In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Tag: Capitalism & Consumption

House Approves the Bail-Out

Let’s hope this works.

I’m really conflicted on the bail-out scheme — asking taxpayers to patch up Wall Street’s greed is not a fair deal. The lack of oversight, and in particular the lack of regulations and controls that would prevent this from happening again, is a big problem. It means that we threw Wall Street a life raft, but we’re not doing anything to stop them from sinking it. It also strikes me as the worst aspects of socialism coupled with the worst aspects of capitalism — nationalization of private industry (along with all of its attendant inefficiencies), with taxpayers footing the bill to keep the private sector afloat.

But the plan that passed is far better than the original, and since I’m not coming up with better ideas, I’m trying not to be too critical. Of course, it’s worth noting that there are other ideas out there, and I — perhaps shockingly — agree with Larry Summers that a multi-pronged approach is the way to go. Brookings also has some interesting thoughts.

This plan is not a win for anyone, but something had to be done, and it had to be done quickly. I know there are those out there who think the government should have just let Wall Street clean up its own mess, and that’s a position that I’m theoretically sympathetic too — but not in the real world. The fact is that if Wall Street totally tanks, we’re screwed. Really, really screwed. And yes, I realize that Middle America has been getting screwed for a long time, but I’m talking more screwed. I’m talking screwed Great-Depression-style. There are levels of screwage, and the whole country is going to be taken to a whole new one if nothing is done.

But I sure don’t envy Congresspeople right now. These are uncharted waters, and this plan could be wildly successful or a massive failure; chances are it’ll be somewhere in between. But to have to make the call on something this important… I wouldn’t want to be in those shoes (which is why I’m extremely skeptical of anyone who thinks that this plan is 100% a great idea, or 100% a terrible one).

All we can do now is cross our fingers (and personally, I’m hoping that when Congress has more time to process and discuss — and when they’re not in crisis mode — they’ll patch up some of the holes in the plan, starting with regulations and oversight). And we can do our homework, because if you’re like me, you don’t know nearly as much about this stuff as you should. The Money Meltdown is a really good starting point to learn about what exactly is going on.

PETA does it again

Other feminist bloggers have covered the PETA breast-milk campaign, and you should read their thoughts. And yes, it is obvious that PETA is doing its usual over-the-top schtick, and the campaign — which encourages Ben & Jerry’s to use human breast milk instead of cow milk to make their ice cream — is not meant to be taken literally.

…but so what? PETA’s point, unfortunately, is not to highlight cruelty to animals by pointing out the fact that it would be cruel to force women to produce milk for mass consumption, and that it’s just as cruel to use cows for their milk. No, as usual, PETA is going for sensationalism. And in this case, for the gross-out factor (coupled with the titty factor).

Because the reaction to PETA’s breast milk suggestion hasn’t been, “Hmm, I guess making cows produce milk for us is kind of cruel;” it’s been, “Breast milk in ice cream?! Gross!”

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Bailout FAIL. Working Americans PWNED.

It seems as though Congress and the Bush administration are nearing approval of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout package. It was clear from the get go that low- and middle-income people were not going to be the winners here, no matter the specifics of the package; some details that are coming out now about the current state of the deal are only confirming that prediction. From the Washington Post:

Democrats also made a number of concessions, abandoning demands that bankruptcy judges be empowered to modify home mortgages on primary residences for people in foreclosure. They also agreed not to dedicate a portion of any profits from the bailout program to an affordable housing fund that Republicans claimed would primarily assist social service organizations that support the Democratic Party, the official said.

The New York Times does report that the package “requires the government to use its new role as owner of distressed mortgage-backed securities to make more aggressive efforts to prevent home foreclosures,” but reaffirms that “some Democrats had sought to direct 20 percent of any such profits [from the governmental purchase of assets at prices lower than they may one day be worth] to help create affordable housing, but Republicans opposed that and demanded that all profits be returned to the Treasury.”

I don’t claim to be any expert on economics, but it seems to me that the benefit to normal working Americans (i.e. “Main Street”) will be quite limited. The whole rigmarole about taxpayers (hopefully) being repayed for the bailout through the government receiving equity stakes in rescued companies is cold comfort given that we can’t trust or expect the government to spend that recovered money on things that actually help improve the lives of low- and middle-income Americans, like education, health care, affordable housing, or welfare.

Well, I should be clear – corporate welfare is a-ok, as this entire bailout package demonstrates. But welfare for individuals and families who are just trying to survive? Nah, that kind of welfare doesn’t fly, nor does the affordable housing that might help rescue them from this collapsing housing market. So Wall Street screws working-class Americans with the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, which then backfires and contributes to Wall Street getting screwed, and then Wall Street are the only ones who can really count on being bailed out? Sounds like a big ol’ FAIL to me.

Cross-posted at AngryBrownButch

South Central Farm to Forever 21?

This just in: Turns out the former site of the South Central Farm – where low-income, indigenous/immigrant Latino farmers grew food in the midst of a toxic industrial area for 14 years before being evicted two summers ago in one of the saddest, most maddening examples of private business interests trumping community and environmental good that I’ve ever personally witnessed – is being developed as a Forever 21 warehouse.

You know, that clothing company that was the subject of a national boycott for exploitative labor practices a few years ago? Turns out LA’s supposedly progressive mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa – who campaigned at the then-flourishing farm several years ago and claimed to support it, only to fail to find a way to help save it despite massive community (and celebrity) support, clear social and environmental benefits, and his own celebrated promises to “green LA”—“has received nearly $1.3 million in contributions and commitments from Forever 21 and its executives over the past two years.”

The former site of the South Central Farm has sat vacant for the past two years. The South Central Farmers are now growing food at a new site about an hour outside of LA. They sell food at several farmers’ markets in the area, and they recently set up a CSA. 

(Background: A few years ago, I wrote several articles about the South Central Farm for the late and lamented NewStandard, including this history of how the community has used the land since 1985.)

Individualism

Bigotry relies on classification. People who are sexist, racist, ablist, homophobic, transphobic, what have you, have convinced themselves that women, people of color, etc. are X or are not Y. That they are able to feel a particular way about an entire group because the group is homogenous in some way.

Whereas, these people feel that their own group is composed of individuals. Let’s take a white male who doesn’t think highly of blacks or women. He’s decided that blacks are a certain way, and women are a certain way. However, he doesn’t like all white men either. But the reasons he may not like someone in this latter group allow for more diversity within the group.

In my earlier post on regulated capitalism, there were some comments that suggested that capitalism involved individualism, which is flawed. (La Lubu has some interesting things to say on individualism, in comment 93 here and also here).

Certainly, while women, like men, have the right to try to excel, this should coexist with working as a team for objectives which would benefit all women. The lack of consensus around feminist objectives and the increasingly difficult balancing act that women face involving a longer workday and other issues are some of the reasons this is challenging, but also some of the reasons it’s necessary.

But I think individualism is something women cannot afford to write out, either.

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Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism

I was planning to post about this awesome project anyway, but Octogalore’s post about capitalism below made it feel especially timely, so:

If you haven’t already, you might want to spend some time at Enough, a new web project created by the marvelous Tyrone Boucher and Dean Spade to explore

how a commitment to wealth redistribution plays out in our lives: how we decide what to have, what to keep, what to give away; how we work together to build sustainable grassroots movements; how we challenge capitalism in daily, revolutionary ways.

You can read and respond to the diverse ideas of lots of different contributors, and also submit writing of your own!

(I’ve also responded to Octogalore’s post directly with a comment there.)

In Which Solnit and BFP Split Some S*it Right Open

So it’s an era of content overload, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how to apply a sort of slow-food/deep-economy/earth-democracy ethic to media making and consumption, and that has me thinking about what kind of media really moves and disrupts and changes and inspires, and I find myself most valuing writing that is rigorous and processed, that simultaneously makes connections between often separated parts and adds layers to seemingly simple conversations, and/or that provokes readers to care about something they haven’t been caring too much about. For instance, on all three points, BFP on the John Edwards drama and Rebecca Solnit on the Olympics.

Brownfemipower starts by saying, “all the angles have been covered beyond to death, pretty much. but there was one thing that i did want to say…” — and then she proceeds to just rip that whole conversation open, revealing how tired and limited the discussion has been pretty much everywhere else and forcing me to remember that, no matter how little I tend to care about electoral politics or marriage or parlor dramas or anything else they’re talking about on TV, every single story is a social story, a political story, with all kinds of deep and layered context and implications.

Which reminded me of Rebecca Solnit’s column about the Olympics (that other presently televised drama I haven’t been watching) in the current Orion, and the way it is both eloquent and critically politicized (as she pretty much always is, as so few writers are), bringing the usual critiques around the Olympics (displacement of local communities, human-rights violations, nationalism) full circle to face the central myths of the Olympics head-on, which makes the critique that much more substantial and devastating:

the Beijing Olympic Games will begin, and television will bring us weeks of the human body at the height of health, beauty, discipline, power, and grace. It will be a thousand-hour advertisement, in some sense, for the participating nations as represented by athletes with amazing abilities. In reality, the athletes will be something of a mask for what each nation really stands for…

It serves the nations of the world to support the exquisitely trained Olympian bodies, and it often serves their more urgent political and economic agendas to subject other bodies to torture, mutilation, and violent death, as well as to look away from quieter deaths from deprivation and pollution. In the struggles for land and resources … bodies are mowed down like weeds. The celebrated athletic bodies exist in some sort of tension with the bodies that are being treated as worthless and disposable.

Lady Yahoo!

I don’t even want to do a full post on the new Lady Yahoo! site Shine — specially vamped to sell lady products via lady advertising — so I’ll just compile some of the headlines.

Whose Design Is It Anyway?
Does the man in your house have a say in the decorating, or is he just there to move the furniture?

That one alone made me choke a little, but then there’s this:

6 things that scare your man
Is a good husband the secret to a working mom’s success?
How old should a girl be before she should wear earrings?

Then my personal favorite:

Would you respect a stay-at-home wife?

The Onion already covered this, Lady Yahoo!. Marie Claire called, and they want their schtick back.