Passing Through

Supersize This

By J. Goodrich

Even John McCain is worried about the size of CEO compensations these days. The 1970's CEO earned 40 times the salary of the average worker, the CEO of the early 2000's made 170 times the paycheck of the average worker. Or much more, depending on the study one consults and the way a paycheck is defined.

Why would a conservative politician such as McCain express dislike of the pay of these new superstars of our global economy? Aren't those gigantic salaries well earned? Isn't the reason for the dizzying rewards of the top CEOs the same as the reason why Nomar Garciaparra gets paid so much? That the money is richly warranted because of the exceptional talents of a few corporate superstars?

That depends on whose take on the markets for CEOs you believe. For the traditional "free market" views nobody can beat the Cato Institute. This is what it said about executive compensation a year ago:

On a recent visit to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, President Bush saw fit to decry the rising inequality in America, complaining that corporate salaries, bonuses and stock options were part of the problem. "We need to pay attention to the executive compensation packages that you approve," he told the audience.

Read More »

(90) Comments

April 9, 2008

Meanwhile, in Texas

By J. Goodrich

You may have followed the events taking place at the polygamist retreat in Texas:

Texas authorities investigating allegations of abuse and the forced marriage of young teenagers to much older men have taken more than 400 children into custody from a remote ranch owned by a polygamist religious sect, authorities said Monday.

The children were joined by 133 women, in homemade ankle-length dresses, who departed voluntarily. While investigators questioned them, state police detained the men who live at the Yearning for Zion Ranch, which is affiliated with sect leader Warren Jeffs. He was convicted last year of being an accessory to the rape of a 14-year-old girl.

But while reading about these events I couldn't help thinking that they offer an extreme example of something which happens fairly often: the clashing of religious and human or individual rights. Consider that Jeffs' sect practices polygamy for reasons that they regard as religious. Then consider the consequences of this practice: young girls being forced to marry much older men, young boys thrown away as surplus to the needs of a polygamous society.

Read More »

April 7, 2008

Soppy and Bitchy

By J. Goodrich

That sounds like the beginning of the name list for the seven dwarves. What would the others be called? Weepy, clingy, bossy, whiny and harpy?

Sadly, they are not some of the seven dwarves, but adjectives Christopher Hitchens attached to Hillary Clinton's recent behavior, adjectives which one would not use to describe a male politician under any realistic circumstances I can imagine. They are "female" adjectives, as are most of the ones I chose to fill in the list of my imaginary seven adjective dwarves.

Now, if you employ female adjectives in describing a female politician you are probably viewing her in a gendered light, picking and choosing among the various stereotypes that tend to be attached to being a woman. This might not be worth pointing out if political pundits did the same thing as often with male politicians, and if there were an equally interesting repertory of matching "male" adjectives. But, alas, that is not the case.

Read More »

April 5, 2008

Still Lively After All These Years

By J. Goodrich

Kathy Lee Gifford is returning to television:

Kathie Lee Gifford had no intention of returning to TV – she just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

"I was having lunch with a friend at [Manhattan restaurant] Michael's on Nov. 7, and Hoda [Kotb] ambushed me and said, 'Will you come on the Today show?' " Gifford, still lively at 54, told PEOPLE the day of Matt Lauer's announcement that she would co-host the NBC morning program's 10 a.m. fourth hour. She starts next Monday.

The world of television offers a fascinating glimpse of the society we pretend to live in: Almost all women are young and beautiful, with Barbie-like body proportions, and most of the men are young and handsome, too. The few old people we see regularly on television are almost all men, however, and in general television, as opposed to the real world, has many more men than women. Something happens to women in the television world which makes them not exist in great numbers and/or die young. It's probably that lack of liveliness the quote refers to.

Read More »

April 3, 2008

The Ailing Health Insurance Markets

By J. Goodrich

Oh no! Another economics post! And a long one! Don't fret. The next one will be as fluffy and short as I can make it. But today I want to play doctor and patient with the US health insurance markets.

How to fix the problems of health insurance is a hot topic, these days, honest, and I want to chip in before the elections are over and we forget all about its importance. While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are offering competing plans which would cover the forty-seven million uninsured in this country, John McCain has a proposal to cut health care costs by increasing competition in the markets. His idea is that competition would drive the price of insurance so low that most everybody could afford coverage! No need for the government to poke its nose where it is not wanted, and the conservatives surely don't want it meddling with the markets.

There's a sense of deja vu about McCain's proposal. Haven't we been injecting competition into the health insurance markets for a very long time? Even the establishment of the government Medicare and Medicaid programs in the 1960's had a pro-competitive edge, because it removed from the commercial markets the most expensive and the poorest paying cases, leaving them with the most lucrative consumers to insure. The Health Maintenance Organization movement of the 1970's was another injection of that competitive hormone into the insurance markets in the form of prepaid group plans which combined insurance with the provision of care. What additional forms of competition has McCain invented that health economists never dreamt about?

Read More »

April 2, 2008

Thank You. I Will Be Here All Month. Try The Veal.

By J. Goodrich

That quote from the movie Shrek about being your server for the month seems like a good way to begin this wonderful relationship we are going to have, even if it is just two ships passing each other in the long night of the last year of the Bush Reich. I will try to offer you various delicious tidbits and you can complain about the food and about the flies in the food. A deal?

How should we begin this long and leisurely meal, then? What should I write about? How about some economics, to begin with? Something about the god of free markets getting all thunderous and angry in the last decade or so, especially in the financial markets?

What should we do about that? The conservatives want to pray to him more fervently, to let him have more space to express his wrath. What they don't want is any kind of reasoned discussion about what markets really are (gadgets, not gods) and why regulating some markets might actually be the most divine thing to do (because some gadgets work best that way), especially for the average people in this country.

Read More »

April 1, 2008

So Long, Farewell

By Samhita Mukhopadhyay

So my month has come to a close here at the Nation and I want to thank Peter Rothberg for this opportunity and his amazing support and Kristina Rizga from Wiretap Magazine for recommending me! If you have not checked out Wiretap Magazine please do so for the freshest and bravest in youth voices and activism.

Actively creating space for the voices of women of color is imperative for progressive publications. I currently work at the Center for Media Justice in Oakland, CA where we fight for the media rights of disenfranchised communities and support grassroots organizers in accessing the media in ways that support their organizing goals. In doing so, the theme of misrepresentation of people of color comes up again and again. Historically marginalized communities have never had access to traditional media, both in terms of representation and in having their voices heard. Progressive news has suffered a similar trajectory, so it is on all of us to actively advocate for the communication rights of disenfranchised communities. At CMJ we do this by supporting grassroots organizers with their strategic communications, along with building a movement for media justice. You can read more about us here.

I bring this up because advocating for the voices that may disrupt common ideologies in ways that are often difficult and challenging is part of creating a just and fair media. The change we want can only happen if we centralize those voices which have been most denied.

Read More »

April 1, 2008

Making Connections

By Samhita Mukhopadhyay

As my blogging stint at the Nation draws to a close, I think it is important to draw some connections between the issues I've been writing about. In the last few weeks I have blogged about two studies that came out recently, the first about the rate of incarceration in the United States and the second about the rate of STD cases in teenage girls. Activists and organizers recognize the complexities of the issues and campaigns we work on. In order to build stronger movements we have to talk between sectors and build alliances that further push our theories of change and our collective agenda.

Sounds like idealistic talk for those that are not part of the movement for social change, but as someone who spends day in and day out working with people on these issues, I see how talking each other about our differences is sometimes the only way to make connections between our issues. Specifically, the feminist movement and the anti-incarceration movement need to be talking to each other. Thanks to a reader, who saw my article on STDs and on prisons, I was sent a study that came out years ago on the connections between rate of STD cases and the rate of incarceration. The conclusion? Women in communities with higher rates of incarceration are more susceptible to high rates of STD exposure, even when they are engaging in low risk behavior.

An op-ed in the Washington Post titled, "An Epidemic No One wants to Talk About," elaborates,

Read More »

March 26, 2008

Reporting on STDs

By Samhita Mukhopadhyay

As thoughlast week's report about 1 in 4 girls having contracted an STD was not startling enough, the New York Times last Thursday led with this as the title:

Sex Infection Found in Quarter of Teenage Girls

This characterization of young women conjures several different issues for me.

Read More »

March 20, 2008

The Only Way Forward

By Samhita Mukhopadhyay

"Black men born in the US and fortunate enough to live past the age of eighteen are conditioned to accept the inevitability of prison. For most of us, it simply looms as the next phase in a sequence of humiliations. Being born a slave in a captive society and never experiencing any objective basis for expectation had the effect of preparing me for the progressively traumatic misfortunes that lead so many blackmen to the prison gate. I was prepared for prison. It required only minor psychic adjustments."

Soledad Brother --George Jackson

A study released last week by the Pew Center detailed just how many Americans are currently incarcerated. According to the study, 1 in 100 Americans are behind bars. Via NYT. The prison industrial complex refers to the imprisonment of certain sectors of society to maintain economic and social order. However, state budget problems in Texas and California, to name but a few, have caused some to turn their attention to the amount of spending that goes into maintaining the prison industrial complex . I also like to think that the ground-breaking HBO series, The Wire, has helped spur consciousness but that is probably wishful thinking.

Read More »

March 14, 2008