By Matthew Yglesias

Paul Kedrosky notes the remarkable takeoff in African GDP starting in 2003:

Ryan Avent says you’re seeing the China effect: “Around the beginning of the last decade, rapid Chinese growth began placing upward pressure on a range of commodity prices.”

Obviously the question becomes how sustainable this boom is. Traditionally the problem for countries that are commodity-exporting their way to prosperity is two-fold. One is that your commodity exports drive up the price of your currency, which reduces the competitiveness of your industries in other tradable sectors. You become a country that sells copper (say) abroad to finance imports of all other kinds of things. Second is that while in the initial phase rising commodity prices make your country more prosperous and in the second phase continued price growth drives investment that further drives prosperity, sooner-or-later the increase in investment tends to drive the price of the commodity back down to earth and then where are you? So what you’ve normally seen is countries riding a commodity price boom-bust whipsaw and never achieving any kind of sustainable development. Will we see that again, or will China manage to keep moving up the value chain to the extent that eventually Africa and other poor places start to take its place as low-cost manufacturing hubs and so forth?

By Satyam Khanna

In 2006, the St. Louis MetroLink opened up a major new subway extension (blue line), bringing the total length of subway tracks in the area to 46-miles. Originally, the sole subway line went from the suburban airport to downtown (red line). Here is the current state of the Metro in St. Louis, where I’m living for the summer:

The new line was hailed by local political leaders as a victory for collaboration between the county and the city (which often clash politically). That’s worth its praise, and certainly the line is beneficial for those living in the suburbs, but ultimately, the blue line extension seems to be a somewhat of loser for the city.

First, you can see that with the new addition, the general structure of the MetroLink system remains east-west focused. In the west is the wealthier suburbs of Clayton and Richmond Heights, whereas in the east (nearing the River) is the financial district and considerably poorer urban core. Chances are that wealthy suburban residents already have cars, so they will likely be driving to the MetroLink station, parking (yet another problem), then using it to get downtown for work, restaurants, and baseball/hockey games.

In the mean time, if you want to move around within the city — or are a poor urban dweller — you must rely on a overcrowded and perpetually delayed bus system.

As Ryan Avent and Yglesias have noted regarding the DC Metro, simply adding “spokes” to existing subway systems, as St. Louis has done here, can end up hurting the urban core by leading to crowded trains and back-ups at stations. Increasing MetroLink’s capacity in a sustainable way means developing a subway framework in urban core of St. Louis. Naturally, that is going to be very expensive. But note that the cost of widening and rebuilding St. Louis’s main interstate highway was over $500 million while the cost of the recent MetroLink extension was roughly $430 million!

Another point is that St. Louis is one of the more segregated cities in America, with north St. Louis city almost entirely black and south St. Louis city predominantly white. The blue line runs right along this racial dividing line. It makes logical sense that a north-south Metro extension, for instance, within the city limits would at least begin to break down the racial barrier while also encouraging increased mobility in the urban center.

Even adorable protesters don't usually win hearts and minds. cc photo from Flickr user satanslaundromat.

By Dara Lind

Texas public schools spread American history over two years of instruction, with eighth-grade history closing out the school year with Reconstruction and high-school U.S. history picking up in 1877. In the hands of the power-mad, revisionist-zealot Texas Board of Education, the division creates some pretty revealing inconsistencies in how students are supposed to be taught to view certain things. The most glaring example of this, to my mind, is the way the respective curricula treat direct action and civil disobedience.

Here’s a requirement from the eighth-grade curriculum, under “Citizenship”:

The student is expected to…analyze reasons for and the impact of selected examples of civil disobedience in U.S. history such as the Boston Tea Party and Henry David Thoreau’s refusal to pay a tax.

Yes, it’s hilarious that the curriculum glosses over the fact that Thoreau wasn’t objecting to taxation in general, but to the use of his tax money to pay for an unnecessary war. (I doubt the Texas BoE shares Thoreau’s conviction that the Mexican War was a petty, imperialistic victory for slavery, of course.) And yes, it’s obvious that conservatives’ newfound love for “civil disobedience,” as represented by the original Boston Tea Party, is a transparent attempt to persuade themselves that there’s a higher purpose to today’s Tea Parties than shouting things, waving signs and electing Scott Brown. But I’m still glad that students are being taught that direct action and civil disobedience can serve an important purpose in pushing for accomplishing social and political change. After all, if they think civil disobedience was so important in the mid-nineteenth century, they’ll surely return to the theme when talking about the mid-twentieth century, right?

Wrong. Here’s the high-school curriculum:

Students are expected to…analyze the effectiveness of the approach taken by some civil rights groups such as the Black Panthers versus the philosophically persuasive tone of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail.”

Those are your options. No Montgomery bus boycott. No sit-ins. Just the Black Panthers — who weren’t even founded until 1966 and didn’t have a significant national presence until ’68 — or King, who gets credit for his pretty words but no mention of how he ended up writing a letter from a jail cell in Birmingham to begin with. The implication is clear: the civil rights movement was effective because of the “persuasive tone” of its more conciliatory orators, not because thousands of people rode buses and boycotted buses and got blasted with fire hoses.

The message the Texas BoE is sending is clear: direct action is a civic duty when white people do it, but nonwhite activists need to sit tight and let their leaders do the talking. (A less charitable interpretation is that direct action by nonwhites is just one step away from Black Panther militancy.) But that’s so obvious it’s barely worth remarking on.  What I find much more interesting is how completely this gives the lie to an argument I’ve heard in conversation from some conservatives and libertarians in the wake of the Rand Paul mishigas: that private discrimination in the South would have collapsed without federal intervention due to the free market and “societal pressure.”  The people making this argument, like the Texas BoE, often end up laying credit for the gains African-Americans made in the civil-rights era squarely at Martin Luther King’s feet — or rather, at his footnotes, because they laud King the orator and ignore King the organizer.They’re eager to claim that social movements are capable of winning hearts and minds when the alternative is legislation, but they ignore the way social movements actually work, and the hard work (and direct action) it takes to get somebody to listen to your pretty words. They ignore it because they’re squeamish about it.

The fact of the matter is that organized social movements, and the actions they undertake, don’t generally win hearts and minds. Civil disobedience and direct action — even marching! — are likely to galvanize the opposition, making them feel defensive and victimized. The Texas BoE’s civil-rights revisionism is evidence of this: they’re not actually comfortable with the tactics that get used to call attention to the need for change. Furthermore, these tactics don’t even generally win sympathy from people who are truly neutral on the issue. What it does is call injustice to the attention of people who are sensitive to injustice in theory, but insulated from it in practice — especially political elites who can then take up the task of rectifying the injustice. Social movements can’t work as an alternative to legislation, only as a complement to it. Civil disobedience is only a vehicle for political change, rather than a principled act of bravado, when the law actually gets changed.

Of course, I’m hardly losing sleep over the fact that Texas is teaching students how to be lousy activists. If the state succeeds in indoctrinating them with the rest of the curriculum, they probably wouldn’t be mobilizing for anything I’d want. But it would be nice if the conservatives who have discovered a new love of protests and expressive politics thanks to the tea partiers understood the true value of social action.

By Matt Zeitlin

It’s hard to say that anything new about Peter Beinart’s blockbuster  New York Review of Books essay on the failure of the American Jewish Establishment has been under-discussed, but one little niggling bit of criticism of it that hasn’t been properly addressed is the argument that Beinart somehow erred in having his essay be published in the New York Review, which, in the words of Jeffrey Goldberg is, “the one-stop shopping source for bien-pensant anti-Israelism” and that  ”If Beinart’s goal is to talk to the great mass of American Jews who support the institutions of American Jewry but who are troubled by certain trends in Israeli politics, this is not the way to do it.”

Yes, it’s true that the New York Review published Tony Judt’s call for binationalism and the authors who write about Israel tend to take a pretty dim view of settlements, settlement expansion, wars Israel fights and so on and so forth. The thing is, the people taking these views also tend to be Israeli intellectuals. The New York Review is one of the few American outlets for liberal Israelis to write long, substantive essays about Israel. As Peter Beinart pointed out on Twitter, “if the NYRB is anti-Israel how do you explain its publishing Margalit, Avishai, Grossman, Elon? Are Israel’s best intellectuals anti-Israel?”

Beinart is right: it’s very hard to argue that a journal that is committed to “bien-pensant anti Israelism” would publish pieces by Avishai Margalit and Michael Walzer, two liberal intellectuals who, yes, are both occasional critics of Israel but also obviously Zionists (the former being himself Israeli). Or what about David Grossman, whom Goldberg has written about movingly?Another harsh Israeli critic of Israel’s policies, but still hardly anti-Israel.

With the exception of the Judt pieces, what the New York Review seems to be doing is giving Americans a taste of what the Israeli equivalents of the American intellectuals who write for the New York Review are saying about their own country. So unless you want to argue that the journal also is anti-America for publishing the likes of, say, David Cole, David Bromwich and  Garry Wills, then it hardly seems plausible that the Review has some core anti-Israel animus.

by Matt Zeitlin

There’s a meme going around the populist, anti-corporatist right as incarnated by Timothy Carney that the financial reform bill that passed the senate, like the health care bill, is just entrenching incumbent interests and isn’t real reform. His evidence for this claim — aside from particular policy points — is partially that banking lobbyists and prominent bankers have had meetings with policy makers and, in general, have had some amount of input on the policy making process and apparently have been successful in killing a specific leverage requirement amendment. And, some bankers have been making noise about supporting reform in general, like when some Goldman guy told Politico that “We’re not against regulation. We’re for regulation. We partner with regulators.” Of course, conservatives jumped all over this as yet another piece of evidence that financial reform was just another big government scheme to protect the perfidious big banks.

Well, it turns out that the banks are playing a similar role to much of the health insurance industry during the health care fight: recognizing that reform is inevitable, publicly trying to get the best possible deal, but also ultimately supporting the other side. This is from Politico:

And even if the derivatives language finally goes away, some on Wall Street who supported Obama and other Democrats say they may not to do so again, frustrated by months of what they view as relentless bashing and punitive policy-making.

“It’s not just derivatives. That’s just a symptom of the larger issue,” said one Wall Street lobbyist who declined to be named out of concern for angering the administration. “It’s general frustration with lack of rationality, principles and the unending uncertainty. [The financial industry] feels re-traded between Obama’s vision during campaign and the execution of the policies.” The phrase “re-traded” is a Wall Street term for bad faith renegotiation of a previously agreed-upon deal.

“This will have an impact on fundraising,” the executive said, “not out of retribution, but out of deep disappointment in the irrationality of policies/rhetoric and a determination not to fall into ‘Stockholm syndrome.’ ”

…

Congressional Democrats and the party committees that support their campaigns are already suffering from Wall Street’s sense of betrayal. According to a center study done for RealClearPolitics, Republicans collected about three-quarters of the political contributions from New York financial services companies in March. About two-thirds went to Republicans in February.

So, once again, Republicans turn out to be totally on the side of business interests and Democrats are trying to pass an imperfect, yet meaningful reform. It shouldn’t really surprise anyone that things have shaken out this way.

By Dara Lind

Because nothing goes with a rainy Sunday afternoon like some well-placed outrage, I’ve been working my way through the text of the new Texas social-studies curricula for middle and high school. As Ali mentioned, they’re pretty bad, and some of the elements that upset me most have flown under the radar (I’ll go into one of them in another post). But I have to say, I approve of this requirement:

Each school district shall require that, during Celebrate Freedom Week or other week of instruction prescribed under subparagraph (A) of this paragraph, students in Grades 3-12 study and recite the following text: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness–That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.”

I’m perfectly well aware that the Texas Board of Education probably chose that particular passage because of the phrase “endowed by their Creator,” and I’m under no illusions that teachers will bother to explain to their students that the Creator in whom Thomas Jefferson believed would look pretty alien (if not downright heretical) to most Christians in the state. Jefferson himself barely makes a cameo in the curriculum for this very reason. Even the Texas Board of Ed seems to understand that recent conservative efforts to emphasize the Founders’ “Judeo-Christian ethics” and religiosity are completely hopeless.

But while I think emphasizing the text of the Declaration at the expense of its context is misguided, I much prefer treating the Declaration as a secular prayer to treating the Founders as secular saints. Glenn Beck’s Colonial Williamsburg schtick weirds me out, but so, in its way, does the obsessive historicism of liberal David McCullough groupies. The Declaration itself, on the other hand, has been as influential as it is largely because it’s such an elegant piece of writing; John Locke, for all his brilliance, wasn’t the prose stylist Jefferson was. It is worth memorizing, at least in part. And making kids memorize this passage reminds them that America wasn’t founded to realize some sort of  “American” ethnicity, but to realize a set of ideas. I don’t imagine third graders will have any sort of transcendental experience while reciting it in unison at the end of Celebrate Freedom Week (ick), but I’d settle for the grudging respect most students have for the Pledge of Allegiance, which is patriotic for all the wrong reasons and much less inspiring.

However. If states with Boards of Education less insane than Texas’ decide to adopt this requirement, I’d love to see them use not only the Declaration but also the Preamble to the Constitution. It’s almost as elegant as the Declaration and complements it nicely, with a focus on positive liberties where the Declaration emphasizes negative liberties. Most importantly, it’s really easy to memorize thanks to the awesome Schoolhouse Rock song about it:

I learned this song over a decade ago for a production of Schoolhouse Rock Live! (In my misspent youth I was a mediocre musical-theatre actress.) I can still sing it. Civic literacy through song: it works.

By Satyam Khanna

Given that the oil spill, along with other events, has overshadowed the recent SCOTUS nomination, I was scouring my RSS for news this morning regarding Elena Kagan and stumbled upon this: “Elena Kagan goes on Supreme Court confirmation offensive in drab D.C. clothes“:

But Kagan is only 50 years old…Her style, however, makes her seem so much older. There’s little that could be described as fun, impish or creative in her dress. It’s a wholly middle-age approach to a wardrobe — if one stubbornly and inaccurately defines that transitional period in life as the beginning-of-the-end of sex appeal, effervescence and sprightliness. Kagan’s version of middle-age seems stuck in a time warp, back when 50-something did not mean Kim Cattrall or Sharon Stone, “Cougar Town” or “Sex and the City.”

Considering the fact that we *don’t know* what Elena Kagan “believes” because of her “lack” of “judicial experience,” it would be worthwhile to see more investigations into Kagan’s legal philosophy, her views on cases, etc. instead of articles about Kagan’s clothing. But Kagan is now a public figure, and I imagine the Post’s Fashion section has some constituency interested in her sense of style. Fine. But take a look at the Post’s Fashion section commenting on Sam Alito’s banal style four years ago:

Samuel Alito eschewed the more formal — and some would argue more elegant — French cuffs for the standard barrel ones. His shirts were perfectly starched. His suits were dark, sober and trim. He looked tidy but not fancy. The nominee wore nothing eye-catching. He didn’t even have an American flag pin affixed to his lapel, an accessory that has been de rigueur for anyone facing a microphone, television cameras and a row of lawmakers. Visually, Alito was as unremarkable as possible. Even the patterns on his ties, which were either a patriotic red or blue, were so subtle as not to even register unless inspected under a magnifying glass. Alito has been described as a nerd. (He took up juggling, after all.) But he mostly shook off the markers of social awkwardness or eccentricity with the simplicity and discreet tailoring of his clothes. There were no image missteps because he stuck to the basics. He didn’t look bespoke, but he looked Brooks Brothers solid.

So, to clarify, for cute nerd Sam Alito, boring clothes = “tidy” and “Brooks Brother’s solid.” For questionably heterosexual middle-aged Elena Kagan, boring clothes = “wholly middle aged” and “stuck in a time warp.”

This goes back to Jack Balkin’s point last week that the media treats SCOTUS nominee reporting in the same way they do scandals: “Newspapers obsessively look for different angles to report the story in ever new ways” and “commentators and political operatives seek dominant, easy to understand narratives that can be used to frame the situation for public consumption.” This story would appear to fall into the latter category. Apparently, we can try to infer that Kagan is “reliable and reassuring” and “very, very wise” based her choice of clothing….or the fact that she doesn’t cross her legs when she sits.

I would imagine that the real reason that Kagan, or any woman seeking higher office, has to dress in “drab” clothing is to deter attention away from her appearance and instead focus scrutiny on her intellect. Lest they risk getting an article like this in the Post’s Fashion section.