Class

What happens when poor black families move from inner cities move to become neighbors with richer ones?

This very interesting article from the AP illustrates one such case from the Detroit suburb of Southfield. Says Southfield's police chief Thomas, himself black:

I've got people of color who don't want people of color to move into (Southfield). It's not a black-white thing. There is a black-black thing. My six-figure blacks are very concerned about multiple-family, economically depressed people moving into rental homes and apartments, bringing in their bad behaviors."

Wonder if this situation is similar to that preceding white flight, in class/economic if not racial terms?

Fellow-Malthusians, feel free to scream

Maeklong Railway Market in Bangkok.

Civil rights movement: 50 years thence

American Radioworks recently released a voice documentary called State of Siege: Mississippi Whites and the Civil Rights Movement which chronicles the resistance put up by the state and people of Mississippi to the end of segregation.

Very listenable. Read transcript here or stream here.

One startling bit of information one gathers is that while most private white schools then created to circumvent racial integration eventually closed down or started admitting students from other races, some of these "white academies" still exist.

Photo credit [Link]

Bear of ignorance

A logical bear would not hug this dude. About 66% of the world's electricity comes from coal-fired plants. The Nissan Leaf pictured here is more likely than not to be powered by coal, and coal combustion is the single biggest source of carbon dioxide pollution which is understood to contribute to global warming .

My objective is not to rail against electric cars; it is to rail against cars. Indeed, if this were a truly thinking bear, s/he would hug someone who takes the bus/train to work.

The personal car is the second-most dubious of man's creations (religion taking the first spot, of course). It does not make good sense to eat soup using a shovel. It does not make any sense to carry around a bed sheet as a handkerchief. Why then does a car make sense as a method of personal transport? Why is it sensible to carry around 2,500 kgs of metal to take a person weighing 80 kgs from point A to point B? Why does it make sense to fuel 100-plus horsepowers when much less would do?

If you said "safety" or "speed" in response to my rhetorical questions, you certainly have a point. However, the meeting point between pragmatism and purpose has rarely settled so much on the side of purpose, as it has in the case of the personal car. Leaf-owners or not, there are no hugs for us, really.

End of an era?

If I was a patriotic Israeli, I would be anxious. The financial might of the country's biggest patron - the United States - is waning; its political and military might is likely to follow suit. Three of Israel's neighboring countries, where the U.S. enthusiastically promoted democracy, elected governments that are unfriendly, if not hostile, to Israel.

At what point will it become unfeasible, politically and financially, for the United States to continue its unconditional support for Israel? When push comes to shove, how hard will Israel's promoters in Washington shove?

For American legislators across the political spectrum, whose campaigns are boosted by Israel-backers, questioning their country's support of Israel is not only unfashionable, it is suicidal.

Maybe that is not completely true. Senator Rand Paul (yes, the same one who, during his campaign, created a ruckus by saying that he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act) positioned money flowing to Israel in the context of America's fiscal position:

"I want to be known as a friend of Israel, but not with money you don’t have. We can’t just borrow from our kids’ future and give it to countries, even if they are our friends.”

It is semi-amusing to read the logic of the outcry over Paul's comments - if dogma can be called logic. Most opponents of his stance make a case for continuing aid simply because that is what has been traditionally done, or repeat the banal argument that propping up Israel promotes peace and America's interests in the Middle East. There is no evidence of the latter; on the contrary, America's illogical support of Israel has severely weakened its interests in the Middle East and the world.

A non-existential dilemma

A big fight is looming in the U.S. Congress as the county approaches its debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion. The easy solution, advocated mostly by Democrats, is that Congress simply raise the ceiling yet again (it has been raised about 70 times in the past 50 years). The harder, mostly Republican, one is to not raise it, instead cut governmental services to keep borrowing under the limit.

Austan Goolsbee, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, cautions against the Republican suggestion that it would lead the U.S. to default on its debt and damage its good faith and credit.

That argument is pure nonsense. It is like sticking an eraser in each nostril and run around screaming "I can't breathe!". A couple of counter-arguments:

First, place those interest-collectors first in line at pay-off time. That is what millions of financially overstretched, profligate Americans (was there a redundant word among the last two?) do fortnight after fortnight; pay off their most urgent debts first.

Second, as far as the good faith and credit goes, is simple - TINA. "TINA" is a concept explained to me long ago by friends who went to IRMA. It stands for There Is No Alternative. If, according to Mr Goolsbee's logic, foreign investors and nations slow down on buying American bonds, what will they buy? The Renminbi? I doubt it. In spite of its faults, America still provides the world an exceptional level of predictability and comfort in its robust legal, political, capitalist, and innovation systems. The very fact that America is having a lively and consequential discussion about its debt ceiling speaks a comforting lot about its political pedigree.

The irony of it is, as long as America's potential lenders have no plausible alternative, America will not have a TINA-moment that will force it to make a difficult decision.

Not to say the Republicans' stand is praiseworthy. Their proposal to manage with budget cuts across the board except on defense spending is cynical and self-serving. If the ceiling-retainers were to have some credibility in this writer's eyes, they should propose hefty defense cuts. Most ceiling-retainers are self-styled stewards of the Constitution; really, what part of the Constitution authorizes the U.S. government to operate military bases in, say, Japan?