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The Book That Predicts Occupy Wall Street: Bruce Sterling’s ‘Distraction’

By Brad Johnson on Oct 7, 2011 at 5:22 pm

If you’re confused about the point of Occupy Wall Street, here’s a great essay by Matt Stoller.

Or you can go even deeper (and weirder) and read Distraction, Bruce Sterling’s wildly entertaining and spookily prescient 1998 satire of American society in 2044. The book begins with our protagonist, political operative Oscar Valparaiso, trying to understand a video that shows a group of seemingly uncoordinated people showing up in a town and working together to demolish a bank in just a few minutes. (Sterling was describing a political flash mob five years before the term “flash mob” was even coined.) Throughout the course of the book, Oscar comes to understand the power of social-network political action and its implications for American democracy.

Oscar and his campaign crew — having just won a U.S. Senate election and now at loose ends — cross over into Texas from Lousiana, where they’re stopped by members of the nearby Air Force base for “voluntary contributions” to their “Air Force bake sale,” because the federal government’s budget crisis is so bad it’s unclear whether the base is being funded any more:

It had never occured to the lords of the consumer society that consumerism as a political philosophy might one day manifest the same grave systemic instabilities that Communism had. But as those instabilities multiplied, the country had cracked. Civil society shriveled in the pitiless reign of cash. As the last public spaces were privatized, it became harder and harder for American culture to breathe. Not only were people broke, but they were taunted to madness by commercials, and pitilessly surveilled by privacy-invading hucksters. An ever more aggressive consumer-outreach apparatus cause large numbers of people to simply abandon their official identities.

It was no longer fun to be an American citizen. Bankruptcies multiplied beyond all reason, becoming a kind of commercial apostasy. Tax dodging became a spectator sport. The American people simply ceased to behave.

The American economy collapsed years before the book takes place, with a vast divide between the moneyed elite and nearly everyone else, whose abilities have been made economically obsolescent by computing technology, international competition, and the demise of intellectual property. In one exchange, the campaign bus driver tries to explain to Oscar that the forgotten Americans are figuring out how to “make their own lives by themselves”:

“Why are there millions of nomads now? They don’t have jobs, man! You don’t care about ‘em! You don’t have any use for ‘em! You can’t make any use for them! They’re just not necessary to you. Not at all. Okay? So, you’re not necessary to them, either. Okay? They got real tired of waiting for you to give them a life. So now, they just make their own life by themselves, out of stuff they find lying around. You think the government cares? The government can’t even pay their own Air Force.”

“A country that was better organized would have a decent role for all its citizens.”

“Man, that’s the creepy part — they’re a lot better organized than the government is. Organization is the only thing they’ve got! They don’t have money or jobs or a place to live, but organization, they sure got plenty of that stuff.”

And this is only one piece of Distraction‘s complex, silly, and dark world, which involves a war-time romance between Oscar and the brilliant neuroscientist Greta Penninger, whom he helps take over a scientific research facility on the budget chopping block as she works on remapping cognition. They then have to defend the facility from the takeover attempts of the insane governor of Louisiana, who is trying to save his state’s people as global warming puts it underwater. Meanwhile, the President is waging war against the Netherlands, and the senator Oscar elected, an eco-architecture billionaire, becomes mentally ill after conducting a hunger strike with all of his vital signs monitored by millions over the Internet.

Sterling’s extrapolations from 1998 into the near-distant future verge on the absurd, but it’s the absurdity of a world changing faster than most people can adapt, one where reputation on social networks can translate into real political power, where it’s hard to tell if things are working great or broken beyond repair. In other words, it’s a lot like the world we live in today.

NEWS FLASH

Bill McKibben To Deliver Teach-In At Occupy Wall Street On Saturday | Climate hawk Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, will be giving a climate teach-in at the Occupy Wall Street on Saturday at 5 pm, ThinkProgress Green has learned. “You could even say Wall Street’s been occupying our atmosphere, since any attempt to do anything about climate change always runs afoul of the biggest corporations on the planet,” says McKibben. “So it’s a damned good thing the tables are starting to turn.”

By Brad Johnson on Oct 7, 2011 at 5:03 pm

Politics

Prominent Perry Endorser Robert Jeffress Calls AIDS A ‘Gay Disease’, Claims 70 Percent Of Gays Have AIDS

By Marie Diamond, Travis Waldron and Scott Keyes on Oct 7, 2011 at 4:48 pm

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC.

Southern Baptist Pastor Robert Jeffress

Today at the Values Voters Summit, presidential contender and Texas Gov. Rick Perry was introduced to the crowd by one of his most prominent supporters, Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas. Jeffress is well-known for his bigoted views about gays, Muslims, and Mormons. During his introduction for Perry, he called Planned Parenthood “that slaughterhouse for the unborn.”

Speaking to reporters after Perry’s speech, Jeffress reiterated his well-known view that “Mormonism is a cult” which should essentially disqualify Mitt Romney from consideration among true Christian voters. “As evangelical Christians, we understand that Mormonism is not Christianity,” he said. “The decision for evangelical Christians right now is going to be do we prefer someone who is truly a believer in Jesus Christ or someone…who is a part of a cult.” He admitted “it’s not a politically correct thing to say.”

In response to questions from ThinkProgress about the booing of a gay soldier at the last GOP debate, Jeffress said “there’s good reason for keeping the tradition of not having homosexuals serve in the military.” He made the patently false claim that “70 percent of the gay population” has AIDS. “It’s a fact that it’s a gay disease so there’s a reasonable reason to exclude gays from the military,” he explained, suggesting that gay service members are more likely to spread disease. Watch it:

It’s pretty ludicrous to suggest that there’s a tradition of not having gays in the military — gay service members have simply not been allowed to serve openly and been forced to conceal their identities for fear of being dishonorably discharged.

In the past, Jeffress has claimed that Islam “promotes pedophilia” and that violence by Muslims is “in accordance with what the Quran teaches” because it’s a “violent religion.”

Perry spokesman Mark Miner said in a statement that Perry does not believe Mormonism is a cult.

Yglesias

Turn The TV Off

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 7, 2011 at 4:45 pm

Washington, DC’s weirdest and easiest to fix pathology is the habit of high-level politicians and political aides gluing their eyes to low-audience nonsense on daytime cable television. For example:

In his West Wing corner office, [William] Daley keeps his television tuned to CNBC to keep track of how the fiscal battles are playing in the financial markets.

The good news is that this makes a lot more sense than the standard DC thing of watching Fox/CNN/MSNBC. But it still doesn’t make very much sense. Short term economic performance matters a lot in politics. But that’s “short term” as in “past few quarters,” not “past few minutes.” Running the country is hard enough without distracting yourself with a lot of pointless noise.

Yglesias

Republic, Lost

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 7, 2011 at 4:43 pm

My review of Lawrence Lessig’s new book Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress–and a Plan to Stop It is out in the American Prospect. I didn’t totally buy Lessig’s proposed solution, but I went into the book a serious campaign finance reform skeptic, and he’s convinced me that the naïve view that there’s a huge corruption problem in Washington is in fact correct.

Lessig takes on the model of lobbying as “legislative subsidy” developed by political scientist Richard Hall and economist Alan Deardorff as an alternative to the naive lobbying-as-bribe model. Legislators come to Washington passionate about several issues. Quickly, though, they come to depend on the economy of influence for help in advancing an agenda. They need the policy expertise, connections, public-relations machine, and all the rest that lobbyists can offer. Since this legislative subsidy is not uniformly available, the people’s representatives find themselves devoting more of their time to those aspects of their agenda that moneyed interests also support. No one is bribed, but the political process is corrupted.

At the same time, Lessig argues, fund-raising is not only a way of obtaining campaign cash but a method for members of Congress to live beyond their means. Congressional political action committees engage in massive spending on dinners, parties, retreats at fancy resorts, and other fundraising events with donors. These events enable members to treat themselves to vacations and high-priced meals they couldn’t otherwise afford. Abjuring the money hustle would, in practice, entail a psychologically difficult decline in the average member’s standard of living in a way that would lead him to shy away from challenging his donors’ interests even if the direct electoral stakes were small.

Read it all.

Economy

Senate GOP Candidate: Wall Street Reform ‘Forced’ Bank Of America To Charge A Debit Card Fee

By Tanya Somanader on Oct 7, 2011 at 4:40 pm

GOP Senate candidate Adam Hasner

To wide dismay, Bank of America recently announced a new $5 monthly fee on customers who use its debit card for purchases. The bank’s decision is just one of the many issues feeding the fury behind the burgeoning 99 percent movement. It is also the new attack weapon in Florida’s GOP Senate candidate Adam Hasner’s campaign.

The former state House Majority Leader is taking on former Sen. George LeMieux (R) for the chance to run against incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL). To take down his rival, Hasner is pointing to the bank’s fee increase as reason enough to dismiss LeMieux. “If Floridians are wondering why they will soon be paying more to use their debit cards, the need to look no further than Senator George LeMieux,” he said.

Why? Because LeMieux supported a reform in the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law that limited how much banks can charge retailers each time a customer swipes their debit card. By Hasner’s logic, this so-called “Durbin Tax” actually “forced” the beleaguered Bank of America to create new fees to stay afloat in the sea of regulations:

In the email, Hasner says that banks were “forced to charge customers new fees due to the negative and costly requirements associated with the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, in particular the ‘Durbin Tax.’” Dodd-Frank legislation was a response to the country’s financial crisis that many economists say was partially caused by lax regulations on financial institutions. [...]

Hasner’s email says, “At a time when Florida families can afford it the least, they will now be charged an extra $5 a month just to use their debit cards. That’s 60 hard earned dollars a year. And guess who voted for the ‘Durbin Tax’ …that’s right, Senator George LeMieux.”

Hasner’s outrage over the bank’s practice would be more persuasive if he went after the right offender. Durbin’s reform is intended to help small retailers that are forced to pay excessive fees every time a consumer shops at their store. Bank of America could easily choose not to overburden their customers with an unnecessary fee. But, as Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said himself, the main reason behind the fee is to simply make money. “I have an inherent duty as a CEO of a publicly owned company to get a return for my shareholders,” he said in defense. “Understand we have a right to make a profit.”

And profit they do. As TP Economy editor Pat Garofalo notes, banks are making nearly one-third of the total corporate profits. Bank of America is still making money, but is “under pressure to show how it will weather problems remaining with its home mortgage assets.” And evidently slamming consumers for using a debit card is its answer.

Justice

Alabama Law Makes It A Felony For Undocumented Immigrants To Have Water At Their Homes

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Oct 7, 2011 at 4:39 pm

Allgood Water Works officials posted this sign letting customers know they had to prove their legal status.

At least one utility company in Alabama posted a sign informing its customers that a section of Alabama’s extreme anti-immigrant law prohibits them from providing water service to undocumented immigrants. According to the sign at Allgood Water Works in Blount County, Alabama, customers must have “an Alabama driver’s license or an Alabama picture ID card on file” by the date that the immigration law went into effect; otherwise, they risked losing their water service.

Sadly, the picture for Alabama’s immigrants is even grimmer than this sign suggests. Indeed, under one provision of the state’s immigration law, HB 56, it is a felony for an undocumented immigrant to even attempt to do business with Alabama’s state-run water agencies:

An alien not lawfully present in the United States shall not enter into or attempt to enter into a business transaction with the state or a political subdivision of the state and no person shall enter into a business transaction or attempt to enter into a business transaction on behalf of an alien not lawfully present in the United States. [...]

A violation of this section is a Class C felony.

In Alabama, Class C felonies are punishable by up to ten years in prison — meaning that undocumented people in Alabama can now be locked up for an entire decade if they attempt to take a bath in their own home.

In addition to Allgood, the Birmingham News reported that the Montgomery Water Works Board and Sewer Authority started requiring customers to prove their legal status on Sept. 1 (when the law was slated to go into effect), but stopped after being told that a federal judge had temporarily sus­pended implementation of the state law. It was unclear if the Montgomery board started asking customers about their legal status again when the law went into effect.

Additionally, Alabama Power told one family that they could not get electricity because of the new immigration law, according to the National Immigration Legal Center. It’s not clear, however, why Alabama Power did so because they are a private company and the law only applies to arms of the state government. To their credit, the electricity company has since told officials at the legal center that they no longer interpret the immigration law to mean that undocumented immigrants cannot receive power.

Yet there are no shortage of routine activities that are now felonies thanks to Alabama’s draconian law. Indeed, because the law defines unlawful “business transactions” very broadly to include “any transaction between a person and the state or a political subdivision of the state,” the mere act of paying income taxes might qualify. Thus, if an undocumented immigrant pays their taxes, they will be guilty of a felony, but if they don’t they will also be guilty of a felony because Alabama punishes tax evaders with up to five years in prison.

In other words, Alabama’s anti-immigrant law effectively makes it a crime to simply live as an undocumented immigrant in the state.

Security

Romney’s Foreign Policy Speech Was All Fear, No Substance

By Eli Clifton on Oct 7, 2011 at 4:34 pm

Mitt Romney’s eagerly awaited foreign policy speech at the Citadel was welcomed by neoconservative hawks who supported the George W. Bush administration’s adventurist foreign policy. But Romney’s speech stood out in that it was full of dire predictions for the future — indeed some were downright apocalyptic — while offering few if any policy responses to confront these supposedly deadly challenges to American national security.

In the first minutes of his speech Romney warned that the next four years could pose a series of potentially devastating foreign policy challenges. He predicted: Iran could hold the Middle East hostage with a nuclear weapon; Obama’s scale-down of U.S. forces in Afghanistan will bring the Taliban back to power; Islamic jihadists will acquire nuclear weapons from Pakistan; China will “brush aside” American naval “inferiority” in the Pacific; and Cuba and Venezuela will undermine the prospects of democracy in the region.

Watch it:

But in response to these dire challenges facing the U.S. — and more broadly the entire world — Romney suggests that the Pentagon increase the shipbuilding rate from 9 per year to 15 and permanently station an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean.

Other than boosting defense spending — which is a terrible idea in its own right — Romney has few if any specific policy prescriptions. Instead, his response to the foreign policy challenges — whether real or imagined — facing the U.S. is laid out later in his speech. He says:

This century must be an American Century. In an American Century, America has the strongest economy and the strongest military in the world. In an American Century, America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world.

While the notion of an “American Century” is not new — a number of the foreign policy positions associated with the George W. Bush administration were first promoted by the Project for the New American Century — the lack of policy specifics in Romney’s speech is noticeable, especially in light of the existential threats he says are facing the U.S. Simplistic notions of American military power as a democratizing force in the world were put to the test in Afghanistan and Iraq during the George W. Bush administration. Even leading neoconservatives such as Richard Perle, David Frum, and Kenneth Adelman criticized the Bush administration for its execution of the war in Iraq and its loosely defined “freedom agenda.”

As Romney frames his foreign policy along similar lines, he may face tough questions about how he intends to combat the long list of threats he says are bearing down on the U.S.

Health

Report: 40 Percent Of Medicare Spending On Tests Is ‘Medically Unnecessary’

By Igor Volsky on Oct 7, 2011 at 4:10 pm

In case you weren’t convinced that the government is spending millions of dollars on health care that does nothing to improve outcomes, this stat may change your mind: an investigation conducted by iWatch finds that “40 percent of Medicare spending on common preventive screenings [is] regarded as medically unnecessary.” Beneficiaries are receiving these tests “more frequently than medically recommended or at times when they cannot gain any proven medical benefit, extracting an enormous financial toll on the nation’s health care system.” This is because “doctors disregard scientific guidelines out of ignorance, fear of malpractice suits or for financial gain, as patients inundated by medical advertising clamor for extra tests.” The Affordable Care Act tries to tackle this waste by changing the incentives that lead to unnecessary care, funding tort reform demonstration projects, and investing in comparative effectiveness research to weed out ineffective treatments.

Climate Progress

VIDEO: People-Powered Testimony Against Keystone XL Tar Sands

By Brad Johnson on Oct 7, 2011 at 4:08 pm

Supported by hundreds of people who believe that the American people don’t need to destroy the planet in order to prosper, dozens spoke up against the construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline at a State Department hearing today. Speakers concerned by the threat tar sands oil poses to our nation and our planet included priests and ministers, Obama campaign volunteers, and Nebraska ranchers.

In the video below, ThinkProgress Green excerpts statements from youth activists Ethan Nuss and Danielle Simms, indigenous leaders George Poitras and Debra White Plume, Friends of the Earth president Erich Pica, clean-tech investor Brig. Gen. Steven Anderson, and former pipeline inspector Mike Klink:

ETHAN NUSS: What we have here is a foreign company using foreign materials to pump foreign oil through America’s heartland.

BRIG. GEN. STEVEN ANDERSON (Ret.): This pipeline will set back the clock of 25 years of energy development in our nation.

MIKE KLINK: Maybe, just maybe, there won’t be 14 leaks in the first year, one of the worst pipeline disasters in history.

ERICH PICA: President Obama ran a campaign on trying to clean up Washington DC and cleaning up the lobby process. It is clear that this process is failing his promise, it is failing the American people, and it is failing the environment, and it is failing our need globally to fight climate change. This pipeline should and must be stopped.

GEORGE POITRAS: President Obama has a moral and ethical obligation to visit the tar sands, see the tar sands, to hear our people.

DANIELLE SIMMS: Either you will support the oligarchy and the oil industry, or you will stand with the American people, environmental and civil rights justice.

DEBRA WHITE PLUME: Our Lakota prophecy tells us, when mother earth cries we stand up or she will die and we will die. I ask everyone to remember: crying Earth, rise up. Rise up with Mother Earth and say no to this pipeline. No to death! No! No! No!

State Department officials Maryruth Coleman and Jim Steele heard the testimony without comment.

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