understand social policies that are fully consistent with well-established social science. The arguments for these policies are presented in a jargon-free way and are illustrated using official US government data and other standard sources. Since none of the policies presented in the book are scientifically contentious, academic sources are cited sparingly. The focus is on exposition rather than argumentation.
For example, no one in academic social science seriously doubts that our children should be educated by public schools, not educated by for-profit firms. Calls for school privatization, greater standardized testing, and the destruction of teachers’ unions come overwhelmingly from privately funded think tanks and business schools, not from social science academics. Thus Chapter 3 on public education takes for granted the academic consensus in favor of well-funded public schools that involve multiple stakeholders in the broad-spectrum education of our children.
Academically contentious questions in public education—the choice of curriculum, optimum teaching methods, the benefits of diversity, gender differences in learning, methods for addressing social disadvantage, etc.—are entirely absent. The exclusion of these highly contentious issues makes it possible for the chapter to address the “big issues” in public education in a brief essay of 2,000 words.
Dedication
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp iv-iv
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Preface
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp vi-ix
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
American politics are on the wrong track, and everybody knows it. The federal government is mired in perpetual budget paralysis. Congressional approval ratings are the stuff of comedy punch lines. Fox News is also a 24-hour-a-day joke that just happens not to be very funny. Politicians are very careful never to say anything in public; saying something can only get you in trouble. And policies that could shape the life chances of millions of Americans for generations to come are formulated on the basis of focus group testing of three-second sound-bites. That is sheer madness. We can and should do better.
I am not a politician, a political activist, or a policy analyst. The last time I held political office it was as Imperator of my high school Latin club. I rarely sign petitions and to my shame I have never walked in a protest march. It should go without saying that I have never been shocked with a TASER™ electroshock device, pepper sprayed, arrested, or imprisoned for expressing my beliefs. I know people who have, and I look up to them as heroes in the fight for justice. I am not a hero.
I am a professional sociologist and social statistician. My other books have titles like Methods for Quantitative Macro-Comparative Research and Latent Variables and Factor Analysis. This book is different, because things have become so bad that I felt an obligation to do something to help make them better. The United States is making a mess of its social, economic, and political policies. With an election coming up in 2016—a Presidential election that is wide-open for candidates from both major parties—I felt it was important that social science have a say. The country should be moving forward, not backward, and social science has the potential to help guide progress toward a better and brighter future.
As my family and friends know all too well, at the personal level I am one of the most conservative people on the planet. I was born on October 5, 1969, and for the most part I haven’t changed since. I grew up in a highly commercialized but relatively benign corporate America.
1 - Create jobs
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 7-14
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
In January 2008 the US economy provided full-time employment for 122 million people and part-time employment for another 24 million. Then the recession hit, followed by the recovery. The end result was that by January 2014 the US economy had lost more than three million full-time jobs and replaced them with just over two million part-time jobs. At the end of this five-year period there were one million fewer Americans with any kind of employment than at the beginning, and many more Americans who were stuck with only part-time work. Over that same five-year period, the US adult population grew by more than 14 million. In ordinary times about 65% of the US adult population actively participates in the labor force. The fact that in 2014 there were 14 million more adults than in 2008 means that in ordinary times the US economy would need about 9 million more jobs to accommodate them. No matter how you add up the figures, the jobs just aren’t there.
Officially, the economic recession associated with the global financial crisis ended in June 2009. The second half of 2009 and all of 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 were growth years. All official sources forecast continued growth in the US economy for 2014 and 2015. In 2013, the US economy produced 6% more goods and services in real dollar terms than it had in 2007, the last pre-recession year of solid economic growth. Private industry is more productive and more profitable than ever. The stock market Dow Jones Industrial Average “reached yet another record high” on September 19, 2014. For the US economy, things have never been so good. So what’s the problem? If the economy is growing, why aren’t companies hiring? Why is it so hard for people to find decent jobs?
The simple answer is that the economy has changed, and the private sector simply doesn’t need another 9 or 10 million workers to get things done. If it did, it would hire them. It’s ridiculous to blame job seekers for not looking hard enough. The jobs just aren’t there, and it’s increasingly looking like they’re not going to be there.
3 - Support public education
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 23-30
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Reform (noun): a policy that is designed to undermine the effectiveness of a public institution in a way that generates private gains.
Reform (verb): to make something worse.
When did reform become a dirty word? Thirty years of education reform have brought a barren, test-bound curriculum that stigmatizes students, vilifies teachers, and encourages administrators to commit wholesale fraud in order to hit the testing goals that have been set for them. Strangely, reform has gone from being a progressive cause to being a conservative curse. It used to be that good people pursued reform to make the world a better place, usually by bringing public services under transparent, meritocratic, democratically governed public control. Today, reform more often involves firing people and dismantling public services in the pursuit of private gain. Where did it all go so wrong? Who stole our ever-progressing public sector, and in the process stole one of our most effective words for improving it?
At least so far as education reform is concerned, the answer is clear. The current age of education reform can be traced to the landmark 1983 report A Nation at Risk, subtitled “The Imperative for Educational Reform.” Future dictionaries may mark this report as the turning point when the definition of reform changed from cause to a curse. In 1981 Ronald Reagan’s first Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell appointed an 18-person commission to look into the state of US schools. He charged the commission with addressing “the widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The commission included 12 administrators, 1 businessperson, chemist, 1 physicist, 1 politician, 1 conservative activist, and 1 teacher. No students or recent graduates. No everyday parents. No representatives of parents’ organizations. No social workers, school psychologists, or guidance counselors. No representatives of teacher’s unions (God forbid). Just one practicing teacher and not a single academic expert on education.
It should come as no surprise that a commission dominated by administrators found that the problems of US schools were mainly caused by lazy students and unaccountable teachers. Administrative incompetence was not on the agenda. Nor were poverty, inequality, and racial discrimination.
9 - Set a living minimum wage
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 71-78
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
In his 2014 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama embraced the movement for a $10.10 minimum wage. Two weeks later he went even further, issuing an executive order that set $10.10 an hour as the minimum wage for all federal contractors, effective January 1, 2015. As President Obama put it in his address, this executive order requires “federal contractors to pay their federally-funded employees a fair wage of at least $10.10 an hour—because if you cook our troops’ meals or wash their dishes, you shouldn’t have to live in poverty.” This new federal contractor minimum will be indexed to inflation. The statutory minimum wage that applies to all other American employers is not indexed to inflation. As a result, its real value has declined steeply over the years.
Does the President’s $10.10 an hour represent a fair wage? Maybe. A living wage? Hardly. No one can really support a family on minimum wage employment, even if the minimum is raised to $10.10 an hour. At $10.10 an hour it would be difficult even to support yourself, never mind a family. And that’s assuming you could find full-time work, which you probably couldn’t. Very few minimum wage workers can find full-time employment, even full-time employment may not be available year-round, and all workers get sick sometimes, or have to care for sick children, or (God forbid) need a day off.
But in the end, the root problem is the low wage. The proposed $10.10 minimum isn’t based on any real analysis of what it costs to live in 21st-century America. It is carefully calibrated to meet the sensitive political criterion of raising families out of poverty—very carefully calibrated indeed. The 2014 federal poverty threshold for a family of three (the standard Census Bureau reference family) is $19,790 a year. The current Federal Reserve inflation target is 2% inflation per year. Since the federal poverty thresholds are indexed to inflation, the anticipated poverty threshold for 2015 is $20,186 a year for a family of three. At $10.10 an hour a person working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year—minus 10 unpaid federal holidays—would earn $20,200 a year, or exactly $14 more than the poverty threshold.
Sixteen for '16
- A Progressive Agenda for a Better America
- Salvatore J. Babones
-
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015
-
Sixteen for '16 offers a new agenda for the 2016 US election crafted around sixteen core principles from securing jobs to saving the Earth. It is a manifesto which makes the argument for each of these positions, clearly, concisely, and supported by hard data. Its progressive agenda charts a realistic path toward a better tomorrow.
12 - Pass a national abortion law
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 95-102
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
There are no easy answers in the abortion debate. Passions run high, and with good reason. But wherever you stand in the abortion debate, one thing seems clear. America needs one law on abortion, not 50 state laws or 500 local laws. Abortion has been more or less legal in the United States since 1973, but it is more legal in some states and places than in others. Is abortion legal if women are harassed going into and coming out of abortion clinics? Is abortion legal if a woman has to travel to another county or state to find a doctor who will see her? Is abortion legal if safe, quality abortion care is not available at all? Whatever the balance between a woman’s right to an abortion and society’s interest in her fetus should not depend on where a woman happens to live, work, or seek health care. Localism in government administration is a fine principle, but localism in official morality is not. One nation indivisible must have a policy on abortion that can accommodate 300 million or more different opinions without trampling on the rights and needs of women, their fetuses, and their families.
National abortion law currently rests on the Constitution as interpreted by a series of Supreme Court decisions, most famously the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. The Constitutional basis for the right to abortion found in Roe v. Wade is built on the thin reed of the 14th Amendment, passed in 1868 to prevent states from reintroducing new forms of slavery. The 14th Amendment stipulates that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” from which has been implied a general right to privacy, from which has been implied a right to privacy in pregnancy, from which has been implied a right to abortion. This is good so far as it goes, but it is hardly a secure footing on which to base such a basic human right as reproductive self-determination.
The problem is: If we had a national abortion law, what would it be? For most of the last 40 years the mood in Congress has been decidedly reactionary.
Frontmatter
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp i-ii
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Frontmatter
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp iii-iii
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
2 - Build America’s human infrastructure
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 15-22
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The 2000s were the worst decade for job creation ever recorded in US history. Between 2000 and 2010 the U.S .economy added a grand total of just two million jobs. That compares with more than 20 million new jobs created during the infamous 1970s. The American economy had problems in the 1970s but nothing like the problems of the 2000s. Ten times as many jobs were created in the 1970s as in the 2000s. Real median wages for Americans of all ages were higher in the 1970s than at any time since. In the 1970s the official poverty rate averaged 11.9%. In the years since 1980 the average has been 13.6%. In 2012 it reached 15.0%. Seen from the perspective of someone coming out of the glorious boom years of the 1950s and 1960s, the 1970s might have seemed pretty awful. Dispassionately evaluated in retrospect they seem pretty good, at least economically. Some people even like the clothes—maybe not the hairstyles, but then you can’t have everything.
The big economic problem of the 1970s was inflation. Annual consumer price inflation hit 12.4% in 1974 and 13.3% in 1979. Everyone who lived through those days remembers the long lines at service stations and skyrocketing prices for gasoline. We may not remember that in 1973-74 the Arab countries withdrew oil from the world market in protest against US support for Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In 1978-80 Iranian oil exports were disrupted by the Iranian revolution and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran. In other words, the biggest economic problem of the 1970s—inflation—was mainly the result of our foreign policy debacles in the Middle East. It’s no wonder that every President since has focused so much foreign policy (and military) firepower on the region. The Middle East killed the presidency of Jimmy Carter just as surely as it killed the government’s commitment to maintaining full employment.
Where did we go wrong? The economics profession doesn’t seem to have the answers. It is hard to take conservative economists very seriously when they tell us that the problem today is too much regulation, or too much taxation, and too much government spending.
Notes
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 135-148
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
4 - Extend Medicare to everyone
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 31-38
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Medicare for all—that about covers it. A civilized country needs universal healthcare, and the only effective way to provide it is through a government-managed program. The United States already has several government-managed programs, but by far the most effective and most efficient is Medicare. Medicare may not be perfect, but it works, and it works at relatively low cost. Almost every American aged 65 and over is covered by Medicare. If Medicare can deliver basically sound healthcare for the this group—the highest-risk part of the population—it should be able to deliver basically sound healthcare for the rest of us. The idea that government-paid healthcare for people over 65 is normal and ordinary, but government-paid healthcare for people under age 65 is some kind of un-American, communist conspiracy is flat-out ridiculous. Medicare already pays more than 20% of all personal healthcare expenses in the country. It is well on its way to being a universal program. It should be made a universal program.
Medicare is an insurance program in four parts. Part A covers hospital bills, Part B covers doctors’ bills. Part C, also known as Medicare Advantage, is an optional private insurance plan that Medicare recipients can choose to receive instead of Parts A and B. Part D, the newest part, is a private insurance plan for prescription drugs.
Medicare needs a lot of work. Private Medicare Advantage plans should be made simpler and more comprehensive. The federal government should take back the right to negotiate Part D drug prices that Congress gave up in 2003. This change alone would save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars per year. Many other tweaks, refinements, and improvements should be made. But the bedrock principle that every American should have inexpensive access to all necessary healthcare should not be a matter for debate. Other civilized countries recognized that healthcare is a basic human right decades ago. Presidents Truman, Nixon, and Clinton all believed in the necessity of universal healthcare and tried to pass legislation to make it a reality. President Obama used his first-term mandate to push the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare, through Congress in 2010.
10 - Upgrade to 10-10-10
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 79-86
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Far and away the most memorable slogan of the 2012 election campaign was the Republican candidate Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” plan. It sure beats “Forward” (Barack Obama) and “Believe in America” (Mitt Romney) and is right up there with “Commerce, Education and the… uh, what’s the third one there?” (Rick Perry). Herman Cain and his economic advisor, Cleveland accountant Rich Lowrie, called for a 9% value added tax, a 9% flat income tax, and 9% federal sales tax to replace all existing federal taxes. It has been suggested Cain’s campaign copied the 9-9-9 plan from the default tax structure implemented in the computer game Sim City. Whether or not this is true, no one believes that 9-9-9 is a practical solution to the problems of contemporary society. No one, that is, outside the Herman Cain campaign team and presumably the still-operating 9-9-9 Fund political action committee.
After dropping out of the Republican nomination battle, Cain was invited to deliver the Tea Party State of the Union response in January 2012. Look for a return of the 9-9-9 plan in 2016, with or without Herman Cain. It might raise taxes on nearly all American households while still somehow managing to decimate overall federal government revenues, but there’s no denying that it’s a great slogan. Even if Cain doesn’t run in 2016, expect someone else to pick it up.
Whether or not Cain makes a comeback in 2016, progressives would do well to up the ante one notch by introducing their own 10-10-10 plan. The 10-10-10 plan would require all employers to provide 10 paid sick days, 10 paid holidays, and 10 paid vacation days a year for all full-time workers, prorated for part-time workers as well. Those with well-paid professional jobs may not realize that other people don’t already have 10-10-10, but they don’t. Far from it. For many working Americans, 10-10-10 would be a dream come true. Take sick days. Today just 65%—less than two-thirds—of all American workers have any opportunity to take paid sick days at all, according to official government statistics. This figure covers all workers, both full- and part-time.
13 - Let people vote
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 103-110
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The United States is the world’s oldest continuously operating democracy, with an unbroken history of national elections going back to 1788. Individual American states and cities can trace their democratic traditions back to the 1600s. The United States can rightfully and proudly call itself the birthplace of modern democracy. No other country comes close. American democracy may not be perfect, but for the first 200 years of the republic the overall trend was unambiguously toward perfection. Progress went in fits and starts, but it always went forward. Between 1860 and 1945 America even went to war for freedom and democracy in the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and several smaller wars. Both at home and abroad hundreds of thousands of Americans made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure (in Abraham Lincoln’s words) “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”
Five years after Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address the 15th Amendment to the Constitution made it illegal to prevent people from voting based on race or color. In 1919 the 19th Amendment made it illegal to prevent people from voting based on sex, and in 1962 the 24th Amendment made it illegal to prevent people from voting based on the nonpayment of taxes. In 1965 the Voting Rights Act reinforced these Constitutional protections by outlawing literacy tests and other discriminatory practices that might prevent people from voting. In 1990 the Americans with Disabilities Act expanded voting even further by mandating accommodations for people with disabilities. All told that’s more than 120 years of expanding the franchise and ensuring that everyone who wants to vote is able to vote.
Despite this proud history of ever-improving democracy, in the 2012 Presidential election only 58% of the eligible population voted. Congressional elections never even reach 50% turnout. In local elections turnout is almost always less than 10%. Most law-abiding Americans are guaranteed the right to vote, but most Americans don’t vote most of the time. In a free society of course that’s their choice to make. Or is it? It’s one thing to chose to vote when voting is as easy as clicking on a link or mailing back a postage-paid form.
16 - Save the Earth
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 127-134
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The Earth is dying. That is not hyperbole. That is reality.
Human beings are torturing the Earth to extract every ounce of useful mineral. We are scouring the land to produce just one more crop before the soil gives out. We are fishing the oceans clean of every living thing that is tastier than a jellyfish. We are depleting every aquifer, felling every tree, feeding every last blade of grass to a cow to be slaughtered for meat, leather, and assorted industrial products. Whatever is left we are killing with global warming, and remember that we are still in the early stages of global warming. The world has only been warming since around 1980. It is now warming very rapidly indeed. Under any likely scenario, there is no end in sight.
Global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. It’s very simple really. Digging things up and burning them takes carbon out of the ground and puts it into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide and other gasses in the atmosphere trap warmth through a well-understood and universally accepted mechanism called the greenhouse effect. It is as if the Earth were covered by a planetary carbon quilt. It is theoretically conceivable that the most of the new carbon entering the Earth’s atmosphere is coming from natural sources or that human beings have not yet added enough carbon to the atmosphere to cause a greenhouse effect. But it is not theoretically conceivable that human beings could add infinite amounts of carbon to the atmosphere without causing a greenhouse effect.
Given that carbon dioxide levels are known to cause a greenhouse effect, that carbon dioxide levels are known to be rising, and that burning fossil fuels is known to release carbon dioxide, it seems pretty reasonable to connect the dots and conclude that rising global temperatures are related to the burning of fossil fuels. Even if the real truth (suppressed by climate scientists the world over) is that global warming to date has not been caused by the burning of fossil fuels, this does not imply that it is safe to burn all of the remaining fossil fuels that are still buried in the Earth’s crust.
14 - Stop torturing, stop assassinating, and close down the NSA
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 111-118
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
“We tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values … we did some things that were wrong.” That may be the understatement of the century so far, but at least it’s an improvement on “[I] laid the foundation for peace by making some awfully difficult decisions.” Score Obama 1, Bush 0 in the acknowledgment of the torture game show. It’s a start. There is no hiding the fact that America in the 21st century embraced torture as a routine tool of foreign policy—or if not torture, at least “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” as long as it was not “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.”
Torture (or extremely enhanced nontorture) techniques approved for use by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the War on Terror included waterboarding, keeping prisoners cold, naked, and wet, and sleep deprivation of up to 180 hours. For the record, 180 hours equals seven and a half days. The pain accompanied by 180 hours without sleep may or may not be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying organ failure or death, but it can’t be pleasant. No one said that interrogation should be pleasant, but no one said it had to be nasty. In any case there is no evidence that nasty works. The expert consensus is that it does not. Whatever else it may be, keeping prisoners cold, naked, and wet without sleep for days on end certainly is not civilized. It is beneath the dignity of a civilized country. It is beneath the dignity of the United States of America. But the government of the United States of America does many things that are beneath the dignity of the United States of America.
It has, however, banned torture. On January 22, 2009 President Obama issued Executive Order 13491 banning torture by US government personnel. This order does not, however, ban US government personnel from subcontracting torture to third parties overseas. Press reports suggest that so-called “extraordinary renditions” of prisoners to third countries with dubious human rights records continue.
7 - Take down Wall Street
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 55-62
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
If the global financial crisis has taught us anything about finance, it has taught us not to trust the big Wall Street investment banks. The banks created the crisis, demanded a worldwide government bailout, then rapidly returned to excessive profitability. Six years after the crisis, millions of ordinary Americans are still mired in loss (job loss, house loss, asset loss), but after a brief setback in 2008 the banks quickly recovered. They have been making money hand over fist ever since. While wages have stagnated in the rest of the economy, the average New York banker’s bonus rose to $164,530 in 2013. That’s on top of an average base salary of around $200,000. Wall Street bankers now make more than five times the average New York City salary, compared with less than two times the average in 1981. It seems Wall Street banking is nice work, if you can find it.
The bankers’ ball almost came to an end in September, 2008. Investment banks Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and American International Group (AIG) all collapsed within a few days of each other. Together these three firms owed massive sums of money to the remaining Wall Street banks. If those interbank debts had gone unpaid, the rest of the Wall Street investment banks would have been dragged under as well. Investment bank Goldman Sachs has long been viewed as having the strongest finances of the big Wall Street banks and among the most careful and sophisticated risk management practices. Yet even Goldman “would have been a goner if the Fed didn’t throw it a life preserver by paying off AIG’s credit default swaps at 100 cents on the dollar and giving Goldman bank-holding-company status, which allowed it to borrow from the Federal Reserve at near-zero interest rates.
The end result? Goldman Sachs not only survived the 2008 crisis with a $2.3 billion profit for the year, but then went on to make a $13.4 billion profit in 2009. It has been profitable ever since.
In the last days of September, 2008 Wall Street pulled off the most audacious raid on the public purse ever contemplated. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson threatened Congress with financial armageddon and a second Great Depression if it did not immediately provide $700 billion to bail out the remaining investment banks with “very cheap capital.”
About the author
- Salvatore J. Babones, University of Sydney
-
- Book:
- Sixteen for '16
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 08 April 2015, pp 156-156
-
- Chapter
- Export citation