Purdy writes: "Katniss Everdeen has broken the Hunger Games and entered open war against the Capitol. But from Ferguson to Washington to Wall Street, we are still playing our own Hunger Games. We are still playing by rules that divide us."
(photo: Emil Lendof/The Daily Beast)
The Hunger Games Economy
By Jedediah Purdy, The Daily Beast
29 November 14
The popularity of Suzanne Collins’s series suggests it has caught something many Americans sense: This is not the best we can do.
atniss Everdeen has broken the Hunger Games and entered open war against the Capitol. But from Ferguson to Washington to Wall Street, we are still playing our own Hunger Games. We are still playing by rules that divide us.
At the start of the YA series, no one really questions that each of Panem’s twelve districts will send two of its young people to fight to the death in a landscape-scale arena that is part haunted forest, part Tough Mudder course. The audience wants its favorites to win. The participants want to win—or at least they want to survive, and when losing means dying, winning is the only way to survive.
The story’s moral core is solidarity: the Gamers start caring about one another and resisting the rule that only one contestant can survive the Hunger Games. The political pivot comes when they realize that there could be a world without Hunger Games at all. The rules of this game are man-made. They benefit some people and hurt many others—even the so-called winners, who survive by becoming killers, then become the celebrity playthings of Capitol elites. With this insight, the fight against the other contestants and the other districts can become a united rebellion against the Capitol.
And what about here in our real world, the one Suzanne Collins didn’t create? Well, of course the Hunger Games is a violent fairy tale. There’s no leering President Snow behind our rules of the game. But the enormous resonance of the story suggests it’s caught something many Americans sense: these rules are not the best we can do. We are living with our own Hunger Games.
What are our Hunger Games? I’d start with the economy. The fact that tens of millions of Americans still can’t afford health care—especially but not only in states that have resisted Obamacare—means that losing the game can literally mean dying. Statistically, rejecting the Medicaid expansion means more than a thousand early deaths every year in my state, North Carolina, mostly among the working poor. That’s just one rule of the game.
Another is that, because it’s hard to unionize, a worker who asks for more is likely to be replaced by someone who will ask for less. Solidarity is harder, and people are pitted against one another. The 29 coal miners who were killed in the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia four years ago were non-unionized, which made it easier for their bosses to ignore safety rules and press for ramped-up production over human life. Don Blankenship, then-head of the company, has just been criminally indicted, but it’s five years too late. His policies made the workplace a Hunger Games arena of its own. National labor law made it easier for him to do.
In this week of Ferguson and everything it stands for, looking behind the rules of the game is especially urgent. The American economy does not teach us that “black lives matter,” at least not as much as white lives. At the start of each Hunger Games, the contestants scramble for a pile of survival gear and weapons before taking off for the woods to hunt one another. Here, black children are born into families with about 10 percent—one-tenth—the average wealth of white families. They are born in neighborhoods with fewer business owners, fewer professionals—fewer of the patrons who can spot their talent and send the real-world version of those little silver parachutes that drop into the Hunger Games arena to save our heroes.
Some white people and immigrants feel personally accused by talk of a “racist” system. After all, don’t they work hard and play by the rules? Do they hate anybody? This perspective can be perfectly sincere and deeply personally decent. (On the Midwestern side of the family, I come from people who work very hard, obey all the rules, and hate no one—who, in fact, would help anyone who needed it.)
But once we understand that it’s the rules of the game that are the problem, we can see that no one needs to be racist for the system to keep spitting out racist results. No one needs to hate for a game to be hateful. Even “fair” rules, which treat every person alike, are not really fair if the contestants scramble across the starting line in very unequal situations, some with swords and bows, some with a little rope and a box of matches. The problem is that being a decent person in an indecent situation is not enough, even though it may also be all you can do.
This is especially hard to see because Americans, even more than other people, tend to see the rules of the market as natural and unchangeable facts. Gravity, as the tee-shirt says, isn’t just a good idea; it’s the law. In American life, the familiar version of market competition is often treated as that kind of law, the kind you can’t change and defy only if you don’t mind falling on your face.
This is naiveté, but it isn’t exactly innocent anymore. We have no excuse for ignorance about the universal health care that most wealthy countries enjoy, the more cooperative and secure German labor economy (where union representatives are entitled to a generous share of seats on corporate boards), or the Swedish family-leave policies that mean you don’t risk losing your job if you dedicate six months to your new baby. And we have no excuse for not knowing that our economy, our schools, and our policing enforce an inequality that many of us wouldn’t wish for but few are doing much to change.
As grown-ups without turbo-charged explosive arrows, we can only change the rules through politics. And our politics reinforces our Hunger Games economy, thanks partly to the Supreme Court’s commitment to treating money as speech and, therefore, democracy as a branch of capitalism. No wonder we enjoy a story where all the power is concentrated in a few wealthy hands. It’s not quite our reality, but it’s not exactly unfamiliar, either.
On a holiday dedicated to reflection, we should take seriously the political impulse that the Hunger Games spurs, even if the movie itself has no politics beyond that impulse. We love winners, even against our better judgment, which is why, in the first movie, we were unsettlingly like the Capitol’s fans, thrilling to the macabre bloodshed in the arena. But we also know better. Solidarity, looking out for one another, can move us more. And, just like Katniss, we need rules that make solidarity a centerpiece of shared life, not a desperate act of rebellion. Recognizing this is the first step away from a Hunger Games economy. It is a grown-up’s way to be the Mockingjay.
FOCUS | The Rules Really Are Different for Blacks Seeking Justice
Saturday, 29 November 2014 10:51
Pitts writes: "In September, I received an email that should have left me feeling vindicated. It was in response to the nonfatal shooting of Levar Jones, an unarmed African-American man, by Sean Groubert, a white South Carolina state trooper."
Former South Carolina state trooper Sean Groubert. (photo: ABC News)
The Rules Really Are Different for Blacks Seeking Justice
By Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald
29 November 14
n September, I received an email that should have left me feeling vindicated.
It was in response to the nonfatal shooting of Levar Jones, an unarmed African-American man, by Sean Groubert, a white South Carolina state trooper. Groubert would later claim he shot Jones because Jones came at him in a menacing way. But this lie was unmasked by Groubert’s own dashcam video, which shows Jones complying with the trooper’s orders until Groubert inexplicably panics and starts shooting.
That video moved a reader named David to write the following: “Think I FINALLY get what you’ve been saying all along. That cop just shot him down for doing nothing more than compiling (sic) with his commands. No offence to black people, but I SURE AM GLAD I’M NOT BLACK IN THIS COUNTRY! Re-evaluating my opinions of the last fifty years.”
As I say, it should have felt like vindication. But it only made me sad. I kept thinking that, had there been no camera to prove Groubert lied, had there been only testimony from witnesses and whatever forensic evidence was gathered, Groubert would likely still be making traffic stops and David would support him, his opinions of the last 50 years unchanged.
My point is not that cameras are a panacea for justice — they weren’t for Oscar Grant in 2009, they weren’t for Rodney King in 1991, they weren’t for Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp in 1930. No, my point is that the bar of proof is set higher when white people — police officers, in particular — kill black ones. My point is that rules change and assumptions are different when black people seek justice.
Knowing that, who can be surprised at what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, Monday night? Who can be surprised that a prosecutor who didn’t seem to want an indictment did not convince a grand jury to return one in the August shooting of Michael Brown? Who can be surprised that Officer Darren Wilson now goes on with his life after firing 12 shots, at least six of which struck home, at an unarmed teenager while said teenager remains imprisoned by the grave? Who can be surprised people in Ferguson and around the country convulsed with shock, sorrow and disbelief? Who can be surprised some vulturous knuckleheads saw the calamity as an excuse to break windows and steal beer? Who can be surprised at pictures showing that the “injuries” Wilson sustained in his scuffle with Brown, injuries that supposedly made him so terrified for his life that he had to shoot, amount to a small abrasion on his lip and a reddened cheek?
I’m glad that video helped David to “FINALLY get” what I’ve been “saying all along,” i.e., that a police officer’s mouth, to use one of my mother’s expressions, ain’t no prayerbook; no source of infallible truth the way too many of us think it is. And that benefit of the doubt is something black people are often denied. And that America devalues black life. But if we have to go David by David to those realizations, each requiring a dashcam video before he gets the point, we are doomed to a long and dreary future of Fergusons.
Last year, when the thug George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin, I wrote that black people need to “wake the hell up” — organize, boycott, vote, demonstrate, demand.
But black people aren’t the only ones sleeping. Too many — not all, but too many — white people still live in air castles of naivete and denial, still think abiding injustice and ongoing oppression are just some fairytale, lie or scheme African Americans concocted to defraud them.
Or else that these things are far away and have no impact on their lives. The fires in Ferguson Monday night suggest that they continue that delusion at their own peril.
I still think black folks need to wake the hell up.
FOCUS | White People Feel Targeted by the Ferguson Protests: Welcome to Our World
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=33264"><span class="small">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, TIME</span></a>
Saturday, 29 November 2014 09:24
Abdul-Jabbar writes: "When the media frenzy dies down, and columnists, pundits, and newscasters take a break from examining the causes of social evils, white people get to go back to their lives in relative freedom and security. But blacks still have to worry about being harassed or shot by police. About having their right to vote curtailed by hidden poll taxes. Of facing a biased judicial system. Every. Single. Day."
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (photo: unknown)
White People Feel Targeted by the Ferguson Protests: Welcome to Our World
By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, TIME Magazine
29 November 14
White Americans feel like they are being singled out because of the color of their skin rather than any actions they’ve taken. That's how black people feel. Every. Single. Day.
n 1971, a riot broke out at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York during which prisoners demanded more political rights and better living conditions. About 1,000 inmates out of 2,200 took control of the prison, holding 42 staff members hostage. Negotiations went on for days before state police stormed the prison, resulting in 43 deaths. Attica has since become a pop culture reference in movies, songs, and TV shows. Even children’s shows like SpongeBob Squarepants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Sabrina: The Teenage Witch have referenced it. The word “Attica” is no longer about what happened in that prison 43 years ago, but is now simply a synonym for political oppression.
I hope the chanting of “Ferguson! Ferguson!” and the symbolic upraised arms of surrender will become a new cry of outrage over social injustice that will embed itself in our popular culture as deeply as Attica did.
As always, there will be blacklash.
Many white people think that these cries of outrage over racism by African Americans are directed at them, which makes them frightened, defensive, and equally outraged. They feel like they are being blamed for a problem that’s been going on for many decades, even centuries. They feel they are being singled out because of the color of their skin rather than any actions they’ve taken. They are angry at the injustice. And rightfully so. Why should they be attacked and blamed for something they didn’t do?
Which is exactly how black people feel.
The difference is that when the media frenzy dies down, and columnists, pundits, and newscasters take a break from examining the causes of social evils, white people get to go back to their lives in relative freedom and security. But blacks still have to worry about being harassed or shot by police. About having their right to vote curtailed by hidden poll taxes. Of facing a biased judicial system.
Every. Single. Day.
That’s the reason Attica makes such a poignant symbol 43 years later. The word isn’t about a specific prison and the terrible violence there, it’s about feeling unjustly imprisoned. Many African-Americans feel imprisoned by walls that are no less restrictive for being built by lack of educational and employment opportunity than by concrete and razor wire. That’s not to say things aren’t a lot better than they were back in the ’60s and ’70s, but there still isn’t an equal playing field.
The Ferguson grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson is troubling, not just for the sake of Michael Brown, but for our faith in legal institutions. Ben Casselman’s recent article in FiveThirtyEight.com concluded that it was extremely rare for a grand jury not to indict. He cited statistics that showed U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, with grand juries refusing to indict in only 11 of those cases. Given those odds, why wasn’t Officer Wilson indicted? Not because he’s white, but because he’s a cop. Casselman reviewed various studies involving officer-related shootings and concluded that grand juries rarely indict police officers in on-duty killings.
In addition to that disturbing information is the fact that the federal government keeps no national database on officer-involved shootings. One can find out how many unprovoked shark attacks occurred in 2013 (53), but you can’t find out how many cops shot or even killed citizens. Right now, it’s left up to individual police departments to self-report (wink, wink). Even the Department of Justice has stopped releasing figures because they were thought to be so unreliable.
So, with a tendency for grand juries to give officers a pass and with no reliable information on just how many shootings and killings are police-originated, how can people feel confident that there’s effective oversight on those officers who might be more prone to shoot unarmed black people? The police and the judicial system are the infrastructure of our society, and right now that infrastructure is as cracked and potholed as many of our highways.
The people of Ferguson, and across the country, are not protesting against white people or police officers, they are protesting against the kind of racism that is so embedded in various social institutions that it’s invisible to all except those it affects. They are protesting a blind faith in any institution when the facts don’t warrant that faith.
"Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.…[T]his much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul. For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter. This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.
Those words are from a speech by Robert F. Kennedy—in 1968, the year he was assassinated. He wanted things to change, and he recognized that meaningful social and political change always originates among the people, not the politicians; it originates among individuals, not institutions. When enough people are frustrated about an injustice, they will raise their voices until they are heard in the courthouse, the statehouse, and the White House.
That’s why I think people should peacefully protest whenever they believe there’s an injustice to be addressed. But we have to remember that the goal of protesting is to raise awareness in those that don’t agree. This is not done instantly, through one gathering. Nor is it done through the persistent occupation of one space. It has to be a national movement, and it has to keep its energy high. When enough people across the country gather to say something, more and more people will listen.
Second, the violence and looting is counter-productive because it redirects the message away from the reasoned arguments to just the emotion. The roar of the fires and the sound of shattering glass drowns out the voices demanding change. The level of frustration that leads to violence is understandable: When you’re treated as if you’re not a valued member of society, why should you uphold society’s values? But violence turns away potential allies and only provides more targets to start the cycle over again. Yes, we must be passionate about the situation, but only because our passion will fuel the open discourse.
Third, we must focus our protests, not on the individuals that disagree with us, but on the institutions that are corrupted and therefore need to change. Change is brought on by political power and political power requires numbers. Pointing out the hypocrisy of this politician or this media pundit has no effect. But lobbying politicians with a huge voting block behind us will be effective.
While the word “Attica” has become synonymous with “oppression,” perhaps one day the word “Ferguson” will be inducted into American pop culture as meaning “justice.”
Abdul-Jabbar is a six-time NBA champion and league Most Valuable Player. Follow him on Twitter (@KAJ33) and Facebook (facebook.com/KAJ).
Our Government Officials Are Deluded About the Limits of Their Power
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=31562"><span class="small">Catherine Rampell, The Washington Post</span></a>
Saturday, 29 November 2014 00:00
Rampell writes: "If the revered Founding Fathers had clear-cut ideas about which branch of government does what, how the powers counterbalanced one another and how jurisprudence and justice are supposed to be carried out, it's all gotten a bit jumbled in recent months."
House Speaker John Boehner. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Our Government Officials Are Deluded About the Limits of Their Power
By Catherine Rampell, The Washington Post
29 November 14
hate to break it to you, dear readers, but our government is in the midst of an identity crisis.
If the revered Founding Fathers had clear-cut ideas about which branch of government does what, how the powers counterbalanced one another and how jurisprudence and justice are supposed to be carried out, it’s all gotten a bit jumbled in recent months. At all levels of government — federal, state and local — public officials are exhibiting behaviors and exercising powers that no dutiful acolyte of “Schoolhouse Rock!” would recognize.
Maybe “identity crisis” isn’t quite the right turn of phrase. It’s really more a series of delusions, or perhaps misunderstandings, about who’s actually responsible for what.
Consider the evidence.
Public prosecutors seem to believe they are defense attorneys. At least that appears to be true in the case of St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch. Typically, grand jury hearings are one-sided affairs in which the prosecution gets to cherry-pick only the most incriminating evidence in order to obtain an indictment, leaving out any evidence that might help a potential defendant. Hence the famous quip that any decent prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. But McCulloch and his team effectively cross-examined their own witnesses to discredit their case against Darren Wilson, by gently, leadingly questioning Wilson and aggressively challenging any witnesses who contradicted Wilson’s account. This can only be explained by McCulloch’s apparent confusion over who his client was.
State legislators (and their constituents) seem to believe they are the Supreme Court. At least that appears true in one insubordinate state, Arizona, where voters this month approved a ballot initiative allowing the state to ignore any federal action or program deemed “unconstitutional.” How is a law’s federal constitutionality decided? By state legislators and Arizona voters. This is a power usually reserved for the judicial branch, and ultimately the Supreme Court, but no matter. The ballot initiative’s supporters say it will come in handy when trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, as well as federal directives on immigration. Speaking of which .?.?.
President Obama seems to believe he is a “king” or “emperor,” titles he said he’d need to unilaterally suspend deportation actions en masse, right before he unilaterally suspended deportation actions en masse.
Local police departments seem to believe they are the military, rolling into suburbia in armored vehicles while aiming assault rifles and other weapons of warfare at the civilians they are supposed to serve and protect. At other times, the police seem to believe they are tax collectors, seizing civilians’ cash without ever filing charges and then putting the proceeds into public coffers.
Governors seem to believe they are mathematicians, capable of reversing the rules of arithmetic. Maryland Gov.-elect Larry Hogan (R) says he will make good on his campaign promise to cut taxes, despite next year’s projected budget shortfall of nearly $600 million. Back in Arizona, Gov.-elect Doug Ducey?(R) promises to eliminate the state’s personal and corporate taxes, while somehow increasing spending on education, amid an existing budget shortfall. Of course, Kansas’s recently reelected governor, Sam Brownback (R), has been using similarly magical arithmetic for a while now.
The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives seems to believe he is a special prosecutor. Or something to that effect. In suing Obama for failing to execute a section of the Affordable Care Act that he and his party also oppose and want nixed, John Boehner (R-Ohio) has cast himself among the likes of other beloved speak-truth-to-power legends such as Kenneth Starr.
Congress more generally seems to believe it has no responsibilities whatsoever, at least when it comes to passing laws. Again, that power has been somewhat ambivalently ceded to the president.
All very disorienting.
Maybe it’s time to send in some McKinsey-style consultants to meet with public officials and walk them through what their legally defined duties and responsibilities — and boundaries to those duties and responsibilities — are. It’ll be like that “Office Space” scene where the Bobs have the “What would you say you do here?” conversation with misguided employees, except the discussion will be over what the law says our elected leaders are supposed to be accountable for day to day, legislative session to legislative session, hearing to hearing, budget to budget.
The result may be a little less confusing, and a whole lot fairer, for the rest of us.
The Fed Needs Governors Who Aren't Wall Street Insiders
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=27766"><span class="small">Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Reader Supported News</span></a>
Friday, 28 November 2014 12:33
Warren writes: "We're concerned that the Federal Reserve - our first line of defense against another financial crisis-seems more worried about protecting Wall Street than protecting Main Street."
Elizabeth Warren. (photo: AP)
The Fed Needs Governors Who Aren't Wall Street Insiders
By Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Reader Supported News
28 November 14
e joined the Senate Banking Committee to try to make the banking system work better for American families. That's why we're concerned that the Federal Reserve-our first line of defense against another financial crisis-seems more worried about protecting Wall Street than protecting Main Street. Fortunately, this is one problem the Obama administration can start fixing today by nominating the right people to fill the two vacancies on the Fed's Board of Governors.
The Board of Governors is responsible for supervising the country's biggest banks. It's also responsible for overseeing the regional Federal Reserve banks, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. For decades, the Board of Governors and the New York Fed have been responsible for supervising Wall Street banks, but after the 2008 crisis and the regulatory lapses it revealed, Congress gave the Fed even more oversight authority. According to the new chair of the Board of Governors, Janet Yellen , the Fed's obligation to supervise the big banks is now "just as important" as its better-known obligation to set interest rates and conduct the country's monetary policy.
Two recent reports highlight that the Fed isn't very good at supervising certain banks. In September, Carmen Segarra, a former bank examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, released secret recordings she had made of meetings at the New York Fed in 2012. The recordings revealed that New York Fed employees had identified concerns with a proposed Goldman Sachs deal with Banco Santander , calling it "legal but shady." The New York Fed didn't attempt to make Goldman address these concerns. The recordings also showed Ms. Segarra's superiors pressuring her to soften her finding that Goldman did not comply with federal regulations on conflicts of interest. While the recordings offered important new insights, they ultimately confirmed the old suspicion that the Fed is too cozy with big banks to provide the kind of tough oversight that's needed.
An October report from the Fed's Office of Inspector General provided additional confirmation that the Fed is failing to oversee the big banks. The report found that the New York Fed had failed to examine J.P. Morgan Chase 's Chief Investment Office-the office that incurred over $6 billion in losses in the infamous 2012 "London Whale" incident-despite a recommendation to do so in 2009 from another Federal Reserve System team. The report concluded that the New York Fed needed to improve its supervision of the biggest, most complex banks.
Lax supervision isn't an abstract or academic problem. The stakes couldn't be higher. Just this summer, the Fed and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. determined that 11 of the country's biggest banks had no credible plan for being resolved in bankruptcy. That means that if any one of these banks makes more wild bets and loses, the taxpayers would have to bail it out to prevent the economy from crashing again. We're all counting on the Fed to monitor the big banks and stop them from taking on too much risk, but evidence is mounting that this faith in the Fed is misplaced.
While there will be a congressional hearing this week to examine what's wrong at the Fed and to consider changes in the law, the administration shouldn't wait for Congress to act. The president is responsible for nominating people to serve on the Fed's seven-member Board of Governors. Currently, two of the seven seats on the board are vacant. The president has the opportunity to move the board in a new direction-and to make that change for the long haul, since governors can end up serving terms of 14 years or more.
The president should use that opportunity to address the Fed's supervisory problem. The five sitting governors have a variety of academic and industry experience, but not one came to the Fed with a meaningful background in overseeing or investigating big banks or any experience distinguishing between the greater risks posed by the biggest banks relative to community banks. By nominating people who have a strong track record in these areas and who have a demonstrated commitment to not backing down when they find problems, the administration can show that it is taking the Fed's supervision problem seriously. Nominating Wall Street insiders for the Board of Governors would send the opposite message.
If regulators had been more willing to protect Main Street over Wall Street before 2008, they might have averted the financial crisis and the Great Recession that hurt millions of American families. So long as the Fed and other regulators are unwilling or unable to dig deeply into dangerous bank practices and hold the banks accountable, our economy-and our country-remains at risk. The administration has a chance to protect the families that are still struggling to recover from the last financial crisis. It should not pass it up.
Read the op-ed on the Wall Street Journal website here.
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atniss Everdeen has broken the Hunger Games and entered open war against the Capitol. But from Ferguson to Washington to Wall Street, we are still playing our own Hunger Games. We are still playing by rules that divide us.
n September, I received an email that should have left me feeling vindicated.
e joined the Senate Banking Committee to try to make the banking system work better for American families. That's why we're concerned that the Federal Reserve-our first line of defense against another financial crisis-seems more worried about protecting Wall Street than protecting Main Street. Fortunately, this is one problem the Obama administration can start fixing today by nominating the right people to fill the two vacancies on the Fed's Board of Governors.
