Chicago
I must say that Katha Pollitt’s exquisite and moving memorial to Pierre Bourdieu [“Subject to Debate,” Feb. 18] brought a little warmth to this soul, calloused and made cynical by the current state of things in the world. As a sociologist/social activist whose venue for change has been healthcare and medical education, I have seen Bourdieu as one of my guiding lights, both intellectually and morally. In keeping with Bourdieu’s central thesis, contemporary American medicine clearly qualifies as a “stratified social system of hierarchy and domination that persists and reproduces intergenerationally without powerful resistance and without the conscious recognition of [its] members.”
His moral stance, regardless of his own stature in the academy, served as a source of reaffirmation for me in my relationship with my students, whose personal and professional development was nurtured through providing care to the disadvantaged in the inner city of Chicago or making themselves vulnerable to the needs of the disfranchised in Africa, southeastern Europe or Central America.
Regarding Richard Posner, that silly ass, besides his megalomania (a contagious virus that seems to have reached epidemic proportions in the law school and economics department at the University of Chicago), he is the prime example of the philosophical conservative who is willing to pay the price of other people’s suffering for his own principles.
EDWARD J. ECKENFELS
San Francisco
I’m still scratching my head after reading Alexander Cockburn’s attack on my support for Enron’s merger with the Portland General Electric Company (PGE) almost five years ago [“Beat the Devil,” Jan. 7/14]. His baffling conclusion that “the role of that green seal of approval [in Enron’s collapse] should not be forgotten” is a non sequitur of the highest order.
Natural Resources Defense Council was part of a coalition of environmental and consumer groups that negotiated an agreement with the merging companies on future investment in energy efficiency, renewable energy, watershed restoration and low-income energy services. Cockburn is indignant that I said I trusted Enron to execute the agreement. But Cockburn, who never called me before publishing his diatribe, evidently didn’t check to find out what actually happened. Enron and PGE did indeed meet their merger obligations, and environmental and consumer interests were among the winners. Enron left in place a hometown management group with a commitment to improved performance on both environmental and equity issues. Its subsequent decision to leave the utility business, long before its collapse, had no adverse environmental consequences at PGE or elsewhere.
There is no connection between Enron’s current calamity and the merger that NRDC and many others supported conditionally nearly five years ago. Only Cockburn’s overactive imagination could suggest otherwise.
RALPH CAVANAGH Portland, Ore.
Lest your readers believe that all Oregon environmental groups were bought off by Enron, none of my clients agreed to the contract (“memorandum”) with Enron. In fact, the Utility Reform Project, Lloyd Marbet and Larry Tuttle appealed the Oregon Public Utility Commission’s 1997 merger approval to the courts, where we eventually lost in December 2000.
As of October 1, 2001, Enron was granted a $400 million (41 percent) annual rate increase by the Oregon commission. Enron also squirmed out of its merger commitment to pay its Oregon ratepayers $105 million for the use of assets paid for by those ratepayers, after having paid only $32 million.
Former PGE executives Ken Harrison and Joseph Hirko cashed in more than $110 million in Enron stock options before the collapse, while hundreds of PGE employees lost their life savings while locked into a 401(k) plan that consisted of 58 percent Enron stock, now essentially worthless. The Enron bankruptcy now threatens to dismember PGE (with transmission and hydro assets sold out from under state regulation), which would cause massive additional rate hikes.
DAN MEEK
Washington, D.C.
Thank you, Alexander Cockburn, for beginning an important dialogue about the harm done when environmental groups run interference for corporations. The Enron debacle in Portland, Oregon, is just one piece of the story about how certain organizations and their funders promoted utility deregulation in the name of protecting the environment. Some even lent their names to defeat a grassroots initiative movement in California to stop the nuclear bailout associated with the deregulation legislation in the state.
Early in the debate over deregulation, a small group of us working on energy issues argued with the funders and environmental proponents of deregulation. We pleaded with them to put their resources and leadership behind a grassroots movement against electricity deregulation, consolidation in the electricity industry and a bailout for the nuclear utilities. Our arguments fell on deaf ears. The dissenting organizations formed a coalition against deregulation called the Ratepayers for Green Electricity. Over the next several years we fought deregulation, but always on a shoestring because the prevailing wisdom was to “cooperate and deregulate.”
Since then, with the blessing and help of some public-interest advocates, deregulation bills have passed in more than twenty states. The crumbs the environmental supporters of deregulation got in exchange for their support are not lasting or significant enough to protect consumers or the environment. We predict more trouble ahead as these deregulation bills are phased in. Fortunately, so far no federal legislation has been enacted, although the proponents of deregulation are still pushing for it.
Furthermore, as we predicted, deregulation has been a disaster for consumers and the environment. Prices are higher, and the promised increase in competition has not come to pass. Rather than creating a green market for renewable energy, deregulation has resulted in thousands of megawatts of new, nonrenewable electricity plants being built or planned. Energy-efficiency programs have lost ground, and the entire thrust is to use more electricity, since under deregulation there is no incentive to save it.
But what is more important than the hollow victory of saying we told you so or naming names is understanding the lessons of the deregulation battle. Deregulation and privatization of public services is about making a profit (just watch the coming industry efforts to privatize water), not about helping consumers or protecting the environment. When environmental groups sign off on these deals in hopes of good will from profit-hungry corporations, they are deluding themselves and betraying the public. Environmental organizations and the foundations that support them should take a hard look at the “market-based” strategy and start putting their resources into creating a broad-based grassroots movement to protect people and the environment.
WENONAH HAUTER
Petrolia, Calif.
Just to inject one tiny sliver of reality into Ralph Cavanagh’s bland tissue of self-exculpation, which will be read with hilarity in Oregon. Portland General Electric sought and received $340 million in rate hikes on PGE customers for federal income taxes over the past three years. It shipped the money to Enron HQ in Houston. Over that period, Enron paid only $17 million in taxes in 1998, nothing in 1999 or in 2000. In fact, the company got a big tax rebate.
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Phoenix
In “And Darkness Covered the Land” [Dec. 24] Robert I. Friedman has given voice to what very few other US journalists have the guts to say–that people don’t blow themselves up in crowded restaurants because their Coke doesn’t have enough ice. It takes desperation to commit suicide for one’s cause. America’s role in the Palestinian apartheid is appalling and intensely hypocritical. Thank you to Friedman for having the cojones to point it out. If only our government would listen before our military support of Israel leads to more blood spilt on our or any other country’s soil.
CLAIRE CLARKE
Chicago
Yet another nauseatingly inaccurate and biased dispatch from Israel. Just to correct the (intentional?) inaccuracies would take almost as many pages as this article runs. Just one example: No one disputes that Arabs feel perfectly safe in Jewish towns in Israel. However, no Jew would venture into an Arab village, as brutal death awaits those who do, like the two Jewish kids lost on a hike who were stoned to death. By the time Truth has put on her shoes, Lie has run twice around the globe. It is tragic that The Nation supports Lie before an international audience.
EVA S. BELAVSKY
Bennington, Vt.
Robert Friedman’s article makes clear the real tragedy for both the Israeli and Palestinian people. All Americans should read it. Our leaders should read it at least twice.
What can we do to get a movement going in this country to demand that the United States and/or the United Nations impose and enforce a peace settlement? Sharon, as Friedman points out, has no desire for a peace that would give a viable country to the Palestinians. Conditions in the West Bank and Gaza can only breed more hatred and consequently more suicide bombers. An imposed peace settlement, which could be altered as cooler heads emerge on both sides, would save face for Israel and Palestine.
Why, if the world can impose peace and peacekeepers between the Greeks and the Turks in Cyprus; between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo; between Albanians and Slavs in Macedonia; and among the Croats, Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia, why not between Israelis and Palestinians? I am old enough to remember when Gdansk was Danzig, and now the Germans and Poles manage to live in peace. I would rather have my tax money supporting peacekeepers than supplying military equipment to Israel. And certainly a more even-handed US relationship with Israel and Palestine would have immense ramifications for a real peace between the West and the Muslim world.
MILDRED P. KATZ
In last week’s issue, we inadvertently lopped off the head of artist Jonathan Twingley’s name, rendering him Jonathan Wingley. (His illustrations appear on pages 11, 16 and 18.) Our apologies.
PIERRE BOURDIEU
ENRON RON-RON-RON , O ENRON-RON
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