Bacon's Rebellion

Talk about history and Karma. Buried in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch is a column by librarian Larry Hall who recollects a horrible tale of power elite racism at William & Mary, the nation’s second oldest university that proponents love to dress up in fluffy history and the usual Rights of Man blather.

Hall’s engrossing tale involves a senior at W&M in early 1945 who also edited the student newspaper, The Flat Hat. Marilyn Kaemmerle took some bold risks for the time. In honor of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, she wrote an editorial that asked why there were no blacks at segregated William & Mary, questionned Southern white perceptions that blacks were physically and mentally inferior and even had the guts to ask why blacks and whites could not intermarry, which was illegal in Virginia at the time. After all, she noted, America was fighting the Nazis at the time over just such issues.

As Hall notes, Kaemmerle was anxious to spark discussion but a silence became defeaning. As a student from Michigan, Kaemmerle may have misjudged just how deep institutional racism was in the South at the time. Free speech, the lifeblood of any university, did not exist for some topics in the Old Dominion, mother of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and all those other brave patriots and fighters for human rights that the old, white “Virginians” love to bring up all the time.

Then, in an eerie way reminiscent of the recent controversy over former W&M President Gene R. Nichol, the Board of Visitors struck. Egged on by rector J. Gordon Bohannon of Petersburg, who opined that “a girl who reflects such heresies is not a proper person to be editor,” the board pushed the school to suspend the newspaper and fire Kaemmerle as editor.

Just as in the Nichol case 63 years later, students angrily protested, but the crackdown was complete. Kaemmerle’s brave ideas almost caused her expulsion, but the effort failed when board member threatened to resign if it happened. She was allowed to graduate. Once again, eerie flashbacks. Nichol would have been fired outright, too, had it not been for the threat of resignation by a visitor behind the scenes. Still, the powers of Virginia’s ruling elite prevailed – both Kaemmerle and Nichol were out.

There’s one more strange irony here. The Times-Dispatch published the “Time Capsule” with the fascinating Kaemmerle tale. Yet the same newspaper once censored its best editor for questioning the status quo and white supremacy.

Virginius Dabney was one of the best editors the state ever produced. His progressive views and intelligence won national respect for the Times-Dispatch in the middle part of the 20th Century. But the white power elite, of which newspaper owner Tennant Bryan was a part, silenced Dabney when he tried to speak out against the racist and horribly-backward policy of Massive Resistance to desegregation in the 1950s.

As journalists Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff note in their excellent 2006 book, “The Race Beat”:

” . . .Virginius Dabney was blocked from opposing massive resistance by Tennant Bryan, the principal owner of Dabney’s Times-Dispatch as as well as (James) Kilpatrick’s News Leader. Bryan and Dabney struck a deal: when the owner wanted militantly segregationist editorials, a business executive with a flair for writing, not Dabney or his editorial staff, would supply them. At one point, Dabney considered leaving his post but got only one nibble, from the Cox papers in Dayton.”

As for Kaemmerle, W&M wrote a letter of reconciliation in 1986, long after the ideas she espoused becme accepted. Jim Crow came to an end by law in the 1960s as did Virginia’s hate-based ban on inter-race marriages. When she died in 2001, an obituary in a newspaper in Arizona where she lived praised her heroism and for being ahead of her time.

As for Nichol, after a few days of thunderous silence, the board announced that he wasn’t that great an administrator and was a lousy fund raiser. The fact that he was an outspoken liberal who challenged long-held views wasn’t a factor in his contract not being renewed, the board claimed.

The cases of Nichol, Dabney, Kaemmerle demonstrate the hideous tendency in Virginia for the power structure to move from the safety of barricaded rooms to punish those who ask too many questions or somehow threaten the status quo, especially when that status quo is so badly flawed. Yet the same power elite will wrap themselves up in history and pompously proclaim just how wonderful their ancestors were and how important forward thinking and equal rights are.

–Peter Galuszka

OK, I will admit it.

I posted on this topic (See “Sub-Prime Lending and the Slums of Tomorrow” 21 Feb 2008) and committed a sin of which I have accused others. I posted without reading the Leinberger article in Atlantic “The Next Slum?”

Since Jim Bacon’s original post went into the archives, I downloaded the article and read it with some care. Jim is to be commended for taking Deena Fulchum’s tip and putting up a good post on what Leinberger had to say. There is more to be said, however.

Back to the core problem of Vocabulary.

The very first sentence indicates this is something new and beyond what our friends Bill Lucy and Dave Phillips have been documenting.

Further it is now showing up in the weekly listings of foreclosures here in the R=30 Miles to R=60 Miles Radius Band around the Centroid of the National Capital Subregion.

What Lienberger finds goes to the question that Groveton raised in the recent post on the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis about “wrong sized house in the wrong location.”

Leinberger makes a number of points that will skewer those 12 ½ Percenters who chafe at the idea that there is a difference between functional and dysfunctional settlement patterns and that the dysfunctional ones would be eliminated by a fair allocation of location-variable costs.

Leinberger leaves out a lot, after all it is a short article. For example who was the sponsor of Futurama at the 1939 Worlds Fair? (Hint: it was the Enterprise for whom it was said in the 50s that what was good for the Enterprise was good for the US of A.)

What about the impact of Frank Lloyd Wright in the illusion of the benefits of scatteration that still resonates with 12 ½ Percenters?

The list of other things to say is long but the points Leinberger makes are well worth reading and digesting.

Sorry I did not do it before the posting.

EMR

The comments on settlement patterns and housing are going on and on with good comments but several sub-threads make it hard to follow. We need Jim Bacon back to keep enough topics on the table so that the comments stay at a manageable number. We will jump in later to try to answer some of the questions, we may miss some, sorry.

Here is a new topic: Bailouts For All.

“Free market” folks must be in apoplexy over the news: a $200 Billion bail out here, a $200 Billion bail out there… The only times that the gambling venue called the NY Stock Exchange has gone up is on news of anther “big government” bailout or a collapse creating opportunity for bottom fishers.

You can see why we wanted to get “Good News: Bad Reporting (Jim Bacon’s 5 March post) before he left for Wyoming. Today, WaPo’s economic columnist Steven Pearlstein calls the current unpleasantness “the most serious financial market crisis since the Great Depression.” He makes some other points that are worth reading too.



Those of us who are concerned about the trajectory of society and the future of democracies with market economies can only shake our heads and ask: Why did not more people listen in 1973?

As you might guess, we believe Robert Reich has a number of answers in Supercapitalism.

EMR

We have not addressed the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis in some time, however, the last few days headlines suggest it is going from bad to worse.

The front page feature in Sunday’s WaPo spotlighted the convergence of bad Agency policies, programs and controls that have created a crisis in the Federal District. (“Forced Out: The Cost of D. C.’s Condo Boom.”)

The news is no better is Fairfax: “Some Homes Once Crowed Now Vacant: Fairfax Crackdown (on “over-crowed” dwellings) Has Unintended Consequences. An Hispanic immigrant was carrying a $550,000 mortgage on a house that sold at foreclosure auction for $120,600?

And the chickens are coming home to roost for Agencies as well. “Damage From Downturn May Be Worse Than Expected: Officials Say Rising Foreclosures and Drop in Spending May Force Revision of Feb. 25 (Fairfax County) Budget Proposal.”

On Friday the business news was headlined by “Investors Dump Securities From Fannie, Freddie: Mortgage Sector Strongholds Falter.” We have said for years the crime at Fannie and Freddie was not the huge salaries and coverups but rather the loan bundling was location-blind thus leveraging support for building the wrong size houses in the wrong locations.

Speaking of crimes, CNN reports that the FBI is looking into fraud at Countrywide Mortgage. Citibank is reported to be in trouble with subprimes…

And the ads keep rolling in; on paper; on Television; and on banners running over Google searches and under AOL e-mails for refinancing…

Financial Enterprise deregulation has really worked well. For lawyers and criminal investigators.

It is not just homeowners that are hurting from a drop in dwelling values and wild lending practices. The whole economy is on weak grounds.
You may have missed it but the Federal Reserve on Thursday announced that for the first time since 1945, owners equity in homes in the US of A dropped under 50 percent. Since 1945! Recall how many new houses were built and sold with very low down payments after World War II. But then this: The only reason that the 1945 date was in the press release is that 1945 was the first year they kept this record.

See “Good News, Bad Reporting” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

Note for Larry Gross:

I just saw your note to us under the Atlantic Reality Falls Church post by Jim Bacon.

You are right “RuralZED” housing is not a useful term. I will check out the links you provided when I get back to the Housing Chapter of TRILO-G.

In the meantime, just because a dwelling has no connection to the grid for energy, water or sewer does not mean it does not have location-variable costs. There are 35 + / – other goods and services to be concerned about.

And speaking of eco-footprints, Larry, check out “Eat Locally, Ease Climate Change Globally” an op ed in WaPo Sunday. A farmer from Abingdon provides some numbers on the cost of food transport.

I know, I know you worry about mangos and papayas when you cannot eat them right off the tree. Do not get me wrong. We love mangos and papayas. Mangos are called “winter peaches” in our Household.

The answer is the same, price them for what they really cost to grow and ship and then let the market decide if they are a four times a week item or a once a month item.

Of course if you do not have a house and no refrigerator you may have to wait until Global Climate Change allows them to be grown in Appalachia. But maybe they can be now in that big green house… Does not look very wind proof…

EMR

Groveton travels a lot, observes a lot and offers a number of good perspectives.

On 6:09 PM 6 March in a comment on Jim Bacon’s post “Virginia’s Nuclear Power Cluster Just got Bigger, Groveton noted:

“4. In the early part of America’s history Virginia was the most populous colony / state. It was an economic, political and intellectual center in the US. However, after peaking in about 1790, Virginia started a steady decline in power and importance. None of that decline had anything to do with the location of Washington, DC. It was simple sloth and neglect combined with Jefferson’s misbelief that cities were evil places that should be avoided and discouraged. He didn’t get many wrong – but he sure got that one wrong.”

Some may not understand how important this reality is to Virginia’s chance of achieving a sustainable economic, social and physical trajectory.

One manifestation of the historical context Groveton articulates is that Virginia has always ended up favoring individual freedom over community responsibilities. Sustainability requires a Balance between the two in an urban, much less Global, society. The last nonurban society disappeared in New Guinea years ago – or was the last one in Brazil?

The second manifestation of Groveton’s observation is that there has been and continues to be an anti-urban bias build into the Commonwealth’s Constitution, governance structure, legislation and especially the infrastructure.

I recall a dinner in Richmond where members of several of Main Street’s leading families – and thus Richmond’s leading families as this was 25 years ago – each identified themselves by the plantation / hamlet in the Countryside with which their family (or their spouse) was associated before the Civil War.

In an urban society a nonurban orientation is not springboard for success.

Something to think about on a rainy weekend.

EMR

Welcome the newest player to Virginia’s nuclear industry cluster: Toshiba America Nuclear Power.

The newly formed company has set up shop in Alexandria with the mission of marketing and promoting advanced boiling water (ABWR) nuclear power plants and providing support for related services. As the business develops, Toshiba plans to expand U.S. operations to provide licensing and engineering support related to construction of future nuclear power plants, including plant design and procurement.

U.S. power companies have announced plans to build over 30 new nuclear power plants in coming years. According to a press release, Toshiba and Westinghouse, a Toshiba Group company, are promoting their advanced boiling water reactors and pressurized water reactors. Toshiba’s initial staff will be about 30, a figure that is expected to increase as work on U.S. nukes gathers steam (so to speak).

The new company also will be a vehicle for Toshiba and Westinghouse to exchange know-how for the operation and maintenance of existing plants. Toshiba America also will handle licensing for the 4S, a new type of super-safe, small and simple system for nuclear power generation, a promising technology for future distributed power sources, and lay the groundwork for future marketing of the system.

Besides the nuclear power plants operated by Dominion, significant pockets of nuclear-power expertise reside in Virginia, mainly in Lynchburg and Newport News. I had never considered the possibility that proximity to Washington, D.C., and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission might be a competitive advantage in attracting nuclear-related enterprises, but a hint in Toshiba’s press release — the statement that it will provide licensing support — suggests that may be the case.

Robert Reich, currently professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley has written another book. This one is titled Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business Democracy and Everyday Life.

Supercapitalism is an important book and should be widely read. In particular, it should be read by Bacon’s Rebellion columnists and those who post and comment on Bacons Rebellion Blog. Why? Because the book addresses an issue central to any discussion of economic, social and physical ramifications of the road ahead.

Supercapitalism will not a ‘best seller’ or a favorite of the Bacon’s Rebellion Corps for reasons we outline below.

Reich has a simple message:

Consumers and investors in the US of A – and the First World in general – are far better off than individuals and Households have been in any society in history. Most have done especially well consuming and some have done exceedingly well financially over the last 3-plus decades.

On the other hand, individuals in their role as citizens have had a very difficult time over this same time period. Further, the quality and effectiveness of the democratic governance structure under which they live has eroded badly.

Reich has the data to back up these assertions. As it turns out, when one strips away the self-serving puffery and pandering rhetoric these realities are broadly agreed to across academic, political and economic spectra.

Reich does a splendid job of providing an economic overview of the US of A since the Civil War as he outlines how citizens got to the post WW II era which he calls “The Almost Golden Age.” Reich then describes how and why that era morphed after 1973 into what he calls “supercapitalism.”

Reich dismantles a number of illusions concerning why some individuals and some ideologies are credited with “economic miracles” along the way. These changes were underway long before the hero jumped on the bandwagon. He also put in their place a number of ogres like “greed.

[We will be adding three new columns to THE ESTATES MATRIX (V 2.0) – for the years 1870, 1920 and 1973 – that reflect some of his important insights. Yes, one of the reasons we like Supercapitalism is that it tracks so well with THE ESTATES MATRIX.]

To his credit, beyond documenting reality, Reich offers a simple “solution” to a key driver of economic and democracy dysfunction. His suggestion makes eminent good sense. Reich also provides a number of ideas which may make it into the platform of a presidential candidate. This is a startling accomplishment for a book dealing with a topic as complex as the future of democracy and market economies.

With this much going for it, why is Supercapitalism not on the way up the ‘best seller’ list?

One reason that a book that explores a subject of this nature may be unpopular is that it is long and hard to understand. That is not the problem with Reich’s book. It is only 223 pages plus end notes and index, even with large print and generous line spacing. What is more, if succinctly written, Reich’s core ideas could be well expressed in 50 pages or less. Of course, writing an essay / working paper would not meet the criteria for a “book” and would not make the publisher or the author as much money. This fact presents an ironic twist of Reich’s basic thesis on what is wrong with capitalism and democracy.

Reich makes simple, straight forward points and expresses them well. He then goes on to cite example after example that pound home the lesson from each of six chapters. Having this wealth of supporting data is a luxury afforded to those who dwell in ivy towers and have grad students and post docs to gather material and research budgets for processing, digesting and editing that material.

So what are the problems with Supercapitalism if it is not that it is long or hard to understand?

Best selling books either make readers feel good or they identify bad guys.

There is not much to feel good about from a clear eyed review of the economic, social and physical trajectory of contemporary society.

Villains sell books because they provide some thing or some one to get mad at.

There being no basis for a feel-good story line, the primary problem with the Supercapitalism becomes the fact that Reich identifies no villain.

In Supercapitalism there are no villains – unless one looks in the mirror. Pogo’s Epiphany applied to the state of the economy and democracy will not sell books.

Reich points out with chilling clarity the conflict within individuals between their roles as consumers and investors and their role as citizens. He calls this conflict “being of two minds.”

The villain vacuum compounds a reality that Tony Downs – the denizen of Real Estate Research and later The Brookings Institution – liked to spotlight in the context of Mobility and Access. Tony pointed out that:

In a democracy, it is very hard to get those who benefit individually from a course of action to support changes which will benefit society-as-a-whole but will limit or eliminate their own individual advantage or benefit.

We explore this issue in depth in The Shape of the Future in the context of “What is good for one is not good for all.” An urban dwelling on a five or 10 acre lot is the human settlement pattern poster child of this axiom. In the book this reality is termed “The Fallacy of Composition.” That is the term Robert Samuelson used to describe this core problem with capitalism and democracy.

[Those who want to use the “find” utility of the Adobe Reader to search The Shape of the Future for the relevant passages, key in “The Fallacy of Composition.”]

The second problem with Supercapitalism’s lack of popularity is that there will be those who find this book distasteful, not because of what the book actually says but, because of who wrote it. Zealots knowing that Reich is a self-declared “liberal” who taught at Harvard, served as Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration and is a backer of Barack Obama are likely to believe they must reject out of hand whatever Reich might have to say.

It would appear however, if those who occupy any station along the many and varied political / ideological continua that intersect the Economic Sphere are honest with themselves they would agree with almost everything that Reich says in this book.

OK, “some” can find “problems” with any statement as the Blogisphere and this Blog document. Let us just say contrarians would find it hard to locate evidence that refutes Reich’s key observations.

The confounding reality for the ideologues – and this is the same issue that arises with 12 ½ Percenters vis a vis strategies to evolve functional human settlement patterns – if they agree with Reich, they undermine many of the positions they have taken in the past with respect to economic, social and physical activities.

If Supercapitalism starts to move up the best seller lists, it will be attacked in MainStream Media by editors and talking heads because the book challenges the fundamental idea of Mass OverConsumption. Never mind that if democracies with market economies are to be preserved, the trajectory of the Mass OverConsumption-driven economy and society must be changed.

[See APPENDIX ONE: “Disorienting ‘News’ On Citizen Well Being” APPENDIX ONE in “GOOD NEWS: What MainStream Media Is, and Is Not, Telling Us.” [Link in 5 March 2008 Jim Bacon post “Good News, Bad Reporting” on this Blog.]

Are there shortcomings in Reich’s book?

Yes, three stand out.

First there is the core malady of Geographic Illiteracy. This is especially problematic in Reich’s discussion of large public corporations that have direct impact on creating dysfunctional human settlement patterns – Wal*Mart for example. See “Learning From Big Boxes, PART III of THE PROBLEM WITH CARS. [Forthcoming]

Reich makes no reference to, or connection between, Wal*Mart actions and dysfunctional human settlement patterns. What Reich’s ideas desperately need is a New Urban Region Conceptual Framework – or some other comprehensive distribution-of-human-activity conceptual framework – that will facilitate an understanding of the economic and social impacts of the actions that he portrays and the solutions that he outlines.

The second short coming with the Reich book also makes it harder than it needs to be to get across the importance of the core message of Supercapitalism. Reich does not have an overarching conceptual framework for the major organizing forces of society.

Chapter Six (“A Citizen’s Guide to Supercapitalism”) cries out for a clear way to distinguish the differences between the interests of Enterprises (the Second Estate) and citizens (the Fourth Estate).

Reich may or may not agree with the context established for Agencies, Enterprises, Institutions and Citizens / Households in THE ESTATE MATRIX. However, if he does not, then he needs to come up with an alternative because without a conceptual framework for discussing these issues it is easy to fall into a wasteland of babble with every reader applying their own definition in the best tradition of Humpty Dumpty.

The third and final shortcoming is that Reich suggests that a comprehensive “solution” to evolving a functional democracy in the 21st century is possible without a Fundamental Change in governance structure. His one simple idea about the nature of corporations is a great start, but it is just a start.

Were the book rewritten it could be easily absorbed in an hour. But the need for a conceptual framework with consistent vocabulary to spotlight the importance of human settlement patterns and the need for something like THE ESTATES MATRIX to illustrate the difference between the interests of citizens from the interests / driving forces of Enterprises (and in interests / driving forces of Agencies and Institutions) would be critical to making his arguments so powerful that they could not be ignored, even if unpopular.

Readers of this brief review will note that we did not go into detail on the conflict between individuals as consumers and investors and individuals as citizens. We also did not divulge the clear, elegant threshold solution Reich presents for a key driver of dysfunction or the specific ideas that may end up in Barack Obama’s platform.

Why?

It would be a good idea for you to read Supercapitalism yourself.

EMR

Over at The Caucus, they’re talking about making the federal government more transparent using new technology. Whether our betters in DC will ever allow more sunlight to shine on their work remains doubtful:

…Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation, which pushes for more government transparency, said the White House site is mostly full of P.R.-friendly statements.

As with any revolution, Mr. Meinrath said, some uncertainty lies in whether Congress will ever make use of all the Internet tools available to it. “That’s an open question,” he said.

Mr. Glover had a, well, slightly morbid outlook: Congress might not become more technology-forward “until older people are voted out of office or die.”

Danny can be forgiven for his pessimism…particularly if he paid any attention to the push for greater transparency in Virginia government during the current session.

From the White House to Capitol Square, the political class is none too eager to have the masses scrutinizing the books…or letting them know where the books are kept in the first place.