Minority Report

Maybe They're Worried About Their Private Social Security Accounts

After last week's market plunge - when America's three main stock gauges fell more than 3 percent - Wall Street and unusually nervous individual investors are looking to the flood of earnings reports this week to see how optimistic corporate America is in its outlook for the economy.

If Bush and his privatization thugs get their way, retirees won't need to go to Vegas - they can play the daily roulette wheel of the stock market to determine if they have retirement security or not...

Vigilante Soldier

Oh no he didn't:

A lone Army reservist accused of holding seven Mexican nationals at gunpoint this week at a desolate Arizona rest stop has renewed concerns about vigilante justice and violence along the Arizona-Mexico border.

...Deputies who arrested Haab on Sunday reported that he used his car to block the suspected immigrants from leaving the rest stop and ordered them to exit the vehicle and get onto the ground. Deputies said Haab "ordered" another driver to help him and gave the driver a second gun to hold on the immigrants while he called police. Before sheriff's deputies and officials with the Border Patrol arrived on the scene, the second driver returned the gun to Haab and left the rest stop. Authorities are trying to locate him.

The immigrants, all undocumented workers, said they were afraid for their lives and asked to press charges against Haab, who is being held on seven counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

It's pretty fucked up that he just assumed a truck full of brown people would be illegal. I guess we should be relieved that he didn't force them to strip and form a human pyramid.

Preparing Them to be Greedy Bastards

I am currently taking an advanced negotiation class which includes students from both the public policy school and the business school. Most of the class is taught through simulations and for the past three weeks, we've been doing a simulation of a labor-management dispute that supposedly takes place over seven years. The policy students play the role of union negotiators while the MBAs represent management.

The context of the negotiation is that labor and management at a food processing company in the Midwest have enjoyed really strong relations for the past fifty years. The CEO and founder of the firm believed strongly that labor should share in the fruits of the company's profits and worked cooperatively with them to provide a terrific working environment. Employees of the company enjoy the industry's best wages, incentives, workforce autonomy, and job security. In fact, the company has a permanent working agreement in place that guarantees wages and job security that has been in place for forty years. As a result, workers feel strong pride and loyalty towards their company.

The marketplace is changing, however. The company faces competition by non-union shops and other competitors have been successful in gaining substantial concessions from their union workforces. Moreover, the CEO has passed away and is no longer part of the firm, replaced by other management executives.

Our negotiation with the MBAs began as part of a standard, seven-year renewal that examined wage and other issues. Right away, the MBAs complained that the many benefits enjoyed by the workers impacted their flexibility in the marketplace and they were concerned that the company would go under if many of the benefits weren't given up. Specifically, they sought to dismantle the working agreement that provided job and wage security, a drastic wage reduction in line with competitors' wages, and the elimination of individual incentives.

As labor, we found ourselves in a tough position. Due to both the nature of the negotiation as well as due to the limitations of the simulation, we found ourselves at a profound disadvantage and forced to make large concessions that decimated our position along many of these issues.

What I found most interesting, however, was that no matter how much we gave up, the MBAs kept coming and asking for more, citing the same reasons - the need to remain competitive. This was in the face of the fact that according to financial statements, the companies profitability was increasing, not decreasing; moreover, wages as a factor of production were declining, not increasing.

Needless to say, the atmosphere became more acrimonious as time went on. In our final negotiation, we were presented with a situation where the union had been working at a new factory for the past three years that utilized newee technologies that required less workers.Productivity and efficiency were the highest of any plant in the world. Company profits were 92% higher than they were seven years earlier. Workers, however, weren't doing so well. Our wages were one-third of what they were at the end of the last contract when including incentive pay. For the past five years, the workers had not had a cost-of-living adjustment. More alarming was that workforce injuries had skyrocketed, to the highest in the industry at 202 incidents per 100 workers.

In this environment, I would expect that people of conscience would be concerned about the high rates of injury, would take stock of the company's financial performance, and realize that there was some room for the company to make concessions for the sacrifices of the workers and to improve worker safety which ultimately harmed the company.

Instead, the MBAs single-mindedly held onto their mantra of competitiveness, even in the face overwhelming evidence that their fears of profitability were ultimately unfounded. In some small way, they felt that they were able to make some concessions - they offered a 5% wage increase - but it came at the expense of asking the union to give up scheduled layoffs and control over seniority rules.

I was really disturbed by the sheer greed and single-minded focus on the company at the expense of the workers. After all, were these students sitting across from me any different than I was? More importantly, if I had been in their shoes, would I have believed their position and advocated it with the same passion and fiery that they had? I'm not sure whether I have a good answer for that since I don't know how they were briefed but I want to believe that had I been in their shoes that I would have felt very differently.

I'm not sure what they teach in business schools but if the team we negotiated against is any reflection of their peers, anyone who works in corporate America at anything less than a managerial level is in a lot of trouble. This was an ungraded exercise and to make concessions would have cost them nothing other than possibly some pride. Yet, in the face of overwhelming evidence of unprecedented profitability, dangerous work conditions, and tremendous worker sacrifices, these individuals chose to give very little, if at all.

The exercise really put into perspective for me the powerlessness of the union. Part of the loss of the union's power stemmed from it's inability to control the national union to which it belonged. Often it worked counter to its interests which leads me to wonder whether nationalizing unions has increased or decreased the power of unionized labor. It seems intuitive that  it would help rather than harm, but in many cases more favorable conditions for the company at other locations or with competitors gave the firms tremendous leverage in the negotiation. The unions were, more often than not, unable to sway public sentiment in their favor nor convince scabs not to cross picket lines, denying them the only power they really have.

I feel like the companies are reaching that stage again where the workforce is considered nothing more than an asset to be exploited and tossed away when its utility is finished. I believe in free markets, but I don't believe in this.

At Least He Got the First Part Right

``We don't have an exit strategy, we have a victory strategy,'' Rumsfeld told soldiers during a surprise visit to Baghdad, according to a pooled broadcast report from the capital.

*sigh*

Mexican Food for White People

Pittsburgh isn't exactly known for it's diversity of ethnic cuisine and what's here is often either highly franchised or just plain bad and often both. Today some friends and I went to a Baja Fresh - what counts for Mexican food out here. My white friend ordered before me and was presented with one of those frequent patron cards that entitles him to free food after he eats four more burritos. Baja Fresh hasn't been doing so well with the lunchtime crowd because of their other franchised competitor down the street, Qdoba.

After my friend finished, I stepped up to have my order taken by a distinctly non-Mexican cashier. After I placed my order and paid, this person made no attempt to offer me the same frequent patron card that had been offered my friend just before me even though a neat little stack of them were sitting next to the register. As I put my change in my wallet, the cashier noticed me eyeing the cards. Without any attempt to obscure what he was doing, he quickly slid the cards behind a display so that the cards were out of sight.

I think I've been lucky for the past two years that I haven't really encountered a lot of overt racism directed at my way - it helps that I don't really get around much beyond school. This blatant and transparent display, however, was so obvious that it took me by surprise. I'm not really angry about it, just confused - what is it about my money that's not as good as my friends? I guess in the end, that's all racism is about. It doesn't make any sense - it's just a preference for one over the other despite the fact that they are both equal.

This might just be sour grapes but I also noticed that the Mexican-appearing individuals all worked in the kitchen while there were several people-of-color whose jobs were to wipe tables, hold open waste containers for customers, and mop floors. Yep, you guessed it - only the white people were manning the registers - white men, no less.

To all the dumbasses who think racism is over, it isn't. It just continues to play itself out in all sorts of stupid and bewildering circumstances that make you wonder what all this talk about equality and justice is about. Baja Fresh can keep their white customers - I'm eating at Qdoba.

As Sala'amu Alaikum,

Brothers and sisters visiting from Al-Muhajabah. I'm honored to have you visit my little portion of the blogosphere.

What a Muslim Teenager's Bad Day Looks Like

Life as a South Asian teenager can really be a bitch. Often what you experience is the clash of culture and values as you try to break out of the strongly paternal bonds and rules that your parents hold onto. I think almost every teen experience is driven by the desire to fit in, especially since your differences are often rudely pointed out. My own experience was one of constant conflict between my parents and I over my grades, my extracurricular activities, dating, and going out.

While this is probably par for the course for most teenagers, the part that was the hardest was the stuff I couldn't control. I got called "Ay-Rab" and "Sand Nigger" so much, you'd have thought it was my name. That was part of my daily experience and there were times when it got really wearisome. I felt isolated from my family and from everyone else since there were so few who shared my experience. I hated school, the people in it, and sometimes indulged in fantasies of suicide as a means to escape my daily suffering. Of course, it wasn't real - I didn't actually have the guts to go through with it - I was just really depressed about my life on some days, probably much as many other teenagers.

I thought my experience was pretty bad. Mine has no comparison with what Muslim teenagers are now subject to.

The parents of the Bangladeshi girl went to the police several weeks ago to file a complaint about their daughter's defying their authority. When the dispute was resolved, they tried to withdraw the complaint, but the police proceeded with an investigation.The police and federal immigration officials searched her belongings and are reported to have found an essay on suicide. According to the family, the essay says suicide is against Islamic law. But detectives went on to question the girl about her political beliefs before arresting her.

So maybe you're feeling a little depressed and write something in your journal about how you're feeling a little suicidal. Suicidal Muslims apparently cannot be anything other than suicidal Muslim bombers.

Wait, it gets better. Law enforcement is claiming that this girl had a suicide bombing pact with another teenaged Muslim girl. The basis of this claim?

Little is known about the second 16-year-old. The mother of the Bangladeshi girl, conveying her daughter's account, said the two girls met for the first time at 26 Federal Plaza after her daughter's arrest. But when the other girl, a Guinean who was facing deportation with her family, noticed her daughter's veil, she gave her a traditional Muslim greeting, and federal agents seemed to think they were friends. The second girl ended up in the Pennsylvania detention center, too.

I would have thought that the FBI would by now have figured out that when Muslims greet one another, even with ones whom are total strangers, they often say "As sala'amu alaikum" (peace be upon you) and the generally expected reply is "walaikum as sala'am" (and unto you also, peace).  This is no different, from a familiarity perspective, than saying 'hello' to someone you see on the street.

With two would-be terrorist suicide bombers in their custody, you would expect the government to be aggressively pursuing criminal charges against the two, right?

A bond hearing in the Bangladeshi girl's case is to be held this morning in York, Pa., but the government has asked that it be closed, based on an affidavit filed by a counterterrorism supervisor in the F.B.I.'s New York office. The case underscores the difficulties faced by anyone who is charged only with civil immigration violations, but is in fact being held in a counterterrorism investigation, lawyers said.

There are no firm time limits on immigration detention, so the burden is on the girls to prove that they are not potential suicide bombers, rather than on the government to prove they are.

Indeed, the evidence is withheld from the girls and anyone who represents them under a "protective order" that F.B.I. investigators obtained from the immigration court, according to an April 1 motion to continue the secrecy, signed by Jeffrey T. Bubier, assistant chief counsel for the Department of Homeland Security in Philadelphia.

..The girls have no right to a court-appointed lawyer, and according to the government document that described the Guinean girl, her family had not retained one.

This is how our government, under the auspices of the Bush Administration, spits on the Constitution of the United States. It does everything it can to prevent people from exercising the constitutional protections created specifically to prevent the government abuse of its power.

In the end, there will be no terror prosecution. Instead, a girl and her family, who have no connection at all to terrorism, will be deported to their homeland all because the girl had a bad day at school. Tell me you've got a bad teenager experience that even comes close. Yeah, that's what I thought.

At Least Black People Get to Pay More

That's apparently how Alan Greenspan describes the progress that African Americans have been making in getting home loans:

About 29 percent of African Americans who bought or refinanced homes last year ended up with high-cost loans, compared with only about 10 percent of white Americans, according to an a consumer advocacy group's analysis of new data from 15 large national lenders.

About 15 percent of Hispanics received such loans offered to borrowers with damaged credit, known as sub-prime loans, according to the analysis conducted by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which represents 640 nonprofit organizations.

...At the conference, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan defended the higher interest rates paid by some consumers as a positive development because those people at least are receiving loans.

"Where once-marginal applicants would simply have been denied credit, lenders are now able to quite efficiently judge the risk posed by individual applicants and to price that risk appropriately," he said in a speech. "These improvements have led to rapid growth in sub-prime mortgage lending; indeed, sub-prime mortgages account for roughly 10 percent of the number of mortgages outstanding, up from just 1 or 2 percent in the early 1990s."

I think I'll take issue with Mr. Greenspan over whether these loans are "appropriate" since it's clear that lenders are willfully exploiting minorities and immigrants who may be less educated about mortgage products or otherwise vulnerable: (article is archived in their non-free section, sorry!)

Recent immigrants and minorities, who will make up the bulk of new households and about half of first-time home buyers in coming decades, are far more likely than whites to take out subprime loans -- and appear more likely to be victimized by predatory lending. Federal data show even affluent minorities are more likely than whites to take out subprime loans, and some consumer groups say minorities are unfairly diverted to the subprime market.

because older homeowners have built up years of equity. AARP has a major initiative to combat The elderly population, too, is growing and may be vulnerable to predatory lending,predatory lending through education and litigation.

"Most of our clients don't go looking for loans," says Jean Constantine-Davis, an AARP attorney in Washington, D.C. "It very often starts out with a home-improvement loan. . . . People think they're getting a loan for a chimney, (but) they've refinanced the house, rolled credit cards into it."

In Memphis, consumer advocates say predatory lenders, including firms owned by blacks, have targeted African-American neighborhoods, resulting in a rash of foreclosures. Data from Boston and Chicago also show concentrated subprime lending in minority neighborhoods.

Most of the wealth that exists in immigrant and minority communities is in home equity. The result of predatory lending is to decimate the wealth of these communities which is why so many states have instituted regulations and consumer protections to stop the practice.

How do lenders respond? By crying to Congress, of course, which is now poised to sweep aside the state protection laws with their own, watered-down versions authored by the lending industry.

The strong words seem to take the long-running debate over how to crack down on predatory lending back to where it has been for years, with a deadlock between lenders pushing for federal preemption of tougher state laws and consumer and civil rights groups arguing that proposed GOP fixes are too weak. The new twist this year, however, is that Democrat Kanjorski and three black Democrats on the committee have co-sponsored the bill with Ney.

...The civil rights groups contend that the Ney-Kanjorski approach falls far short of what is needed to stop abusive lending targeted at minorities, the elderly and immigrants and instead removes protections in existing federal law and in state and local regulations. The states and local jurisdictions have been passing laws since about 1999 as lending to subprime, or higher-risk, borrowers has exploded. Although not all subprime lending is predatory, complaints about abusive lending, with hidden or excessive fees and deceptive practices, have skyrocketed as higher-cost, subprime loans have become available.

As someone who is now buying a home, the connection between personal wealth and homeownership is now pretty clear to me. This connection between housing policy and social mobility is a worthwhile one that deserves more exploration and sadly, will not thanks to the GOP and their Democratic enablers.

The notion that getting bad loans is better than no loan at all is a despicable and disgusting position. Then again, Chairman Al is excelling at that these days...

Senioritis and Then Some

With less than a month of classes left, my productivity is going downhill. The hard work earlier in the school year paid off and I'm one of a few students with multiple job offers, one of which I accepted on Friday. With that out of the way, I'm looking forward to finally moving back to New Jersey and getting acquainted with married life as it is experienced by most people instead of at the 2-3 week intervals with lots of phone calls that it is for me.

My wife and I put an offer down for a condo a few weeks ago which was accepted and I'm now in the process of learning why people hate lawyers. Our overpriced lawyer takes forever to get on the phone to get basic information (I guess that's common) and won't offer us any advice on negotiating strategy. It's kind of eye-opening since many of our friends are lawyers but we've never had to do business with any. I can only hope that they're not as obnoxious in their professional lives as ours appear to be.

All of this preoccupies me almost to the exclusion of everything else, including the blog. I know I need to put up a few posts so I'm hoping there's enough out there for me to be angry about.

I Won't Be Vacationing in Florida

With my luck, some vigilante asshole will assume I'm a terrorist and therefore believe they have a right to shoot me:

Gov. Jeb Bush said he will soon sign into law the so-called "Castle Doctrine" bill — giving Floridians more discretion to shoot would-be attackers in their homes, vehicles and public places — after the state House approved it overwhelmingly Tuesday.

The Senate had passed the bill unanimously.

...The bill says that person has "the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so, to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another."

The bill would make shooters in such situations immune from criminal prosecution and civil action.

It would seem like commonsense policy not to let citizens have both the discretion and immunity to use deadly force in a highly subjective situation. Where are the Florida Dems? Apparently so whipped by the lack of strong leadership that they're willing to bend over and take anything up the ass:

The measure (SB 436) not only garnered every Republican vote in both chambers but also had the support of all 14 Senate Democrats and 13 of 36 House Democrats. It passed 94-20 in the House, with three Republicans and three Democrats not voting.

"Even voters who are hurt by Republican economic policies vote Republican because they don't trust us on cultural wedge issues like gun control and religion," said Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres. "The voters stop listening to us and they don't even get to our economic issues. So we're trying to show that, if you are a gun owner, you are a Democrat too."

What a sad statement. The Dems have settled for Republican-lite.

Oh, well. When a few white people get shot up by some people-of-color and the minorities go free, they'll be repealing this mighty fast...