Makers and Takers: How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street

   Andrew Lo, an MIT professor, hears that his mother has cancer and sets out to do his own research on cancer treatment. He’s lucky, his colleagues at the school have contacts in a biotech firm, and they’re developing a new cancer drug. The problem is in the money, and I don’t mean HIS money. The firm is at the mercy of investors in order to fund the research and testing, and the investors want huge guarantees that the drug will work. This isn’t news to me, I remember a 1990’s article about the eight-figure cost of testing McCavor (a cholesterol reducing drug, if anyone still takes it) and all the other medicines, most of which were eventually outclassed. What surprised me in this book is that the drug companies are all moving to Ireland to get tax breaks. Not only is the USA losing the jobs, but the CEO’s  might not have to pay tax on the money.

   The author blames part of the problem on the MBA degree, because, according to her, it teaches useless theories and not real-world finance. Okay, we all remember the scene in Back to School, where Rodney Dangerfield one-ups the stuffy professor and schools him on the realities of business. I can believe that scene, the professor obviously has never been out of academia, so he has no idea of what really goes on. But I disagree with the author’s argument that the MBA is to blame; if the drug companies need financing, they should be hiring pitchmen who can negotiate with potential investors.

    Next comes the charity director (in this case Josette Sheeran of the UN world food program) with a prop that she brings to meetings, and how she shows skeptical plutocrats how hungry the kids are. I disagree again with the author’s argument, in this case blaming capitalism for the worldwide rise in food prices. She doesn’t question other possibilities, like the people in the USA, Britain, and Europe who reject farming as an occupation. She also ignores the fact that India and the Arab oil states are importing more food than ever before. She also ignores the possibility that a country’s farming practices are unsound. No mention is made about unsound farming methods, which George Washington Carver spent years trying to change. It reminds me of the people who cure themselves of illness, and reduce their medicines from 20 to two, by simply cutting processed foods and losing weight.

   I think the problem here is that the author is going for the most expensive solution to a problem, rather than starting at the bottom. She blames the rising corn prices on ethanol in gasoline, but she doesn’t realize that all processed foods use corn syrup as a sweetener, and most US livestock is fed on corn. If Americans were to reject processed foods, corn prices would drop, and with that, the price of beef, pork, poultry, dairy, and eggs. Maybe the problem is entirely on Americans eating too much junk? I had a similar (and funnier) argument once from an old Israeli, and it went like this; “Ben-Gurion brought has own lunch to work and ate pita bread and goat cheese, then Yitzhak Shamir liked to sit in cafes and drink coffee, but now Netanyahu wears $1000 suits and eats $300 steak dinners, and the steaks are all imported.”

    To sum up, I disagree with everything the author says. The problem is not Wall Street, the problem is materialism. If Americans weren’t glued to the TV and stuffing their faces with junk food, the USA would not be dependent on corn and drugs.

Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

    The subject of imprisonment as the new slavery now takes up a whole shelf in the sociology section of the bookstore. For those of you who read The New Jim Crow, the author mentions it in the introduction as a jumping off place, and unlike the former, Rethinking Incarceration is a bit more progressive; it offers workable solutions.

Dominique DuBois Gillard blames mass incarceration on the War on Drugs. He argues, convincingly that the media pushed the image of the dangerous, menacing Black criminal, while ignoring the White Americans involved. At the same time, he blames Black politicians for supporting harsh anti-drug laws. For example, 14 members of the Congressional Black Caucus supported Bill Clinton’s 1994 anti-crime law. However, I don’t agree with his argument that the churches were responsible for the harsh laws. Whether it was Falwell and Graham on the right, or the Black churches on the left, I can’t see any blame being put on them. The churches only played a tiny part in the War on Drugs, even during the conservative Reagan era.

Another issue in this book is the heavy-handed tactic used in drug enforcement, especially the excessive use of SWAT in the raids. He uses the Catherine Johnson case in Atlanta as an example, involving no-knock warrants, lying cops, and unnecessary shootings. Unfortunately, he ignores the Whites (usually poor ones) who suffer at the hands of corrupt, dishonest, overzealous, or mean-spirited police. By making it an issue of color, he’s likely to make the reader question his argument. Using the Old South’s Black Codes is unnecessary, because they ended over a hundred years ago. The Black Codes have nothing to do with today’s mass imprisonment. Then he discusses mental illness and how people end up in jail when they should be getting mental health care. He’s right about that one, states are shutting down mental hospitals, and dumping the patients out with a week’s supply of Thorazine. So why not write more about this?

Gillard makes good arguments on the economics of prisons, and the ways that private businesses can use them for profit. The Kids-For-Cash scandal is mentioned as an example, though I think that’s a little extreme. He also ignores the fact that the kids in Pennsylvania’s famous scandal were mostly Caucasian. He misses an opportunity to go into how the prison pipeline is in fact pan-racial, and that is something that has to be publicized in order to get broader support. I also wonder if the Kids-For-Cash scandal was entirely the result of greed, or was it feeding into the public’s desperation for a solution to crime? The police usually couldn’t care any less about a kid who throws a lamb chop at her stepfather, or a kid who mocks the school principal on Myspace. So why did the police arrest the kids in the first place? This is where the author’s argument can gain steam. If the police decide to breach their own limits and arrest kids for being rude, does that open up the justice system to corrupt bullies? Will private prison tycoons, or even bribe-taking judges, smell an opportunity to make money? Maya Angelou once said, “Don’t go telling everyone about your troubles, it lets the bullies know there’s a victim in the neighborhood.”

It isn’t just the prisons themselves where you can see the mass incarceration, but in the schools as well, and yes, he writes about the school-to-prison pipeline. I’ve seen troubles schools, Black and White, but it’s the Black students who are suspended more. However, the author misses something that I’ve observed in how Black and White kids are disciplined differently. Black schools often use intimidation to keep the kids in line, while White schools (even wretched trailer-trash) use regular school management. Even the supposedly “good” charter schools in New York have a Black Dean of Students who is scary, nasty-looking, uses “mad dog” looks when he (or she) wants something, and gets in the kids’ faces for anything. As an example, I’ll cite the Vice documentary Expelled From Every Other School (available on Youtube) where a big, nasty staff member barges into a class, gets in the kid’s face, and bullies him into taking his coat off. It’s the same way in the homes of Black children, where the parents use either the “drill sergeant” method of parenting, or they use the same street-thug attitude seen in the jail. I have to wonder, would a Black teacher get away with talking that way to a White kid? I’ve seen public schools with a separate dean for Black and White kids, so I really have to wonder.

We Are Staying: Eighty Years in the Life of a Family, a Store, and a Neighborhood

    Radio Clinic was a fixture in Manhattan, through the early days of radio to the Depression, from the post war boom to the bust, from the best days to the worst days and on. I bought my first air conditioner there when I moved into the neighborhood, though it was no longer called Radio Clinic and radios were only a tiny part of the store. Jen Rubin, a fixture in the store as a teenager, recounts the life of a store that her immigrant grandfather started, and her father inherited. The title We Are Staying is from a sign posted on the store after the 1977 Blackout and looting. It didn’t ruin them, they persevered.

   Let’s start with her grandfather, the founder. He was a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe in the 1930’s, got into radio repair, worked out of a small store, and moved up to the store on 98^th and Broadway. Rubin’s book is a window into the history of the Upper West Side, both in economic and personal vignettes. Her grandfather put his business in the neighborhood because there were more people there, thanks to the huge buildings, and the extra money of the residents didn’t hurt either. Even poor people had radios, and the profit was in fixing the cheaper ones. When FDR began his famous fireside speeches, radio became even more valuable. She also writes about how tax breaks encouraged the building owners to subdivide apartments into SRO’s, and they brought bad elements into the community.

    There’s a funny story in the book about how her grandfather got involved with the Soviets. Two diplomats came in to buy a TV, and they tried, without success, to haggle a lower price. They were shocked to find that her grandfather, Leon Blum, understood Russian, and it brought in a ton of business. The Soviet customers  - diplomats and ballet directors, mostly – would come into buy loads of electronics (though I suspect they were taking them home to unload on the black market.) Soon the FBI got wind of the huge Soviet clientele, and the old man now had a side gig as an informant.

    This book also has a lesson on family business, and how working with relatives can create problems. The author’s father never got along with his relations in the business, especially when it came to how much they should pay their employee, Raymond. He was a Black American who’d worked in the store for decades, and he was much older than the new management, and believed that he deserved a raise. Raymond could’ve owned his own store, but where would he have gotten the capital? No bank would given a business loan to a Black man in the 1950’s.

    The business stayed (hence the title) after the 1977 Summer Blackout, when the huge power outage created opportunity for looting. She says that everyone blamed everyone; first it was Con Ed, with faulty wiring and violations, then the stretched-thin NYPD, then it was the famously unready mayor Abraham Beam (who couldn’t handle even the smallest emergency.) She quotes sociologists who blamed the looting on “disenfranchisement” of minorities, and given the demographic of the looters (Black and Latino bums who lived in the SRO’s) the theory may be true. The stores that were hit the hardest were the ones  with the small, quick-selling items, so Radio Clinic was hit hard. At the same time, the blackout saved some merchandise, because you needed the hoist to get the heavy air conditioners up from the basement. Most retail stores had some theft, but the pizza joints were safe; nobody breaks into a pizza place to steal the ovens.

    Jen Rubin devotes a full chapter to how her father’s store recovered. He spent a full year begging for loans, haggling with the city for grants, and begging suppliers to delay the bills. He said “I’m responsible for 25 families, mine and those of my employees. He father’s efforts to sustain the business are worthy of being a college course, and all that he had to do can’t be learned at Harvard Business School.

   The store closed by 2008, thanks to online competition and rising rents. It’s impossible to run an independent mom-and-pop electronics appliance store, there’s too much competition and the big chain stores have easier credit and capital. It’s true what Jimmy McMillan says, “The rent IS too damn high,” especially for the little guy. But the store lasted decades when others did not. Her father chose to stay, rather than collect the insurance and declare bankruptcy.

It Was All a Dream: A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America

    Right after Obama was elected, a book came out called A Day Late and a Dollar Short, about the failure of government aid and service. The Obama age isn’t expressly written about in this book, but the Hope & Change ideal (or was it a cult?) was definitely a motivation. Did having a Black man in the White House make a difference? Could anything really change in Alabama or Mississippi, the poorest states in the Union? Would anything change in Detroit, Philly, Camden, Chicago, or The Bronx, where decades of Black Democrat rule had failed?

    Reniqua Allen regards herself as a beneficiary of the American Dream. Born and raised in New Jersey, with educated and successful Black parents, she was (like me) a child of the 1990’s. She recounts the sitcom Living Single and how it inspired her to be just like the character on the show; a financially independent Black women, who can get away without being overly girly and still find a decent man. As an adult, Allen seems to face a puzzle about the goals of American life. Firstly, is prosperity achievable, or do young minorities get left out? Secondly, are young Black Americans achieving the American Dream without realizing it?

    Allen’s first subject is a Morehouse graduate who aspired to live and work in New York City. Not an impossible dream; anyone can take a train north, if they can pay. Unfortunately, his three years in The Big Apple were a disappointment from the very start. First, he didn’t get the journalism job he’d studied for. He became a Teaching Fellow but hated to long commute on the city’s crumbling transport system. He felt stressed, worn out, defeated, and after taking stock of his life, realized that the problem wasn’t the job, but the city! He returned to the South, went to live in Georgia, goodbye dirty subways, hello front porches and easy car commutes. This is an example of a New Millennium trend – The Reverse Migration – now that America’s cities are no longer the so-called “promised land.”

    In the Morehouse graduate’s case, we also face another dilemma in the USA – the student loan debt crisis – and it makes you wonder if a dream is worth it, when you have to spend your life paying for it. The next problem is the delusion of the creative job. Did he know how competitive journalism is? Did he know how low the pay is? Did he think he could compete with someone who’d written for their high school paper, college paper, interned at a paper, and had a record of reporting? When he became a teacher, that was a much more achievable goal. So, the question is, was his dream in fact a “dream deferred,” or was it a broken dream, or was it a pipe dream?

   Just as I expected, Reniqua Allen goes into another American problem, the college athlete. You have a group of boys who fall for the myth that sports are a way out of poverty. These boys waste all their time on their sports, put the ball before the book, never have part-time jobs or summer jobs, get a sports scholarship to college, and then lose it thanks to an injury. This is where I have a problem with the author using the words Broken Promises in the title, because nobody promised these youths anything! One of the saddest examples of the student athlete delusion is the documentary Hoop Dreams, which I hate. Yes, I know you all loved it, but I call it Hoop Nightmares, because it’s about sorry kids being cheated by wolves. All over the USA, high school ball games are watched by men in suits, sent by colleges to find Black athletes for their teams. Is this any different from a cattle call, or even a slave auction? Slave owners used to dress their slaves in fancy clothes for the auctions, and the buyers would select the ones who were big and strong. Never did they look for a slave with accounting skills or legal knowledge, because slaves were never sent to school. Slavery ended 150 years ago, and today the college scouts are after tall Black boys who can play ball. They never visit the school looking for Black kids who are good at science. The kids who are good at science have to seek out the college themselves.

    Back to the subject of student loan debt, Allen calls the chapter Don’t Double Down on Stupid, and recounts another graduate drowning in bills. He takes out loans to go to college, doesn’t get the job he wants, takes out another loan for graduate school, and despite all his education, he has no job and huge debt. It sounds like this young man is pretty stupid, despite his education. Nowhere does the graduate (or even the author) consider all the other viable options he could’ve taken. He could’ve become a police officer, or corrections officer, or he could’ve gone into teaching. I know that law enforcement isn’t attractive to a lot of young Black men, and few desire to go into corrections, but these jobs are easy to get into and they’re a way to quickly pay off debts. After doing two horrible years as a corrections officer, you’ll be glad to take any other job, or go to grad school. Maybe do a degree in political science? I’m sure the years in corrections will give you plenty to write about!

    One of the problems that the author herself suffers from is lack of financial sense. Throughout the book she makes it look like a “microaggression” for a Black man to have to wait patiently for something and declares it racist to discourage a Black kid from college. She admits she dumped a $70,000 TV job for another degree, which she pretty much admits is useless. Then she writes about a UCLA student, the daughter of an LAPD cop and kindergarten teacher, limited in life because her parents never went to college. Here again is the author’s blindness to reality. This man had 25 years on the force, plenty of time to take a 2-year degree at a cheap college, and so did her mother. On one hand the author laments the strain of the student loan, but then declares that having no college degree means you’ve been cheated out of American life, obviously through racism.

    Nowhere in this book does Allen give blue collar careers any respect, not even a modicum. When I saw the chapter titled Blue Collar I thought “maybe now she’ll acknowledge that college is NOT the magic pill to sure all of Black America’s ills.” Tough luck for me, she doesn’t. She describes Appalachian coal towns as a good pace to be because mining pays so much, but then she goes back into her routine of indulging the underachiever.  Brandi, the author’s new martyr, finds that coal towns don’t suit her, goes to college, drops out when her mother gets pregnant, and ends up at Walmart. This sort of thing I’m sure happens to White people, but if it happens to a Black woman, then the author will obviously use it in her quest for victimhood. A page is devoted to the story of a Black coal miner who preferred Trump to Obama, and when I read it, I knew that Allen has a huge dislike for the White working class. The miner makes no bones about the racism that exists, but Allen seems to resent him for getting along with the Whites, not fighting them. There’s a story of a Black farmer and army veteran who sought out farming as a form of therapy. He doesn’t deny the racism either, and he speaks of the ignorance among farmers, but the author does plenty of ignoring herself.

    Next comes the African immigrant and his experience as a Black American. An African boy, the son of diplomats, is raised in Switzerland, moves to the USA and gets a culture shock; his host family are Mennonites in Pennsylvania and they have no TV! They all assume that in Africa everyone rides elephants, but back in Nigeria his house had a TV! All the while, I’m thinking of all the US families, Black and White, ruined by materialism, so hooray for the Americans smart enough to get rid of their boob tube. Those simple-living Mennonites (or even the Amish without electricity) could teach us something about life. As for the African in the chapter, I’m surprised he didn’t prepare better. He could easily have stayed in Switzerland after his parents were recalled (liberal Switzerland wouldn’t have thrown him out) and gone to college or a trade school in that country for free. Then he could’ve emigrated to the USA with either a top education or a marketable skill. He would’ve entered the USA as one of the highest order of people. Another missed opportunity.

    It Was All a Dream is basically an exercise in Millennial whining. She goes looking for Black American who have problems (often they’re the same problems that Whites have) and uses them to prove that America is racist and Blacks are the victims. My theory is that Black leaders like Sharpton and Jackson needed to find a common enemy, and it was easier to gain support from their own power base by playing the victim. Then the Black Democrat politicians did the same thing, by convincing Black voters that their problems were the result of racism and that they deserved money. They’re not going to go to poor Whites and say “listen up, we’re all getting screwed, let’s work together.” Police abuses, for instance, effect Whites as much as Blacks (if you don’t believe me, look at New Mexico) and the problems of drug use, teen pregnancy, student loan debt, and civil asset forfeiture are a problem for all races.

    Reniqua Allen is just another young whiner. She needs to see racism in everything so that she can play the victim. These “dreams” she discusses are just dreams, and these so-called victims may be just that; victims of the American Dream. When it comes to dreams versus reality, remember what Josephine Baker once said, “Sometimes the best way to make a dream come true is to wake up from it.”