By William Hackmore, September 15th, 2011 
This is the second part of Hackmore’s reflections. Part one was published on Tuesday. I wonder is this digital age the cynical society on steroids, fueled by a strange combination of uneven affluence and hopelessness? -Jeff
I leave the party, and wander through the casinos. These hackers, they’re mostly Millenials. As I walk through the various game rooms, I see faces, gaunt, pale, and bleary-eyed, but excited, some old, but most as young, or even younger than “the kid” at the Xerobank party. They’re here, living like kings temporarily in Vegas, but few actually gamble anything — we all saw the news about the stock market today.
How many of these Millennials really have jobs? When they were still in school, they lived up to their moniker, and watched the world in which they grew up come to an end. For some, their coming-of-age came when they watched more than three-thousand people die, on live television, on September 11th, 2001. Some fought the war. Others went to college. They saw their society torn apart by irrational ideologies on all sides. Whichever path they took, many Millenials found themselves, highly trained, with years of college or military service behind them, living back home with their parents, out of work, enjoying a far lower standard of living.
Is a mass technological movement like Anonymous really that surprising then, given the circumstances? Most of these hackers, who can afford to go to Vegas, seem to be successful. Most of them have managed to stay afloat by wits alone, riding the tech industry, or government service, which both continue to grow in defiance of the turbulence in other sectors of the economy. Despite this, more than a few of the down-and-out have managed to get to Vegas somehow, by road trip, or by spending months scraping together whatever they have. They sleep in cars, or on the conference floor, or in other people’s rooms, and share an identity based on hardship and civic engagement, however strange and threatening the mode of that civic engagement may appear.
For those Millenials . . .
Read more: In Search of Anonymous: Down and Out in the Digital Age – Part II
By Casey Armstrong, September 14th, 2011 
There is a growing expectation that Washington may address the jobs crisis in a significant way with the possibility of major parts of “The American Jobs Act” becoming law, The New York Times reports today. A key to this could be the supercommittee, officially called the “Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.” Casey Armstrong considers whether it is likely to be up to its bi-partisan tasks. The question of American governability is on the line. -Jeff
Last month, I speculated that the supercommittee had the potential to help drag our legislature into a more authentic form of bipartisanship, a bipartisanship based on principled mutual compromise in the tradition of Henry Clay. I expressed my belief that the makeup of the committee would determine its ability to affect change. In that respect, the prospect of the committee changing the status quo now seems bleak. There is great opportunity but the membership of the committee suggested that the opportunity will be missed.
The Committee on Deficit Reduction is nominally a “joint select committee.” Emphasis should be given to the “joint” nature. Select committees generally suggest, but don’t legislate. In the present supercommittee, I see the spirit of the conference committees that resolve contentions between Senate and House bills. “Going to conference” offers possibilities of compromise that would not have previously existed for the conferees in their respective chambers or standing committees. Conference rules state that “the conferees are given free reign to resolve their differences without formal instructions from their bodies.” Senate scholar Walter Oleszek quoted an anonymous Senate leader opining, “Conferences are marvelous. They’re mystical. They’re alchemy. It’s absolutely dazzling what you can do.”
In the Obama budget talks, posturing was encouraged by heightened visibility. Separate branches of government competed for authority. With the supercommittee, we move to what Erving Goffman called the “backstage.” The individual actors have more agency to shape the outcome than the participants . . .
Read more: Can Washington Matter? The Case Against the Supercommittee
By William Hackmore, September 13th, 2011 
These reflections on a trip to a hackers’ conference reveal an emerging new culture: where the public and private are confused, identity is hidden, appearance is suspected, and surveillance is assumed. -Jeff
My arrival in Vegas has put me somewhat off my equilibrium. It’s twelve in the morning here, and through some trick of non-euclidian geometry, my cell tells me that it’s only been three hours since my flight left New York City at nine. I know that the time-difference has created the illusion that less time has passed than I perceived, but the streets of Vegas are indifferent, and beat out their manic, midnight tempo regardless.
I’m here, in search of Anonymous, that nameless, faceless organization that scares the pants off of politicians and public figures everywhere, a bogeyman, haunting the nightmares of middle-class boomers, and mid-level bureaucrats. This past Summer has seen a great uptick in the number of high-profile cyber crimes, many committed in the name of WikiLeaks, and I know that this may be my best chance to get a word with someone who knows about the splinter-group Lulsec.
Even as Jim, Frank, Karen and I make tracks across the desert highway in the rental car, fifteen-thousand hackers are making similar pilgrimages, converging on our location from all over the world. The leaders from every tribe come to DEFCON, one of the largest hacker conferences on the planet, bring the latest news and gossip from all corners of the world back to their local communities. Nobody knows quite what will happen, but whatever does will set the tone for the entire year.
First impressions, Vegas: a hooker thumbs a ride under a sign advertising six dollar prime rib. The strip is a hallucinogenic wonderland of dancing light, and architectural insanity. Each architectural monstrosity bound to its neighbors only by divergence, and difference. Each is more garish and twisted than the last. This city is a schizoid’s sandbox in the middle of the desert. The land here is . . .
Read more: In Search of Anonymous: Down and Out in the Digital Age
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 12th, 2011 
Yesterday, I was with Steve Assael, my friend of nearly 60 years, retracing, as much as possible, his steps of ten years ago. He worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield on the 25th floor of North Tower of the WTC. The vivid specificity of his memories was moving, from the opening tragedy, the paraplegic colleague who couldn’t escape because the elevators weren’t working and his co worker who decided to stay with him, to the loneliness of direct experience, riding on the subway in Queens along with the daily commuters ten years ago and walking downtown yesterday. We spoke, walked, looked around, remembered 9/11/01 as a day of personal experience and national trauma. I wondered and worried about how the people we saw yesterday remember. I recalled that the U.S. has been implicated consequentially in the suffering of so many others since that day. Steve and I don’t agree on such matters, but political discussion wasn’t on the agenda.
We met in Penn Station at 7:45. The time, more or less, he had arrived on his morning commute from Massapequa, Long Island, ten years ago. We took the express train downtown to Chambers Street, as he did then. Instead of a crowd of office workers, we joined the anniversary memorial ceremony, part of the general public observers (only the relatives of those who died were included in the ceremony). Steve later told me that he had hoped that by chance he would bump into one of the hundreds of people whom he knew when he worked there. But, ironically, we met my friend and colleague Jan Gross, author of Neighbors, one of the most important and troubling books of recent decades.
We passed through a security checkpoint at 8:30. We were a couple of blocks from the memorial, with a clear view of the rising tower. We observed the ceremony on a huge television screen and listened to the reading of the names for a while, and heard the dignitaries’ readings. Our project was to wander, look . . .
Read more: New York, N.Y., September 11, 2011
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 9th, 2011 
As Will Milberg anticipated, President Obama gave a speech last night that did not just involve political positioning. It was a serious Address to a Joint Session of Congress about our economic problems, proposing significant solutions. The address was also politically astute, and will be consequential. Obama was on his game again, revealing the method to his madness.
His game is not properly appreciated, as I have argued already here. He has a long term strategy, and doesn’t allow short term tactics to get in the way. He additionally understands that politics is not only about ends, but also means.
Many of his supporters and critics from the left, including me, have been seriously concerned about how he handled himself in the debt ceiling crisis. He apparently compromised too readily, negotiated weakly, another instance of a recurring pattern. In the first stimulus, healthcare reform, and the lame duck budget agreement, it seemed that he settled for less, could have got more, was too soft. But, of course, this is not for sure. I find that my friends who supported Hillary Clinton look at me, as an early and committed Obama supporter, differently now and express more open skepticism about Obama these days. But I think, as was revealed last night, that Obama’s failures have been greatly exaggerated. (Today only about political economic issues)
A worldwide depression was averted. The principle of universal health care for all Americans is now part of our law, the most significant extension of what T. H. Marshall called social citizenship since the New Deal. And, a completely unnecessary American induced global crisis did not occur. None of this was pretty. The President had to gain the support of conservative Democrats (so called moderates) and Republicans for these achievements. But it was consequential. In my judgment, despite complete, and not really loyal, Republican opposition to every move he has made, he has governed effectively, steering the ship of state in the right direction, despite extremely difficult challenges.
And during his . . .
Read more: President Barack Obama: There is Method to his Madness
By William Milberg, September 8th, 2011 
The failure of economics in the runup to and aftermath of the Great Recession has generated a lively debate about how to reform economics and more specifically about the renewed relevance of Keynesian economics, which had fallen out of favor since the 1970s. The Keynesian message, so important in this latest round of political wrangling over the increase in the US debt ceiling, is that cutting government spending in a slump will only worsen the unemployment problem. The role of expansionary fiscal policy, according to Keynesianism 101, is to provide demand for goods (and thus for employees to produce those goods) when the main sources of demand in a capitalist economy — households and businesses – are not providing a level of demand necessary to generate a socially acceptable level of unemployment.
Keynesianism 102 is about the multiplier effect of changes in spending. This is the notion that an increase in demand (from any source, not just government but certainly including government) will impact employment and incomes with a ripple effect. This includes a direct impact and then a secondary impact when the direct incomes are then spent (in some fraction) and an additional fraction of that is spent, etc.
There are two corollaries to the lesson of Keynesianism 102 that are worth mentioning because they have been raised in the current policy debate. The first is about the differential multiplier effect of a spending increase compared to a tax cut. Empirical studies show that the multiplier effect of the former is greater than the multiplier effect of the latter. The second is about the differential multiplier effect depending on the income of the recipients. Since the poor are more likely to spend a higher percentage of additional disposable income than the rich, a tax cut that benefits low-income people will have a bigger multiplier effect than a tax cut that benefits the rich.
These lessons have not been integrated into current economic policy in the US, where deficit spending and progressive tax reform and expanded benefits for . . .
Read more: Unemployment Equilibrium: Keynesianism 103
By Gary Alan Fine, September 7th, 2011 
Sitting quietly at my desk yesterday, thinking my thoughts about earthquakes, hurricanes, and the glorious Libya campaign, I was awakened by a phone call. A radio reporter from one of our major Chicago stations called, asking for my opinion about a newly minted coloring book that is designed to help children remember the “truth” of 9/11. This effort from a company named “Really Big Coloring Books” is what they describe as a “graphic coloring novel.” Perhaps we should think of this as a “Mickey Maus” effort.
While the coloring book, rated PG by corporate description, aims at teaching children “the facts surrounding 9/11,” it is not without its red-state politics. The company claims proudly that “Our Coloring Books are made in the USA. Since 1988.” The production of coloring books has not, yet, been outsourced to Vietnam. The book, We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom, has as its target audience a group that can, in fact, never remember 9/11, but only know of the day through the visceral accounts that we provide. According to the publisher, “The book was created with honesty, integrity, reverence, respect and does not shy away from the truth.” When a publisher (no author is listed) suggests that a work does not “shy away” from the truth, he is suggesting that others are doing that very shying and that the truth is both unambiguous and uncomfortable.
The book is filled with accounts of brave Americans and dangerous Arabs, and the text reminds its readers, “Children, the truth is these terrorist acts were done by freedom-hating radical Islamic Muslim extremists. These crazy people hate the American way of life because we are FREE and our society is FREE.” Nice touch, particularly on the page in which “the coward” Bin Laden is shot, while using women and children as a shield. One wonders which age child is captivated both by Crayolas and by the moral philosophy of human shields.
But my argument is less about this . . .
Read more: Forgetting 9/11
By Lisa Aslanian, September 6th, 2011 
In The Atlantic, several prominent music critics reviewed “Watch the Throne,” the fabulous collaboration between Kanye West and Jay Z. Again, critics are angry about the subject matter. The song “That’s My Bitch” met with this reaction — it is the only song where Jay sings about B, and in the song, he does not adequately sing the praises of monogamy. First, he does more than sing about B (his wife, Beyoncé Knowles) — he enters her, as a black woman, into the pantheon of women men dream about (like Marilyn Monroe) and second, yes, he is “crass” and “protective” because he is saying, with cheek and guile, “that’s my girl.”
A host of questions ensue. Do we really associate musical maturity with our image of a monogamous family man? Do we ask our artists to promote social constraints, or do we want our art to articulate fantasy and felt experience? Does the egregiously simple image of maturity= monogamy play on a host of stereotypes about black men — not being monogamous, leaving their families, etc. and even if these stereotypes are partially true — is it the place of music and its’ critics to address them?
Jay Z has assumed enormous social responsibility. He openly discusses his early years dealing crack, cautioning young people not to do it by saying “you will end up in jail or dead.” He is philanthropic. Must we ask that his music, his fantasy, his creativity — his art — be as pedestrian and unambiguous as his politics?
Here is another loopy bit from the monogamy-happy review — another reviewer decided that the rapper in a steady marriage (Jay) sounded happier than the rapper who has yet to wed (Kanye). Huh? I have gone back repeatedly in search of this happiness (because the reviewer does not ground the comment) and for the life of me I cannot figure out what the hell she means — they both sound happy — at the top of their games.
***
Two years ago, young Jeezy and . . .
Read more: More on Rap: The Matter of Maturity
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 5th, 2011 
Today is Labor Day in the U.S. In practice, for most Americans, the primary significance of the day is as the unofficial last day of summer. I just went for a long swim in my outdoor pool, which closes today.
There are also political and union activities on the labor theme, marking the official reason for the holiday. Thus, President Obama gave a speech today in Detroit to a union gathering, previewing the themes of his long awaited address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday, addressing the concerns of organized labor.
This September date as a workers holiday was originally chosen by the Central Union of New York in 1882. It is strange that the rest of the world celebrates May 1st as the international day of labor, marking the Haymarket Affair of 1886, a scandalous labor conflict in Chicago. During the cold war, the U.S. even officially designated May 1st as “loyalty day.” The contrast with the practice of the Soviet Union and its allies was essential. The American Labor Day, though, has an equally serious origin. It became a national holiday after the violent events surrounding the Pullman Strike of 1894. American indeed has an important and rich labor history.
I think it is unfortunate that American labor’s celebration is out of sync with the rest of the world. We commemorate alone, which weakens the power of the ritual. Nonetheless, especially now, when labor issues are so central, as President Obama indicated in his speech, it is important to take notice. I recall some previous Deliberately Considered posts.
Rachel Sherman’s “Domestic Workers Gain Visibility, Legitimacy” noted an advance in labor legislation in the state of New York. She highlighted the achievements of the Domestic Workers Union to agitate and achieve some fundamental rights in the new legislation, concerning overtime, vacation leave and protections against sexual and racial harassment. As she also observed the place of American domestic workers in the global economy and the connection between class and gender, . . .
Read more: In Review: On Labor Day
By Scott Beck, September 2nd, 2011 
Freedom is an integral part of American consciousness and national identity. Thus, legislation and policy proposals are often debated in terms of their ramifications for freedom. Yet, most Conservatives believe this ideal is their private property and pertains only to private property. They hold a narrow view, which privileges the business class. Freedom for the rest of society will magically flourish so long as corporations have their way. This particular approach to freedom, economic freedom, has been brought up repeatedly by Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who has warned that economic freedom in the United States is in danger of disappearing. This claim has twice earned Romney a “Pants on Fire” rating from Politifact.com. Of course, this will not deter Romney or other Republican candidates from extoling the virtues of economic freedom, warning us of its impending extinction and the tyranny which will ensue. Because the conservative’s “freedom” has been so politically consequential in recent years, it deserves close scrutiny,
According to the ascendant conservative ideology, the size of a government stands in inverse proportion to the liberties of its people. Hence, more government means less “freedom.” The corollary to this maxim is that the lifeblood of the government is tax revenue. Hence, if you want to limit the size of government, you must keep taxes as low as possible. Add the claim, following Cold War logic, that restrictions on economic freedom lead to a decline in general freedom, and you have “freedom,” which will then somehow trickle down on the rest of us. The case for economic freedom has its appeal. Yet, the implicit claim that economic freedom necessarily leads to other freedoms, political or otherwise, does not stand up to scrutiny, as revealed by two recent reports on freedom: Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World 2011” and the Heritage Foundation’s “2011 Index of Economic Freedom.”
A comparison of the two lists is quite instructive as it undermines claims that economic freedom is the basis of other freedoms, that socialist programs . . .
Read more: Does Freedom Trickle Down?
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