The two parties

For Lincoln’s 200th birthday I stopped in at Civil War Memory and was distracted by Kevin L’s musings on the supposed transformation of the Republican Party — from the party of liberty and equality to the party of big business, wage slavery, and Indian wars. What happened?

The change was more apparent than real. Since reading William E. Gienapp’s Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 a couple of years ago, I’ve cobbled together a working definition of the core principle within each of the two major parties. It doesn’t flatter either of them.

• The Republicans are the party of large social structures as being more important than individuals, families, and other such unplanned arrangements of human resources. It’s the party of cartels, conglomerates, corporations, commissions — of massive, remote-controlled organizations, whether public or private. (The “small government” mantra only applies when the Republicans are out of power.)
• The Democrats are the party of ethnic difference. Whether acting as the party of white supremacy or of affirmative action, the Democrats’ path to power consistently involves the exploitation of supposedly innate differences between human groups. Even appeals to unity tend to dissolve, in this party’s hands, into us-’n’-them formulations.

I wouldn’t mind being convinced that this is a simplistic and cynical parody of two noble political institutions. So go ahead, convince me.

What I’m working on

I’ve decided to join the academic social network Academia.edu, by far the best of the two or three I’ve seen in this category. Here’s how I summed myself up:

My dissertation is based on the diaries of Lukas Vischer, a Swiss traveler in the United States, 1823-1828. His travels ranged from Canada to the Mississippi Valley, and his notes on American Indians are of particular interest.

Vischer’s documents (at the Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt, Basel, Switzerland, and in private hands) provide a valuable transatlantic perspective on the “early republic” around the sesquicentennial year, 1826, as well as insight into migration and the meaning of “Amerika” for German-speaking Europeans at this time. Vischer is noted for his subsequent career as an artifact collector in Mexico. His experience of “American antiquities” in the U.S. points toward his later activities in Mexico.

I’m also reading Spanish colonial documents ca. 1813, concerning the province of West Florida, to explore relations between the Creek Nation and Spain during the War of 1812. This is for a conference paper concerning the Burnt Corn battle of July 1813, to be presented in May 2009.

Finally, I’m interested in the history of Brewton, Alabama, and the lower Conecuh valley, and intend to eventually publish something about it. I’ve spent some time with the McMillan family papers in Brewton and the Pace Library archive at the University of West Florida, Pensacola.

I should probably explain that “American antiquities” refers to American Indian artifacts. The relatively vague term accommodates the belief, commonly held in the 1820s, that what we now call the Mississippian civilization must have been established by wandering Eurasians, possibly the lost tribes of Israel.

In other news this week, it finally dawned on me that transcribing all the Lukas Vischer papers, which I photographed in Basel, would take me a total of 42 weeks at 40 hours a week. Clearly I need to change my approach.

All quiet on the Afghan front

Military reporter Joseph E. Ricks has just blogged about a July 2008 battle at Wanat in eastern Afghanistan: a fight, he writes, “that the Army’s chain of command doesn’t seem to want to talk about, but which some of those with knowledge of the incident have encouraged me to look into.”

Ricks approaches the episode from a sympathetic perspective: He assumes that the war in Afghanistan is correctly motivated and should succeed, provided only that it is properly executed. Never mind that our effort to punish the Taliban seems to have had the opposite effect, while terrorizing the very people we’re supposed to be helping.

We might have taken to heart the lessons of the 1916 Army campaign against Pancho Villa, which strengthened Villa’s guerrilla movement and weakened the legitimate Mexican government. (We forget that the first “terrorist strike on American soil” was in 1916 at Columbus, New Mexico.) The only way to win that one was to withdraw and claim victory. I’m sure the same will turn out to be true in Afghanistan.

Army leadership, however, appears to be mesmerized with its own dogma. The upper echelons are willing to jaw endlessly about “facts on the ground,” but unwilling to accept unwelcome truths.

Chicken joke: Joe McCarthy

Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin changed American history on this day in 1950 by giving a paranoid speech to the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia. McCarthy’s claim that the U.S. State Department was riddled with communists led to a widening congressional witch hunt lasting more than three years.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

McCarthy: It was an agent of the International Communist Conspiracy, carrying out orders from the poultry commissars.

[More chicken jokes]

Take me to our leaders

The Sunday Birmingham News served up what it calls the city’s “forthcoming cadre of leaders.” The newspaper’s selection process was mysterious. As columnist John Archibald commented, “you could smell the bloodlines and the corporate clout.” But that doesn’t explain all the selections.

Here are the favored 15 in alphabetical order:

1. Brooke Tanner Battle, Foundation Fund Management Co. managing director^*
2. Michelle Clemon, McWane Inc. vice president of human resources and community affairs
3. Corey Ealons, a “Birmingham native” (meaning, I guess, that he no longer lives here) “who served on President Barack Obama’s transition team.”
4. Bing Edwards, attorney and Balch & Bingham partner
5. Jeremy Erdreich, Erdreich Architecture owner
6. Brian Hamilton, Saber Engineering president and CEO
7. John Hudson, Regions Financial Corp. senior vice president responsible for diversity and public affairs
8. Carrie Kurlander, Alabama Power assistant to the president and CEO
9. Bill Ritter, Regions Financial Corp. senior executive vice president and regional president
10. Guin Robinson, Jefferson State Community College coordinator of institutional development, and former mayor of Pell City
11. Nick Sellers, Alabama Power vice president for corporate relations
12. Dalton Smith, Region 2020 executive director
13. Cedric Sparks, Mayor’s Office of Youth Services executive director
14. Deborah Vance-Bowie, Birmingham Mayor’s Office chief of staff
15. Charlie Williams, Druid Hills Neighborhood Association president

Archibald noted wryly that of the “top leaders” chosen 10 years ago, seven have moved on for one reason or another, one is in federal prison, and another — our current mayor — is under federal indictment. Only three of the top 10 leaders (William Bell, John J. McMahon Jr., and Mike Warren) are still influential 10 years later.

Read into that what you will.

I try to meddle in local affairs, but don’t remember ever being in the same room with any of these people. But I’m learning that even more than most places, Birmingham has separate social spheres — no longer defined by race alone, but still separate, and almost never impinging on one another. It’s a serious problem. You can see the effects in our politics and governance.

Over the last 10 years, though, I’ve felt that Birmingham citizens are more involved and interested in local politics than they were before. It would be a shame if we sat back now and let Obama and our “leaders” make the decisions for us. We’re just getting started.

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* This company is a division of Founders Investment Banking on Lakeshore Drive.

False promises to the jobless

Looking over Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bait and Switch, a 2005 exposé on the decline of the middle class, I found descriptions of the following three alternatives for the downsized corporate manager.

• Franchising, also known as “buying yourself a job,” is the purchase of the right to operate a local franchise of a major corporation. Most of these businesses fail, apparently at an even higher rate than other small businesses. A 2002 study found that franchisees had a success rate of about 25 percent and an annual income averaging less than $30,000. Those “be your own boss” sales pitches don’t tell the whole story.
• Commission-only sales employs many millions in what are often pyamid marketing schemes — so rewards depend on recruiting new people to fill in the lower reaches of the pyramid. Commercials and promotional literature for these schemes typically imply that you can make $30,000 a month or more without lifting a finger. In fact these jobs offer few or no benefits, with high start-up costs (e.g., purchasing a supply of the product, attending mandatory meetings, or paying fees to an organization). Usually there is no guarantee that your “employer” will not insert competing sales reps into your territory. Five years ago, about half of these direct-sales jobs made less than $10,000 a year, and only 8 percent — the tip of the pyramid — earned $50,000 or more.
• Real estate, the traditional fall-back career, looks less promising than ever with the collapse of the housing market. But even in its salad days, when we all believed home values would rise forever, only about 14 percent of those who obtained a real estate license actually stuck with the profession for more than one year. Of those, only 30 percent made more than $30,000 a year.

What all these jobs have in common is that the employer has successfully shifted the risk of taking on a new hire, along with the expense of health care, insurance, and retirement benefits, to the employee.

Ehrenreich also found that a sizable proportion of unemployed managers and professionals end up in “survival jobs” — temp jobs or entry-level positions at places like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Home Depot. These people are not officially classed as “underemployed” as long as they are able to work full time. As far as the Bureau of Labor Statistics is concerned, a move from a corner office to unemployment, and from there to a job grooming dogs at PetSmart, is a successfully concluded job search.

Source: Barbara Ehrenreich, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2005 (ISBN 978-0-8050-8124-4), pp. 181-186, 189-190, 205-210.

Raptor to the rescue?

The 2009 Raptor luxury vehicle

One of the ads in Gmail pleaded with me to “Preserve F-22 Raptor jobs now!” Curious, I followed the link, and after a few minutes I used the site’s tools to send the following letter to the White House.

Dear President Obama,

During the campaign for president, your opponents often attacked you as a “socialist.” I note that now that you are in office, you are being given a prime opportunity to prove them wrong. I don't expect them to get the point, though, because government spending on the military is somehow never “socialist.”

I’m referring to the F-22 Raptor program. You are probably receiving mass mailings right now urging you to release “advance procurement funding” for this “Fifth Generation fighter,” thereby magically protecting American jobs and security.

I urge you not to be stampeded into approving the F-22. The U.S. already has air superiority over the entire world, and ramping up military production is one of the least promising tools you have for stimulating the economy.

I find the arguments advanced at the website preserveraptorjobs.com to be unconvincing, and the claims of economic impact for the program appear skewed. Moreover, I am concerned that the site may be an astoturf operation that advances the narrow interests of aerospace executives. Please view these pleas for Raptor money critically.

Sincerely.

[Signature]

It appears that the email was sent.

I might have added that even Defense Secretary Robert Gates is opposed to the Raptor program, which has been soaking up federal cash for Boeing and other contractors since 1991. As for strategy, it’s a fact that the U.S. fleet of F-15s and F-16s is more than adequate for confronting any potential adversary, even those to whom we have sold F-15s and F-16s. In the Mideast, we’ve seen that the F-16 is more than adequate for blowing up buildings full of “insurgents” and their children.

As for economic impact, the website appears to count every job that is theoretically touched by Raptor money — such as the cashier at the convenience store where the waiter buys gas who works at the lunch counter where a dozen Boeing employees often eat — as if every one of those jobs will be imperiled by the Raptor program’s cancellation.

One might argue that spending money on the Raptor will stimulate the economy just like all the other items in the stimulus package. But in fact, Pentagon procurements for military hardware really function as a massive socialist economy in the middle of a relatively open capitalist market. The federal government (with other governments it approves of) is the only lawful consumer of these goods. In other words, spending on military hardware supports a workforce, but produces nothing for the marketplace, and must be funded by tax revenue.

After leaving my contact info at preserveraptorjobs.com, I can’t wait to see what other appeals I am asked to send. I noticed that the site contained no information identifying its creators or their goals, so I suspect it was put up by a Washington PR firm. Their next campaign will no doubt be on behalf of whoever pays. Perhaps a defense of executive pay? Help for our good friends the Saudis? Or a reprise of “drill, baby, drill”?

I can hardly wait.