Re: RE: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
> Truly digmatic & poetic. It's going on my wall, > next to my Allan Ginsburg postcard. > > mbs >...eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incom- prehensible leaflets, who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu- scripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy... America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry. I smoke marijuana every chance I get. I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid. My mind is made up there's going to be trouble. You should have seen me reading Marx. My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right. I won't say the Lord's Prayer. I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia. I'm addressing you. Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine? I'm obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week. Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. It's always telling me about responsibility. Business- men are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me. It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again. Asia is rising against me. I haven't got a chinaman's chance. I'd better consider my national resources. My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions. I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns. I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go. My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic. America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they're all different sexes. America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe America free Tom Mooney America save the Spanish Loyalists America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die America I am the Scottsboro boys. America when I was seven momma took me to Com- munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sin- cere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy. Ame
RE: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
Oy vey indeed. Reading Rakesh makes me forget what I actually said about Lind. I'm sure I didn't say he was my leader. I'm about 2/3rds thru The Next American Nation. I've said the analysis of race and class history in the book is very persuasive. It's good populism. I'm on his elaboration and defense of 'liberal nationalism' now. We were talking about whether Lind was a *nativist,* and Rakesh goes off on a bender about Vietnam. Obviously you can be a "liberal internationalist" and support the Vietnam war. In fact, those were the dudes that started it, not 'nativists.' When I was a small shaver, I remember seeing American Legion guys petitioning against the war at a county fair. Later on LBJ set them straight, of course. Once he's torqued off there is no talking to him. You have to argue with two people at once -- him and the person he makes you out to be. Way too exhausting. mbs Rakesh (here and gone again...)> On top of it, Lind seems to have written a book in defense of > genocidal US policies in Vietnam--did I understand you, right, > Pugliese?
RE: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
I'm thinking about how to get from here to there, and Yoshie is talking about getting from there to here. mbs Yoshie is thinking long-term, while it seems that Max is thinking short-term . . .
Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
>>Lind is not a nativist. He is a liberal >>nationalist. He may be a Listian, but >>to me that is not necessarily a Bad Thing. >>The idea that he is a right-wing plant is >>hallucinatory. >> >>mbs While what Pugliese downloaded includes reasonable criticisms of a neo bracero program, it soon became an assault on the poor Mexican immigrant. He uses the excuse of a neo bracero program to call for the exclusion of poor uneducated Mexicans as such instead of for the granting to them of worker and citzenship rights. The handling of complex studies on the job displacement effects of immigration (Bhagwati rung Borjas' clock in my opinion) and welfare burden of the poor Mexican immigrant (note Lind does not consider the sales taxes which even trabajadores sin papeles pay though they are probably in excess of any state benefits which they receive) is purely demagogic. Indeed Lind descends into the worst forms of scapegoating, and his prose becomes indistinguishable from the Brimelow's and Murray's who think a restrictive immigration policy is in the eugenic interests of the nation. >Already both LEGAL and illegal immigration from Mexico are >exacerbating America's social problems, because so many Mexican >immigrants are uneducated and poor. Mark Krikorian of the Center for >Immigration Studies -- a non-profit which advocates tightening >immigration laws -- claims that 31 percent of immigrants from Mexico >are dependent on at least one major federal welfare program. (my emphasis) And then he goes on about their criminal propensities. In the thrall of nationalist myth Lind does not consider why a tougher immigration policy (and Lind seems to want to limit immigration over and above eliminating guest worker programs) may not necessarily improve the competitive position of poor citizens, but Max would have to study Marx (the mascot of this list) to understand why as a result of its laws of motion, the capitalist system will create a reserve army of labor out of its valorization base, i.e., its population base, no matter how limited by restrictive immigration policy. And taken over by nationalist myth Lind does not consider whether there are other more effective policies than restrictive nationalist immigration policy (Lind is not just after the neobracero program but-it seems to me--the immigration of poor Mexicans under any conditions) to improve the conditions of the citizen poor (assuming his interest is genuine). And if Lind were truly concerned with the position of poor citizen workers rather than in Bell Curve fashion the putative dysgenic effects of poor Mexican immigration, wouldn't he would be giving other policy advice first and foremost--more pro union legislation, an expanded public sector, tougher anti anti black discrimination law, etc? On top of it, Lind seems to have written a book in defense of genocidal US policies in Vietnam--did I understand you, right, Pugliese? He has also called for a ban on the US import of third world goods on the basis of the most superficial arguments that this would be good for those poor third world people too. It would surely thrust many peoples into a holocaust of poverty. For Max to rise to the defense of Lind and call him a liberal nationalist indicates what a reactionary he is. I thought Max was only pulling toes; now I must conclude that it is actually much uglier. The insults will only increase from here, so Michael, I am unsubbing. Good luck to all you progressive economists which I insist is an oxymoron. Yours, Rakesh
RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
Lind is not a nativist. He is a liberal nationalist. He may be a Listian, but to me that is not necessarily a Bad Thing. The idea that he is a right-wing plant is hallucinatory. mbs . . . Michael told me not to insult anyone, so I will hold back my comments on the neo-nativist and self-proclaimed Listian Lind, who was hidden in a trojan horse offered to the left by Buckley and co. But once it was brought within the gates, I for one was not surprised that out came another faux intellectual windbag like Jim Sleeper whose good friend he is. Yours, Rakesh
Re: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
Michael wrote:
>It may be that intellectual property laws may be the most effective form
>of protectionism devised so far.
except that it's not the kind of thing that's called "protectionism." It
protects individual corporations or other property-holders, not the
domestic markets of countries. It's an extension of "normal" property
rights like patents, copyrights, trade marks, etc. The owners of
"intellectual property" can easily take their property and move to another
country.
max writes:>Michael Lind (The Next American Nation) makes the point that
patents, IP, and professional licensure (i.e.,
tenure!) are the upper-class ("white overclass") variant of
protectionism.Consistent free-traders should be willing to do away
with those barriers to trade as well. How do laissez faire econ profs
justify tenure?<
professional licensure is definitely a form of protectionism as the word is
usually used.
BTW, I used to have a colleague who wanted to reject tenure on the basis on
laissez-faire principles. The college said: either take tenure or leave. He
stayed, eventually ending up in the administration.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
RE: Re: Re: The US Dollar (spend it fast as you can)
Michael Lind (The Next American Nation) makes the point
that patents, IP, and professional licensure (i.e.,
tenure!) are the upper-class ("white overclass") variant
of protectionism.
Consistent free-traders should be willing to do away
with those barriers to trade as well. How do laissez
faire econ profs justify tenure?
mbs
It may be that intellectual property laws may be the most effective form
of protectionism devised so far.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
