Friday Homestead Dispatch

Obsequious Opulent Oligarchs

And down the line. Past sleeping houses behind those walls sleepers spun dreams he’d never know, let alone share. A thousand lives woven like threads in a patternless tapestry and if he died here on the highway it would alter the design not one iota. The world was locked doors, keep-out signs, guard dogs. He figured to just ease through unnoticed and be gone. — The Long Home, William Gay

1.
A year ago August I wrote:

I’ve wondered over the years why GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is the main arbiter of how we are doing as a country. If you only listen to and read mainstream news sources, that seems to be the case. You’ve heard them, sentences uttered like Gross domestic product fell 0.9% at an annualized pace for the period, according to the advance estimate. That follows a 1.6% decline in the first quarter and was worse than the Dow Jones estimate for a gain of 0.3%. And, of course, you’re thinking Now I completely understand how we’re doing as a country.

Senator Robert Kennedy famously said, “GDP measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.” GDP consists of a combination of consumption, plus private investments, plus government spending, plus exports-minus-imports, and it’s been the dominant metric in economics for the last century.

Joseph Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University and chief economist at the Roosevelt Institute, says in a detailed and interesting article in Scientific American, “Governments can fail if this number falls—and so, not surprisingly, governments strive to make it climb. But striving to grow GDP is not the same as ensuring the well-being of a society.”

Stiglitz goes on to say, A good indicator of the true health of an economy is the health of its citizens. A decline in life expectancy, even for a part of the population, should be worrying, whatever is happening to GDP. And it is important to know if, even as GDP is going up, so, too, is pollution—whether it is emissions of greenhouse gases or particulates in the air. That means growth is not environmentally sustainable.

There was more good information in that post but this is just to preface an opinion piece penned by writer Robert B. Reich in his Substack posted last month titled How Private Equity Is Now Destroying The Labors Of Love. I liked it enough that here it is in its entirety:

Paramount recently announced that it will be selling Simon & Schuster, one of the biggest and most prestigious publishing houses in the United States, to the private-equity firm KKR, for $1.62 billion. The acquisition vastly increases the influence of financial interests over book publishing. This worries me because it continues a trend that began years ago — elevating profits above the love of publishing books.

When I published my first book decades ago, the purpose of most publishing houses was to publish books. Publishers made money in order to publish books. They earned enough on their big bestsellers to take chances on unknown authors like me and put out books that delighted small numbers of enthusiastic readers but never showed a profit.

But in more recent years, the major purpose of most book publishers has switched from publishing books to making money.

After KKR takes over Simon & Schuster, this prestigious publishing house won't be taking risks on unknown authors or putting out wonderful books that appeal to small numbers of enthusiastic readers. It's going to be a profit center for one of the biggest private equity firms on Wall Street, dedicated exclusively to making money.

The same dynamic has infected other parts of the economy. News organizations once made money in order to report the news. Now, news organizations exist in order to make money. For years, CBS News was insulated from the commercial side of CBS. This allowed Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite to report what they thought the public needed to know. Today, most network and cable news has to show a profit. It's been a slippery slope leading to Fox News' shameless pandering to the lies and bigotry its viewers find entertaining.

Hospitals and health insurers once made money in order to provide health care. Now, hospitals and health insurers provide health care in order to make money. Blue Cross and Blue Shield began as nonprofits that insured all comers. But as big profit-seeking insurers targeted younger and healthier people, the Blues were left to insure the older and less healthy, which made it impossible for them to continue. They turned to making money. Now, private equity runs hospitals, into the ground. And so on.

I was reminded of this distinction — between making money in order to provide particular products and services, and providing products or services in order to make money — while watching the magnificent series 'The Bear,' now streaming on Hulu.

If you haven't seen it, I won't give away the plot except to say that the major characters want to create a great restaurant. Each has a backstory that reveals why this is so important to them.

Making money is the means to achieving their dreams, but they aren't in it for the money. They're in it to produce wonderful food, served with perfection. This transcendent goal is central to their own self-worth. It gives each of their lives purpose and meaning.

It's still possible for businesses to exist in order to produce wonderful goods and services. I know many retailers, small manufacturers, and professionals who do what they do mainly for the love of it. (My father ran a clothing store, and although he worked seven days a week, making money was secondary — enabling him to keep his family afloat and continue to do what he loved.)

But the financialization of the American economy has turned almost all larger businesses into profit centers. Private equity in particular has leached out every other value.

When I ask my former students how they like their work, I often hear the same story. 'I like it well enough,' they say, often with a tinge of regret. 'But the money people won't let me do what I'd really love to do.'

2.
In a more civilized country than ours, Mexico’s Supreme Court threw out all federal criminal penalties for abortion Wednesday, ruling that national laws prohibiting the procedure are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights in a sweeping decision that extended Latin America’s trend of widening abortion access. “No woman or pregnant person, nor any health worker, will be able to be punished for abortion,” the Information Group for Chosen Reproduction, known by its Spanish initials GIRE, said in a statement. Some 20 Mexican states, however, still criminalize abortion. While judges in those states will have to abide by the court’s decision, further legal work will be required to remove all penalties.

It’s not yet illegal in Arizona but hostile according to a map released by the Center For Reproductive Rights. (It’s protected in Kansas!) Since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade last June, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years in a 6-to-3 ruling, twenty-two states now ban abortion (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html) or restrict the procedure earlier in pregnancy than the standard set by Roe v. Wade.

According to Common Dreams, The Green Wave—named for the green bandannas worn by advocates who have assembled at huge reproductive rights rallies—saw a major success in Argentina in 2020 when the Senate passed a law legalizing abortion. Colombia's Supreme Court also decriminalized abortion care in 2022, and green wave protests have taken place in countries such as Chile and Peru, where public outcry last month pushed the government to allow an 11-year-old girl to access an abortion after she was raped by her stepfather.

Mississippi Free Press editor Ashton Pittman wrote on X, "We live in a world where it's feasible that many American women may soon find that crossing the border into 78% Catholic Mexico may be their best option for obtaining an abortion."

As you Arizonans should know, there will soon be folks with clipboards asking for signatures to add the Arizona Abortion Access initiative to the the 2024 ballot with the goal to add the amendment to the state’s constitution. Please, PLEASE sign the mofos and pass the word. According to the AZ Mirror, the number of signatures needed, 15% of votes cast two in the state’s most recent gubernatorial election, is set at 383,923 signatures, and a spokesperson for the Arizona Abortion Access campaign told the Mirror they’re aiming to collect more than 500,000 signatures to ensure a buffer against those that will eventually be rejected during verification.

The proposed amendment would bar any law or policy from restricting or denying a person’s access to abortion care before the point of fetal viability without a “compelling state interest,” defined as an evidence-based law designed with the patient’s health in mind that doesn’t “infringe on the individual’s autonomous decision making.” It also would prohibit any interference with patients seeking an abortion after the point of fetal viability when a health care professional has determined the procedure is necessary for the patient’s physical or mental well-being. Several reproductive rights groups, including the ACLU of Arizona, Affirm Sexual and Reproductive Health, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona, NARAL Arizona, Healthcare Rising Arizona and Arizona List are involved in the campaign, which makes for greater funding opportunities. 

Let’s make this happen. Sign and vote.

3.
We just received a brochure on TEP’s Midtown Reliability Project in our snailmail. Back in May I published the third of three posts regarding the company’s plans to upgrade their infrastructure and how it was going to be paid for. It’s a moot point now that Prop 412 has passed.

From TEP’s web page on the project: The Midtown Reliability Project will replace older, lower-voltage equipment that cannot keep pace with the increasing energy use in central Tucson, an area that includes historic neighborhoods, popular business districts and the University of Arizona campus. Peak power demand in the area has nearly reached the capacity of that older system, reducing electric reliability and leading to longer power outages on some circuits. Because the line is urgently needed to maintain reliable service, TEP will seek to complete construction by the summer of 2027.

There are several ways for you to share your thoughts with TEP on the subject if so inclined.

1. Online Form
2. Mail and actual letter to TEP, ATTN: Midtown Reliability, P.O. Box 711, Mail Stop CB200, Tucson, AZ 85701-0711
3. Sending email comments to midtownreliability@tep.com
4. Call 1-833-523-0887 and leaving a voicemail message
5. Or attend an open house at the Doubletree Hilton on Alvernon Thursday, Sept 21 from 6-8pm

Tiny Tidbits of Goddamn!

1. A guy the Guardian calls a ‘serial adventurer’ was detained during his latest attempt to cross the Atlantic in a makeshift “hydropod.” Floridian Reza Baluchi even has a website dedicated to his thrill-seeking lifestyle where he is described as a peace-loving adventurer who wants “to run through 198 recognised countries and paddle a Hydro Pad across the ocean showing the world that anything is possible if only you believe.” Cool. I think the folks in the Titan Submersible were also believers. Goddamn!

2. Footage has emerged of the “onboard medical emergency” that forced a US airliner back to Atlanta only two hours into its flight to Spain: a messy trail of diarrhea left by a struggling passenger. The flight crew did their best to mop up the mess with paper towels and scented disinfectant but that only had the effect of making the plane “smell of vanilla shit”, one passenger said. Goddamn!

3. Hey, I’m a poet:

An ignorant man from Alabama
Who never did like Obama
Holds the military hostage
While he pulls on his sausage
Reciting some words from his Gramma

As Charles Pierce writes, Senator Tommy Tuberville, the human tackling dummy for whom Alabama exchanged Doug Jones continues to exercise a hold on military promotions, a senseless, anti-choice tantrum that virtually the entire military establishment has condemned with increasing vehemence. As the Senator said on Fox News, “Secretary Del Toro of the Navy, he’s needs to get to building ships, he needs to get to recruiting and he needs to get wokeness out of our Navy. We got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over a loudspeaker. It is absolutely insane the direction we are headed in our military -- and we’re headed downhill, not uphill.” Goddamn!

4. An ex-colleague from the university posted this meme yesterday on Meta which, to me, is a lazy way to pass on what could be a truthy-truth but most often is disinformation:

Sure enough in last night’s Substack by Heather Cox Richardson, she posts that A report published last week by the European Commission, the body that governs the European Union, says that when X, the company formerly known as Twitter, got rid of its safety standards, Russian disinformation on the site took off. The report concluded that “the Kremlin’s ongoing disinformation campaign not only forms an integral part of Russia’s military agenda, but also causes risks to public security, fundamental rights and electoral processes” in the E.U. The report’s conclusions also apply to the U.S., where the far right is working to undermine U.S. support for Ukraine by claiming—falsely—that U.S. aid to Ukraine means the Biden administration is neglecting emergencies at home, like the fires last month in Maui. Goddamn!

And now…