Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, and the International Corporations

The fact that US progressives are considered as inconsequential little flies on the fringe of the political system is roughly the same thing as the fact that in countries like Haiti only right wing pro international corporation politicians are allowed to govern without being assassinated or deposed (thus for example the Aristide episode). Never think that what goes on in "that dirt poor country" has no corollary in much wealthier countries.

In one of my numerous Internet travels I within the last year stumbled on a Jamaican forum which was dominated by right wing, well off Jamaicans. One thread I looked at was where the right wingers were making light of and belittling Michael Manley, who in the first of his two terms as Jamaican Prime Minister (separated by an interim) during the 1970's dabbled with policies that would rein in the corporations somewhat in favor of ordinary Jamaicans. About 30 years later, all these right wingers could do was make petty fun of Manley's efforts toward and belief in protecting the common people from the ravages of international corporations.

Ha ha ha, that's really funny, someone wanting to help ordinary people, only a small fraction of which in Jamaica (or Haiti) have ever benefitted from the huge corporations that make the right wingers well off. That’s very, very amusing.

Today, the main reasons why Jamaica is somewhat better off than Haiti are:

(a) International corporations (and of course small business people looking for an exotic place to invest) prefer English speaking countries with half way decent infrastructure to a Creole French speaking country with bad infrastructure, so Haiti has simply not gotten all that much investment by the corporations even though financial and trade policies were rammed through in their favor. It seems that the corporations reserve the right to say: "Thanks, but no thanks." And

(b) Jamaica has stubbornly retained a small but functioning public sector which prevents the corporations that operate in Jamaica from achieving total control and domination over the Jamaican government and the Jamaican people. The corporations and the international organizations that do their bidding have to settle for relative control in Jamaica because total control is denied to them there. This prevents Jamaicans from being as dirt poor as Haitians.

The trend over the last 50 years is clear: generally speaking, the more control corporations have over a country, the poorer it is, and vice versa.

Meanwhile, in Cuba, probably the most important long term result of the Revolution of all was that the international corporations have been for over 50 years now very restricted there. Ironically today, corporations are itching to operate without restrictions in Cuba because Cuba has a reasonably good infrastructure and a well educated population. Corporations can only benefit so much from dirt poor wages alone, thus their hesitation with respect to Haiti and other dirt poor countries with poor infrastructure.

Comparing on the one hand the huge corporations' relative reluctance to invest in dirt poor Haiti despite there being no restrictions on their doing so to on the other hand their licking their chops at the thought of investing in Cuba if and when they ever are allowed to, it seems that corporations don't know what is good for them. They would be better off in the long run if they refrained from crushing indigenous governments and industries by pressuring international organizations like the IMF to in turn pressure countries to pass anti people and pro corporate policies.

To see a detailed spreadsheet showing international investment by country, click here.

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It's Definitely Not Your Grandfather's China Anymore

[NOTE: The following was written on January 14, two days after the massive Haiti Quake.]

GUEST COMMENT ONE

OleManRiver January 14th, 2010 10:10 pm
Okay, I've read through all the postings here so far, and while several mention Cuba for historical comparison, nobody seems to wonder whether they have announced an intention to send in their vaunted medical corps the way they did immediately after Katrina AND WERE TURNED AWAY.

I've been watching all the news available, including World Focus (which DID have a piece this evening on the imperialist history of Haiti and the slave revolt and the reparations), but not a word on potential Cuban aid to Haiti. My bet is that one reason the U.S. is sending in big military ships is to keep the Cubans out.

Of course it's all for our "caring" for our needy neighbors to the south, whom we will not abandon, and besides, them damned Cubans don't speak French!

Won't surprise me one bit if our presence there compounds the disaster. No large-vessel functioning port, an airport with a single functioning strip, roads in the city intended for foot traffic and half of them clogged by fallen debris. No water. No electricity. Hospitals rubble. Why hasn't Nestle arranged an air drop of their fancy bottled water?

Before this is over Haitians will be blamed by the likes of Pat Robertson for cannibalism. But Christian NGO Humanitarian Mercenaries were able to save some. (CUT, to appealing-looking white couple talking to the camera about their experience helping those poor people...)

To paraphrase from Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, "Hell, the stench'l probably kill ya."

UNITY PROGRESS
Well according to the official Cuban news (granma.cu) there were about 350 Cuban medical people already in Haiti when the quake struck and more will be sent but how many had apparently not been decided as of late Wednesday or early Thursday.

How many medics and how many countries they are in I don't know but it is fairly well known that Cuba has medical people in many third world countries.

It's so nice to see that other small countries like Iceland and Sweden have flown in assistance very quickly.

GUEST COMMENT TWO

nobodyknown January 14th, 2010 10:28 pm
Cuba sent in medical aid YESTERDAY. It was one of the countries mentioned on Rachael Maddow. China had it's team mobilized within two hours, (don't know if they've actually arrived yet), and even Venezuela beat the US, being second only to the Dominican Republic.....

You are right, this will be used as a political chess game by the time things are finished with, but hopefully the people of Haiti will get the required relief...

BTW, if my memory serves me, the entire Mogadishu issue started when the fine CHRISTIAN people refused to feed the hungry children in Somalia unless they converted from their native religion, even though they had ample food in their compound. The christian compound was stormed and the food taken and the missionaries then asked for US support....

UNITY PROGRESS
I saw that China arrived in 24 hours or less; it's definitely not your grandfather's China anymore.

GUEST COMMENT THREE
DJM January 15th, 2010 2:23 am
I would like to point out what I felt was a very subtle piece of propaganda which I heard numerous times in the coverage of Haiti's trouble..... "Even China is sending a contingent." It was the word "EVEN" that caught my attention, as if it is such a surprise that they would. Yes, the American coverage managed to put a little seed of doubt about China's desire or ability to do something humanitarian (after their own earth quake disaster such a short time ago,I would expect them to understand what is needed). Maybe the talking heads on CBS didn't even realize how condescending it sounded, but my ears have become very sensitized.

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Globalism is a net Loss for Countries Such as Haiti

Countries such as Haiti are a reminder that the global economy is a failure for the great majority of people in 3rd world countries. Haitians who lived in the 1800's (after slavery ended but long before international corporations started infiltrating) were overall at least as well off as those who lived there since 1970. The lack of electricity and the lack of a few other amenities that had not been invented yet was offset by food and shelter (crude though it was) being virtually free and by everyone being able to easily get employment (mostly in agriculture but there were a few other options).

Fast forward to today, and we see that the global economy as run by the massively rich corporations is all about extracting marginal profit in just the right places and times, but obviously it does not care about people as a whole or about national economies as a whole. So in Haiti for example the international corporations might open a few factories employing 1% of the population, but the other 99% of the population not only does not get the income from the factories but faces higher prices and lesser employment opportunities due to the displacement of domestic agriculture and the displacement of other indigenous industries due to encroachment by those same global corporations. Globalism is a net loss for countries such as Haiti.

GUEST COMMENT

phoenix20 January 14th, 2010 12:17 pm
tremaine: Well said. Ghandighost above spoke (a la Klein's disaster capitalism thesis) of how disasters create extraordinary opportunities for exploitation by the vultures who go to the scenes of disasters. And so they do, and I expect the birds are already circling in search of carrion. But comments like yours are useful in reminding us that there is another opportunity that uniquely occurs with disaster: the opportunity to focus our ever-distracted attention on the real conditions of human beings in this world. I recall many post-Katrina commentaries that found as a "bright spot" in all this tragedy that it laid bare the structural racism in our society in a way that not any number of lectures by learned professors of sociology could do. We had, in other words, a brief shining "learning moment" in which we learned, among other things, that the right wing assault on "government" had succeeded so well that there was no effective government ready at any level (city, state, national) to deal with a human disaster. (Given the "tax revolt" component of the currently popular tea-baggers, I doubt we made the best use of that moment).

Now we have another "opportunity": to see through a new focus on Haiti as a virtual poster child for the neo-liberal destruction of the world an awareness of what-the-hell we having been doing to the rest of the world. I'm not too optimistic that we will do much better with this opportunity than we did with the New Orleans one. But the appearance today of this article and the companion one by Peter Hallward encourages me to "hope" at least that a vigilant and courageous alternative press can pound on the heads of our consciousness to produce some semblance of awakeness.

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Cubans in Haiti

In the wake of the huge Haiti Quake, someone was a little confused about just what Cuban resources were deployed in Haiti and when...
GUEST COMMENT

WTF January 15th, 2010 11:23 am
"...the reality that Cuba already had over 400 doctors posted to Haiti.."

This is wrong, so please do not perpetuate this lie - it makes Progressives look stupid.

The reality is that Cuba had over 400 "emergency workers" in Haiti before the first US C130 landed, as I reported yesterday in another thread.

These workers are doctors, EMTs, crisis workers and S&R dog teams. They are NOT all doctors.

UNITY PROGRESS
Judging from the following, Lindorff is largely but not exactly accurate.

"In that context, he clarified that there are currently "403 Cuban cooperative personnel, 334 of whom are working in the heath sector as doctors and paramedics," in the devastated country."

SOURCE

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Ted Kennedy is Mocked by the Obama-Favored Senate Health Insurance Bill

[NOTE: The following was written on January 15, which was four days before the Massachusetts special senate election.]

Laugh out loud that Obama is so far to the right and has screwed up so badly that the Massachusetts Senate race is even competitive.

Equally amusing is the mere existence of the theoretical possibility that Obama himself could lose to Sarah Palin in 2012. Mitt Romney, though, is far more likely to be nominated than is Palin and the most likely thing for 2012 is that Romney cruises to a relatively easy win.

I am going to have a major party at my place if Obama loses Ted Kennedy's seat, because Obama's health insurance law is a fraud, makes a mockery of Ted Kennedy and all non-right wing people, and would do much more harm than good.

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Unity Progress Likes the British and Canadian Health Systems More than the German One, and the Death of Utilities

GUEST COMMENT

bernice January 16th, 2010 10:48 am
I think that Massachusetts citizens "praise" for their new system covers only the fact that it's easier to become insured, as well as mandated.

The plan itself, however, is running hundreds of millions of dollars over budget each year. The state has become so strapped that it cut off, I believe, 30,000 LEGAL immigrants from access to the exchange. It is also being sued by one of Boston's largest hospitals because the state's payments to it are so inadequate that it may soon have to stop accepting poor/indigent patients for care, which has been one of its main missions.

The problem with both the MassPlan and the Senate plan is that they were based on a European system (Norway, Switzerland, others) of private insurance that is also employer based and mandated. HOWEVER, those countries consider health care a human right and a common good and treat insurance much as we treat a public utility like an electricity producer. All insurers are non-profits, the government reviews health care costs each year and tells the companies how much they can charge in premiums, it pays premiums for the poor, and forbids all the abuses Americans have suffered from their insurers for decades.

This is why their systems provide universality and a common benefit set (rich and poor all get the same care) while costing at least 40 percent less per capita than we spend while leaving 45 million Americans out of the system.

If our country is so in love with privatization of the common good, it could at least emulate the Norwegians instead of market fundamentalists who have no conception of the public good.

UNITY PROGRESS
As Bernice says, health care is supposed to be like a utility. Whereas in the US, even electricity has in the last 30 years become a profit center rather than a public utility. There are barely any public utilities at all left in the US after 30 years of extreme right wing government.

Prior to right wing dominance of US politics, the concept of "utility" automatically meant a heavily regulated public utility. Today the word "utility" survives, but it doesn't mean what it used to. Today, the word utility refers to just another kind of private enterprise, one that used to be publicly controlled but is now just lightly regulated and can maximize profits partly free of government interference on bahalf of lower income consumers.

I used to be neutral and it is still a debate mostly for wonks and perfectionists, but during the course of my fixation on the "health debate" in the US in 2009 I decided to favor the Canadian-UK model over the Germany model for health care. This is because I have realized (and this theme has been repeated over and over again over the years) that the US is even more screwed up than I thought it was before.

The very concept of insurance does not serve health care well at all, because health care is something that is virtually inevitable and because of the need for ongoing preventitive care, whereas insurance is supposed to be just for disasters and catastrophes.

True, the countries that have private insurance companies make sure those companies don't make any profit on the required policies, and they make sure the policies are fairly good, and they make sure that the insurance companies pay all the claims they are supposed to. But why have a facade of insurance at all?

More and more I think the British, as their empire and as World War 2 came to a close, developed the system most close to perfect. The British in 1948 said: "screw all the window dressing and all the dead end side streets and all the unnecessary bells and whistles: let's just declare health care to be a major utility and as in all modern, reputable countries where major public utilities are provided publicly and available to all citizens, that's the way health care will be in Britain."

Over 60 years later, the British mostly like their system. No one with a truly serious problem waits for health care unless there is a rare foul-up (most of which are caused by the patient). Many English people not only like their system but they actually love their system. No politician in the UK can win an election if he or she talks about dismantling that system. The UK health system is so good that it substantially offsets much more negative aspects of UK society and makes the UK overall a nice place to live.

Given how bad the US system is and how inappropriate the concept of insurance is for health care, I have decided that having the government directly provide the health care as in the UK or at least having it mandate the health care but having it provided by private physicians as in Canada is slightly better than having highly regulated, non-profit insurance companies.

I think that technically, by the way, France is a hybrid between those two approaches.

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Quick Summary of Obama's Failings

Just to name a small fraction of his failings, Obama has abandoned his supporters, lied about everything with respect to health insurance, is promoting a health overhaul that will do more harm than good (http://www.unity-progress.blogspot.com and http://www.firedoglake.com) has jagged to the right at every single juncture, and has failed to produce more than a trivial number of jobs.

Hell, even George W. Bush once in a blue moon jagged to the left and he did, after all, become very upset when the job market went to hell, whereas with Obama the job market and the collapse of it are just little side things that "responsible people" can circumvent around.

I for one refuse to be fooled, deceived, or made to feel guilty about anything by Obama, who is now on his knees for Massachussetts votes.

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Gridlock is Good When Right Wing is the Only Game in Town

GUEST COMMENT

Sioux Rose

Well, if it plays out the way the writer suggests, and this Republican win means the bill freezes, as the still-born abomination that it is, then I'd say Divine Order has stepped in to attempt to balance the scales. Our leaders have little by little taken meaningful laws and foreclosed on them, while taking what OUGHT be ILLEGAL and rendered it legal under the figleaf endorsement of political whores for hire. When the game gets this bad and ugly, surprise moves, foul balls, and anything to impede alleged "progress," or contining in the current direction may well prove beneficial.

UNITY PROGRESS
Right. Logically, if you have two parties and neither of them are doing much good, the best short term thing is for there to be a gridlock between them so that no more bad laws get passed.

Then the non-right can finally get serious and get a new party started that will be marketable. I personally don't think the Green party is marketable because it is considered by many millions to be mostly a one issue party not fully equipped to govern, but who knows, when people start starving to death, I guess they would vote Green as a last resort.

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Haiti has been Cheated Compared with Even Jamaica and the Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic outside of Santo Domingo and perhaps Santiago and a tiny number of other towns is virtually as poor as Haiti has been. The international corporations have preferred to invest (sweatshops and tourism mostly) in Santo Domingo and a few other locations in the Dominican Republic because that country has been much more politically stable than Haiti, and secondarily in some cases for racist reasons. When the US makes an already volatile Haiti worse by intervening and by overthrowing Aristide and so forth, it serves to intimidate all but the most fearless corporations and small investors from investing in Haiti.

For those who want to invest in a black Caribbean country, Jamaica has been overwhelmingly favored over Haiti, mainly because Jamaica has stubbornly resisted total dismantling of its government and total control by the US and by international corporations. Thus, when people think of going on vacation in an exotic Caribbean country, far, far more think of Jamaica (or Puerto Rico or Dominican Republic) than Haiti. To be blunt, although Haiti can draw more tourists than it has in the past, it will not be able to compete with those established tourist destinations.

So Haiti will most likely have to develop without private international investment even more so than up until now. They can only do so with a non-right wing government that is not subservient to the United States. If they maintain that government, they will remain at least as dirt poor as up until now.

See this spreadsheet for a complete country by country breakdown of foreign direct investment. This will prove to you that Haiti has been shortchanged even compared with the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, let alone in comparison with other, far richer countries.

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A Dream Where Haiti is Born Again

I saw the very first trickle on Thursday and I said to myself that if the Haitians leave Port-au-Prince it will be very good for them and bad for the giant international corporations (otherwise known as giant leaches). If you look at history, migration is one of the most important things that change the future.

Haiti was historically an agricultural country with most people living in the country and in towns and in very small cities. As has already been reported in Common Dreams comments (thanks, folks) the population of Port-au-Prince was artificially ballooned in the last few decades as a result of the huge international corporations forcing (at gunpoint, basically) the Haitians to lower their import tariffs on sugar cane, coffee, and on other agricultural and other goods. After the tariffs were cut to shreds, the local farmers could no longer compete with the huge international agricultural conglomerates which dumped large quantities of food and other items onto the island, so many of those farmers then moved to Port-au-Prince, where a relatively small subset of them obtained employment in sweatshops and where the majority of them became unemployed and dirt poor.

The interesting thing about devastation is that it completely changes both the physical and the economic landscapes. The massive international corporations are now going to be even more reluctant than they already were to invest in the "poorest country in the Western Hemisphere," In fact, they aren't going to be willing to invest much of anything at all for several years.

At the same time, Haitians are going to be even more poor than they already were (yes, poverty can always get worse) and a much greater percentage of them than before will not be able to afford imported food. When you combine the fact that they are moving back to the country with the changed economic reality, you can deduce that the Haitians will reestablish small farms and then simply use them to feed themselves and their immediate neighbors, thus removing themselves from having to buy imported food.

It is in fact absurd for people in a lush tropical country to have to pay money for imported food, and of course it is absurd for anyone to work in a sweatshop, so a silver lining in this catastrophe is that Haitians who now live away from the corporate and Western-dominated Port-au-Prince will enjoy better lives than before.

Finally, it should be noted that both the Cuban Revolution and the original Haitian Revolution, objectively and obviously speaking two of the most successful revolutions in history, were successfully generated from the rural countryside as opposed to from the main towns which were under foreign control to one extent or another. Since history often does repeat itself, this means that there is a distinct possibility that in the coming years Haitians living outside of Port-au-Prince will form a real resistance to the control of Port-au-Prince by international corporations and by right wing foreigners.

It is interesting to note that shortly after the Revolution in the early 1800’s, Haiti was divided into two: north and south. The north was all country and very small towns. In south Haiti, even after the Revolution, there were political and even small military conflicts between those in control of the small city of Port-au-Prince and those living outside of that destined to be destroyed city.

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Bringing Democracy Back: The Formula Used World Wide

New rule: whenever someone is diagnosing the loss of democracy in the US, would they please also mention the most promising solution: all the big fish in the little ponds shall go into alliance with one another, forming an ocean filled with non-right wing fish. Then that umbrella organization will evolve into a new political party that is too large to be denied ballot access and is too large to be considered a fringe or just a one issue party.

That's not some hypothetical process that might or might not work. That is exactly the process that most non-right parties used to develop into parties that eventually would and still to this day govern in various provinces, states, prefectures, and countries around the world. As one example, right on your border, you have the New Democratic Party in Canada, which in 1961 emerged from a series of unifications of non-right entities. This was the party that brought affordable health care to all Canadian residents.

It can be argued that those who merely write articles, no matter how wonderful they are, but fail to advocate unification, are falling short of the mark. Non-right Americans seem to be in bred not to unify, which will eventually be the death of them.

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Could There be a new Haitian Revolution?

I wouldn't be surprised if there is another Haitian Revolution resulting from this within the next 20 years. Maybe one or more of the escaped inmates will lead it. Certainly, this is what would happen in centuries gone by, before most everyone became lulled into a false sense of security by the neocons and by the marvels of modern technology.

Here is interesting information about the first one that I have been reading:

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/history/revolution/revolution.htm

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How Google is Preserving the 1990's Internet Status Quo

EDITORIAL NOTE: Despite the shortcoming claimed below, Google is overall a very good company that obviously has contributed greatly and outstandingly to the Internet and to the economy as a whole. The Google blogging platform, of which this site is a part, is by a good margin the best such platform in existence. Google Blogger will host your blog for free, and yet the customization and publishing capabilities are second to none. Google Blogger is both the most powerful and the easiest to use blogging system.

I think that in general Google is virtually a perfect company, with this search engine flaw described below (which has only relatively recently become a significant problem) the only substantial flaw I am aware of. Moreover, due to the sheer number of sites, it may not be possible for Google to solve the problem described below without creating new problems for the huge number of people who depend on or who prefer the older, high traffic sites.

If changing the main search engine is impossible, what I would most like to see  is for Google to develop an alternative search engine where newer sites with great content but with few links to them would come up high in the search results.

Someone was very dubious about an article at Common Dreams (link at the bottom)....

GUEST COMMENT

katsteevns January 14th, 2010 6:49 pm
"the vast majority of American's are totally clueless, including the author of this article"

Does Common Dreams let just anyone publish? How does that work?

UNITY PROGRESS
The internet and all neighborhoods in it (including the progressive hood) is basically one giant, multi-division good old boy network. Most of the sites which get significant traffic are ones that started in the 1990's. Back then, everyone used to link to everyone else.

Today the 1990's sites generally do not link to new sites although there are a few exceptions. For one thing, the sheer explosion of sites since 2000 make it impractical for the high traffic, established 1990's sites to link to newer sites without hopelessly cluttering their page. Moreover, why should the established sites make it easier for new sites to encroach on their traffic by linking to them? They would be shooting themselves in the foot if they did link to newer sites.

Google decided back then (and has never changed) to use number of links to a site as the primary determinant of how high in search results a site will be. Sites started since 2000 and especially since 2005 don't get a competitive number of links to them, so they generally do not appear anywhere in the first few pages of search results. So then they don't get much traffic (unless the author is very well known).

Google’s search engine results have become stale because year after year they primarily preserve the traffic status quo. Every year, mostly the same 1990's vintage sites appear on the first page of search results, whereas sites started after 2000 do not. With the Google system, every year it becomes closer and closer to impossible for a brand new site to gain traffic, unless the authors of it are very well known.

What all this means is that mostly authors connected with sites started in the 1990's are published at Common Dreams (along with famous authors not necessarily connected with any single site). The universe of authors in this category is ultimately limited. Authors connected with newer sites and/or with sites with little traffic are not published by most progressive sites. The most notable exception is opednews.com, which will publish authors who are not published elsewhere.

GUEST COMMENT TWO

qatzelok January 15th, 2010 10:23 am
Thank you for explaining how this pollyannish article made it onto Common Dreams.

How is it possible to write an article about "How America can help" when its military is still there fighting against socialism?

GUEST COMMENT THREE (SAME AUTHOR AS GUEST COMMENT ONE)

katsteevns January 14th, 2010 9:17 pm
Thank you for that ! I thought searches were brought up according to the date they were posted, but maybe I am wrong.

UNITY PROGRESS
Google recently installed options for search results, but they are misleading and don't do what you might think they do. If after you do a search you then click "show options" and then you click "latest," you get only one page of results: just 10 items. It seems virtually inevitable that even in those mimimal listings there is again heavy bias toward the 1990's sites, although technically the bias would be a little less due to the strict time ordering.

But new sites and sites that don't get much traffic most likely don't ever appear even on the latest results search, although I am going to investigate that.

If within the time options you click "last 24 hours" or one of the other short time frames, the results are indeed postings from the last 24 hours and there are multiple pages, but (a) they are not in time order but are in "Google priority order" and (b) there is definitely the same heavy bias toward the 1990's vintage sites that you see in the ordinary results.

There is a separate Google blog search where you can order results by time and where there is far less bias toward older sites. But the Google blog search is limited to true blogs only, and for that reason and because it is not shown on the main Google page it is used by only a very, very small fraction of those who use the regular search.

Someone needs to make a search engine that is biased toward new sites to offer a real alternative to the increasingly stale Google results.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

Will Some of the Corporations Reduce Operations in Haiti?

GUEST COMMENT

medina January 14th, 2010 8:40 pm
I would like to add: Do NOT remove the children with the Operation Peter Pan idea Catholic Charities would like to use. This is abusive to the children to take them from their culture, community, and families and give their island away to capitalism!

UNITY PROGRESS
Maybe the devastation will be so bad that many of the corporations will close up shop and then Haiti will be allowed to reestablish their own industries and agriculture. Unlike countries subject to drought, Haiti is lush and could reestablish very profitable agriculture for export if they could raise import tariffs and slip the noose of the controlling international agricultural corporations and return to small farming. There was one report today that some Hatians were literally walking away from Port-au-Prince and back to the countryside.

GUEST COMMENT

I believe Hatian economy existed by subsistance farming and small local business. It was farming for export that depleted thier resources and to a very large extent thier way of life.

UNITY PROGRESS
Yes, you are right, and that Haiti needs to return to small farms as opposed to corporate mega farms was what I meant.

The export aspect is optional and I mean small scale exporting done by Haitian companies that have taken back control of agriculture from international corporations, which are only interested in large scale exporting. Having international corporations in charge of agriculture in Haiti and deciding how much will be exported (way too much) is what caused and will continue to cause the damage if those corporations stick it out despite the devastation, something which at the moment is in at least a little bit of doubt.

As an example of huge corporations closing up shop when times get tough, consider that after the financial collapse that they themselves caused, the international financial corporations pulled out of Iceland in favor of less devastated environs.

The above was in response to this article.

The Entire Obama Presidency Summed up in one Short Sentence

"Instead, what Mr. Obama offered was a bait-and-switch."

The entire presidency of Obama summed up in a short sentence.

The above was in response to this article.

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The Root Cause of Haiti's Poverty and of US Problems is one and the Same

Get closer to the root cause of Haiti being dirt poor, which is that huge international corporations want everything set up according to exactly what they need for their profit making convenience in countries such as Haiti. Huge corporations don't want to have to "get their hands dirty" by competing in a free market with indigenous industries in countries like Haiti. They want those indigenous industries hammered and brought to heel if they are going to set up factories and other operations in countries such as Haiti.

Only on the surface have international trade and financial policies kept Haiti dirt poor. But those policies are dictated by the huge international corporations to the World Bank and the like and to the governments of wealthy countries. These corporations, in turn, are dictatorially run by obscenely compensated executives. So actually, the real, primary root cause of Haiti being dirt poor is the out of control greed of corporate executives of huge corporations with international reach and that of large shareholders of those corporations.

Similarly, these parties are the primary root cause of the failure of the US employment market and of the failure of the US health system. It's a small world after all.

The above was in response to this article.

The Six O'Clock Express to the Depths of Hell

Robert Reich correctly and completely explains why Obama's tax is bad to say the least.

Lord Obama is a dream for those who want the US to be routed in the international competition (fostered by the huge corporate players in the global economy) for scarce resources and for economic status and prestige. Obama is apparently moving up the day when the dollar loses its status as international reserve currency, although the greenback may nevertheless hang on for a few more decades even with the damage wrought by Obama and his cronies at the Fed and in the banking industry. But be warned that exactly how many decades remains completely unknown: it could be as few as two more decades or as many as six more decades.

But thanks in part to Obama's insistence on the most right wing economic policy possible at every juncture, the prospects of countries like China, Germany, Japan, and even Brazil are looking fairly strong. Are there any major countries that have worse prospects than the US anymore?

It really seems that everything Obama pushes for is economically inferior to the alternative. Think of Obama as the 6 o'clock express to the depths of economic hell.

For those who at this point want the health insurance deform to be considered a total failure as soon as possible, and to absolutely, positively guarantee that it eventually will be considered a total failure, we do have allies in Lord Obama and his sidekick, Lord Emanuel.

The above was in response to this article.

An Unauthorized Discussion of Economics and Economics Statistics

GUEST COMMENT NUMBER ONE

drosera January 11th, 2010 12:49 pm
What's "money multiplier"? What's "MZM money supply"? What's the "Case-Shiller Index"? "Core PCE"? Somebody step forward and translate this jargon, please!

GUEST NUMBER TWO

squidd January 11th, 2010 2:14 pm
"money multiplier" - a $1 of spending... will produce more than $1 in the economy... if i give you $1... you go to the 7-11 and buy coffee... 7-11 pays it's employees who rang it up... the 7-11 suppliers sold 7-11 coffee... cups... filters... then the 7-11 and coffee suppliers employees go out an buy something... and that original $1 gets 'recycled' several times... right now... i think the "multiplier" effect is $1.75... in the real economy... that's why in recession/deprssions... govt spending... the only ones who can print money... each $1 spent actually spends more than $1... now... taxes come back to the govt... and govt services can be provided... that's a simplistic explanation

"Case-Shiller" is the gold standard of housing trends...

you need to try tor read more... like Thom Hartmann... Matt Tabbai... Mike Whitney... Pam Martens... Dean Baker... they all have articles around the web... Dean Baker writes at http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press...

and these folks educate as they expose... you have to get motivated... these terms are deliberately being used to bamboozle people...

like the "U6" unemployment rate... back in the 80's and 90's reagan AND clinton "jiggered" the numbers to remove underemployed and people unemployed more than a year... to make the real unemployment numbers look better... so unemployment will "go down"... just by the number of people unemployed more than a year dropping off the rolls every month... they can look good by DOING NOTHING...

NO ONE is going to explain this FOR you... and that's what they count on... it'll be a little confusing at first... but you'll pick it up in no time...

there was a time... i didn't know what "points" on a mortgage were... today... i can explain CDO's... MBS's... and several other obscure acronyms that caused 1/2 my housing value to go poof...

GUEST NUMBER THREE

drosera January 11th, 2010 8:30 pm
Thanks, Squidd, for your explanation of the "multiplier effect." I guess the multiplier effect goes under 1.00 if the government is buying "toxic assets." What they buy isn't worth what they are paying. And that, I suppose, is why bailing out the banks isn't as good as getting money to people directly. That money--what goes to people--gets recycled. Thanks for the lesson.

GUEST NUMBER FOUR
AGG January 11th, 2010 8:40 pm

Well said.
And let's not forget the CPI. Williams at Shadow statistics has shown how the Consumer Price Index was gamed to under represent inflation for the past 30 years or more. This threw a wrench in all the labor contracts that adjusted wages using the CPI, not to mention pensions and social security. Finally the effect on the government's poverty line amount was to move it lower and lower (even as the figure gradually rises in nominal dollars) due to the gamed CPI. Rather than correct this crap, they are allowing poverty level "multiples" to qualify for certain programs. It's just one lie after another.

The main culprit here is the master criminal, Alan Greenspan.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENT
Don't waste your time with wildly inaccurate US unemployment numbers. Use the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment numbers and the latest population numbers of your choice and figure out for yourself and according to your standards what the real unemployment rate is.

GUEST COMMENT NUMBER FIVE

TheProf January 12th, 2010 1:43 am
According to TrimTabs the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects the most reliable number but doesn't use it, that is the withholding from salaries submitted to the IRS and reported daily. Its been on a continually decline since the Depression started.

GUEST COMMENT NUMBER SIX

squidd January 16th, 2010 12:18 pm
Thanks! "professor"... too simple... like duh... that makes perfect sense... daily tracking of witholding...

Ross Perot would say often.. a strong vibrant economy is millions and millions of workers and their tax dollars going into the treasury...

guess the "new pardigm" turns that whole thing on it's head... now that labor can be arbitraged... and they've perfected raiding the worker classes' assets... pensions... bennys... 401(k)'s... housing... health care costs... hmmm... what's left?

oops... forgot about those pesky socialist programs... social security and medicare...

ahhhh... but the night's still young...

The above frightfully rebellious discussion of economics was in response to this article.

Obama's Goals and Pledges Were no Where to be Found in the Proposed Health Insurance Reform

GREAT AND ON POINT GUEST COMMENTARY

raydelcamino January 12th, 2010 11:02 am
Walker needs to make his thesis more explicit by stating that not only does the Senate Bill not advance health care beyond the most recent step forward (Medicare in 1965), the Senate Bill launches health care "reform" on a trajectory that prevents it from ever moving forward (unless your definition of forward is increased insurance and drug company profits), or achieving any of the eight goals Obama articulated when he took office.

The Senate Bill fails to meet ANY of Obama's eight health care "reform" goals:

1) Guarantee Choice
2) Make insurance affordable
3) Protect families' financial health
4) Invest in prevention and wellness
5) Aim for universality
6) provide portabality of coverage
7) Improve patient safety and quality care
8) Maintain long term fiscal sustainability

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENT
Plus it violates his no new taxes for those earning less than $200,000 pledge.

GREAT AND ON POINT GUEST COMMENTARY

The huge new sin taxes on tobacco already did that.Tobacco was taxed at I believe $25.00 a pound on rolling tobacco,the effect doubled the price.Brilliant!let the poorest addicts in society pay for S-Chip and other unfunded child health care.If no one can afford to smoke a huge public health menace is nipped in the bud.
cough wheeze gasp@#$%! peace

The above was in response to this article.

The Looting Class and the Imploding Class

There is no need for speculation on what would happen if the US imploded, because it obviously has imploded as far as the great majority of the population is concerned. True, some of the elites have implemented a vigorous looting program for themselves, by for example paying themselves massive salaries and bonuses even after the financial collapse and as another example by refusing to lend to credit-worthy businesses even after receiving huge public bailouts. And elites can pretend that the US has not imploded if they ignore the bottom 90% of the population. But unless you are in the looting class you are in the imploding class.

Meanwhile, Europe's far more sophisticated and humane political and economic systems have to one extent or another insulated their common man populations from being devastated by the financial collapse and from the ongoing looting. For example, many European countries have unemployment rates that are less than half the real unemployment rate in the States, not to mention that the involuntarily unemployed in Europe get subsistence so that they are living in ordinary houses and apartments rather than in shelters, cars, tents, and under bridges.

The above was in response to this article.

Good News From Europe

FROM A GUEST

Not this lame "Europeans aren't having any babies meme" again. It varies a lot from country to country, but most of Europe is doing fine. Sweden, France and Germany have all experienced major increases in fertility over the past few years, in part thanks to pro-family programs that don't penalize couples for having kids and that make health care and education affordable. (You don't need a trust fund to send a kid to university in Germany-- the tuition is mostly taken care of if a student is qualified enough.) Although Italy, Poland and Spain indeed have rock-bottom fertility, most of the rest of the Continent has stabilized at a higher rate.

No, they're not at replacement fertility, but Europe's managed to stabilize its population anyway simply by importing co-ethnic Europeans from other countries, especially from Russia and the new eastern EU states (i.e., Eastern Europe demographically subsidizing Western Europe). There are also plenty of South Americans, North Americans (lots of USAers especially to Germany) and Australians who move to Europe every year if they have e.g. Italian-American or German-American roots, which also helps to maintain the population. Besides, world population has to stabilize at some point, and Europe is smart enough to hover at the decent level they're currently at, and thus avoid this idiotic growth-at-all-costs fallacy that's overwhelming the infrastructure and housing in US cities.

And no, there isn't any "Muslim takeover" in Europe. I worked for 4 years in Europe (mostly France and Belgium) and just returned to the States in late 2009, and when actual professionals do the surveys in places like France (even allowing for self-reporting, where a Muslim can profess a Muslim faith even without actively practicing it), the Muslim population is much lower than the scaremongers always bleat about-- more like 2-3% at most (probably lower) than 9-10%.

What the-sky-is-falling crowd always seems to forget, is that an immigrant to France from Algeria, Syria or Lebanon is NOT necessarily a Muslim. Those countries historically have had millions of Christians and Jews, and so millions of the North Africans and Middle Easterners coming to France have been Christian and Jewish (often even ethnic French themselves who'd settled there in the 1800's). Same with Germany-- Turkey used to have millions of (usually Orthodox) Christians, but that number has dwindled so much in recent decades in part because so many hundreds of thousands have come to settle in Germany. (And the Turks are dwarfed by the Poles and Russians anyway, who come in much higher numbers.) Same with the Egyptian Copts going to France and Germany. The problem is that some fool looked at the immigration numbers from North Africa and the Mideast to France, and just assumed that 6 million Muslims had poured into the Paris suburbs. They didn't even bother to check if those immigrants were actually Muslim to begin with.

The one exception is Britain, which really is undergoing a massive demographic transformation due to the flood of Middle Easterners (from e.g. Yemen), South Asians (Pakistan) and Africans from the ex-Commonwealth and other nations, millions of whom have indeed been Muslim. But this is not true for the rest of Europe. Americans too often stupidly project our own demographic change onto the rest of the Western world, but it's just not the case. The USA, it's true, will be majority non-White by about 2030-2040 or so, with the massive influx of mainly Latinos (not to mention our own large numbers of African and Muslim immigrants, like Britain). Same with Australia and their Indonesian/Pakistani/Sudanese influxes, and of course with Britain as pointed out. But these three countries are the marked exceptions in the Western world-- most of the West including all of Europe outside the UK, is very much stabilizing their population and staying European in terms of their people.

UNITY PROGRESS
Thanks for that valuable and useful information.

The above was in response to this article about Europe.

Looting Like There is no Tomorrow

Historically there has always been a lot of looting by the "lords of the manor" just before, during, and just after economies collapse. After these looting parties, all there is left is the hard reality of the collapse, including the economic miseries and the sheer lack of economic opportunities the collapse entails.

Since the elitists know the post collapse economic void is coming, they enthusiastically loot as much as possible until the system is "looted out". There is a lot to loot in the States. Looting is what the Goldman Sachs and other elite crews are doing now: in fact they are looting like there is no tomorrow.

They say there is some logic behind almost all crime. The looting going on now is logical because the alternative for the elites is trying to make do without a lot of loot in the post collapse dark age, when loot will be at a big premium.

The above was in response to this article.

Obama Thinks His Voters Will be Satisfied with Cake so he tells them to eat it

What about liberal angst about no jobs in 10+ years and about one and a half million people filing bankruptcy every year and about the millions living in shelters, cars, tents, and under bridges? Does Obama think that angst about all of that will fade away too? Is he really that much of a "let them eat cake," out of touch, right wing kind of guy?

Why yes, I do believe he is.

The above was in response to this article.