Mistake costs dishwasher $59,000

Guatemala native Pedro Zapeta a dishwasher in the U.S. for 11 years
From John Zarrella and Patrick Oppmann
CNN

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- For 11 years, Pedro Zapeta, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, lived his version of the American dream in Stuart, Florida: washing dishes and living frugally to bring money back to his home country.

Two years ago, Zapeta was ready to return to Guatemala, so he carried a duffel bag filled with $59,000 -- all the cash he had scrimped and saved over the years -- to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

But when Zapeta tried to go through airport security, an officer spotted the money in the bag and called U.S. customs officials.

"They asked me how much money I had," Zapeta recalled, speaking to CNN in Spanish.

He told the customs officials $59,000. At that point, U.S. customs seized his money, setting off a two-year struggle for Zapeta to get it back.

Zapeta, who speaks no English, said he didn't know he was running afoul of U.S. law by failing to declare he was carrying more than $10,000 with him. Anyone entering or leaving the country with more than $10,000 has to fill out a one-page form declaring the money to U.S. customs.

Officials initially accused Zapeta of being a courier for the drug trade, but they dropped the allegation once he produced pay stubs from restaurants where he had worked. Zapeta earned $5.50 an hour at most of the places where he washed dishes. When he learned to do more, he got a 25-cent raise.

After customs officials seized the money, they turned Zapeta over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The INS released him but began deportation proceedings. For two years, Zapeta has had two attorneys working pro bono: one on his immigration case, the other trying to get his money back.

"They are treating me like a criminal when all I am is a working man," he said.
Zapeta's story became public last year on CNN and in The Palm Beach Post newspaper, prompting well-wishers to give him nearly $10,000 -- money that now sits in a trust.

Robert Gershman,one of Zapeta's attorneys, said federal prosecutors later offered his client a deal: He could take $10,000 of the original cash seized, plus $9,000 in donations as long as he didn't talk publicly and left the country immediately.

Zapeta said, "No." He wanted all his money. He'd earned it, he said.

Now, according to Gershman, the Internal Revenue Service wants access to the donated cash to cover taxes on the donations and on the money Zapeta made as a dishwasher. Zapeta admits he never paid taxes.

CNN contacted the U.S. Attorneys office in Miami, U.S. Customs and the IRS about Zapeta's case. They all declined to comment.

Marisol Zequeira, an immigration lawyer, said illegal immigrants such as Zapeta have few options when dealing with the U.S. government.

"When you are poor, uneducated and illegal, your avenues are cut," he said.

On Wednesday, Zapeta went to immigration court and got more bad news. The judge gave the dishwasher until the end of January to leave the country on his own. He's unlikely to see a penny of his money.

"I am desperate," Zapeta said. "I no longer feel good about this country."

Zapeta said his goal in coming to the United States was to make enough money to buy land in his mountain village and build a home for his mother and sisters. He sent no money back to Guatemala over the years, he said, and planned to bring it all home at once.

At Wednesday's hearing, Zapeta was given official status in the United States -- voluntary departure -- and a signed order from a judge. For the first time, he can work legally in the U.S.

By the end of January, Zapeta may be able to earn enough money to pay for a one-way ticket home so the U.S. government, which seized his $59,000, doesn't have to do so.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/27/immigrant.money/index.html

Bolivian President Evo Morales on Indigenous Rights, Climate Change, Iraq,

Bolivian President Evo Morales on Indigenous Rights, Climate Change, Iraq,
Establishing Diplomatic Relations with Iran, Che Guevara's Legacy and More

Democracy Now!
September 26, 2007

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/26/1442242

AMY GOODMAN: Today, a Democracy Now! special: We spend the hour with Evo
Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia. He traveled to New York
this week, where he's scheduled to speak before the United Nations General
Assembly today. On Monday, he addressed a high-level UN meeting on climate
change, during which he accused what he called "predatory capitalism" of
affecting the environment.

Evo Morales first spoke before the UN General Assembly last year, where he
dramatically brandished a coca leaf and vowed never to yield to US pressure
to criminalize coca production. Morales's rise to power began with his
leadership of the coca growers union in Bolivia and his high-profile
opposition to the US-funded eradication of the coca crop. He helped to lead
the street demonstrations by Indian and union groups that toppled the
country's last two presidents.

An Aymara Indian, Evo Morales became the country's first indigenous
president when he was elected nearly two years ago with more popular support
than any Bolivian leader in decades. Since then, he has moved to nationalize
Bolivia's oil and gas industry and is seeking a new constitution that would
grant more power to Bolivia's indigenous majority.

Today, we spend the hour with Evo Morales, talking about indigenous rights,
biofuels, the Iraq war, establishing diplomatic relations with Iran, and the
enduring legacy of Che Guevara on Latin America. Democracy Now!'s Juan
Gonzalez and I sat down with President Morales at the Bolivian mission here
in New York. I began by asking President Morales what his message is this
year to the UN General Assembly.

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Last year was our first experience, my
first time at the United Nations, as well as my first time in the United
States. And as the coca leaf stands for and is symbolic of the struggle of
the peoples for land and for their sovereignty, so last time I was here, it
was my responsibility to talk about how it is that I came to become
president of Bolivia.

But today, the most important thing is to talk about the changes that we're
forging in democracy through this cultural and democratic revolution in my
country and at the same time share my enormous concern and to talk about
things that are not just a regional or a local problem, but a global
problem, and that's the environment.

JUAN GONZALEZ: One of the things that has happened, changes, obviously, is
that just a few days ago, more than a week ago, the United Nations General
Assembly passed an important declaration in terms of indigenous rights.
Article 34, specifically, says that indigenous peoples have rights to
promote, develop and maintain their institutional structures and their
customs. How important is this to Bolivia in the current writing of the new
constitution that you're involved in now?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First of all, we'd like to salute, thank
and recognize the countries of the world that approved and voted for this
Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, just as fifty, sixty years
ago, the United Nations for the first time recognized the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. And it's only now, over 500 years later, that
indigenous people's rights are being recognized. Happily, there were only a
few countries that didn't support this declaration.

And so, I want to say to the indigenous peoples, but also to the other
peoples who live in the cities, that this is a very important thing that the
struggle for indigenous people's rights has not been in vain. And it was
very important to get organized to mobilize. It took over twenty years, but,
working together, people were able to do this, to approve this declaration
and establish that we are people that have rights just like anyone else on
earth.

In some cases, it will be to recognize the rights of minorities in some
countries, this declaration. In my country, it's to make sure that the
majority is respected, and it will be respect for their institutions, for
their structures. And this is an important contribution to unity within our
country, but not because we have a declaration behind us recognized by the
United Nations. It's important that, even though this declaration exists,
that doesn't mean that we, as the majority, are going to be vengeful or use
this as the majority.

I want you all to know, through the means of communication like yourself, I
want the people of the United States and the people of the world to
understand that the indigenous movement is not vengeful. We want to live
together, respecting the difference and the diversity that we have. Some of
the people in our country, when they saw that this declaration that came out
that's not just a declaration recognizing indigenous peoples, but also right
to land, to self-determination, they think that we're going to take a
vengeful attitude, and I'm here to say never.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think the message was of the four countries that
voted no: Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the United States?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] It will be important for not the
countries, but the people who lead those countries, their ambassadors, their
leaders, to reflect and to embrace a recognition of indigenous people's
rights. I'm convinced that indigenous peoples are the moral reserve of
humanity. So amongst indigenous peoples, there's not a mentality of being
individualist, personalist or egotistical, and therefore there's not an
attitude of trying to take over resources and control them for themselves.
How nice it would be if those four countries, or better, for the presidents
of those four countries, and along with the social forces, and especially
the indigenous peoples, join together to save humanity.

JUAN GONZALEZ: But in practical terms, implementing this in your country is
obviously creating many issues. You have thirty-six different nationalities
among the native people. And the battle now, the constitutional battle over
whether you're going to have provincial autonomy or autonomy for these
indigenous nations, how will that work itself out?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First of all, dialogue and concerting,
coming together. You're right, though, when you recognize that there are
some small groups in my country that still don't recognize exclusion and
racism as it exists in our country. And that's why I call on the countries
that not only supported this declaration, but also the countries that didn't
support this declaration, to come together and move forward to recognizing
indigenous people's rights, but without excluding anyone.

My government will guarantee departmental or state-level autonomies, but
also local-level autonomies and indigenous people's autonomies. A lot will
depend on the specificities of these different regions. Sometimes there will
be regional autonomies and local autonomies; sometimes there will be
regional autonomies, as well as indigenous autonomies. And we'll have to
figure out how these different autonomies are going to work together. When
we made our initial demands as indigenous, original peoples, there were
people who reacted to and rejected our demands. But I want to tell these
people now -- and some people are originally from a place that dates back to
a thousand years, some are much more contemporary, but we all have to learn
how to live together.

AMY GOODMAN: Bolivian President Evo Morales. We'll come back to our
conversation in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to our conversation with the president of Bolivia,
Evo Morales. He's addressing the United Nations General Assembly today. On
Monday, he addressed a high-level UN meeting on climate change. Over eighty
world leaders attended; President Bush did not. In it, Evo Morales spoke in
his speech on Monday about referring to the need to prevent industrialized
nations with their gas emissions from continuing harming the planet.

Democracy Now!, Juan Gonzalez and I sat down with President Morales at the
Bolivian mission. Juan asked President Morales about the issue of biofuels.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to ask you about the message that you're going to be
bringing to the United Nations, as well, over the issue of the use of
agricultural products for biofuels, that clearly in Brazil President Lula
has a different perspective. He is promoting the use of biofuels. What is
your perspective on this issue?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] From the time that biofuels were first
talked about, we've seen a spiraling process of speculation of land. There's
a whole speculation on grains like wheat, not only at the regional level
within countries, but also internationally. So, therefore, the cost of
agricultural products rises. And this is a product of that moment from
which, going forward, people have been talking about biofuels.

And personally, in our movement, as well, we're convinced that agricultural
products should not be dedicated, directed towards automobiles, cars, and
that lands be dedicated towards old rusted vehicles. First to people, before
automobiles. And that's our difference.

And we want to debate this, but we don't want to debate it just as
governments or presidents. We want to debate with our peoples, with the
social forces in our countries, and I would even dare to say, at the South
American regional level, submit this to a referendum of the peoples of South
America and let the people say yes or no to different biofuels. This is
something I've learned from Subcomandante Marcos, from his messages -- that
is, to govern obeying the people. That means to govern, but respecting the
different proposals that social forces put on the table, because sometimes
when a proposal is put on the table between presidents, arguments arise, and
this can even generate confusion amongst people sometimes. And that's why I
consider it to be very important that people decide with their votes in a
referendum about what the future biofuels is going to be. That would be the
most democratic thing.

AMY GOODMAN: Mr. President, you've just established diplomatic relations
with Iran. When the Iranian President Ahmadinejad leaves the United Nations
General Assembly, New York, this week, he will first go to Bolivia. Why did
you establish diplomatic relations?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First of all, it's important our peoples
are from the culture of dialogue, so we have diplomatic relations with the
United States, we have diplomatic relations with Cuba, just as we have
diplomatic relations with France and with Iran, but, above all, diplomatic
relations for life, for humanity, for peace with social justice.

In my country, we're going to be opening commercial and diplomatic relations
to establish relationships of complementarity so that we can resolve the
social and economic problems that we confront. We're never going to
establish diplomatic relations to wage aggression or to hurt or to declare
wars or to get involved in arms races. We're not of the culture of death.

Moreover, I respect the technology, the industrial development in the area
of gas and oil in Iran, and that's what we've seen as interesting, that we
can work together on these issues. And I'd like to agree with you. We
haven't ever thought about other issues in our relations. As far as I know,
it's not a country that's sending troops to end other people's lives in
other countries. And I admire Cuba very much, for example, which sends
people to other countries to help save lives.

AMY GOODMAN: Just to follow up on that point, has the United States weighed
in? Has the United States responded to your diplomatic relations with Iran?
And what do you think of the US talking about perhaps attacking Iran?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] The United States, nor any other
country, can observe or comment or have anything to say about the
relationships that we have with any other countries. We're a small country,
but we're a sovereign country with dignity, with the right to establish
relations with whoever we want. If the United States government reacts, if
they would have reacted, it would suggest that they are still thinking that
Latin American countries need to be subordinate to the United States. But
happily, in Latin America, there are countries with democracies that are
liberating democracies, not subordinate democracies.

AMY GOODMAN: Your vice president has denounced US funding of rightwing think
tanks in Bolivia as intervening in internal affairs of your country.

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Former ministers and vice minister of
the government of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who, as you know, escaped to
the United States, and the former President Banzer, who, may he rest in
peace, as well as former President Tutu Quiroga, these former ministers are
financed through foundations, NGOs, to create this counterweight to the
government of Evo Morales. It's impressive. And what we're asking for is
that all international cooperation be transparent, that it come through
formally the central government.

AMY GOODMAN: What are those groups pushing for?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First of all, these neoliberals, the
rightwing organizations, the ones who sold out the country, as we say in
Bolivia, is to exhaust the image of Evo Morales especially. And so, if they
have objected, if they want to exhaust Evo Morales, it's to be done with the
government of Evo Morales. And these things circulated on the internet, then
pamphlets, [inaudible]; verbatim they say, "We have to overthrow this Indian
(and leave that blank)," because I can't repeat those words on the radio.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to ask you about the student protests that broke out
recently there and the continuing battle over writing a new constitution.
It's been more than thirteen months, and the Constituent Assembly, I
understand, now is going to start meeting again. But the battle, especially
over this issue of the capital for Bolivia, what is the significance of the
battle over whether Sucre or La Paz should be the capital of Bolivia?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Bolivia was founded in 1825, and the
people who were participating, they were only 8% of the population; they
were all mestizos or criollos. But who fought for the independence from
Spain? It was that other 92%; it was the indigenous peoples. So we proposed
to re-found the country, indigenous peoples, non-indigenous peoples,
professional peoples, nonprofessional peoples, but to transform the country.
Therefore, there are sectors that are seeking to undermine or make sure that
the Constituent Assembly fails.

The enemies of this deep structural transformation that we're pursuing, some
of them have entered, are members of the Constituent Assembly, and they've
been working from the very beginning, when the Constituent Assembly started
on 6th of August, 2006, to undermine the process through the demand for
two-thirds, the demand for autonomy, and now the demand to move the capital
of the country.

This issue of where the capital is going to be located is not a national
issue. It's not a problem for the government. It's an issue for just two
departments. And there are families that don't love their country and who
are not working for the majorities, who are working for those people who
have not been respected, the indigenous majorities, they're talking about
where the capital is going to be located as a tool to shut down the
Constituent Assembly.

But what are we working for? What are we betting on? First, as the
government and also as the indigenous movement, to make sure that the
Constituent Assembly concludes successfully. It's the best way to find
unity, equality and justice, to forge that in my country.

And I would like to remember the words of a businessman, actually, from
Bolivia. What did he say before the Constituent Assembly? "I'd rather have
rocks in my door than bullets." What does that mean? That I would rather
have these sorts of popular demonstrations and protests happening than a
civil war, a fighting war with bullets.

And now, so that we have neither the protests nor the shooting war with
bullets, we're pursuing this deep structural transformation through a
democratic process, which is the Constituent Assembly. How are we doing
this? Through the creation of writing a new constitution for the country.

Of course, it's going to be difficult to have equality, but to make those
differences between people smaller is possible. Early in the process, only
weeks into the process, they said that Evo Morales was not going to respect
private property. That was another attack, another attempt to undermine and
cause the Constituent Assembly to fail. With the powerful people above, what
we're trying to do is lift up the people, the humble people, from below,
through using the strategic natural resources that we have to put them on a
more equal footing.

And the other thing that they can't accept is, how is it that what they call
the Indians, that they feel for the country and they're working for their
people and that this Indian is governing well? This is something they can't
tolerate. Two facts: the last time that Bolivia had a budget surplus was in
the 1960s during a boom, a tin boom, and we've been over sixty years always
with a fiscal deficit. Last year, for the first time, in my first year of
government, we have a budget surplus, and Bolivia's international reserves
never were more than $1 billion. And this year we're approaching $5 billion
in international reserves. And the modification of the hydrocarbons gas and
oil law, which cost us blood, thereafter the nationalization of gas and oil,
has allowed Bolivia to improve our revenues, the revenues for the country.
An example: in 2005, Bolivia only received $300 million -- $300 million in
2005 in revenues from state gas and oil, and this year we're going to be
receiving more than $2 billion in revenues from gas and oil. And this is
something they can't accept.

A political class, for them, government was business. It was enrichment.
What they can't accept is that our corruption in Bolivia has been declining.
In the past, Bolivia was considered in the number two position in terms of
the championship for the most corrupt country. Many international
institutions have recognized that corruption is on the decline in Bolivia.
And what these groups don't accept is that this -- what they call an
"Indian" can change Bolivia, bring dignity to Bolivia.

And in this situation, some sectors are talking about the re-election of Evo
Morales, and so this is something that would have to be become
constitutionally permitted. But what do the right, the neoliberal, the
opposition, say to this? And they say we can negotiate anything, but not the
re-election of this Indian. This is the problem. It's not a problem of where
the capital of the country is located. And, of course, they never liked
groups like the ones that you make reference to that will travel from Santa
Cruz to Sucre to agitate, to stir up these issues.

AMY GOODMAN: Bolivian President Evo Morales. We'll return to the conclusion,
where he talks about the war in Iraq and the legacy of Che Guevara. Stay
with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to our conversation with the Bolivian President Evo
Morales. The Bolivian Supreme Court recently asked the government to start
extradition proceedings for the former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de
Lozada, who lives here in the United States in Miami. They also asked for an
order for him not to be allowed to go to another country, but to be sent
back to Bolivia. I asked President Morales what the former president is
guilty of and whether he thinks the United States will extradite him.

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First of all, the United States cannot,
should not receive, protect delinquents from any part of the world. It is
unconscionable that the United States, a democratic country, would be
protecting international criminals like Posada Carriles. The process has to
do with two issues: first of all, human rights, and second of all, for
economic damages done to the state. So people who massacre peoples, that
violate human rights and do economic damage to countries and their economies
have to go to jail. The United States shouldn't be sitting there waiting for
a process to be put into motion, but rather should kick these people out so
that they can be submitted to justice.

I hope the United States respects these norms and respects the decision of
our Supreme Court. But here, we have an experience. The last military
dictator was sent to jail. And since that time, in Bolivia, no member of the
military dares to threaten a coup d'etat. Likewise, any democratic
government that violates human rights, that massacres people or that does
economic damage to the state should also be subject to these sorts of
processes, and their leaders should be put in jail, so that they never dare
to do it again either.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Mr. President, you said a few moments ago that you'd rather
have protesters throwing rocks than using guns. In a few weeks, it will be
the fortieth anniversary of the death of Che Guevara. He died in Bolivia.
Looking back at it -- you were a child then -- what is your sense of the
legacy of Che Guevara to the people of Latin America?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] First of all, in the '40s, in the '50s,
in the '60s -- of course, when I hadn't been born yet -- my first perception
was that people rose up in arms to struggle against the empire. Now, I see
quite the opposite, that it's the empire that's raising up arms against the
peoples. What I think is that back then, that the peoples, they got
organized and struggled, looking for justice, for equality. And now I think
that these transformations, these structural transformations, are being
forged through democracies.

And from these two points of view, Che Guevara continues to be a symbol of
someone who gave his life for the peoples, when in Bolivia and in other
countries around the world reigned military dictatorships. So that's why
it's amazing to see that all over the world Che Guevara is still there,
forty years later. But now, we're living in other times. But to value and
recognize that thinking, that struggle, and if we recognize and we value it,
that doesn't mean it means to mechanically follow the steps that he took in
terms of military uprising.

And that's where, for example, I respect Fidel Castro. In 2003, I was
invited to a conference in Havana, Cuba. And Fidel said the following:
"Don't do what I've done. Do what Chavez is doing: transformations through a
constituent assembly." I think it was a good teaching, because we've seen
the constituent assemblies in Venezuela, in Ecuador and now in Bolivia, as
well, that through democracy we can achieve structural transformations.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the effect of the war on Iraq in Latin America, in
Bolivia, in particular?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] There is a feeling that leads to the
rejection, the repudiation of the United States government. This
intervention of the United States in Iraq helps anti-imperialist thinking
and feeling to grow. The pretext of fighting against terrorism and for
security, with this pretext, they intervene and create all these deaths. But
there are also other issues, economic issues, underlying it. I feel that
we're in a times of not looking to how to extinguish lives, but rather how
to save lives.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to ask you about the issue of global warming. It's
become a major increasing discussion in many governments and around the
world. From the perspective of the indigenous people of Bolivia, the future
of the planet? And what policies must be adopted, especially by the
industrialized countries?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] So if globalization does not admit
difference and pluralism, if it's a selective globalization, therefore it
will be almost impossible to resolve environmental issues and save humanity.
The most important contribution that indigenous peoples can make is to live
in harmony with Mother Earth. We say the "Mother Earth," because the earth
gives us life, and neither the Mother Earth nor life can be a commodity. So
we're talking about a profound change in the economic models and systems.

AMY GOODMAN: Several years ago, Father Roy Bourgeois and others who founded
the anti-School of the Americas movement at Fort Benning, Georgia, asked
that -- came and visited you in the palace and asked that Bolivia not send
soldiers to train at the -- what used to be called the School of the
Americas, a place where Banzer, the dictator, had trained. Other countries
are considering this ban. I think Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica
have said they won't send soldiers. Will Bolivia?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] So, it's not just a question of not
sending people. Perhaps it would be better to shut the School of the
Americas. But I understand it's also part of the survival and continuation
of [inaudible] and to create a certain interventionist mindset.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to ask you perhaps a delicate question. You
mentioned earlier your admiration for Fidel Castro. Fidel, before he stepped
down, had been president for more than forty years, before he stepped down
from day-to-day administration in the Cuban government. President Chavez now
has been in office for two terms and is seeking to change the law to
maintain himself in office. Do you think that the leader of a country, no
matter how progressive, should have a limited amount of time in power?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] To put those kinds of limits may not be
the most democratic. Here, what's important is the conscience of a people.
And so, our proposal, there has to be a way to revoke leadership roles, but
also to ratify leadership, and this is for mayors, for governors, for
regional leaders, as well as for presidents. If they have the support of the
people, then they have every right to be ratified in power. And mayors,
governors and presidents, they can also be revoked, their mandates can be
revoked before they finish their terms, if that's the will of the people. In
fact, I'm seeing at this point that, through ratifying and returning people
to power, it actually becomes an incentive for them to do a good -- and
continue to do a good and better job in their municipalities at the
departmental levels in the positions that they hold, because the people have
valued their work, and that's why they're ratified. But when they are not
ratified, they take advantage of that fact, and they say, "OK, I'm on my way
out the door, so now is the time to steal, as my mandate is ending."

AMY GOODMAN: What is your assessment of President Bush?

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] Why would I have to evaluate President
Bush? I respect your country. One concern that I have is that in Iran -- in
Iraq, the massacre of the people cannot continue. I think that this is
something that not only affects President Bush, but affects all the North
American people. I think that in this new millennium, we fundamentally
should be oriented towards saving lives and not ending lives. The
differences continentally between countries, between regions, these should
be discussed. And if there's not agreements between governments and their
presidents, why not submit these issues to the peoples to be decided upon?
This would be the best way to do democracy now.

AMY GOODMAN: Bolivian President Evo Morales. He speaks today to the UN
General Assembly.

All the Economics You Need to Know in One Lesson

All the Economics You Need to Know in One Lesson
by Michael D. Yates

CHEAP MOTELS AND A HOTPLATE: An Economist’s Travelogue by Michael D. Yates ORDER THIS BOOK

This essay complements my forthcoming book: Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate: an Economist's Travelogue (Monthly Review Press).

We Meet an Economist

Karen and I were hiking in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on the Atalaya Mountain Trail, which begins in the parking lot of St. John's College. This college, like its sister college in Annapolis, Maryland, is dedicated to a "Great Books" program. Students read and discuss the "great books" of Western Civilization, beginning with the ancient Greeks, while at the same time studying languages and sciences. The goal of the college is to provide an education that seeks "to free men and women from the tyrannies of unexamined opinions and inherited prejudices. It also endeavors to enable them to make intelligent, free choices concerning the ends and means of both public and private life."

Economics as taught in our colleges and universities and propounded by our pundits and politicians is a good example of a tyranny of "unexamined opinions and inherited prejudices." Ironically, on our hike we met a man who embodied this tyranny. We had stopped to catch our breath on the steep path. Santa Fe is more than 7,000 feet above sea level, and we had not yet acclimated to the altitude. An older man was hiking with some friends, and when he saw us he said "hello." We struck up a conversation, and he asked me what I was doing in Santa Fe. I told him that I was a writer and journalist and we were traveling around the United States gathering information for a travel book to be written from the perspective of an economist. He asked us what we had been observing in our travels. We told him that the three things that stood out most were environmental degradation, suburban sprawl, and growing economic inequality.

I could tell by his demeanor that he did not agree with what we were saying. When we finished, he said that he had a different take on things. He thought that almost everything was getting better. He said that he had been born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1934, and the air was better today than then, even though there were two million more people there. People were living longer and were healthier than ever before. What especially impressed him was the remarkable distribution system developed by modern retailers. People could get almost anything they wanted anywhere in the country, quickly and efficiently. "Why," he said, "almost everyone in the country lives within an hour of a Wal-Mart Supercenter." After we said that organic food was expensive and hard to get in much of the country, he launched into a long story about his battle against prostate cancer. He said that he had radically altered his diet and was eating natural foods, including organic vegetable juices purchased cheaply at Wal-Mart Supercenters. He suggested that anyone could do the same.

While we were talking, two more of his companions joined us. One of them said, "I see you have met the professor." My interlocutor also had a PhD in Economics and had also taught in a college for a few years. I thought to myself, "Well, that explains a lot."

The Dismal Science

Economics is a peculiar discipline. The dominant economic theory is called the "neoclassical" theory; it is the only one taught in all but a handful of graduate schools. It is the one I was taught, and it is the one the economist we met in Santa Fe was taught. It is preached with a zeal and demand for conformity that has led critics to characterize it as a religious cult. Newly-minted PhDs leave school convinced that they have a special knowledge unavailable to the ordinary person, and they devote themselves to giving this knowledge to others.

The main trick used by professors of economics is to draw their pupils into a make-believe world and then convince them that this world is a good approximation to the real world, enough so that the world in which we live can be studied effectively by analyzing the fantasy world. In fact, the professors also claim that this pretend world is a good approximation not just of the world of today but of the world of any time in human existence, so that any society can be studied through its lens. To them the neoclassical theory is as universal and timeless as the theories of Einstein. They see economics as the physics of the social world.

The economists take their analysis one step further. The hypothetical world of their theory is in all important respects an ideal world, the best we could have. Therefore any deviation from it that we observe in the world of existence should, in the interest of human happiness, be eliminated.

It is a curious thing to say that something should change in the living world because it does not conform to a world which does not, and, as we shall see, could never, exist. For example, a minimum wage set by the government interferes with the efficient operation of the ideal world by causing a loss of employment. The neoclassical economists then conclude that we should not have a minimum wage in the actually existing world. Or, the economists conflate the ideal economy of their theory with the real economy, which is capitalism. Since the imaginary economy is good, so too is capitalism. It is no wonder that economics has been compared to religion. To hold such views requires a strong faith.

It is instructive to look carefully at the model economy of economic theory. What the economists do is make a set of restrictive assumptions. They say, "let us assume we have an economy with the following features." They then list these features and trace out their logical economic consequences.

According to the economists, an economy is defined as a system of markets, that is, as the entire set of actions we call buying and selling. They assume that in every market for goods and services (called product markets) and in every market for labor, land, and capital goods (called factor markets), there are numerous independent and isolated buyers and sellers. They further assume that each of these buyers and sellers is a single-minded "maximizer," fixated in all of his or her actions on getting the most of something. Sellers of goods and services business firms, for example are assumed to be trying to maximize their profits. The business firm is assumed to be the equivalent of an individual; the relationships among people inside the firm are ignored and presumed to have nothing to do with the firm's behavior. Buyers of goods and services, called consumers, are assumed to be trying to maximize their "utility," the satisfaction they get from consuming goods and services. If consumers are faced with two collections of good and services with the same price, they will always pick the one that makes them happier. If the two collections give the same happiness, they will always choose the cheaper one.

In the factor markets, the buyers are business firms (the sellers in product markets), and they try to maximize profits by purchasing labor and the other building blocks of production only when these inputs add more to firm revenue than to firm cost. For workers to be hired, in other words, they must be productive enough to justify their pay. It follows that workers will not be hired if they are not productive enough or if they demand too high a wage rate.

The main sellers in factor markets are workers trying to market their ability to work. They supply their labor only if the wage offered by employers is greater than the joy they get from not working. Like consumers, they try to maximize their utility, by dividing their time between work and free time in such a way so that they are happier than if they had divided it any other way.

The economists assume that many thousands of independent and selfish buyers and sellers meet in thousands of market places and try to strike bargains. Each buyer and seller is assumed to be such an insignificant part of any market that no one of them can have any influence on what happens in the market. If one buyer decides to purchase one more unit, this buyer's actions cannot create a shortage of the product for sale and make its price rise. The same argument holds for all sellers as well.

The end result of the haggling in the marketplaces by all the buyers and sellers is that there is established in each market a "just right" price and a "just right" amount of each good and service produced. This happens because each buyer and seller acts solely in self-interest. If a price is too high, the sellers will lower their prices rather than not sell the product. If the price is too low, buyers will offer higher prices rather than do without something that gives them "utility." In the end, each price is neither too high nor too low, but "just right." The amounts supplied are "just right" for similar reasons. If too much is supplied, the price will fall and less will be supplied by profit-seeking firms. If too little is supplied, the price will rise and more will be supplied.

The markets, then, deliver prices and quantities for all goods and services (and for all factors of production, since the same processes are working there too) that are optimal. No other prices and quantities are "just right." The "just right" prices and quantities are called "equilibrium" prices and quantities, and these are the ones the markets give us.

The great thing about all this, according to the economists, is that it occurs without any human planning. No conscious human action is needed; the markets work automatically. As one of the gurus of the economists, Adam Smith, put it, it is as if there is an "invisible hand" guiding the selfish actions of the buyers and sellers toward an optimal outcome.

So far, then, the economists have assumed that there are large numbers of buyers and sellers in every market, so many that no individual actor in any market can make anything happen by its own actions. They have also assumed that all buyers and sellers act strictly out of self-interest, always trying to maximize something, whether it be profits or happiness. However, other assumptions are needed for the markets in the economists' model economy to perform optimally. Each participant in the marketplace must be independent of every other participant. For example, what one firm does must not enter into the profit-maximizing calculations of any other firm in a market. If one company wants to lower its price because there is a glut of the product in the market, it might hesitate to do so if it thinks that its rivals will start a price war if it does.

Every player in every market also must have complete knowledge concerning everything that might influence his or her decisions. It is difficult to make rational decisions or assume that choices are free when market actors lack available information, either because they don't know it is available or because someone else is monopolizing it.

How does neoclassical economics explain the large and rising inequality, uninspiring jobs, and environmental degradation we saw so much of in our travels? The analysis of the imaginary economy, which is at the heart of the theory, provides the answers. There are two possibilities. An answer might flow directly from the analysis of the ideal economy. Or the world of reality might not conform to that of the ideal one, and this could be the cause of the problem.

Let's look at inequality. Since in the imaginary world, people are rewarded financially according to their productivity, those with low incomes must be less productive than those with high ones. Or, those who are poor might have stronger desires for leisure than those who earn large incomes. In either case, low wages or poverty are the direct result of choices made by individuals. People might have decided not to do the things that would make them more productive, such as obtain more education and training. Those who choose not to become computer literate cannot expect to a land a high-tech job.

It could also be true that society's decision-makers those in government, for example have, perhaps out of ignorance or an uninformed desire to "do good," created barriers to the making of better choices. The government might have mandated that employers pay a minimum wage, thus denying employment to anyone not productive enough to justify an employer paying that wage. Or perhaps the government has legislated money transfers to the poor, to help them out of poverty, without realizing that this will encourage them to be lazy, unwilling to work hard when they can get free money.

The theory provides two types of solutions to inequality. First, if some of us cannot improve our productivity because we are too poor to buy more education or training, the government can enact laws and programs that make it easier for us to do so. Low interest loans to students would be a good example. Subsidies to employers who hire and train the less advantaged would be another. Second, if there are currently in place public policies that have the effect of harming those who have low wages or are poor (harming them in the ideal world of the theory, that is), then these should be eliminated. Minimum wage laws and welfare programs would be two good examples.

What about bad jobs? Economists have approached this problem in two ways. It is implied in the theory of the make-believe economy that work is inherently bad. People work only to get the money necessary to buy the things that give them satisfaction or "utility." Work, itself, give us only dissatisfaction or "disutility"; this is why we must receive a wage to work. So there is no use to complain that jobs don't use our full human capacities; it is not possible that they could.

This rather biblical notion of work begs a question: why are some jobs so much worse than others? Here the theory must do some fancy footwork. The basic idea is similar to the premise of the movie, Field of Dreams. Build a baseball field in the cornfields of Iowa, and fans will flock to it. If people want better jobs, all they need to do is make themselves available for them. As possible employers see that there are hordes of people ready to do meaningful work, they will note that they can now supply such jobs at wages that will ensure them a good profit. The implication of this analysis is that there are not more good jobs because workers don't want them. So employers have no incentive to offer them. If it were the case that some workers who want good jobs can't afford to accept the lower wages that would initially be necessary of employers to supply the better jobs, the government could again offer subsidies to employers.

Thousands of articles have been written by economists on the environment. Much of it revolves around the so-called "tragedy of the commons." In the make believe economy of the theory, every bit of property the land, the air, and the seas is private property. All of the selfish actors in the markets do everything in their power to preserve their property, and as a result the society as a whole benefits. Whenever there is common property, each person suffers no individual cost if he or she uses it up. You won't litter your yard, but you might toss trash on a public beach or in a park. Only when property is private is there an incentive, for those who own it, to preserve it. Here is one situation in which the real world differs from the ideal world that cries out for an easy solution. The air cannot literally be made into private property, but people can be forced to treat it as if it were. If companies had to pay to pollute the atmosphere, they would either produce a smaller quantity of polluting output (emissions from power plants, for example), or they would find cost-effective ways to reduce pollution. In other words, it is necessary to create market conditions in cases in which previously something could be used without cost. To take another example, consider cars. Auto companies and consumers bear only part of the entire costs of car production and use. Society as a whole bears the costs of auto emissions, acid rain, and so forth. The solution is to privatize the costs society bears, by, for example, taxing gasoline to push the price up and force conservation. And charge high tolls for road use.

It is beyond the scope of this essay to provide a full-scale critique of mainstream economics. However, if neoclassical economics were a science, its practitioners would subject the theory to rigorous tests and reject it if it proved unable to pass these tests. The theory has repeatedly proven itself a poor model of reality, failing test after test: there is no evidence that a higher minimum wage causes a loss of employment; there is no correlation between a worker's wages and a worker's productivity; there is no evidence that providing people with needed resources, as in a welfare system, causes them to use their time unproductively; there is no evidence that jobs requiring skills are increasing despite the fact that hundreds of millions of people would like them; there is no evidence that people inevitably destroy property held in common or that making property private guarantees that it will be used in a socially beneficial manner.

Yet the neoclassical theory is taught universally in our colleges and universities, and every economic pundit and economic adviser in government is a believer in the theory. Why is this so? Why could nothing I might have said changed the mind of the economist hiker I met in Santa Fe? I think the reason is that neoclassical economics is a gigantic propaganda device aimed at covering up the power of those with money and convincing the rest of us that whatever bad things are happening are either inevitable or our own fault. You are rich because you are more productive (and hence deserving) than I. Or you are innately more future-oriented than I; you go to school so you will be productive in the future, while I would rather party now and have a menial job later. If things are going to hell in a handbasket, it is because the real world economy has not been structured to be exactly like that of the ideal economy of the theory. It's my fault, or the government's fault, or it's human nature. It is never the fault of the system itself. This provides the best possible cover for the grotesque wealth of the few, the rotten jobs of the many, and the ruination of the environment.

Toward the Truth

They say that the truth will set us free. Well, here is the truth about the economy. The economy Karen and I have been witnessing firsthand is a capitalist economy. In such an economy the society's productive wealth is owned by a small fraction of the population. This property is protected by the law, which means that is protected by police force, that is by the state's use of violence. The vast majority of people own no or very little productive property and must depend on the few owners for their daily bread. This dependence takes the form of offering their ability to work to the owners in exchange for a wage. However, this exchange is not and cannot be one between equals; the party owning what the other party needs has a built-in advantage. Employers use their superior bargaining position to "negotiate" a wage and conditions of employment that guarantee them the ability to extract from workers an amount of labor sufficient not only to pay the workers' wages and replace the capital used up in production but also to generate a surplus above costs. That is, workers are forced by the fact that they own nothing to work a number of hours greater than those that would pay their wages and the capital costs, and they must give up the output produced during these "surplus" hours to their employer. The employer owns all of the output, simply because the employer owns the business.

The surplus hours workers are compelled to labor are the source of the employers' profits. If the workers had controlled production, they may have chosen to supply surplus hours (to generate funds necessary for the business's expansion, for example), but the decision would have been theirs and not someone else's. In capitalism, the owners own the output, and therefore they own the profits that come from the surplus labor. These profits are extracted from workers whether they like it or not.

Profits are the motor force of capitalist economies. Each business establishment is in a dog-eat-dog competition with other businesses locally, nationally, and today, internationally. This competition dictates to the owners of each business that they must use the profits to make the business grow. A company that doesn't get as much profit as possible from the labor of its workers and use this profit to grow is one that will not survive the relentless competition. A company that does not survive is one that does not confer on its owners all the perquisites of success in capitalism: consumer goods, status, and political power. Owners will do just about anything to ensure the survival and growth of their companies.

To extract profits and grow, corporate owners must try to put downward pressure on wages, to prevent them from growing at a pace that would eat into the surplus labor time. They are helped in this by their considerable political power; they can pressure the government, often successfully, to pass laws and utilize its police power to prevent or make it hard for workers to organize to push their wages up and improve their conditions of employment. They are also aided by the strong tendency of capitalist economies to create large reserves of surplus labor, a "reserve army of the unemployed." This reserve is produced by the removal of people from farming (often by force), by the continual mechanization of production, by employer use of labor-saving and de-skilling techniques (see below), by shifting production around the world, and by the tendency of capitalist economies to sink into periodic recessions and depressions. Unemployed labor (including full-time homemakers and prisoners) is available to replace employed workers or at least keep them from demanding too much money, shorter hours, or better working conditions. The education system guarantees that nearly everyone in the reserve army has the capacity to do a variety of jobs.

Since profits are what make capitalist economies tick and since profits come from surplus labor, it behooves employers to exert maximum control over workers. This is done primarily by structuring workplaces in such a way that workers have as little opportunity to interfere with production as possible. What workers do at work how they do their jobs, at what pace, and with what intensity is called the labor process. Employers must control this if they are to make money. Control is the essence of capitalist management.

A grasp of just two concepts is necessary for anyone to understand modern work. The first is the Babbage Principle, and the second is Taylorism. The inventor and manufacturer Charles Babbage showed that an employer intent on making money must organize work so that the amount of skilled labor used on any job is minimized. If a job requires both skilled and unskilled work, don't allow the skilled worker to do the unskilled parts. Skilled labor is expensive; unskilled is not. A skilled metal smith might go through several steps to make a large batch of tin funnels: making a template, tracing the design on sheets of metal, cutting out the funnel shapes, bending the metal shapes, connecting the ends, and finishing and polishing the funnels. Babbage taught employers to use unskilled laborers to repetitively perform just one of the last five steps, or "details," of the task of funnel-making. Use cheap labor to replace expensive labor wherever possible. The Babbage Principle is a fundamental technique of capitalist management; few jobs are immune to it.

Taylorism is the name given to the management theory developed by Frederick W. Taylor. Taylor, the son of well-to-do Philadelphia Quakers, was sent to work by his father in a machine shop following an emotional collapse. There he was able to capitalize on his obsessive-compulsive personality in a war against the skilled machinists. After he learned the machinists' trade, he was made foreman and began a lifelong campaign to find and enforce the "one best way" to do the work. Taylor became the founder and chief agitator for "scientific management." Despite its high-sounding name, scientific management aims to systematize the Babbage Principle by placing all control over work processes in the hands of the employer. First, management, through the employment if industrial engineers, studies in minute detail what each worker does. Jobs are broken down into their fundamental motions. Then management writes a detailed description of each job's motions, reorganizing them to minimize the time it takes to do each one. The employer next orders each worker to do the work exactly as the engineers say it should be done, using the Babbage Principle whenever possible. By systematic study of work and a willingness to fire recalcitrant workers, Taylor said that management could gain a monopoly of work knowledge and use this to control the entire work process. Taylor taught, and employers were apt pupils. Profits ultimately depend upon the ability of employers to control their workers. Skilled workers are difficult to control, so their skills must be destroyed.

To the capitalist mind, all objects are thought of in terms of their money cost. All things are commodities, to be bought and sold. Whatever else things might be is irrelevant in terms of what is most important to the system, namely the accumulation of capital, the extraction of maximum profits from labor and the use of these profits to achieve maximum growth of capital. We have just seen that our capacity to work is a commodity, bought at the lowest price possible and controlled and exploited to the maximum extent possible. However, there are other inputs that must be purchased beside labor. And these inputs as well as the commodities needed by workers for their survival (food, clothing, shelter) are either an intrinsic part of the natural world or produced in conjunction with it. Coal and iron must be removed from the earth before they can be used to produce steel. Ground must be planted before food can be produced; trees must be cut down or cleared before houses can be built. What is more, all production alters the natural world. The energy produced at a power plant throws all sorts of substances into the atmosphere. Some crops may deplete the soil of its nutrients. The production and use of some products can even alter climates.

All production affects nature, and economic systems prior to capitalism damaged the environment. However, two features of capitalism radically distinguish it from all previous political economies. First, capitalism produces goods and services on a scale unimaginable even four hundred years ago. Even if employers tried their best not to harm nature, their collective size would make the task a daunting one. But there is a second unique feature of capitalism. Everything is viewed through a calculus of private cost. Or to put it in more academic language, capitalism tends to commodify everything, to turn every object into something for sale. Nothing else matters except that resources be available when needed and at a low price. Lumber companies want trees no matter what other functions these trees might serve or that they might be beautiful objects for us to contemplate. If companies can get away with dumping wastes into our rivers and oceans or into the air, they will do this, figuring that if they do not some rival might. Dangerous products will be foisted on the public, even if the harm they might do is known by the producing company, as long as the monetary gain from doing so is greater than any cost arising from lawsuits or other consumer actions. The political power that modern giant corporations wield insulates them from severe governmental regulation or legal penalties.

The Proof Is in the Pudding

If what I have said about capitalism is true, what would we expect to see with respect to inequality, jobs, and the environment? With a small group of people owning and having near absolute control over the entire society's productive resources, it is inevitable that there will be large income inequalities. Productive property (land, buildings, machinery, factories, and the like) is inherently unequally distributed. Since this property generates income (rents, interest, and profits), these will be unevenly divided as well. Unless workers are organized, the very nature of the system confers so much economic and political power on the owners that they are able to leverage their initial economic advantages and make them grow larger. There will be significant impediments to the organization of workers, including the reserve army of labor, so under typical conditions, capitalist economies will exhibit large and often growing inequalities of wealth and income. These will translate into many related inequalities, including housing.

What about jobs? Today the Babbage Principle and Taylorism are built into every workplace and are so common that they are taken for granted. Almost no jobs are immune to them; they might be so for awhile but not over the long haul. This means that there will be few good jobs available in a capitalist society (again, the organization of workers can, again at least temporarily, offer workers some hope here). Among all the animals, human beings are unique in their ability to transform the world around them by their labor. This ability, in turn, hinges on the human capability to conceptualize what they do before doing it. We can think about our work, plan it out beforehand. This gives us enjoyment as well as lots of output to consume. Unfortunately, capitalism blocks us from taking advantage of our innate human capacities.

There is no reason to expect that capitalism will encourage wise social use of the environment. Quite the contrary, if the natural world is seen merely as a set of exploitable commodities, we would expect to see a short-term profit orientation that views resources, and human beings, as expendable.

The evidence in support of my analysis of capitalism is overwhelming. Just consider the following facts:

1. 2.8 billion people, about one-half the world's population, survive on less than two dollars per day, and 1.2 billion on less than one dollar per day. Even supposing that some of these people get some goods and services outside of the money economy and that prices for some foodstuffs and other necessities are very low, these are appalling numbers.

2. The richest fifth of the world's people consume 86 percent of all products, while the poorest fifth purchases 1.3 percent everything from meat to paper and automobiles.

3. The three richest persons in the world have assets greater than the combined GDPs of the 48 poorest nations (note that this is a comparison of wealth to income). So, if the three richest persons sold their assets, they could buy the total output of these 48 countries.

4. If the poorest 47 percent of the world's people (about 2.5 billion persons) pooled their yearly incomes, they could just purchase the assets of the world's wealthiest 225 individuals.

5. The richest 1 percent of people in the world get as much income as the poorest 57 percent. The richest 5 percent had in 1993 an average income 114 times greater than that of the poorest 5 percent, rising from 78 times in 1988. The poorest 5 percent grew poorer, losing 25 percent of their real income, while the richest 20 percent saw their real incomes grow by 12 percent, more than twice as high as average world income.

6. If we look just at the United States, we see similar results. The rich are asset heavy, especially with respect to financial assets (those which yield income), and debt poor, while the opposite is true for those with the lowest incomes. In 2001, the richest 1 percent of households owned 44.8 percent of all common stock (excluding stock owned through pensions); the poorest 80 percent owned 5.8 percent. This suggests that the poorest 10 or 20 own a minuscule share of stock. Even including stocks held through various pension arrangements, in 2001, those households with yearly incomes less than $15,000 held 1.1 percent of all stocks, while those with annual incomes equal to or grater than $250,000 owned 40.6 percent of all stock. Debt, on the other hand, bears down most heavily on the poor. In 2001, debt service payments made up 40 percent or more of yearly household income for 27 percent of those households with less than $20,000 in income. For households with yearly income between $90,000 and 100,000, the percentage was 2 percent. Thirteen percent of the former group were sixty days or more late paying their bills; for the latter group the rate was 1.3 percent.

For at least the past thirty years, the distributions of wealth and income have become more unequal, nearly everywhere in the world.

The evidence on jobs is just as devastating as that on inequality. While economists and pundits babble on about all the good jobs that high tech is bringing, the truth is that most new jobs created don't have much cachet. As I said in another venue,

Nearly 30 million persons labor as teaching assistants, food preparers and servers, counter attendants, cashiers, counter and rental clerks, bookkeepers, customer service reps, stock clerks and order fillers, secretaries, general office clerks, assemblers, sorters, helpers, truck drivers, packers and packagers, and laborers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the ten occupations with the largest job growth between 2000 and 2010 will be food preparation and service workers, customer service representatives, registered nurses, retail salespersons, computer support specialists, cashiers, general office clerks, security guards, computer software engineers, and waiters and waitresses. Of these, nurses and software engineers are the only obviously "good" jobs, and even these are rapidly being rationalized or outsourced by cost-conscious managers.

Today high-tech and low-tech jobs alike are shifted around the world by firms competing in the global marketplace, and this is going to continue into the indefinite future. As is the operation of the Babbage principle and Taylorism. And if you think most jobs in the United States leave a lot to be desired, then take a look at the world's poor countries: hundreds of thousands of young sex workers, camel jockeys, child factory laborers, adult sweatshop workers, and house servants. It is enough to say that in India, call center work is seen as a desirable job, and the call centers are filled with college graduates. There are more than 150 million persons openly unemployed in the world.

Although there have been strong movements determined to clean up the world, they have not been very successful, given how much we now know about the impact of modern capitalist production on the environment. Poisoned food, power plant smog even in remote places like Big Bend National Park, scores of "Superfund" sites still mired in waste and filth and with no money in sight to restore them, global warming, mass extinction of species, cities so polluted that people have to stay indoors or wear masks, forests clear-cut of trees, the list goes on. It may be true that mother earth has an amazing capacity to restore herself, but it is a fair bet to think we not have enough time left for her to do it before we are all of us dead or too sick to care.

The Future

If we don't change our ways, the future looks bleak. I shudder to think what my great grandchildren will see if they make the voyage of national discovery we made. One gigantic urban-suburban-exurban mess of traffic jams, strip malls, and concrete, marked by a bunker mentality and reality of the few versus the many (gated and guarded enclaves for the rich and hideous mass housing and prisons for the rest of us), all of us fearful of ever more devastating "natural" disasters. Don't laugh, these things are already here; we're not that far away from apocalypse.

The good news is that human beings are a resourceful species. If the many organized against the few and took things into our own hands, we could reinvent the world. There is no compelling reason why there couldn't be far greater equality, work worthy of human beings, and harmony between us and the natural world. I don't have any grand plan for change, but, at a minimum, I offer the following:

We have to bring capitalism to an end. The system has outlived whatever historical necessity it might have had. There is simply no way that capitalism can solve the problems we saw everywhere in the country, much less solve these problems around the world, where they are many times more severe. One critic of capitalism put it this way: socialism or barbarism. We are well down the road toward barbarism.

If we reject capitalism, what should we replace it with. In the end, we will determine this in the context of our struggles to end a barbarous system and give birth to a new one. However, some things will be essential.

First, we will have to end the growth for growth's sake mentality dominating our own society. There is no need for output to grow willy-nilly without any sense of what production is appropriate and how the output is distributed. To limit growth, however, will require some national (and eventually international) planning. There is no reason why a national dialogue could not take place on priorities and needs and methods discovered for the implementation of what such dialogues conclude is required to be done. There is no reason why, especially given modern computer technology, that planning cannot be done democratically.

Second, much planning and decision-making can and should be done on as local a level as possible. If the Mormons in the West could plan their towns and their agriculture to meet local human needs, there is no reason why all towns cannot do this. What purpose does urban-suburban-exurban sprawl serve? Shouldn't it be eliminated as quickly as possible? Shouldn't our living spaces encourage as much walking as possible? Shouldn't we have reliable and fast public transportation? Shouldn't we have good, efficient, and reasonably-sized housing for all? Why should homelessness and substandard housing coexist with 20,000 square feet mansions?

Third, our agriculture will have to be radically revamped, to end the sharp split between town and country evident around the world. Smaller-scale, locally-oriented, environmentally-sound, gardens-everywhere agriculture needs to replace, as much as possible, the large-scale, corporate farming that now dominates world agriculture. Consider that Cuba, despite terrible economic hardship caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union upon which it depended, achieved food independence in less than a generation after this collapse, and did so without super-mechanized and chemically-dependent agriculture.

Fourth, workers and communities must jointly manage as many of our workplaces as possible. Every worker should be trained to understand production and to manage complex modern technology. As much dangerous and menial work as possible should be mechanized out of existence, and that which remains should be shared out as much as possible. Alienating mass production assembly line-like work should be eliminated wherever possible, and production by coordinated work teams should be used instead. Swedish auto workers proved that this can be done.

Fifth, our education system should be completely scrapped and replaced with one in which the problems of inequality, work, and environment are made the center of study and in which the arts, both in terms of art as traditionally conceived and the mechanical arts, are taught to every student, not just in special subjects but integrated into all studies.

To those who say that such ideas are utopian and incapable of realization, I say this. Look around you. Isn't it truly utopian to believe that we can continue along the path we have been traveling for so long now and with such shameful and deadly results?

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Michael D. Yates is associate editor of Monthly Review. He was for many years professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. He is author of Longer Hours, Fewer Jobs: Employment and Unemployment in the United States (1994), Why Unions Matter (1998), and Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global System (2004), all published by Monthly Review Press.

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URL: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/yates141006.html

Feud Brews Over Katrina Housing Funds

by Sheila Byrd

JACKSON, Mississippi - A state agency wants to divert $600 million from a Hurricane Katrina housing program to a port restoration project, outraging advocacy groups who say the proposal shortchanges thousands of people still homeless on the Gulf Coast.

The Mississippi Development Authority has proposed taking the money from the $2.25 billion remaining in Gov. Haley Barbour’s Homeowners Assistance Grant Program, which is funded by federal block grants. Part of that program is dedicated to low-income and working poor homeowners.

“It’s just unfair,” Reilly Morse of the Mississippi Center for Justice said Wednesday. “We’ve been told affordable housing was supposed to be a priority. Don’t rob the displaced to build a port.”

Agency officials said there would be enough money in the housing fund to cover about 30,000 homeowners applying for grants to restore or rebuild property destroyed by the storm.

The development authority chose to tap the Homeowner Assistance Grant Program because it had excess funding, Donna Sanford, director of MDA’s disaster recovery division, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

The proposal is open to public comment until Sept. 24, and organizations including Oxfam America and the Mississippi NAACP have said they will oppose it. The proposal needs approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The $600 million would be used to restore public infrastructure and publicly owned facilities at the State Port at Gulfport that were destroyed during the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane. It would also improve the operating capacity at the port, Barbour said in a news release.

Barbour said the restoration is “crucial to the economy of our state and essential to the revitalization of the Gulf Coast region.”

The port generates about 3,000 maritime jobs and is the third busiest container port in the Gulf of Mexico, said Don Allee, executive director of the Mississippi State Port Authority.

Thousands of families still live in FEMA trailers and affordable rental property is scarce. Roberta Avila of the Interfaith Disaster Task Force said many coast residents haven’t recovered because they don’t qualify for the governor’s housing program.

© 2007 The Associated Press

White House Manual Details How to Deal With Protesters

White House Manual Details How to Deal With Protesters

By Peter Baker
The Washington Post
Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Not that they're worried or anything. But the White House evidently leaves little to chance when it comes to protests within eyesight of the president. As in, it doesn't want any.

A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of "deterring potential protestors" from President Bush's public appearances around the country.

Among other things, any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who manage to get in anyway should be shouted down by "rally squads" stationed in strategic locations. And if that does not work, they should be thrown out.

But that does not mean the White House is against dissent -- just so long as the president does not see it. In fact, the manual outlines a specific system for those who disagree with the president to voice their views. It directs the White House advance staff to ask local police "to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in the view of the event site or motorcade route."

The "Presidential Advance Manual," dated October 2002 with the stamp "Sensitive -- Do Not Copy," was released under subpoena to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a lawsuit filed on behalf of two people arrested for refusing to cover their anti-Bush T-shirts at a Fourth of July speech at the West Virginia State Capitol in 2004. The techniques described have become familiar over the 6 1/2 years of Bush's presidency, but the manual makes it clear how organized the anti-protest policy really is.

The lawsuit was filed by Jeffery and Nicole Rank, who attended the Charleston event wearing shirts with the word "Bush" crossed out on the front; the back of his shirt said "Regime Change Starts at Home," while hers said "Love America, Hate Bush." Members of the White House event staff told them to cover their shirts or leave, according to the lawsuit. They refused and were arrested, handcuffed and briefly jailed before local authorities dropped the charges and apologized. The federal government settled the First Amendment case last week for $80,000, but with no admission of wrongdoing.

The manual demonstrates "that the White House has a policy of excluding and/or attempting to squelch dissenting viewpoints from presidential events," said ACLU lawyer Jonathan Miller. "Individuals should have the right to express their opinion to the president, even if it's not a favorable one."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that he could not discuss the manual because it is an issue in two other lawsuits.

The manual offers advance staffers and volunteers who help set up presidential events guidelines for assembling crowds. Those invited into a VIP section on or near the stage, for instance, must be " extremely supportive of the Administration," it says. While the Secret Service screens audiences only for possible threats, the manual says, volunteers should examine people before they reach security checkpoints and look out for signs. Make sure to look for "folded cloth signs," it advises.

To counter any demonstrators who do get in, advance teams are told to create "rally squads" of volunteers with large hand-held signs, placards or banners with "favorable messages." Squads should be placed in strategic locations and "at least one squad should be 'roaming' throughout the perimeter of the event to look for potential problems," the manual says.

"These squads should be instructed always to look for demonstrators," it says. "The rally squad's task is to use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drown out the protestors (USA!, USA!, USA!). As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event site."

Advance teams are advised not to worry if protesters are not visible to the president or cameras: "If it is determined that the media will not see or hear them and that they pose no potential disruption to the event, they can be ignored. On the other hand, if the group is carrying signs, trying to shout down the President, or has the potential to cause some greater disruption to the event, action needs to be taken immediately to minimize the demonstrator's effect."

The manual adds in bold type: "Remember -- avoid physical contact with demonstrators! Most often, the demonstrators want a physical confrontation. Do not fall into their trap!" And it suggests that advance staff should "decide if the solution would cause more negative publicity than if the demonstrators were simply left alone."

The staff at the West Virginia event may have missed that line.

Click here to view story.

Remembering Puerto Rico’s Ponce Massacre

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March 22, 2007

Remembering Puerto Rico’s Ponce Massacre

In Puerto Rico, Wednesday marked the 70th anniversary of the Ponce massacre. On March 21st, 1937, 19 people were killed and more than one hundred wounded when police opened fire on a demonstration calling for independence from the United States. The day is considered a defining event in Puerto Rico’s history of struggle against US domination. [includes rush transcript]

Juan-Manuel Garcia-Passalacqua, Puerto Rican political analyst and radio host. He joins us on the line from Puerto Rico.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to Puerto Rico, where the seventieth anniversary of the Ponce massacre has passed. On March 21, 1937, nineteen people were killed and more than 100 wounded when police opened fire on a demonstration calling for independence from the United States. The day is considered a defining event in Puerto Rico’s history of struggle against US domination.

AMY GOODMAN: Juan-Manuel Garcia-Passalacqua is a well-known Puerto Rican attorney, radio host and political analyst. He joins us now on the line from Puerto Rico. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Juan-Manuel.

JUAN-MANUEL GARCIA-PASSALACQUA: It’s a pleasure, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the significance of this date, of March 21, yesterday, in fact?

JUAN-MANUEL GARCIA-PASSALACQUA: It is no coincidence that on the date of the commemoration of the abolition of our slavery and of the Ponce massacre that intended to celebrate it, precisely today the American Congress takes up at a hearing in an hour what to do with the eight million Puerto Ricans. And I am sure Juan will know that in my column today in El Vocero here, I have requested that they hear him and that he should send all members of the committee a copy of his brilliant book Harvest of Empire that explains it all. So I am very glad to be with you today, and don’t forget to tune in at 10:00, because the Congress, for the first time in 107 years, is going to listen to the diaspora.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Juan-Manuel, for many Americans who don’t know anything about the Ponce massacre, it would be good to sort of give the framework of what happened. And clearly, I think, Albizu Campos, the great Nationalist leader, had just been sentenced to prison on sedition charges for ten years in prison, and this protest was actually a protest to free Albizu, wasn’t it?

JUAN-MANUEL GARCIA-PASSALACQUA: Well, the whole demonstration was directed at the commemoration of the abolition of slavery, and one of the examples that slavery had continued after its abolition was precisely that Pedro Albizu Campos was imprisoned by the United States. The important thing about this celebration, commemoration—however you want to call it—is that the governor, Blanton Winship, was the one that ordered the massacre, the American governor who was a military governor with experience in the killing of Sandino in Nicaragua, and that that particular order has been transformed into a brilliant movie here by one of our best authors, called Revolucion en el Infierno, which I recommend to anybody that has a CD, because you can ask for it at the Ateneo, and it will show. The fascinating thing about that, Juan, is that its author took up the experience that his uncle told him, because his uncle was one of the wounded in the Ponce massacre. So we have now a visual testimony of what happened that day, that I recommend to all your listeners. It is really espelosnante.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to actually ask Juan, Juan-Manuel, to read from his book Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. Tell us who described this massacre, Juan.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, actually, I was born in Ponce, the city where the massacre occurred, and my family was from there, and so actually, as I was doing research on the book, I started interviewing my own family members. It turned out one of my aunts, Graciela Ramos, who just recently passed away, was a Nationalist at the time, was dating one of the Nationalist cadets who was supposed to participate in the protest that day. But he decided instead to go on a picnic with my aunt, who was sixteen at the time, and so both my aunts, a younger one, who was just a little girl at the time, described to me what happened that day. And I have about a paragraph or two in my book on it.

“The day was Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937. My aunt Graciela was sixteen and caught up in the Nationalist fervor at the time. Luckily, she decided to skip the march that day and go on a picnic with her sisters, Ana and Pura. They all trekked up to El Vigia, the magnificent hilltop estate of the Seralles family, owners of the Don Q rum distillery. From the rolling castle grounds you can look down on all of Ponce. Pura, who was a child at the time, recalls that shortly after the Nationalists gathered, the church bells began to ring, and when she looked down the mountain toward the plaza she saw people scattering in all directions. A young woman they knew ran up to them, screaming, "There’s a massacre in the town. The Nationalists and the soldiers are fighting. The hospital is full of wounded.” When the smoke had cleared, 21 were dead and 150 were wounded. A human rights commission would later report that all had been gunned down by police. It was the biggest massacre in Puerto Rican history.

“After the Palm Sunday Massacre, hysteria and near civil war swept the island. Nationalists were hunted and arrested on sight. Some headed for exile in New York City or Havana. Graciela, our family’s only Nationalist Party member, decided that nothing could be won by fighting the Americans. With Albizu [Campos] in jail and the Nationalist ranks decimated, she abandoned the party.” And, of course, within a few years, most of my family then came to the United States. So it was clearly a—

AMY GOODMAN: Although they were part of the United States.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, but to the continental United States. And clearly it was the seminal event in Puerto Rico and had enormous impact on the independence movement, didn’t it, Juan-Manuel?

JUAN-MANUEL GARCIA-PASSALACQUA: Juan, I can’t describe much better than you, what you have just said. And that’s why I insisted in writing that you be cited and called to testify at those hearings either today or on April 25, when they continue, because the present congress of the United States does not know that story. And again, Ramos-Perea and his uncle and you and your aunt should be there. The dead still can’t speak, so please make an effort, Juan—you know how much I respect you and your work—to be there and testify and tell them this story, that today Democracy Now! transmits in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Juan-Manuel, we did a piece just before we turned to you about a family that just went to Canada. Their plane had been brought down in Puerto Rico because of an emergency on the plane, and they didn’t realize—they were an Iranian family—that they were in the United States when they came to Puerto Rico, which brings me to the question—and what Juan was talking about—for people who are not aware of Puerto Rican history, explain how it was seventy years ago that Puerto Rico was a part of the United States.

JUAN-MANUEL GARCIA-PASSALACQUA: Well, again, Amy, the problem with that is that in the case regarding the Guantanamo prisoners, just the 7th of February, the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia said that Puerto Rico is not part of the United States, has never been part of the United States, citing the case that said that, Balzac v. Porto Rico, that called Puerto Rico—and this is one of the most fantastic quotes that the Supreme Court of the United States has ever invented—“appurtenant [and belonging] to […], but not part of the United States” of America. So just a few days ago, again, the highest court under the Supreme Court of the United States said, again, what Balzac said: Puerto Rico is appurtenant to, but not part of the United States, and—and I’m quoting again from the decision in In re Guantanamo and Boumediene v. Bush—Puerto Rico is “foreign in a domestic sense.” Whatever that means. So that’s why the hearings are being called today, because the manure has hit the ventilator.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And also, that conclusion has also, to some degree, been reached by the Puerto Rican government itself, because recently—

JUAN-MANUEL GARCIA-PASSALACQUA: Exactly, Juan.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Maybe you can explain the whole issue that arose with Juan Mari Bras and the decision—I think it was last fall—of the Puerto Rican government to now issue citizenship papers that are distinct Puerto Rican citizenship papers, as opposed to American citizenship papers, in Puerto Rico. Could you explain that?

JUAN-MANUEL GARCIA-PASSALACQUA: Well, the interesting thing, Juan, is that the bills, both bills—HR 900 and HR 1230—that are being considered at the hearings today in an hour, both admit—and this is the most relevant thing of what’s going to happen today—that Juan Mari Bras was right and there is such a thing as Puerto Rican citizenship that is not American citizenship. And, again—

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Juan Mari Bras, for those people who don’t know him, was the former leader of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, who renounced his American citizenship and then was for a while stateless until this court decision on Puerto Rico came down.

JUAN-MANUEL GARCIA-PASSALACQUA: Exactly, and he was taken to court by statehooders, and he won the case in the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico that issues a brilliant opinion. And again, the fascinating thing, Juan, is that this development, the recognition of the Juan Mari Bras theory and the crisis posed by the cases of In re Guantanamo and Boumediene v. United States have been brought up in the Congress of the United States by two leaders of the diaspora—Jose Serrano, who, as you know, is a Mayaguez-Bronx combination, and Luis Gutierrez, who is a Chicago-San Sebastian combination. So I am very proud, and you’ll see my column in El Vocero today in the internet, of this enormous fact that for the first time in history, in 107 years, the initiative and the leadership on the future of Puerto Rico has gone to leaders of the diaspora. And so, I’m so glad.

AMY GOODMAN: Juan, very quickly, as you outline in Harvest of Empire, just a thumbnail history of Puerto Rico. 1898, what happened, to today, where Puerto Rico stands today.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, clearly, I mean, the Spanish-American War, which was a defining war in terms of creating an overseas empire for the United States, as a result of the Spanish-American War, one of the prizes that the United States got in the Treaty of Paris was the territory of Puerto Rico, which it occupied during the war, and initially General Nelson Miles came in promising freedom to the Puerto Rican people, but then the United States never left and continued to occupy the island, first under a military government, then under a civilian government with US-appointed officials running it. And then, until the 1940s, when it allowed a certain degree of autonomy, but always within the understanding that Puerto Rico was a territorial possession of the United States.

JUAN-MANUEL GARCIA-PASSALACQUA: Exactly.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And so that you’ve had this problem, this contradiction now for more than a century. Puerto Ricans were declared citizens in 1917, even though the entire legislature of Puerto Rico opposed the citizenship at that time—well, the majority did—so that you have a situation where Puerto Ricans are legally citizens is that they aren’t legally citizens but—they are legally citizens, but actually their territory is considered a possession of the United States, and therefore have lived in a second-class citizenship status, in a colonial citizenship status, in essence, now for close to a hundred years.

JUAN-MANUEL GARCIA-PASSALACQUA: Amy, if I can add just one thing to what Juan has just said, it is very important to understand that that condition, that reality that we are living today, for the first time again is being considered today in an hour in the Congress of the United States, as it exists. And the reason for that, Amy, is that the Gulf War has made it understandable that the United States is an empire and that it has colonies. Iraq is the latest colony. The thing is that Iraq was colonized because of its oil, and Puerto Rico was colonized because it was a calling station for the Navy. And that realization—and I quote the eight books in my column today from Harvard, Yale, Duke and other universities—eight books have admitted that the Gulf War invasion is equivalent to the Puerto Rican invasion of 1898, citizenship or not. So we’re in new times.

AMY GOODMAN: Juan-Manuel, we’re going to have to leave it there. But just very—in one five-second response, what is the poll of Puerto Ricans in their attitude to the war in Iraq?

JUAN-MANUEL GARCIA-PASSALACQUA: Oh, here, the sad thing is that only persons that look for jobs in the military have gone to that war for—

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Juan-Manuel Garcia-Passalacqua, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Puerto Rican analyst and radio host, speaking to us from San Juan.

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