Letters Letters
Cosima Coinpott’s Debut San Francisco As a long, longtime subscriber to The Nation, I congratulate you on cryptic Puzzle No. 3197 [June 20]—the first by the new constructors. The puzzle is brilliant, with great humor and wonderful homage to Frank Lewis at 1 across. Kudos! BARRY TRAUB Baltimore I am halfway through the first Kosman/Picciotto puzzle. I am demoralized, befuddled, tormented and enraged. Thank you! 1 and 29 across is a stroke of gracious genius. The torch is well and fittingly passed. JOHN C. McLUCAS Lawrence, Kan. The new puzzlers are tops! The inaugural cryptic was elegant and lively; the tribute to Frank Lewis in the first clue was perfect; and finding the authors themselves playfully peeking out from two other clues was a delightful surprise. I can’t wait until next week! Candelabra voyage entertains praise (5)! PAIGE A. NICHOLS Markowitz Hits the Mark Alexandria, Va. I’ve just finished reading “Trials,” on Janet Malcolm, by Miriam Markowitz [June 6]. I am compelled to do what I’ve never done before concerning a book review or essay: I am sending my thanks and congratulations to an author I’ve somehow missed in the past but will not miss again. For the clear-eyed comprehension and scope Markowitz brings to her subject and for the most fluid, elegant prose I’ve read in many years, her writing sets a new, extremely high standard for the art of the essay. This is simply stunning work. I look forward to reading more—anything—she has written, past and future. In a world overflowing with too many words that say far too little, Markowitz’s work is just, fair-minded—and deeply appreciated. DIANE R. IVONE Lake Orion, Mich. “Trials” contained a reference to the “conditional tense.” There is no such thing. Tense is strictly temporal, broadly divided among past, future and present. Mood is contextual and independent of the temporal. There is a conditional mood, more often referred to as the potential mood, as well as subjunctive, imperative and the default mood, the bland and literal indicative. The subjunctive is used to indicate that something is in fact not true, but if it were, then some other consequence would flow. He is not guilty. Had he been guilty, then he would have fled. The conditional or potential mood indicates genuine either/or uncertainty. If he is guilty (and we don’t know), then he will flee. The indicative makes up most reportage. He is guilty, and he fled. There are few publications that preserve any semblance of literary quality. This is one. Keep it that way. Ideas are our children; they should not be sent outside ungroomed. PATRICK GRIFFIN Bishop’s Collected Works Somerville, Mass. I’m grateful to John Palattella, in his “Shelf Life” of May 16, for once again being a voice of reason, this time vis-à-vis the recent updated and expanded editions of the poetry and prose of Elizabeth Bishop issued by Farrar, Straus and Giroux to celebrate the centennial of her birth. The new Poems corrects errors in text and placement that compromised Bishop’s own Complete Poems (1969) and the posthumous 1983 volume she had nothing to do with; the new Prose replaces FSG’s skimpy posthumous Collected Prose. Previously unpublished facsimile pages punctuate a wide range of new material, from the large-scale Life World Library Brazil in Bishop’s original draft (she disowned the brutally edited published version) to surprisingly revealing and even problematic smaller work, all in their most accurate versions. New covers restore the design and colors Bishop chose for her original Complete Poems. Most reviewers, like Palattella, have welcomed the amplified contents of the new editions, and I applaud his taking to task the radically conservative view of The New York Review of Books, echoing The New York Times Book Review, attacking the new volumes for their very completeness, for including more material than those reviewers deem appropriate to preserve Bishop’s reputation for perfection. Palattella eloquently argues that, as with any great writer, allowing us access to her fullest output serves not to diminish her stature but “to deepen our sense of Bishop’s ambition and achievement—to better understand how Bishop became Bishop.” Bishop encouraged her students to read everything by any writer they were interested in. What might surprise even Palattella is that Bishop, the legendary perfectionist, was in favor of the posthumous appearance of her unpublished work. In her will, she granted her literary executors “the power to determine whether any of my unpublished manuscripts and papers shall be published, and if so, to see them through the press.” There is nothing she specifically excludes (and she kept almost all her drafts). One of the most finished of Bishop’s unpublished poems, a startlingly naked love poem called “Breakfast Song,” which to my mind is one of Bishop’s most piercing and personal later works (the distinguished composer John Harbison set it gloriously to music for the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson), is attacked in NYRB as “cringe-making.” De gustibus. (Though maybe, as S.J. Perelman put it, “De gustibus ain’t what dey used to be.”) But to argue for the exclusion of this poem, or any of Bishop’s unpublished work, seems to me perversely anti-intellectual and anti-literary. Thank you, John Palattella, for helping us keep our priorities straight. LLOYD SCHWARTZ, editor, Elizabeth Bishop’s Prose; co-editor, Library of America’s Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters ‘Barry’s Boys’ Inver Grove Heights, Minn. Your fact-checkers must have been nodding off when they let in the first paragraph of Jackson Lears’s review [“Same Old New Atheism,” May 16]. The Barry Goldwater “bit of doggerel” did not just “surface”—it was the work of the Chad Mitchell Trio, an early-’60s folk group. It was the first cut on their album Reflections. I remember playing this song over and over on my mono record player. These guys may not have matched Peter, Paul and Mary in the trio category or Phil Ochs or Pete Seeger in the political song category, but they did some good work, “Barry’s Boys” being just one example. They also put out “The John Birch Society”—“fighting for the right to fight the right fight for the right”—which they recut in 2008 as “The George Bush Society.” They still tour occasionally. PETER BENNER Even Homer nods; our fact-checkers never do. They report: “In 1962 Julius Monk produced a revue called Dime a Dozen at a small theater in New York. It featured a song about the college students who supported Goldwater, called ‘Barry’s Boys,’ written by June Reizner (sample verse: ‘We’re the bright young men/Who wanna go back to 1910/We’re Barry’s Boys/We’re the kids with a cause/A government like grandmama’s/We’re Barry’s Boys’). If you Google the song, the Chad Mitchell Trio often comes up, pointing to them as the popularizers of the song.”—The Editors
Jun 28, 2011 / Our Readers
Exchange Exchange
Charity Begins at Home New Orleans Roberta Brandes Gratz’s “How Charity Hospital Died” [May 16] is rife with errors, bias and gross distortions of the truth. It appears she made no effort to seek facts that might have compromised her agenda. Despite her claims, Gratz never contacted me or anyone in my office, and I find no evidence that she tried to contact anyone from LSU Health for her story. Dr. James Moises’ claim that the Interim LSU Public Hospital (ILH) does not provide “urgent and chronic outpatient care” and “reaches a vastly reduced patient population” is wrong. Every service the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans, informally known as Charity Hospital, provided before Hurricane Katrina is available at ILH, including a Level 1 trauma center. Our outpatient services are robust and, in fact, serve a population larger than before Katrina. Gratz’s statement relying on Lt. Gen. Russell Honoré’s assessment of Charity’s post-Katrina status collapses with the most basic research. General Honoré changed his position on Charity’s condition and said the storm destroyed the hospital, as the Times-Picayune reported on August 24, 2009
(nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/08/ fema_dispute_over_charity_hosp.html). This article (and another, on August 6) discusses the binding arbitration that would determine the extent of damage to Charity, and clearly disproves Gratz’s statement that LSU pressured FEMA to increase its damage estimate from $23 million to
$475 million. Does she really think LSU can pressure a federal agency like FEMA to revise its assessment by $452 million? Allegations by nameless people of sabotage in the hospital are unsubstantiated. No evidence exists that these events occurred. Gratz’s statement, “In 2004, an entire wing of Charity was converted to private single-patient rooms for non–publicly funded patients” is false. Gratz mischaracterizes the report from the Public Affairs Research Council, and her allegation that LSU is scheming to abdicate its responsibility to our indigent patients is offensive. The Memorandum of Understanding approved by the LSU board of supervisors and the State of Louisiana, which spells out how the new University Medical Center (UMC) will be run, clearly states that the hospital will maintain its role as a safety net. LSU has always served a dual mission of indigent healthcare and academic training. A simple review of the February 11, 2009, letter from Jerry Jones, assistant commissioner for the Louisiana division of administration, to James Fannin, chair of the state appropriations committee, would have revealed to Gratz the major problems with the RMJM Hillier study, which she cites to indicate the soundness of Charity Hospital post-Katrina. The letter also lists the public meetings on the Charity replacement held in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act, despite State Treasurer John Kennedy’s assertions to the contrary. Gratz grossly mischaracterizes the area where the UMC will be built. Long before the storm, the area suffered from blight, neglect and abandoned properties. A Louisiana Office of Facility Planning assessment shows that less than a third of the properties in the LSU footprint were in use. She also says an interstate highway will separate the UMC from downtown, implying inaccessibility; but she fails to mention that the interstate is raised, has numerous streets running under it and is not in any way an obstruction to the UMC site, which is two blocks from Charity on the same
unobstructed street. Gratz violates the basic tenets of journalism, namely neutrality and objectivity. MARVIN McGRAW, director, communications and media relations, LSU Health Gratz Replies New York City It’s good to hear, finally, from LSU, as all attempts to contact it for my article failed. To claim that “every service…provided before Hurricane Katrina is available at ILH” is quite contrary to the experience of New Orleanians. Specialty outpatient services and the days and hours available to patients are not at the pre-Katrina standard. Not reopening the medical-ready Charity Hospital left New Orleans without a Level 1 trauma unit for eight months. It eliminated the medical home of many African-American, poor and working people who were struggling to return. The assessment of Charity’s post-Katrina status in my article definitely did not rely on Lt. Gen. Russell Honoré’s letter to President Obama (signed with five others), nor has he retracted that letter. Honoré adjusted his position after the government bailout of Wall Street, commenting to friends that the healthcare infrastructure of New Orleans should be bailed out as well. In addition, Marvin McGraw has apparently overlooked the sworn, notarized affidavit of Army Staff Sgt. John Johnson, quoted in my article. On-site cleanup volunteers’ reports of sabotage have been consistent. Charity’s fifth-floor west wing was indeed converted into beautiful private rooms of great appeal to people who could pay. Project Worksheet #PW2175Ver3 from FEMA documents the back-and-forth dispute over the reimbursement amount, which went from $23 million to $475 million. The arbitration hearing was closed to the press and the public, despite protests from reporters and citizens. Before the hearing FEMA staff who had opposed LSU’s damage estimates were transferred or reassigned. FEMA attorneys failed to call credible witnesses to testify and, yes, LSU and its staunch advocate, US Senator Mary Landrieu, wield considerable power. The February 11, 2009, letter from Jerry Jones (which I did not mention) has been refuted in excruciating detail elsewhere. The essential facts of the RMJM Hillier study remain accepted by many: that the historic Charity building could be retrofitted into a state-of-the-art hospital for considerably less money, time, disruption of people’s lives and demolition of their homes than the current plan—and still can. The public meetings I referred to addressed only specific, narrow issues. There were no meaningful public hearings held by elected officials at the local level to determine the wisdom of this mega-project, which has resulted in the destruction of hundreds of rebuilt homes and businesses in a historic neighborhood and will delay essential medical care for years. Every significant decision was made behind closed doors. As State Treasurer John Kennedy said, “Alternatives were never thoroughly and publicly discussed.” McGraw’s description of the bulldozed neighborhood as “blighted” insults the hard-working residents who came back after Katrina, rebuilt or were rebuilding their homes (often with government funds) and struggling to rebuild their lives. The term “blight” is a convenient government term applied to any neighborhood to be sacrificed for a new development scheme. Measuring blight by the number of vacant houses would put the whole city at risk. I said the highway “separates” the new hospital from the downtown; it does. Even though there is still no business plan for the new facility and insufficient funds to build it, the neighborhood continues to be demolished. At the June 2 hospital board meeting, consultants reiterated that the plan calls for considerably more beds than will be needed, will require a $100 million annual state subsidy and at least $147 million in start-up cash from the state. ROBERTA BRANDES GRATZ
Jun 15, 2011 / Our Readers and Roberta Brandes Gratz
Letters Letters
Ivy Beleaguered Washington, D.C. “Faulty Towers,” William Deresiewicz’s excellent discussion of a dozen recent books on the world of higher education [May 23] correctly portrays the growing “adjunctariat” as contingent workers exploited by university administrators motivated primarily by the bottom line. But this academic underclass is rising up. At George Washington we 1,150 part-timers are now members of SEIU Local 500 with a contract that gives us, for the first time, job security, benefits and higher pay. It’s part of a national movement that will have an impact on higher education in all kinds of constructive ways. CHESTER HARTMAN Director of research Poverty & Race Research Action Council Petersburg, Va. I find myself in agreement with most of William Deresiewicz’s fine article. He did make one assertion with which I take issue, however: “A scientific education creates technologists. A liberal arts education creates citizens.” I hope that in referring to “scientific education” he really meant engineering, electronics, computer science, aerodynamics, etc. Science, pure science especially, is truly one of the liberal arts. A citizen who is ignorant of, for example, quantum mechanics, relativity, radioactivity, the structure of the solar system, cosmology, global warming, evolutionary biology, genetics, etc., is not truly educated, and is ill equipped to deal with the issues that confront twenty-first-century society. CAREY E. STRONACH Anderson, S.C. In addition to the calamitous developments at American universities William Deresiewicz describes, the Koch brothers are giving millions to institutions in
exchange for oversight on hiring and maintaining faculty members of economics departments. Their design is to promote
the teaching of unfettered capitalism. Clemson University has just received
$1.2 million for this purpose. BONNIE S. LEDBETTER Duluth, Minn. There is truth in “Faulty Towers,” but it is not the whole truth. I have spent the past fifteen years of my thirty-four-year academic career teaching philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Superior. We are a public liberal arts institution serving the surrounding largely rural and low-income region. Faculty teach four courses a semester. Classes average around twenty-five students. The administration has worked to increase full-time tenure-track teaching. Faculty is active in governance. Despite a governor who is ideologically opposed to public institutions and to our faculty union, we persevere. RICHARD HUDELSON Philadelphia The article fails to mention what is happening to students. Student debt is skyrocketing to obscene levels while a BA in most liberal arts fields is worth very little. I believe my BA in English actually hurt my career (programming). I will be paying it off until I am 40. AARON COUCH Chicago I’ve thought for some time about why tenured professors don’t seem to be as bothered by the fate of graduate students as they should be. I think they unconsciously believe they got their jobs because they worked hard doing brilliant work; they think the “best” students are as brilliant as they are and will also find tenure-track jobs in desirable locations. Everyone else must have made mistakes. I did get a tenure-track job, but it was at a regional campus of a state school in the middle of nowhere. Unable to find a job in a major city, I finally quit, before I was up for tenure, and moved back to Chicago. The decision clearly shocked and disappointed at least one of my former professors, but everyone outside academia thought my choice was obvious. What am I doing now? Adjuncting, of course. KAREN LEICK Los Angeles William Deresiewicz is half right in his trenchant critique of the problems that beset higher education. He is right that tenure is important, that academic jobs are scarce and that faculty have to speak out more. But he is curiously wrong about who our students are and what they desire. He writes: “Do we really want our higher education system redesigned by the self-identified needs of high school seniors?” More than half of higher education is composed of part-time working adult students. Why would we not try to redesign our systems based on what they need? They may not know their Shakespeare from their Chaucer, but they do know they want learning to be speeded up and made more relevant to their lives. Faculty generally resist teaching in the summer; classrooms are empty on weekends; general education is a meaningless smorgasbord that lacks coherence. Students are savvy consumers, and they no longer have the luxury to travel in the summer, kick back on the weekend or take classes simply because it’s a requirement. Until the faculty think about what students need rather than what we want, the system will be under duress. WILLIAM G. TIERNEY University & Wilbur Kieffer Professor of Higher Education; director, Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis University of Southern California Chicago/Schaumburg, Ill. Yes, there are problems in “higher” education, and we need to admit there are problems before they can be fixed. William Deresiewicz’s article is a good start. One factor he did not cover is the decline in reimbursement from corporate America to employee/students. Although university costs have gone up, reimbursement has been decreasing. Businesses were willing to help employees in the 1980s. Now there are dollar caps per semester; companies cover only business-related classes; and they pay 100 percent for an A, but only 50 percent for a C. It puts pressure on a student working full time, with family and community commitments. I taught for twenty-two years in a small private university. The saddest part of the change from the 1980s to the 2000s is that of “learning is fun” to “learning is drudgery.” ROGER CLERY, professor emeritus Roosevelt University Los Angeles If William Deresiewicz’s “Faulty Towers” were the only essay The Nation published this year, it would be enough. PHYL VAN AMMERS ‘Policing Pregnancy’ Indeed Bluff Point, N.Y. Re Michelle Goldberg’s “Policing Pregnancy” [May 9]: another rich, fat, white guy in a suit condemning a poor woman for making a difficult decision about an unwanted pregnancy. The next time I see one of these sanctified fools, like Carl Swimmer (R-Utah), giving birth, I will listen to his misogynistic diatribes. Until then I will acquiesce to a woman’s right to choose. Butt out, butthead! If men were sentenced to prison for killing sperm (the actual beginning of life), think of all the life sentences they’d get for those children left on the shower curtain. MARK D. SMYTH
Jun 7, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
‘Overdose of Enthusiasm’ Arlington, Mass. John Nichols’s “The Post-Wisconsin Game Plan” [May 30] highlights some positive anti-corporate initiatives by the California Nurses Association (CNA); the Firefighters; my own union alma mater, the Communications Workers of America; and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). I would caution about an overdose of enthusiasm for SEIU’s “Fight for a Fair Economy,” however. On paper, this campaign looks fine. Who on the liberal/left could object to any well-written blueprint for “mobilizing low-wage workers—be they union members or not” or “channeling anger about jobs into action for positive change”? Unfortunately, there’s a wide gap between union rhetoric and reality. Past organizational behavior may be more predictive of future performance than current pronouncements. See, for example, the case of new SEIU president Mary Kay Henry, whose “voice” Nichols finds to be so “calm” and “thoughtful.” Before taking over from Andy Stern a year ago, Henry was part of the international union wrecking crew that laid waste SEIU’s membership base in California in early 2009, leaving many rank-and-filers little inclined to go knocking on anyone’s door “to build mass movements of low-income and working-class people.” When Henry and other SEIU officials in Washington removed the elected leaders of the 150,000-member United Healthcare Workers-West, without just cause, and put UHW’s local under trusteeship, they triggered a series of disastrous inter- and intra-union conflicts. These fights consumed more than $140 million in dues money, when everyone’s contribution was added up. In California thousands of SEIU-represented “working-class people” were forced to mobilize against their own national union while fending off the attacks of private and public sector employers. Nichols further strains our credulity when he highlights the membership engagement insights of “veteran organizer Jane McAlevey.” Henry and McAlevey both served on the SEIU executive board that rubber-stamped Stern’s takeover of UHW, applauded his costly attacks on CNA and the Puerto Rico teachers union (FMPR) and then tried to cannibalize UNITE-HERE, triggering further defections from Change to Win, the SEIU-initiated labor federation (now down to four members). The idea that a union with this troubled and divisive track record can simply reinvent itself as a new labor vanguard is highly questionable. Let’s remember that SEIU was first going to save us with its New Unity Partnership in 2004. A year later, it was Change to Win to the rescue. After that, what we needed was Obama and a $10 million SEIU venture called “Change That Works” to hold Democrats accountable. Now “Fight for a Fair Economy” is the key? By all means, we should fight for economic justice, on the job and in the community, with any helpful labor allies. But recent history has shown that business union rebranding, internal dysfunction and organizational attention deficit disorder foster little “positive change” or political “staying power.” STEVE EARLY The Empathy Gene Detroit, Mich. Jackson Lears’s critique of Sam Harris’s books [“Same Old New Atheism,” May 16] gratuitously slams all of science. I teach the “parascience” of evolutionary psychology. Lears’s criticism of it is shopworn and easily refuted. No such thing as human nature?—ridiculous given the extensive influence of genes on human behavior. Adaptationist hypotheses not falsifiable? Many have been refuted. Learning how our prehistoric ancestors lived means we must live the same way? What evolutionist advocates for resuming hunting and gathering? If we progressives disdain science, we yield its power to the less fastidious conservatives. GLENN WEISFELD Martinsburg, W.V. Ethics is born of the ability to empathize. Some have it and some don’t. We tend to use religion or psychology or philosophy to justify what we are already inclined to do. The men who flew planes into buildings on 9/11 lacked empathy, and Sam Harris, apparently, does as well. In New Orleans, a black queen told William Burroughs, “Some people are just shits, honey.” AUSTIN PORTER Madison, Va. Jackson Lears has effectively identified Sam Harris’s errors. Contrary to Harris’s claim—that science can solve humanity’s ethical problems—lies the philosophical and scientific fact that the logic driving the brain/body, essentially the physical laws of nature, cannot explain the motives behind human behavior. Spinoza, who is acknowledged as the philosopher of science, makes it clear that even though body and mind are simply two different ways of looking at the same thing, the laws that govern the body cannot explain the flow and connectivity of ideas. Harris assumes the opposite, that some physical function of the brain can be analyzed to determine what people ought to be doing with their lives. His error is easily demonstrated. Even if there were, for example, a “compassion gene,” that gene would function pretty much the way all hardware does. We know how nuts and bolts work, but from their physical nature we cannot determine the function of the things they fasten. Similarly, we can say the brain is a data-processing engine, but even a full knowledge of how it works would tell us nothing of the meanings of the data being processed. We will not know from that gene what virtues we should love. Our future thus lies in the hands of sociologists, historians, political scientists—all those who strive to understand the real
forces that empower us in our human struggle. The physical laws that determine how the brain functions assure that the understandings these humanist searchers are able to derive will be encoded in our neurons and thus drive our behavior. This fact—and it is a fact—explains both the joys and sorrows we have encountered in our history. Harris got one thing right: the brain processes errors as perfectly as it processes truth; for that reason we must strive to get our ideas straight. For whatever we decide the truth to be shall determine how we act. Harris would have us wander the brain’s labyrinth, vainly searching for the truth. The only truth we will find there is the truth of how the brain works. And that will not move us one nanometer closer to understanding life itself. FRANKLIN LONZO DIXON JR. Author, Spinoza’s God Lears Replies RINGOES, N.J. Far from attacking “all of science,” as Glenn Weisfeld charges, I simply questioned scientific claims that are based on conceptually flawed designs or empirically weak evidence—such as just-so stories or statistical results that turn out not to be replicable. These problems have afflicted work in the behavioral sciences (including “evolutionary psychology”) and have undermined positivist pretensions to certainty. The difficulties become especially marked in efforts to construct a science of ethics. I appreciate Frank Dixon’s (and Spinoza’s) elaboration of my argument on this matter. JACKSON LEARS No Nicknames, Please Re Nik Steinberg’s June 13 “The Monster and Monterrey”: Nuevo León’s governor’s full name is Rodrigo Medina de la Cruz.
Jun 1, 2011 / Our Readers and Jackson Lears
Letters Letters
GDP RAISES ALL BOATS Cambridge, Mass. The answer to Martha Nussbaum’s “What Makes Life Good?” [May 2] might have been different if she had presented some key facts, namely, that virtually every statistical test shows a strong relationship (“trickle down”) between growth in national income (GDP), which she disparages as a measure of well-being, and reduction in poverty. Why? Because increases in GDP raise paid employment—having a good paid job means not being poor for landless people like Vasanti, Nussbaum’s protagonist; it’s the default of poverty in today’s developing world. Even in African countries with large mining and agricultural estates and unequal income distribution, poverty has sharply fallen since 2005 because prices of minerals and cash crops have risen, and the incomes of miners and poor agricultural workers have improved. How to create good jobs (every survivor in a poor country works, but typically in self-employment at a subsistence level)? Nussbaum praises the Capabilities approach: making job seekers better clothed, housed, fed and educated (“a crucial avenue of opportunity”). But in developing countries, where educated unemployment is rife, investing in job seekers’ right to education doesn’t create remunerative work; usually better qualified job seekers simply join the unemployed, or the brain drain if they’re lucky. More jobs require pressure on government (local, state and national) to invest in job creation. Graffiti in one Indian village read, “We will give the Congress Party our vote if it gives us a job.” And it did, by promising
2 million government jobs to trigger more private sector employment. So “what makes life good” for Vasanti is not just reforming the household and bettering the village; it’s becoming a progressive national activist to influence decisions at the top of the power pyramid, not just decisions about education and security but also about capital investments and employment. ALICE AMSDEN Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nussbaum Replies Chicago I am very grateful to Professor Amsden for her thoughtful and provocative letter. Her defense of GDP omits, however, a crucial question: how should we define poverty? I argue that the right question to ask is, What are people actually able to do and be?—in a wide range of areas, including health, bodily integrity, education, political rights and liberties, employment opportunities and quite a few others. If we think of poverty as the absence of the Central Human Capabilities on my list, then it is simply not true that increased GDP by itself “trickles down” to relieve poverty. Field studies of the different Indian states, conducted by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, show that growth is poorly correlated with achievements in health and education: Kerala, whose economy has not grown well, has stunning educational achievements (99 percent male and female literacy in adolescent years, dramatically different from the national averages I reported) and equally impressive health achievements; states like Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, which have focused on growth, lag behind in health and education (see Dreze and Sen, India Development: Selected Regional Perspectives, Oxford, 1997). Nor does the independence of health and education from GDP disappear when we turn to the more affluent countries: Kerala’s general health achievements are similar to those of Harlem in New York City, which is good for a poor state in a poor country but shameful in a rich nation like ours (see Sen, “The Economics of Life and Death,” Scientific American, May 1993). Now let us consider women’s vulnerability to violence, a key part of Vasanti’s story. Unfortunately, although good data are hard to come by, we can confidently conclude that our rich nation has a shamefully high rate of violence against women. The Violence Against Women survey published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that 18 percent of US women have experienced rape or attempted rape, usually from an intimate partner; the rate of other physical violence is approximately double that. Finally, let us consider political and religious liberty: does increased GDP per capita “trickle down” to produce these good things? People used to say so, predicting that China would soon change. Time has told a different story. In short: if we think of poverty and well-being broadly, as I argue we should, increased GDP alone proves incomplete, and GDP information will not tell us how people are faring in these other, also important, respects. I agree with Professor Amsden that job creation is extremely important: education is only part of what government should provide. So I endorse the Rural Employment Guarantee instituted by India’s Congress Party (for which much credit is due to Jean Dreze). Even if government were to give people not only education but also a basic minimum livelihood, this would be inferior to job creation from the point of view of agency and self-respect: jobs allow people to control their own destiny rather than making them passive dependents. MARTHA NUSSBAUM The Goldstone ‘Recant’ Mill Valley, Calif. My thanks to Adam Horowitz, Lizzy Ratner and Philip Weiss for exposing the distortions of what Judge Richard Goldstone actually wrote in his April 1 op-ed for the Washington Post [“The Goldstone Affair,” May 2]. The authors argued convincingly that Judge Goldstone did not “recant” the report, as supporters of Israel’s far-right government claim. But I wish they had questioned his use of the word “deliberate” when it came to Israel’s actions against Gaza civilians. What else accounted for Israel’s indiscriminate use of artillery, white phosphorus weapons and bombs in one of the world’s most densely populated areas, if not the deliberate targeting of civilians? Why did the Israelis level public buildings, a large food warehouse, small factories and sewage and water facilities, if not to punish civilians? And why, oh why, did they destroy a large chicken farm and kill 31,000 chickens? The word “deliberate” is often in the eye of the beholder. But I can see nothing accidental about Operation Cast Lead, especially since the casualty figures—1,400 Gazans and thirteen Israelis dead—indicate that Israeli soldiers were not acting in self-defense. RACHELLE MARSHALL North Haven, Conn. “The Goldstone Affair” may have created an unnecessary opacity in its account of Goldstone’s two after-statements on his report. It has him saying to the AP, after apparently renouncing the report, that “as presently advised I have no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this time.” A bizarre case of asserting A and then Not A. However, his full statement, according to the AP story, was this: “As appears from the Washington Post article, information subsequent to publication of the report did meet with the view that one correction should be made with regard to intentionality on the part of Israel,” the judge said. “Further information as a result of domestic investigations could lead to further reconsideration, but as presently advised I have no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this time.” He meant to make one correction (not minor but not definitive of the report’s total findings): on the charge of intentionality of government policy. Though “further information” might lead to “further reconsideration,” he has, at present, “no reason to believe that any [further] part of the report needs to be reconsidered at this time.” The authors’ shortened quotation makes him sound simply self-contradictory. Whatever his motives—judging by the op-ed and the AP correction alone—he was unexpectedly careless in the op-ed and reasonably careful in the interview. DAVID BROMWICH Palm Coast, Fla. Israel’s foreign minister accused Richard Goldstone of giving “legitimacy to terrorist organizations.” Israel already did that by electing two former terrorist leaders to be prime ministers. Menachem Begin of the Irgun proudly called himself Terrorist No. 1. My experience of the Middle East in the mid-’40s leads me to believe that Stern Gang leader Yitzhak Shamir deserves that title. HORACE HONE The Spider Woman Rita Hayworth Tango Pittsburgh Natasha Wimmer points out, in “The Cursi Affair” [May 9], Manuel Puig’s formidable contribution to the Latin American literature of cursi. But as Pamela
Bacarisse has shown in her two studies of Puig’s novels (The Necessary Dream and Impossible Choices), Puig treated popular culture and high culture with equal seriousness. They both deal with the human need to make “the universe less hideous and time less heavy” (Baudelaire). Puig’s vision of life was essentially bleak, but it helped him understand the lives of quiet desperation of others. KEITH McDUFFIE Swans & Zombies & Book Clubs, Oh My! Montreal Our book club met in April to discuss The Black Swan. Some loved Nassim Taleb. Others hated him. But all would agree that Joshua Clover’s “Swans and Zombies” [April 25] gets Taleb all wrong. Indeed, anyone who skim-reads The Black Swan in Barnes & Noble could tell you that. Like the Fight Club, our book club has a few simple rules: first and foremost, if you wish to join us for a symposium, you must read the entire book. Unlike Clover, we think it unethical (and shameful) to talk about books you haven’t read. When reviewers play with ideas they haven’t earned, they signal disrespect for ideas and authors, as well as contempt for readers. JOHN FAITHFUL HAMER Clover Replies Ithaca, N.Y. I have been impressed with the fierce defenses marshaled by the faithful on behalf of Taleb’s book, which I have read with all the diligence it requires. It would be unfortunate if such spirited engagements, focusing their energies on what is a mere fillip in an extended review, ignored the books and issues that are its contents—i.e., catastrophic crisis as a characteristic of capitalism rather than as a consequence of one of its recent management styles, and thus not easily resolved by such conventional choices—when such attention is all one can ask from a serious reader. JOSHUA CLOVER
May 25, 2011 / Our Readers, Martha C. Nussbaum, and Joshua Clover
Letters Letters
Mud in Your Eye Hamtramck, Mich. In minor objection but with much appreciation for Elias Altman’s “Watered Whiskey” [May 2], it seems to me that this collection contains some of the strongest barrels of whiskey brewed by James Baldwin, and as one reads it, and feels the anger that emanates from this love-revering artist, one can understand why these writings, perhaps until now, remained uncollected; taken together, his truth is hard to swallow. Yes, he says, we have come so far, and no, he is not talking about race relations in society, and probably he is not talking about you or, for that matter, me. It burns our throat, and depending on where we came from, makes us feel dirty or makes us feel real. For those of us who are not made proud by his paintings of the great myth of America, but who sense that salvation will come not in loving the freedom but in freeing our love, I think we should ask ourselves: have we added water just to make it easier to go down? CAMERON KYLE-SIDELL Dreamt of in Your Philosophy Holden, Mass. Re Richard Wolin’s thoughtful review of James Miller’s Examined Lives [“Being in the World,” March 7/14]: I would like to see critics take seriously that Western philosophers do not represent all of philosophy. How rich are the traditions of Asia, which could have informed this book’s mode of inquiry. Soon the day will have passed when philosophers of Asia can be ignored without critical comment and when authors are not called out for this failure of global worldview. TODD LEWIS Shorewood, Wis. Richard Wolin properly gives a good part of his review to discussion of Socrates and Plato. Unfortunately, he describes Plato’s Forms as a concern of metaphysics but not of civic life. But Plato makes it clear that the Forms are about knowing what’s truly good, which is the key to any truly useful contribution to civic life. This is not a question that any responsible philosophy can ignore. It would have been helpful if Miller or Wolin had mentioned the valuable contributions to political thought of Locke, Hegel, Mill and Rawls, all of whom followed Plato’s lead in thinking that a clear picture of what’s good for humans is indispensable for thinking about civic life. Obviously philosophers aren’t politically or morally infallible, but they’ve done a good deal to clarify how we might best live together. ROBERT M. WALLACE Wolin Replies New York City In keeping with Todd Lewis’s suggestion, I am all in favor of histories of philosophy that are in tune with the contributions of Taoism, Confucianism and so forth. But I am not sure that such an approach would have worked well in the case of James Miller’s Examined Lives, which is focused on continuities and discontinuities within the post-Platonic philosophical tradition. I agree with Robert M. Wallace about the relationship between the Good, as philosophically defined, and human excellence. However, we disagree about the nature of Plato’s contribution to this discourse. In many ways, Plato’s distrust of the demos translated into a fear of politics and a mistrust of civic engagement. Hence, the draconian (and distasteful) nature of his political prescriptions: elite rule by Guardians and Philosopher Kings, the “myth of the metals” and the Noble Lie, which is designed to prevent hoi polloi, or unwashed masses, from trying to better themselves. Plato’s metaphysical starting point—the supersensible Forms—already displays a scorn for the phenomenal world, politics included. We would do better to take our bearings from Aristotle’s proto-democratic definition of politics as “ruling and being ruled in turn.” RICHARD WOLIN
May 18, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Uncle Sam, Closet Socialist West Plains, Mo. John Nichols’s “How Socialists Built America” [May 2] is an instant classic and can’t-miss candidate for inclusion in the next annual Best American Essays. DAVID DUNLAP Woodbridge, Va. The fact that Vivian Gornick’s review of The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, brimming with Luxemburg’s trenchant and subtle perceptions about the vagaries of socialism [“History and Heartbreak,” May 2], appears in the same issue as John Nichols’s piece reveals weakness of editorial judgment. Compared with Luxemburg’s, Nichols’s views of socialists and socialism are sophomoric. Luxemburg knew that socialist governments often evolved into harsh dictatorships. In Chile, as the president of a 135-year-old democracy, Salvador Allende introduced a new social compact that Luxemburg would have applauded. Allende’s approach paralyzed his government. His cabinet and advisers discussed every alternative course of action in grievous detail, intensively, intelligently and endlessly. No decisions were taken. Hugo Chávez came to power in Venezuela as a populist committed to socialism. He has avoided the trap of chronic indecision by moving resolutely toward dictatorship. It should be clear that America has not been built by socialists of either the Allende or Chávez variety. Norman Thomas realized that he would not gain such power. He employed indirect and pragmatic means to inculcate creative social-democratic innovations into mainstream policy. LAWRENCE J. O’BRIEN Auburn, Ala. John Nichols’s article was such a pleasure and relief to read. I am so weary of politicians tossing the term “socialism” around as a fearmongering epithet. They equate socialist ideas with Stalinism, and are not honest enough to admit that much of what makes America great is positive socialism. Not only do the programs Nichols cites (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, school lunch and others) owe a great deal to socialist ideas; fire and police departments, public libraries and the Interstate system also reflect socialist tendencies. Even the revenue sharing of Major League Baseball is socialist. Not so long ago the word “communist” was hurled at anyone whose views threatened some people. Now the fearmongers hope to use the respectable word “socialist” as a term of derision. It must not happen. We must join Nichols in loud affirmation that there is such a thing as good socialism. O.C. BROWN Amherst, Mass. May I add to John Nichols’s welcome cast of socialist-leaning characters Benjamin Franklin, our senior and perhaps most important founding father, a rags-to-riches capitalist who first proposed (I believe) public fire departments, public libraries, public parks, public schools, public streetlights, etc. FAYTHE TURNER Reno, Nev. John Nichols mentions James Fulton as a GOP moderate who worked with Socialist Party members. I was Fulton’s Congressional aide from 1957 to 1959 while I was attending George Washington law school. Fulton was a “liberal” Republican from a steelworkers’ district in Pittsburgh. He served fourteen terms and died in office. Back in the ’50s Republicans believed in “Government.” They thought they could do a better job of managing it than the Democrats. Too bad the modern Republican Party doesn’t have any Jim Fultons in its ranks! ALAN HUTCHISON Homage to the Deadline Poet Washington, D.C. Whenever the Rs say “deficit” or “debt” to a man, The Ds should say, over and over again: Afghanistan. REPRESENTATIVE BOB FILNER (Calif-51)
May 11, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
W(h)ither Medicare New York City Contrary to your editorial “A Serious Man” [April 25], those of us over 55 would also be affected by Ryancare. Paul Ryan’s scheme to destroy Medicare is a prescription for intergenerational warfare. Americans under 55 and not eligible for Medicare will become resentful of Medicare beneficiaries. As those of us over 55 die off, the voting bloc for Medicare will become smaller and smaller, Medicare funding will decrease, services will be reduced and fewer doctors will accept Medicare payments. Newt Gingrich will have achieved his goal of having Medicare “wither on the vine.” I am 65. If I live to be 85, I doubt Medicare will be there for me, either. REBA SHIMANSKY Boise, Idaho The Medicare issue seems a smoke screen. What should really have citizens concerned is Paul Ryan’s proposal to lower the highest individual tax rate from 33 to 25 percent. Perhaps we should raise that rate from 33 to 50 percent (Reagan-era rates). Now that would be “serious.” ROBERT RYCHERT Plymouth, Mass. Paul Ryan’s plan for Medicare in three sentences: (1) eliminate Medicare for those under 55; (2) shift the cost of Medicare to future seniors by issuing vouchers that don’t keep up with healthcare inflation; (3) hope that today’s seniors are stupid/greedy/selfish enough to go along with this. Ryan’s plan follows the standard right-wing playbook—pit one group against another (private vs. public sector workers, nonunion vs. union, rich vs. poor, young vs. old) and privatize everything in sight. It’s a simple strategy—divide and conquer. Congressional Democrats, President Obama, progressive TV and radio talk-show hosts need to be out there with simple charts (à la Ross Perot) to explain this. We don’t have a minute to waste, because Medicare isn’t the only program in jeopardy. CYNTHIA CURRY Fundamentalist ‘Paleologic’ Narberth, Pa. In “Axis of Fundamentalism: Gainesville to Mazar-i-Sharif” [April 25] Patricia J. Williams shows us what can happen when words are infused with unreflective self-righteousness and wielded as weapons in confused and overheated rhetoric. Too often they become metaphors that fundamentalists hate, kill and die by. Psychiatrist Silvano Arieti wrote about aspects of the thinking of adult schizophrenics, also typically found in children 1 to 4, characterized by a primitive form of logic that Arieti called “paleologic.” Misconceptions based on it in the child may confuse him and amuse his parents, while those of the psychotic may be bizarre and idiosyncratic. But paleologic inspired by fundamentalist fervor in otherwise normal adults can be lethal. STEPHEN E. LEVICK Just Another Word for Nothin’ Left to Lose Los Angeles Corey Robin, in “Reclaiming the Politics of Freedom” [April 25], is right in seeing conservative ideology as successfully identifying freedom with the market and depicting government as the source of constraint. Of course, we need to reverse this falsehood by showing how the market enslaves while the government can enhance freedom. But he is dead wrong when he talks about “the age-old suspicions on the left that freedom is…inherently antagonistic to equality.” Since the origins of the terms “left” and “right” in 1789, the left has conjoined liberty with equality. Karl Mannheim’s classic Ideology and Utopia makes it clear that it is the rightists (ideologists) who see freedom as requiring inequality; the leftists (utopians) have consistently viewed equality as a requirement of liberty—as did, incidentally, the ancient Athenian democrats. ROGER CARASSO Schaumburg, Ill. I agree with Corey Robin’s argument about the need to “reclaim the politics of freedom,” but only to a point. The GOP—since Reagan, I think—has been adept at connecting “freedom” to a deep love of country, responsibility and order, despite advocating a radical agenda that diminishes those things. Democrats don’t need to talk more about “freedom”; they need to talk about doing what is right, as a matter of faith, patriotism and just plain human decency. Rather than “freedom” they should find religion—not a church but the source of their own deeply held convictions—and connect through that. And if there are no deeply held convictions, then there are more problems than just what terms we employ in our rhetoric. GENE GIANNOTTA Carrboro, N.C. Corey Robin argues for the left to adopt “the politics of freedom.” But “freedom” has little to say to our day-to-day concerns. Here in Carrboro we prefer “stewardship, caring and community.” These values have sustained a thirty-two-year-old farmers’ market, helped us join just four other Eastern cities as a silver-level bike community and led to ready acceptance of a growing immigrant population. A former mayor is now the most progressive member of the State Senate. Another was the state’s first openly gay elected mayor. We have five coffee shops, none of them chains, and a locally owned newspaper. We are the smallest town in the Southeast to receive stimulus funding for energy retrofits. Our citizens embrace advocacy on a host of issues from climate change to human rights to war and peace. In 2003 we declared Buy French month in response to the “freedom fries” nonsense in Washington. Stewardship, caring and community have served the left well because they truly speak to the experience of the people. DAN COLEMAN Buying the Wiesenthal Book New Smyrna Beach, Fla. D.D. Guttenplan has made a sale for Tom Segev [“On the Case,” April 25]: I will buy Segev’s book about Simon Wiesenthal because he approaches the man’s life with compassion. Yes, Wiesenthal often made inconsistent claims. Yes, Wiesenthal was vain, etc. But without his lifelong dedication to truth and justice the world would be less informed about Austria’s gleeful attachment to the Nazis. More important, many Nazi war criminals would have gone to their graves never having to publicly acknowledge their crimes against humanity. SAMUEL MCILRATH You Say Spartacist, I Say Sparticus Chicago In his April 25 letter Tom Tilitz states, “[Clara] Zetkin was a leader of the revolutionary wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany…. Her opposition to World War I led her, along with her close friend Rosa Luxemburg, to split from that party and help found the German Spartacist League.” The party of Luxemburg, Zetkin and Karl Liebknecht was the Spartakusbund, or Spartacus League. The Spartacist League is a Trotskyist party founded in the United States in the 1960s. In German, Spartacist League would be Bund der Spartakisten.
May 5, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Too Pig to Bail Bluff Point, N.Y. William Greider’s message in “Put the Banksters on Trial” [April 18] is right on the money! If a citizen robs a bank, he will go to jail. Why should corrupt bankers walk free when they’ve robbed an entire nation? And why is President Obama so afraid to let Elizabeth Warren off her leash? I say cut her loose, and let’s watch all the creepy Madoff wannabes pay for their crimes! MARK D. SMYTH Not So Smart, ALEC Eugene, Ore. The American Legislative Exchange Council’s aggressive pursuit of the e-mail records of university professors who have dared to offer some insight into ALEC’s considerable behind-the-scenes influence in crafting anti–public worker legislation is ripe with ironic hypocrisy [“Noted,” April 18]. As revealed by The Nation’s investigative reporting on the anti-immigration legislation passed in Arizona, ALEC is a central player in shadowy antidemocratic efforts to move a highly conservative and destructive agenda through statehouses across the country. Its carbon-copy legislative proposals have cropped up in legislatures across the country, complete with the same misspellings and typos. While ALEC is a private organization and therefore exempt from FOIA, it seems to me that there should be a greater effort made to investigate and expose the members of this cabal, given their obvious effort to influence legislation while avoiding responsibility for the consequences of their efforts. CLAIRE SYRETT Tax the Rich—Please! Prescott, Wisc. So, New York’s new Democratic governor wants to let the “millionaire’s tax” lapse [Katha Pollitt, “Women Under the Budget Knife,” April 18]. Perhaps rephrasing the rallying cry of our founding fathers would be appropriate: No representation without taxation. WILLIAM KRUBSACK Kudos to Melissa Boca Raton, Fla. Re “Are We All Black Americans Now?” [April 18]: Whenever I finish listening to Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC or when I finish one of her Nation columns, I always feel like my consciousness has been raised about the human condition and, more specifically, the black experience in America. This essay was carefully prepared, building step by step from the foundation up, with historical truth and insight in a breathtaking series of historical analogies between life for the African-American community and events taking place since the November elections. Bravo to Harris-Perry for seeing things that many of us miss and for the thought-provoking analysis in each of her wonderful columns. BOB WAXMAN Olney, Md. I admire and greatly appreciate Melissa Harris-Perry’s intelligence, mind and creative expressions. In an April 18 Nation Associates ad she says, “For a progressive political nerd like me, being asked to write a column for The Nation was equivalent to being drafted by the NBA (although admittedly with a much smaller salary).” Melissa, think bigger! You are much more valuable than any NBA player! MARY A. ALLMAN Stirling, N.J. Bravo! Melissa Harris-Perry hits the bull’s-eye again. We are all very pleased in my family that she is on board what my granddaughter calls Grampa’s favorite “grown-up magazine with no pictures.” Marriage must agree with her, since she seems smarter with every issue. But this is absolutely the last iteration of her periodically reinvented name I will tolerate—unless, of course, she marries me. L.E. ALBA Palestinians & Israelis Together Motza Ilit, Israel Joseph Dana and Noam Sheizaf, in “The New Israeli Left” [March 28], mention Combatants for Peace. Some Israelis are actively opposing the occupation and the settlements—they are literally destroying our country—and assisting Palestinians because we feel, as Jews, it is our moral obligation. We are a small minority, but that minority is doing great things. The Combatants for Peace movement was started jointly by Palestinians and Israelis who had taken part in violence: Israelis as soldiers and Palestinians in the struggle against the occupation, mainly during the second intifada. Until then we had seen one another only through gun sights and at detention centers. Now we have put weapons aside and fight for peace. We recognize that this is the only way to put an end to the violence and bloodshed and the oppression of the Palestinian people. We act only nonviolently and see dialogue and reconciliation as the only way to end the occupation and to halt the settlements. I recently spoke with a fellow who heads the Jerusalem–Bethlehem branch of the organization. He commanded “shock” forces (his term) in the Bethlehem area during the second intifada, and I don’t even want to think of the violence he’s been responsible for. He spent seven years in jail and was released as part of the Oslo Accords. He had never met an Israeli who was not in uniform until he participated in demonstrations at Bil’in. Here he encountered Israelis in the thick of things, opposing the path of the wall and the expropriation of land. It did not take long before he became active in Combatants for Peace. I volunteer in Humans Without Borders, an organization of about 200 members devoted to helping Palestinian families whose children require medical treatment available only in Israeli hospitals. Each week volunteers drive about fifty children and their families to and from hospitals in Israel, where we visit and comfort the children—especially the ones being treated for cancer. I drive children from the Bethlehem–Jerusalem border crossing to a hospital in West Jerusalem to undergo dialysis three times a week. Humans Without Borders also organizes summer camps for the kids; we bring whole families to the sea and zoos for fun days, and we do so much more. Ilan Shtayer is a remarkable man who almost single-handedly arranges for the weekly distribution of vegetables from Wadi Fukhin, a small Palestinian village being strangled by the ultra-Orthodox city-settlement of Betar Ilit. The village is famous for its organic agricultural produce—they raise the most amazing vegetables. But until Ilan and others took the marketing in hand, the villagers had no way to sell their vegetables. Each week he trucks the goods into Jerusalem and distributes large boxes of wonderfully fresh organic seasonal produce—we never know what the boxes will contain. The 150 families in Wadi Fukhin survive because Ilan and his friends distribute that produce. Anarchists Against the Wall, Combatants for Peace, Humans Without Borders and others desperately need funding. LARRY LESTER
Apr 27, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Libya? Visalia, Calif. In “The Libya Intervention” [April 11] you compare the NATO activity in Libya with the Iraq War. But the Iraq War was entered on a whim of the Dubya Dimwit administration, which justified its actions with a suite of blatant lies. A more appropriate comparison would be with the 1991 Gulf War, where we used military force to halt mass atrocities by armies of criminals acting out the petulant rage of a self-obsessed dictator. I don’t question our intervening in Libya, but I do question our competence. I fear we will be less successful in dealing with Qaddafi than with Saddam. DENNIS ANTHONY New York City I objected strongly to the Iraq invasion, but I felt proud to hear my president say that America had chosen to intervene in Libya because of who we are. I call that restoring our moral standing. ANNA THEOFILOPOULOU Tulsa, Okla. When I read the Wall Street Journal I know I will find soundly researched, reasonably objective news stories, but if I turn to the editorial pages (which I never do) reason and objectivity will be replaced by an ideology worthy of the Middle Ages. Sadly, I find The Nation to be equally praiseworthy, and guilty—with the opposite ideology. An example is your stance on Libya. Not all military interventions are equal. Kosovo cannot be equated with Iraq. BRAD BYERS Be Sure Green Is Green Beverly, Mass. Amen to Mark Hertsgaard’s final comment in “Obama ♥ Nukes” [April 11]: “Let’s make sure that [alternative energy] is truly green.” There are a lot of wolves in sheep’s clothing out there. Something green must return more energy than went into building, maintaining and decommissioning it at the end of its life. This is known as energy balance. A wind farm or solar panel in the wrong place can fail this criterion if a large infrastructure is required to distribute the energy, or if geographic considerations result in the need for heroic civil engineering. Where are energy balance studies? JOHN BELL The Lies of Old Men Beaverton, Ore. William Mitchell, in “Beyond Austerity” [April 4], debunks neoliberal economic myths used to justify destructive government policies. It is courageous for a professional economist to do so. He writes, “The analogy between national and household budgets is false—government can spend more than its revenue because it creates currency.” Mitchell concludes, however, that government budget deficits are needed to fund “increased public spending to directly target job creation.” If the government can “print” all the “currency” it needs, why should there be a budget deficit? When the government prints and directly spends legal tender, it competes with private banks, which also create money. Banks charge interest on their new money, which vanishes when the loan is repaid. Newly printed and spent government money is free of debt and permanently increases the money supply. When “targeted jobs” build interstates and bridges, or a high-speed rail system, they do not compete for resources with home builders or automobile manufacturers. Infrastructure construction and maintenance is uniquely a government responsibility, and paying for it with debt-free new “currency” will promote private investment and economic growth. Dennis Kucinich will reintroduce the National Employment Emergency Defense Act, which authorizes debt-free money creation and spending by the government (see kucinich.house.gov/UploadedFiles/NEED_ACT.pdf). ROBERT W. ZIMMERER Zacatecas, Mexico William Mitchell claims that progressive economists “with some well-known exceptions (Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman and William Greider)” now advocate “fiscal constraint” rather than increasing overall deficit spending. Stiglitz and Krugman are impeccable neoclassical economists who apparently believe in the “special case” argument for massive Keynesian-style deficits during downturns. Otherwise, they are in basic accord with the general laissez-faire consensus of mainstream economics, which generally stands apart from the zany ideas of the Chicago School monetarists and rational expectationists, the supply-siders and libertarians driving the current wave of government-smashing austerity policies. Greider is a journalist. There are, however, a few thousand professionally trained economists who have earned the term “progressive”—often known as “radical,” institutionalists, post-Keynesian, neo-Marxist or Marxist— economists. None of these practitioners are advocating “fiscal constraint” at present. Furthermore, most of these progressive economists would question Mitchell’s standard-issue Keynesian solutions, since while “Japan has been running large deficits since…the early 1990s,” as Mitchell champions, it has also languished in a morass of deflation and stagnation. JAMES MARTÍN CYPHER Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas Madison, Va. I have no argument with William Mitchell’s logic; it’s his argumentative skills that need repair. After a long historical introduction, Mitchell lists five so-called neoliberal lies. He then proceeds to clarify the lies by repeating them in more or less commonsensical terms, pounding them even more clearly into his readers’ minds. Those lies have curb appeal. If they are to be refuted, the language must be equally appealing. As Mitchell points out, the public has been hornswoggled by smooth-talking blue-eyed devils on Fox and other media outlets. If he had simply stated that demand is a function of money in consumers’ pockets and supply is a function of demand, turning supply-side economics on its numskull head, he could have proceeded to destroy the neoliberal lies in plain, organized words instead of deluging his readers with opaque jargon. FRANKLIN LONZO DIXON JR. Correction Katha Pollitt’s May 2 “Subject to Debate” column said that Planned Parenthood received $317 million in Title X funding. Actually, Title X received $317 million in 2010, part of which went to PP.
Apr 20, 2011 / Our Readers