Bill's Big Diamond Blog

Kiva.org

Just a quick post for folks who might be interested in microlending as a way of directly making an investment in the hard work of entrepreneurs around the world: Check out kiva.org to learn how you can make a small investment!

Hat tip to Bob Harris on this.

(Why not have a look at this fellow's loan application? Maybe you'd like to invest in his family's future?)

Ill Fares the Land

In his NY Review of Books piece on Ill Fares the Land , Tony Judt writes:

In the US, the UK, and a handful of other countries, financial transactions have largely displaced the production of goods or services as the source of private fortunes, distorting the value we place upon different kinds of economic activity. The wealthy, like the poor, have always been with us. But relative to everyone else, they are today wealthier and more conspicuous than at any time in living memory. Private privilege is easy to understand and describe. It is rather harder to convey the depths of public squalor into which we have fallen.

Remembering Howard Zinn

Historian Howard Zinn, who we lost in January at age 87 to a heart attack, worked throughout his lifetime to create a different America, one based on human values and the rights of ordinary people to control their own destinies. Zinn wasn't waiting for an American political leader, espousing hope and change, to make the world a better place; he advocated that the people pressure all our leaders through direct action to create jobs, to fight against corporate domination of our politics, to break down racial barriers, and to insure decent healthcare for everyone. Moreover, Zinn worked to end the dominance of the military industrial complex that has so shaped the post-World War II world.

These were just a few of the goals Zinn illuminated in his academic work, by documenting great movements that have pushed our history forward. He spent his lifetime presenting American history as a series of alternatives between passivity in the face of power and the people's occasional willingness to engage in struggles that have not always succeeded fully or quickly, but have eventually led to greater freedom, more economic power for ordinary working people, the poor and the oppressed. His most popular work, The People's History of the United States, has helped preserve a narrative of American movements for change and struggle that helped shape our history every bit as much as the powerful and well-connected leaders who rode astride the changes they created.

For me, Howard Zinn's work, Postwar America 1945-1971, played a formative role in developing a perspective of my own on the country I lived in as a young person. It stood on its head everything I thought I understood about the role our nation played in the world after the end of the Second World War and made me think about how different a place the planet might be had Franklin Roosevelt's emphasis on aiding self-determination kept preeminence after his death in 1945, instead of being subsumed in a fearful mania that led to the Cold War. Zinn's book and the courage of a high school history teacher named James Bunnell to disseminate revisionist histories to his students during the 1970's helped shape my life and outlook. I began to feel differently about how to address power and to find it important to tell people's stories, rather than relying on histories crafted solely from the point of view of those who would bend it to their own substantial economic and political interests.

I never met Zinn, but followed his work and the controversies he encountered and obviously enjoyed during a lifetime of afflicting the powerful and encouraging Americans to do the same. In this blog, a place where I spend a fair amount of time discussing politics and social history, it seems right to remember the life of a man who empowered so many like me to take journalism away from being solely the domain of those who own the presses and give it back to the people. Zinn helped create a world in which so many of us now write, film, and discuss politics and history as a living and democratic study, not simply a discipline given over to those who are most connected to the powerful and well financed. Zinn lived just long enough to see a version of his People's History finally made into a televised performance as The People Speak , hopefully making his work even more accessible to new generations of Americans who may otherwise never have heard the stories of slaves, abolitionists, farmers, laborers, feminists, and war resisters, except perhaps in passing reference.

Rather than summarizing more of his work here, I leave it to readers to follow the links below to read the remembrances and anecdotes of his friends and colleagues and to access some of Zinn's books, articles and notable confrontations. I think one excerpt from The People's History of the United States below will help those unfamiliar with Professor Zinn's work frame his perspective and I will close with it:

If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past, when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare. That, being as blunt as I can, is my approach to the history of the United States.

Howard Zinn 1922-2010

We've lost Howard Zinn today. While most of the mainstream political world will have comments about a speech by the President tonight, I'm left much more affected by the reaction that we will no longer hear from the people's historian.

While President Obama delivered another elegant, yet less than progressive address to the Congress and the American people, the country won't have the benefit of one consistently honest and frank voice in response. Howard Zinn understood that, as Americans, we need to celebrate the heroism of those of people who stand up against established interests, especially when those interests oppose democracy and the rights of working people.

I'll reflect more on Zinn's legacy in the coming days. For the moment, the verbiage of State of the Union address pales by comparison to the silence Professor Zinn's absence creates. Until we can deconstruct President Obama's promises of change and hope, and compare them with the unrealized substance of his promises to working people, we will have fallen short of the tough standards to which Zinn held political leaders.

“I think people are dazzled by Obama’s rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president — which means, in our time, a dangerous president — unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.”

—Professor Howard Zinn

Perhaps, in remembrance of Zinn, we should apply a tougher standard to the realization of the democratic ideals the President so often invokes in his rhetoric. We might ask, "Where is the real change and hope we can believe in?"

Meanwhile, whatever the President may or may not really desire, let's take a moment for reflection on the work and life of Howard Zinn, who told the stories democracy must enshrine, not of the powerful or of the well connected, but of those who go forth, day after day, to live out the promise of government for the people, by the people, and of the people. May they not perish with Professor Zinn tonight.

'Climategate?' I Wish...

As Brad DeLong is fond of saying, "Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?"

It's pretty disheartening, just as President Obama has announced he'll be going to the Copenhagen Climate Conference at its closing (implying a possible deal to announce on carbon emission reductions) to see that the WaPo is instead playing up the ridiculous 'Climategate' story so prominently. It's a great distraction for those who'd rather bury their heads in the sand than deal with the reality of climate change, but a real disservice to readers who by now should have little doubt of the severity of the crisis we are into.

I remember when the Post was a beacon for press freedom and independence. Do you?

Jobs for a Renewable Economic Future

Check out what Stan Ovshinsky is doing in Detroit to create energy jobs for an American economic and environmental renewal. You won't hear about his work on the evening news, but Bob Herbert writes about him today in his column.

Thank God!

President-Elect Barack Obama announces a massive job creation program to put 2.5 million Americans to work.

Council Law: Bring Your Bikes in NYC Buildings

Closer to home, this is welcome news for bike riders in NYC (especially since we may not have money for subway fare in the coming economy).

In 2006, New York City Council Member David Yassky drafted the Bikes in Buildings bill (Intro. 38) which essentially requires that commercial buildings allow bikes to enter them and create proper storage facilities for said bikes…

…To date, 30 Council Members have signed onto the bill, so things are looking good. (NYC has 51 Council Members)

Link to the bill.

New We Campaign Ad

An Summer Energy-Saving Moment

Permit me to step away from the Veepstakes speculation for a moment, take no position on whether Obama will announce a Vice-Presidential pick tomorrow, whether McCain will begin running a series of Charlton Heston memorial ads, or whether Hillary Clinton will really answer the phone personally if you call at 3 AM.

I’d like to take a few moments to discuss energy. Yes, very exciting. In fact, while the cost of energy is driving decisions in our everyday life, from whether to fly off on vacation to how much our rent increases will be, it’s not so thrilling to read about. It’s even less thrilling to conserve. But in an era when our oceans are rising along with the cost of everything energy-related, it might be worth a couple of minutes to think about the savings one can achieve simply by wasting less of a precious commodity.

Let’s take heating and cooling: It’s not too cool to think about heat at this time of year, but the same principles apply to air conditioning. Heating and cooling account for 50 to 70% of the energy used in the average American home. That’s pretty significant. If your Con Edison bill is like mine, saving a portion of that by keeping your home better insulated and using efficient heating and cooling systems and appliances can add up over time.

Now imagine what that energy savings, over time, might amount to if you applied it to every low-income home in America. That’s the kind of savings that could be realized, at low cost, by supporting the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Legislation was introduced recently in the U.S. Senate that would have provided additional funding for the 38 million low-income households who qualify for assistance to actually receive that help towards heating, cooling, and insulating their homes. It failed to pass the Senate.

Next time you hear someone going on about drilling offshore for oil, tell them about the immediate savings that the Senate passed up. That's savings that would have helped lower demand for fuel now, not in ten or fifteen years, when the Earth will have passed a point of no return on global warming. Then ask them to imagine what that savings would have meant to the 38 million households living at or below the poverty line.

h/t Bob Herbert