Elite Cluelessness - Cyprus & Singapore

 

Cyprus

The recent economic turmoil in Cyprus once again displays how clueless and disconnected the ruling elite are from the reality of people’s lives; once again provides a striking example of their desire, nay obsession, to minimize impacts on the wealthy by taking from the poor.

Cyprus has gained a lot economically by being a haven for offshore banking – their banks’ assets are several times the economy - and so it was easy for the Troika – IMF, European Central Bank and European Commission – to look for bailout money from account holders. A large percentage are owned by Russians and a good percentage of that is shady money being laundered, so to penalize the country they devised a scheme that would levy a one-time tax of 6.7% on accounts of less than €100,000 and 9.9% on accounts over €100,000.

That was a bald-faced attempt to steal from the poor, while concurrently minimizing losses for the rich. Before that proposal was made, it was believed by all depositors in all European banks that all accounts under €100,000 were insured, guaranteed, rock solid. Up until that point, all felt safe that nothing less than a total breakdown of society would jeopardize their savings.

Instead, people with €1000 in the bank were expected to do their share, to the tune of  €67, to save their incompetent banksters. After all, if the little people weren’t taxed than the rich would have to pay a lot more. That made it an easy step to propose reneging on their previous hard-wired guarantee. Not only did all hell break loose in Cyprus, and all legislators in parliament either voted against the proposal or abstained, but now, regardless of the Troika’s insistence that that was a one-off and only applied to Cyprus and no other average people would be forced to assist in bailing out banks in the other Eurozone countries experiencing financial difficulties, nobody will be able to trust that €100,000 guarantee. It’s finished, nobody with money in the bank will feel completely safe again.

They then tried to float basically the same idea but exempt the first €20,000, but that was only marginally more acceptable than the first rip-off plan. The latest proposal is that only deposits above €100,000 would get hit, which is they way it should’ve been from the start.
A guarantee is a guarantee. If you had €100,001 in the bank, you knew the first €100,000 was protected, but that you were taking a chance on the last €1. Especially if you were putting your money in a notorious offshore banking center, unless you are a complete idiot, you had to know there was a good chance, however remote, that you could lose out. That’s what capitalism is supposed to be all about; You invest, you speculate, you take your chances; you win some, you lose some. Instead the elite seek to protect banksters and their investors and wealthy depositors at all costs and the little people are left to foot the bill and then fend for themselves.

The elite have gotten so isolated from masses they live in their own personal bubble and can no longer relate to the real world of the 99%. Like when Romney was asked what a person could do when they couldn’t find a job in a very tough market for job-seekers, he said, Ask your parents for money to start a business. Yes, very simple, ask your parents.

Personally, I prefer in all the chaos afoot that Cyprus is ‘forced out of the Eurozone’. As mentioned in a previous post, leaving the Euro and having their own currency will not stop most transactions in the country being in Euro. Having their own currency used alongside the Euro, as happens in Cambodia where about 80 to 90% of all transactions are in US Dollars, will give them some flexibility. What Cyprus ‘leaving’ the Euro would do is begin a two-tiered currency system in many European countries in which Euro and local money are used side-by-side. It would also be two-tiered in the sense that the Euro would be a master currency backed by and used exclusively in the strongest northern countries – Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria - with the remainder of individual states issuing their own currencies for local transactions; for instance, all government salaries and payments to government offices would be in local money. Once the local money finds its proper value - it would be volatile at first - the individual states would try to maintain it within a narrow range compared to the Euro. Cambodia, for instance, has kept its currency within a 5% range of value compared to the USD for the 11 years I’ve lived in the country, so it’s accepted along with dollars with little or no discounting and there’s no need to recalculate every day.

Regardless of how the bailout evolves, Cypriots are in for serious hard times with massive unemployment and punishing austerity for as much as a decade. They got rich off of being an offshore banking haven, now they will pay the price. Once again, the lure of big bucks casts aside all doubts, restraints and reason and it’s full speed ahead until the ship hits an iceberg.

Singapore

In February, Singapore experienced its largest ever demonstration; 4000 people turned up to protest against the government’s push for increased immigration. People tend not to protest there since they are wealthy and relatively content in the world’s number one nanny state, not to mention the government oppressively and forcefully frowns upon such activity.

The demonstration, along with the loss of a seat in the legislature to the opposition in a by-election, quite stunned the ruling elite. The Lee family, which has ruled the city-state since independence in the sixties, now has to contend with the largest opposition ever – they now have 7 seats in the 87 seat body. Until recently, the largest opposition contingent was four. That is not because 95% of the population has always solidly backed the government, rather the government has devised a painless (for them) and bloodless means of eliminating all official dissent.

The first time an opposition member of parliament makes a statement deemed to hurt the feelings of the ruling family, he/she is sued for defamation for everything they’ve got and is subsequently bankrupted – the government never looses such a case – and once bankrupt is no longer eligible to sit in the legislature.

But this is the 21^st century and people over the world are finding their voices and are less able to remain pliant and docile when they feel impacted by social changes that are not to their liking.

Singapore’s population of 5.2 million is now 40% foreign born, up from 22% about twenty years ago. The protest was in response to a government white paper which seeks to add another million and a half immigrants to the city by 2030. The government insists that the country needs more people to continue its industrial and economic growth, but their citizens, like wealthy populations everywhere, are not much interested in making babies. The birthrate there is even low by wealthy country standards. They’ve tried everything including special benefits for having kids and even a government dating service, to no avail.

As almost everywhere the government is locked into endless growth, growth as the be-all and end-all of society, as its guiding philosophy. Bhutan, which is promoting a Gross Happiness Index in place of Gross Domestic Product, is probably the world’s only exception. If Singapore has more people and more wealth, that must be a good thing, no?

However, while the government sees immigration as a  path to increased wealth, the protesters, as the majority of the people at large, see higher property prices, competition for jobs which lowers wages, more crowded public transportation and strains on public services.

The question is; Growth for who? It certainly isn’t the commoners who benefit, it’s strictly the elite who benefit from growth in a mature economy. Growth can be justifiable in a developing country which has large numbers of desperately poor people. In developed countries, small places can be improved by expansion if that growth adds intellectual and financial opportunity, but once a location reaches a certain size, it’s mostly downhill, at least in terms of livability. Sure there’s lots of money to be made in megalopolises, but if you’re in a place like LA and have to spend two to four hours a day commuting, the money no longer has the same value.

Some countries with large geographic areas but small populations, such as Canada and Australia, can benefit from immigration, but Singapore with an area the size of New York City and a projected 7 million people – about the same as NYC - will be just as crowded and difficult to live in, especially for the lower classes. The wealthy have no concerns about housing prices or overburdened public transportation. The country’s legislators earn more than a million dollars a year, so would have little concept for what their constituents deal with on a daily basis.

Singapore’s rulers have never had to consider the people’s wishes before and I’m sure they’ll continue to use their defamation magic to try to quash their token opposition, but the tide is turning and they will be forced to listen to the people.

Personally I’m a fan of immigration, at least in theory. I’m one myself, though few would refer to me that way, but after 11 years in Cambodia, what else could I be? One could even consider me an economic migrant, since I could not make it in my native land without abject penury and bemoaning my fate 24/7. Cambodia’s lax immigration policy has brought hundreds of thousands of relatively wealthy expats to live here. My lowly pension is still several times Cambodia’s per capita income so I’m making a positive contribution in spite of it all.  

Immigration would also be a good idea for countries like Korea, which has the world’s most homogeneous population and Japan with the second most, even though both countries are relatively crowded, because they desperately need lessons in and experience with relating to diverse peoples.

As a long time expat estranged from my own country, it’s unsurprising that I believe that one of the best movements for the world is immigration that mixes people up and gets us closer to understanding each other. That isn’t to say it isn’t extremely important that immigration happen at a slow measured pace otherwise backlashes that have destabilizing impacts are possible.

Welcome to the world.

575 Gigatons

Five-hundred-seventy-five gigatons is how much carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere without the Earth’s temperature going over 2º C (3.6ºF). The total carbon stored in the ground is about five times that much. In other words, 80% of known reserves of fossil energy has to stay in the ground if we’re not to exceed that number.

Australia has recently sweltered in a heat wave so intense its weather service had to add two colors to its temperature map to represent temperatures over 50ºC (122ºF). High temperatures and brisk winds have spawned vast wildfires there. Hurricane Sandy brought the lowest barometric readings ever recorded in the Northeast and had hurricane force winds that stretched for about 950 miles. Sixty percent of the contiguous US is experiencing drought; about half of that is categorized severe, extreme or exceptional.

The extreme weather we are now experiencing is the result of ‘only’ 0.8ºC so the impact of a 2ºC increase has to be daunting if not almost incomprehensible. And yet we are not only headed in that direction but our emissions are actually accelerating. Whereas we, the world, need to reduce our emissions by 5% a year to save ourselves, emissions rose by 3% last year, the fastest rise ever!

China is opening a new coal-fired power plant every week. By 2020 it will double its coal consumption. (This is not without its immediate environmental consequences – Beijing of late experienced extreme pollution levels.) It’s also damming every river in the country and is the world’s largest producer and consumer of solar installations, but that doesn’t change the fact that its emissions are rising very fast as a result of its high growth rates. It’s not the only culprit, new coal plants are opening all over the world, including here in Cambodia. And in total contradiction to common sense, the consensus in the financial community is that China needs to wean itself from exports and encourage its people to consume more. The elite who run the world are living in a 20^th century bubble and are completely divorced from reality.

The US media has been gushing uncontrollably of late about how fracking is opening up large new reserves of oil and gas and the country may be self-sufficient in ten years. That is mostly hype since yields from fracking wells fall precipitously after the first year – 60 to 90% in most wells, but regardless, that fossil fuel needs to stay in the ground to save the world, and that would be true even if fracking didn’t cause permanent groundwater contamination. The idea that permanent loss of groundwater is a worthy tradeoff for 5 or 10 years of cheap fossil fuel is ludicrous, stupid and insane, but that’s exactly what’s happening.

To make it clear where the US stands on climate change, at the recent Doha climate conference it worked its damnedest to scupper, stymie, put a spanner in the works to prevent any meaningful global action on climate change. (It was also beyond ironic - but telling of the political world’s real attitude towards climate change - that the conference was held in Doha which has the highest per capita emissions in the world.) Obama has made clear that doing anything serious about global warming is less important than dealing with unemployment, etc. And yet… the economic conversion necessary to tackle the climate problem would be the best way to put people to work. Mr. Compromise doesn’t understand that the climate is not negotiable, that it cannot be fixed with a political compromise. It’s a real-world engineering problem which portends certain catastrophe if not dealt with immediately and is not at all like making sausage.

I greatly admire those activists who’re putting their life into trying to make a difference, and I guess, by writing this, I’m doing it too in my own limited way, but still it’s hard not to feel pessimistic. Regardless, we need to be apprised of what’s happening, active in trying to change the paradigm and aware of the consequences of continuing on our present path… even if we can’t do anything about it. In this case we are, by being active, working for our own personal salvation even if the world, as we know it, is doomed.

And a short comment on packaging…

100% Ain’t What it Used to Be

I always liked V-8 juice; good taste, 100% vegetable juice. There are juice companies here in Asia that do veggie juice but they always add fruit to the mix. Orange juice is added to carrot, Apple juice added to green veggies, etc.  So occasionally (because it’s relatively expensive) I’d buy a can of V-8… until I discovered 100% ain’t what it used to be. Underneath the easy-to-read words, 100% vegetable juice, in script that is partially obscured, that you might not notice right off, it says, with added ingredients. How ingenious to create something that’s 100% and not 100% at the same time!

I recently bought a container of grated parmesan cheese made in America. On the front it says 100% real cheese in one place and 100% grated parmesan cheese in another. On the list of ingredients, however, it says powdered cellulose added to prevent caking. Somehow the powdered cellulose (most likely ground up wood) doesn’t count as part of the 100%. All the more reasons why I try to avoid any type of packaged food produced in America… not that I trust foodstuffs produced in Asia (honesty in packaging from China?) but when it comes from the US, it’s almost certain to be tainted.

Food labeled organic is usually a good bet, but now that major corporations have taken over the larger organic food producers they’ve started pestering the FDA to loosen organic standards so they can legally adulterate their ‘organic’ products. Since Obama recently appointed a Monsanto hack to head an important FDA office, that loosening is very likely to happen.

Bin Laden Strikes Back From His Watery Grave

In Pakistan recently nine health workers who were administering polio vaccines were killed by the Taliban. For several years now, Pakistanis in general and the Taliban in particular have been skeptical about the honesty of the program, believing that it was a Western base for spying and a conspiracy to make them impotent amongst other evils. As a result of those murders the program was halted.

Pakistan is one of only three countries in which Polio is endemic (Afghanistan and Nigeria are the others) and great progress has been made over recent years bringing down the yearly total of infections from around 20,000 to about 50.

Pakistani suspicions about the program were confirmed when it was revealed that the CIA used a fake vaccination program to try to get information about Bin Laden’s whereabouts. While the doses administered were real enough, immunization only comes with three doses and they only did one so the program was a total scam. It was unconscionable for the CIA to set up the fake program and even worse for the Pakistani doctor they used to run it. The doctor was given a 33-year sentence, which the US strenuously objected to, for collaborating with the CIA. The sentence was well-deserved, since it’s not only the health workers who’ve subsequently paid with their lives, but also the tens, hundreds or thousands of children who may eventually suffer from polio because they were denied access to the vaccine. Polio kills or permanently maims an individual within hours of being infected.

In the end result, they got no useful information from the fake program, but did manage to jeopardize the lives of many innocents. When you come right down to it, America’s action was the equivalent of murder, but since it’s only Pakistani children who’ll die or be crippled, it’s clear they don’t count for much. Whatever it takes to kill Bin Laden, right?

There’s a popular new movie, Zero Dark Thirty, about the capture of Bin Laden which bills itself as based on a true story. However, the major theme of the film, and which takes up the first 45 minutes of action, is the efficacy of torture in gaining useful information on his capture. That was a total lie since no useful information was gained from torture. When confronted by that fact the director of the film said, It’s just a movie. Just a movie which tries to make torture cool, useful and acceptable when it had nothing to do with the capture of Bin Laden.

As I understand it, there’s also a popular TV program in which terrible terrorist acts are thwarted at the last minute by the use of torture. Torture is never justified. As far back as the 18^th century, the prohibition of ‘cruel and unusual punishments’ was enshrined in the 8^th amendment in the US Bill of Rights. The routine use of torture insures that innocent people will be abused, not to mention that the torturers themselves become dehumanized. No matter, it’s now the American way along with motherhood and apple pie.

Torture is not the only part of the abrogation of basic human rights that has been embraced by the American people and their government. The US now assumes the right to assassinate anyone, anytime in anyplace, including American citizens, it thinks is a bad guy. Forget the right to a fair trial and presenting of evidence; that’s so 18^th century. And if innocent civilians get caught in the crossfire, well that’s the price of war.

America’s drone strikes have been a lot more successful lately, since the definition of insurgent/terrorist was changed. It used to be that a person had to be individually identified as a bad guy to be targeted, now every man killed in a drone strike between the ages of 18 and 35 is automatically assumed to be an insurgent.

In the latest killing innovation the CIA has begun signature strikes. Previously, they only targeted known bad guys; now, activity that’s merely suspicious is enough to get blasted to smithereens. That is how 11 girls aged 10 to 17 were murdered in Pakistan recently. They were out before dawn collecting firewood when they were taken out by a drone pilot sitting in a comfortable chair in front of a computer monitor thousands of miles away. Those of you dependent on the mainstream media probably didn’t hear about that incident, they’re only Pakistanis, after all.

Twenty American children killed as a result of a crazed gun culture and it’s the top news for weeks; eleven Pakistani kids killed by US drone strikes and it barely rates a mention in the US media. Well, there’s a war going on and collateral damage is inevitable, so they say. Still, it’s not hard to understand why an overwhelming percentage of Pakistanis hate America. And why Bin Laden couldn’t have asked for a better outcome to his death.

Déjà Vu All Over Again.

About 4 years ago, right after an American election and before an Israeli election, six prominent Gazans were assassinated by Israel. This came in the midst of a long-time relative lull in rocket attacks. It was clear at the time that the killings and subsequent bombardment of the Gaza strip had been planned for months.

This time, after several Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy, had been killed in the previous week or so, Ahmed Al-Jabari, head of Hamas’ military wing, was assassinated in a trap set by Israel the day after he thought he had negotiated a cease fire with them.

Israeli leaders need to show how tough they are to be able to appeal to their constituents, who mostly seek revenge and retribution against the Palestinians will never give up their quest for freedom from occupation no matter how many die or how many suffer the repression that comes in response to their valiant, but feeble attempts to fight back and gain their freedom and dignity. Israel has no interest in negotiating a real peace, one that would be fair to the Palestinians, because that would mean giving up land they have stolen, so they need to kill and maim and destroy on a regular basis to try to suppress the restless natives and hold onto their dream of Greater Israel.  

The majority of Israeli Jews are completely out of touch. When the UN General Assembly votes 189 against Israel, 3 for, they don’t connect their actions, their murderous ways to the reason for their near universal censure. The BBC radio program World Have Your Say interviewed an Israeli living near Gaza. He was complaining about having to spend so much of his time in his bomb shelter. He then made one of the most preposterous, off-the-wall statements I’ve ever heard, anytime, anywhere. He said that the Gazans don’t build bomb shelters because they know the IDF doesn’t target civilians. This at a time when 90 Gazans had died and 700 were injured.

Is he unaware that his country has maintained a blockade of Gaza for 5 years in which building materials are banned from import? There is one way around the blockade, through the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, but everything costs twice as much when it comes in that way. Is he aware that Gazans are very poor. That they don’t have the money to build shelters. Does he know that 80% of Gazans are dependent on food aid. Is he aware that 50% of children there are malnourished because Israel limits the amount of food that’s allowed in.

The blockade has shut down 95% of Gaza’s industry because no raw materials are allowed in and no finished products allowed out. A substantial part of Gaza’s farmland is off limits because it’s either near the border – any Palestinian within 300 meters, and sometimes a lot more, of the border is liable to be shot – or was destroyed in the last Israeli rampage. They aren’t allowed to fish more than 3 miles from shore. They have few options and almost no hope so they don’t care how hard they are hit, or how many of them die as long as they can pick off a few Israelis with their rockets and occasional sneak attacks.

The next night an Israeli said that the IDF is the most moral army in the world. The words, moral army, in themselves are an oxymoron. Soldiers are trained to kill, and if they feel threatened, to shoot first and ask questions later. As for the IDF, it’s noted around the world for being ruthless, callous and brutal. Israeli Jews live on another planet where they are always right and everybody else is wrong.

Subsequently, an Israeli on the program said he wanted the army to go in and finally wipe out the terrorists, like the army hasn’t been trying to do that for the last 30 years. He sounded young, probably was not even born when the first Intifada began. They never learn, they’re always the victim, they never connect their brutal occupation with the attacks against them. No matter how many times their violent, bloodthirsty ways fail to bring safety and security, they only know how to double down on the killing.

The night before the cease fire, an Israeli insisted that his country had totally left Gaza, as if leaving a place still allowed you to enforce a near total and crippling blockade. In fact, the IDF goes into Gaza anytime they want, to arrest anybody they want, to kill anybody they want. Israelis have no clue, they only know talking points, they’re divorced from reality, they’ve lost their capacity for fairness or compassion or even logic. If the roles were reversed, and the Arabs were the occupiers, the Jews would fight to the death to free themselves, and use all means at their disposal to do it, just as they did in their fight to create the state of Israel in 1947 when they committed devastating terrorist acts, like the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem when more that 200 innocent people died.

It’s clear what Israelis want. A recent survey showed nearly 60% think they live in an apartheid state and want to keep it that way, with their Arab citizens, who make up 20% of Israel proper, permanently relegated to second class status. A poster of four maps showing the loss of Arab land since the beginning of Israel has circulated on the internet and elsewhere. The 2012 map shows the West Bank as hundreds of tiny dots or small enclaves – urban ghettos and rural shtetls – surrounded by land controlled by Israel. Palestinians now control about 10% of the West Bank.

When the poster was placed on the London Underground it was called a provocation by some Jewish groups. Yes, the truth hurts, and it is very provocative to show how Israel is seeking to squeeze the Palestinians into ever smaller ghettos, something no other country in the world would be allowed to do. As long as the US vetoes every attempt at the UN to stop Israel from its illegal and immoral actions and also provides billions of dollars in military aid - in spite of Israel being a wealthy country - the farce will continue, nothing will change to balance the Arab-Jewish equation or provide the Palestinians the freedom every person in the world deserves.

The Gazans consider their efforts to have been victorious, since in spite of being outgunned 1000 to 1 they managed to kill six Israelis and wound many more. It doesn’t matter to them that 162 Gazans were killed and more than a thousand injured, they’ll never cease their fight for freedom. On the other side, Israeli Jews have to know they will never be safe and secure until justice is done, no matter how much destruction they wreak or how many casualties they cause. They could indulge in mass murder or deportation to try to stop the resistance, as some Israeli politicians have suggested, but even the US might balk at that.

QE3 - Not for You and Me

QE 1 and 2 worked so well the US Fed has figured it’d be great to go for another round. QE stands for Quantitative Easing, which is a lot like printing money in common terms. The first two involved printing a half-trillion dollars each, which was used to buy near worthless mortgage backed securities from the banks at face value. As a result of those QEs and lots of other money lent to the banks at near zero interest - which, since those super-low interest rates are less than the rate of inflation, is akin to paying the banks to take that money - the stock markets are near all-time highs, corporate profits are soaring to the point that American corporations are sitting on nearly $2 trillion dollars of cash reserves and the 1% are seeing massive gains in their wealth. So it’s worked out fabulously.

Well now, that was a joke, that’s not really why they did it, or why they said they did it. As it happens, the 1% already have a greater share of national income than at any time since 1929. No it’s because they’re worried about unemployment continuing to be stubbornly high and the economy being in the doldrums for a large number of Americans. Which brings up Einstein’s definition of insanity; that is, repeatedly doing the same thing while expecting a different outcome. But feeding the banksters is the only thing they know how to do, it’s the only trick in their bag, so they have to keep plugging away at it.

With all that extra money to play with the banks - or so the theory goes - will be eager to lend it out to businesses who actually need it to do real, productive work in the economy and finally some of it will trickle down to the masses. But that involves risk, it’s much easier to take that new-found free money and buy US treasuries at 2% interest. When they do indulge in risk they speculate on commodities, which inevitably raises the cost of basic foodstuffs and other necessities of life, but hey, that’s the magic of the free market – goods and services are allocated where they can create the most benefit for those capable of paying for them.

QE 3 will mean a mere $40 billion per month, with no end date, of new printed money. It’s free money, figmentary money, conjured up out of thin air, which means, at least in theory, it should cause inflation – if you’ve got an increased amount of money relative to economic size and capacity, then each dollar should be worth less. That’s actually not happening today since in spite of the inherent weakness in the American economy and its massive public debt and budget deficits, there’s such economic turmoil in the world, the dollar still constitutes a safe bet in the minds of many people and so world investors sitting on huge piles of cash have been flocking to US Treasuries. That cheap money that’s easy to print while still maintaining value cannot last indefinitely without drastic belt-tightening changes which are extremely unlikely to happen. If/when the dollar crashes it’ll come suddenly with almost no warning.

Meanwhile as long as it’s so cheap and easy to create money with no ties to anything real, anything of value, why not use it to actually create value? Why not use it in a way that actually makes a difference for somebody besides the bankster 1%? I realize it’s an immense stretch for America’s political and financial leaders - not to mention those of the UK and EU and others who are also indulging in printing money to feed the banksters - to imagine using that imaginary money for the public good, but just in case they’re struck by lightning and come within an inch of death, or close enough anyway, to have a change of heart, here are some thoughts how that free money could be used.

Forty billion dollars would buy a new extensive light rail system for eight to ten American cities. In a few months every city large enough to be able to take advantage of efficient, clean light rail would have one. Roads, bridges, sewage systems, electrical grids, alternate energy applications… whatever, $40b per month is not small change.

The anti-poverty programs of the sixties and seventies (not to mention the programs of the Great Depression) could be resurrected. In the late seventies at the end of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, before the Reagan revolution changed the US government’s focus to a war on poor people, I participated twice in the make-work, CETA – Comprehensive Employment Training Act – program. Anyone who was out of work for more than a year was eligible.

The first time I helped build a play structure in a small church-owned but publicly accessible park. CETA provided our wages and a small amount of money for administering the contract. The artist/sculptor who they wanted to do the job wasn’t eligible so I agreed to take the job but then work half time and share the pay with him. It was a six month contract which paid $833 month - $10,000 on an annual basis. Not a lot of money even back then, but enough to keep from begging or depending on other people for housing and food. CETA jobs lasted a maximum of one year and weren’t intended to be comfortable jobs but only tide you over until you could find a ‘real’ job and hopefully learn something in the process.

Just after that contract ended another CETA job opened up in a community recycling program. The business in question had been picking up food waste but didn’t have a good method for processing it. It’s great stuff when composted but super grody and a bear to deal with. That was a year’s contract for four staff. We learned a lot about composting that year and produced a decent report, but frankly the subject matter didn’t really warrant four people working full-time for a year. The occasional boondoggle aspect was one of the reasons conservatives hated the program so much. Still it kept us (me anyway) off the streets and provided a survivable income.

It also introduced me to a group of people doing a recycling program where I eventually spent 13 years and it became the major focus of my working life. And I was able buy a house on contract because I had a steady income for a year and a half which gave the seller confidence that I could make the payments. Today it’s tough love for the people, welfare for the banksters.

As long as QE money is ‘free’, not costing anybody anything (aside from the future possibility of inflation), not connected in any way to productive endeavor, now only going to line the pockets of the country’s wealthiest citizens, why not spread some of that largesse around? Why not get people working, provide a little hope for the future and a little pocket change for the present? Never. Cannot happen. The poor barely exist in the American political lexicon, now only the middle class matters and according to both candidates that includes people earning up to $250,000 per year, a figure which puts them in the top 3%.

Now the so-called fiscal cliff is approaching. According to agreements made in the past, if the Congress was unable to come up with a reasonable deficit reduction plan, there will be automatic cuts in spending and a return to pre-Bush taxes. In other words, the economy will head downhill, just as many of Europe’s economies are. It’s obvious if you increase taxes and cut public spending, then you will increase unemployment and generally hurt the economy. So now even the Repugs are turning into (back-door) Keynesians.

The only way to increase government revenue without harming the economy is by taxing the wealthy and their special breaks (taxing capital gains at less than working income, exempting inheritance from taxation and giving them a free ride on their stock transactions) since their excessive wealth does nothing good for the economy while their excessive speculation and high-speed trading are truly destructive.

Needless to say that can’t happen since they own the government.

In other news, Hurricane Sandy, a storm of unprecedented size, helped along by ocean temperatures 5º F above normal, wreaked havoc in the eastern US. Global warming, which unquestionably had an impact on the size and severity of the storm, was never mentioned in the debates for good reason: Both candidates were allowed to vet every question, neither wished to broach that uncomfortable topic. However, unprecedented storms, droughts and heat waves have a way of intruding on preordained debate questions. Without drastic changes, starting yesterday, in the way energy is produced and used in the world, and especially the US, then the worst, not to mention the unthinkable, is yet to come.

Meanwhile, after nearly two years of campaigning, the election is finally upon us. Mr. Pain Capital, who earned his money bankrupting healthy companies or sending their jobs to China is neck and neck in the national polls with Mr. Hopelessly Compromised. Still, in American elections the popular vote doesn’t mean much, it’s the votes of the individual states that matter. In that case Obama is ahead, though, as in the case of Ohio, not enough to insure against fraud and theft. He only won last time because his margin was too great to allow for Repugs to steal the election.

The reason why election theft is still a realistic possibility in spite of Bush’s boys stealing two elections in a row is that the Dumbos never thought it was important enough to pursue, uncover and root out the causes of the theft. They never thought it was important enough to hold hearings, do research, fight to have voting machines count honestly. Most of you will be amazed to learn that, according to Jimmy Carter, foremost authority on honest elections, Venezuela has the cleanest elections he’s ever monitored. Simply put, they have machines which in addition to electronic counts also produce a receipt which allows the voter to double check to make sure their vote is counted correctly. Incredibly simple.

Not in America where voting machines are owned and operated by private companies which are allowed to hide their software under the guise that it’s proprietary information. And if many voting machines in Ohio are owned by companies connected to Romney’s son or his partners at Pain Capital, where he still is reaping large returns, well, what the hell. According to the Dumbos, or so it would seem, if you’re smart enough to steal an election, then you must deserve it. Otherwise they would’ve fought like hell against the brazen thievery that put Bush into office twice.

Why Organics?

When I first heard about the recently announced Stanford University study on organic food which stated that organic food was no healthier than conventionally grown food I was duly skeptical. Then I learned from lefty websites that pesticide residues were not included in the term healthier, as if ingesting known carcinogens was no big deal. Next was the revelation that the study was funded by agribusiness and further that a primary researcher listed on Stanford’s website has a long history of being paid by the tobacco industry to cast doubt on tobacco’s dangers; in other words, the study was ultimate bullshit.

Before I learned of the agribusiness connection to the study a friend had posted the Stanford article on Facebook – It was an aha! I told you so posting. When I pointed out the nefarious connections to him he went on railing about how it was science and it didn’t matter who funded it. In the summary put out by the researchers they disingenuously state they received no outside funding for the study, conveniently omitting that the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford which did the study receives millions from Cargill and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has been pushing GM crops very hard.

In this case it was a meta-analysis of about 300 other studies, so if you have an agenda and Cargill is paying your salary, you look for studies that reinforce your objective. So, yes it does matter.

The study concluded that organic was no healthier based solely on nutrition content, largely dismissing the effect of ingesting pesticides, so let’s deal with that first. That fact organic food is no more nutritional is not surprising since you don’t even need soil, organic or otherwise to grow healthy plants. You can, for instance, get just as high off of dope grown hydroponically as in soil. All you need in that case is a neutral medium for the roots to take hold in, artificial light and chemical nutrients.

The same is true of Genetically Engineered foods; that is, there’s no discernable difference in nutrient content between GE and conventional crops, which is probably why the FDA insists that there’s no reason for labeling, let alone concern. Their lack of concern might also stem from the revolving door between the FDA and Monsanto. In the latest affront to health and reason, Obama recently appointed a former Monsanto exec to an important post at FDA. But of course as my friend would argue, it’s all science; that Monsanto flack can be totally trusted to be fair and impartial when regulating the use of Monsanto’s agrichemicals and certification of its GMO crops. Of course.

From the study summary; “ (the researchers) did not find strong evidence that organic foods are more nutritious or carry fewer health risks than conventional alternatives, though consumption of organic foods can reduce the risk of pesticide exposure.” (my emphasis) and “There were no long-term studies of health outcomes of people consuming organic versus conventionally produced food; the duration of the studies involving human subjects ranged from two days to two years.” So, to recap, no fewer health risks from organics even though they do involve less pesticide exposure, and no long term studies of health risks that might actually shed light on the effects of exposure to same.

And finally, “The review yielded scant evidence that conventional foods posed greater health risks than organic products. While researchers found that organic produce had a 30 percent lower risk of pesticide contamination than conventional fruits and vegetables, organic foods are not necessarily 100 percent free of pesticides. What’s more, as the researchers noted, the pesticide levels of all foods generally fell within the allowable safety limits. Two studies of children consuming organic and conventional diets did find lower levels of pesticide residues in the urine of children on organic diets, though the significance of these findings on child health is unclear. Additionally, organic chicken and pork appeared to reduce exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but the clinical significance of this is also unclear.”

So, all the benefits of ingesting fewer toxic pesticides and fewer antibiotic-resistant bacteria are unclear, even the fact that children – who are much more sensitive to toxins –

fed organics had less pesticides in their systems didn’t seem important to the researchers because “they all generally fell within allowable limits” (my emphasis). Limits set by who? FDA, staffed by ex-Monsanto execs, of course. They generally fell within allowable limits, but evidently not always. Nonetheless, even though the researchers admit, somewhat grudgingly, that organics contain less of things we know are bad for us, they can still clearly state and publish to the world a study that says organics are no healthier than conventionally grown food.

So now it’s my turn to be clear. There is no totally safe level of pesticide exposure. There is no magic line between safe and unsafe. Ingesting smaller amounts reduces the probability of getting cancer, but the possibility is always there. Let me expand and illustrate from an experience in my past. In the nineties I participated in a citizens advisory committee for Portland’s sewage treatment plant. At one point the handling of hazardous materials came up for discussion. One of the hazardous materials the plant dealt with was chlorine. Sounds a bit odd, doesn’t it. Chlorine is part of the salt we use to flavor our food, we swim in it in public pools, it routinely is used to kill bacteria in our water, but still, when dealing with train car loads of it it’s classified as a hazardous material.

As part of the sewage treatment process, chlorine is added to the effluent to kill bacteria, but then before the cleansed water can be returned to the environment the chlorine has to be removed. So I asked if there was another way to kill bacteria without using chlorine. Yes, responded the plant manager, it can be microwaved, but it costs a lot more… think of the extra burden on the ratepayer, he emphasizes. Then another committee member said, Hey, it carries only a one in a million chance of giving you cancer, what’s the big deal? Only one in a million, I retorted, but then add all the other toxins in our water, in our air and in our food and give cancer a couple of decades to take hold and the easy to scoff at one in a million becomes a frightening one in seven.

At that point some people will respond saying, Well you have die sometime anyway, so again, what’s the big deal? It is a big deal; there’s a world of difference between dying of old age with a few assorted ailments and dying of cancer which comes with an extended period of pain and suffering (not to mention a great expense in America).

The other reason why organics are safer is the absence of GMOs. Every study I’ve heard about showed devastating consequences to animals who were fed them. Almost all of those studies have been suppressed, but one, about 10 years ago, did manage to break through the corporate news blockade. That was the study done on Monarch butterflies. Monarchs eat only milkweed. Researchers dusted milkweed with GM corn pollen. Within a reasonably short time half the butterflies died, while the other half suffered terrible stomach problems. The control group which ate milkweed dusted with conventional corn pollen were unaffected.

Yet the FDA insists there’s no difference between GM corn and conventional. That may be true when thinking only of nutritional value, but clearly there’s something else happening here if GE corn kills butterflies. One important theme in the corporate news articles was that Monarchs don’t eat corn so there was no reason to worry. Monarchs don’t eat corn but people do. GE corn includes genes from Bacillus thuringiensis a natural pesticide and one, in fact, used by organic farmers. One of the comments which my skeptical friend made in defense of pesticides was that they are water based so don’t remain on the crops. Great, but when the toxin is part of the corn there is no escape.

It’s possible that one species can remain unaffected by a certain substance while another is ruined but before a whole nation was experimented on there ought to have been real studies done. There has been a strong spike in asthma, certain cancers and other maladies in the past decade or so that coincides with the introduction of GM foods. And once again, these things may well take 20 to 30 years to show up in most people so the worst is yet to come. One interesting and frightening aspect of GE crops is they seem to have a much stronger will to live and propagate then natural crops. In one experiment on spinach where both GE and conventional were grown in close proximity, 95% of the next generation showed GE traits. In North Dakota which is heavily planted in GE rapeseed, which produces canola oil, the roadsides are lined with wild rapeseed, almost all of which is GE.  

Besides the impact on the individual consumer of conventional industrial agriculture, one must also think of the effect that type of food production has on the people involved in the process as well as the world as a whole. Researchers at Stanford can discount pesticide exposure to you and me but farmworkers suffer disproportionally.

Something like 80% of all antibiotic use in America is in industrial meat factories. Routine use of antibiotics in raising chickens and pigs has led to America’s rivers being contaminated with them. With so much antibiotics in both food and water, untreatable strains of bacteria have developed leaving many people without treatment possibilities. Many Americans drink treated river water, but there is no easy way to remove antibiotics, pesticides or chemical fertilizer runoff from that water.

Typical pig factories produce as much shit as a city of 100,000 people. It is left in large lagoons which smell so bad, it’s difficult for people to live within miles of them. They also sometimes leach into ground water or overflow into rivers. This is another case of industry externalizing costs. Yes, you get cheap ‘nutritious’ meat, but the true costs of that industrial process are born by society at large and by individuals whose bacterial infections, for instance, are no longer treatable with antibiotics. It would work as fertilizer but there’s so much of it in a small area and it’s so expensive to deal with, relative to application of chemical fertilizer, they just leave it to stink up the neighborhood.

Industrial agriculture produces ‘nutritious’ crops but the soil is rendered lifeless in the process. For instance, I’ve become a plant collector here in Cambodia where all those things referred to as house plants in the states grow outdoors here. I have hundreds of plants, most growing in pots. Several times I’ve purchased a plant that looked very good only to have it subsequently refuse to grow or start looking pale and unhappy, at which time I give it extra manure and compost to try to revive it. I grow only organically except for a water based pesticide I use to kill red ants which are an unholy pest, which I haven’t figured out how to get rid of otherwise; I would try a pepper spray if I could find it here. At a certain point I decide I have to repot it to try to give it a better lease on life. What I find is soil that is so thick and muddy the roots couldn’t penetrate. Some plants can grow in that type of soil, most can’t. The chemical fertilizer they applied made them look good in spite of the very poor quality of the soil.

In America some 25 to 30% of greenhouse gases are produced from industrial agriculture, which includes manufacture and application of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers, the giant machines used to plow, plant, cultivate and harvest, and the long distance shipping of produce. Once again the true costs are externalized. Cheap food now, a boiling planet later.

Finally, industrial agriculture, being based on fossil fuels, is simply not sustainable. No matter how much oil is found in the Arctic or under 5 miles of water out at sea, it’s a finite resource. We’re past peak oil, which means we’ve already used up half of the total resource. The first half was the easy-to-get-to cheap oil, we’re now beginning the expensive half. Much before we run out, it’ll become devilishly expensive, but the bottom line is it’s a finite resource and we will run out. When that happens, there will be only one alternative, we will revert to farming organically, the way it was done for all the millennia since the beginning of agriculture until the late 1940’s. That being the case, it would behoove us, if we were intelligent enough to understand where the world is going, to switch now. Waiting until the last drop of oil is consumed to change to organic will result in mass hunger since it will take years of applying organics to the soil for it to regain its former natural fertility.

Not only that but to save ourselves we’d need to develop systems for the gathering and processing of every possible bit of vegetable, animal and human waste to add to the soil. That is also something that cannot be done overnight. Today organic farms are just as productive as conventional ones. Organic farmers have access to large amounts of organic material today because that sector is so small compared to the whole picture. When conventional farming is no longer an option there will be a mad rush for organic material to enrich the soil.

The Stanford study pointed out that 30% of conventional produce tested contained pesticide residues and even 7% of organic did also. The later is a testament to the pervasiveness of pesticides in the environment, since a farm cannot be certified organic until three years after the last chemicals were applied.

Personally I’d love to be able to eat strictly organically, but it’s very difficult in this world to be fanatic about it. If I were living in America with the income some of my friends enjoy, I’d eat about 80% to 90% organic. Achieving 100% would practically preclude eating out, since organic restaurants are extremely rare and very expensive. When visiting the states in the past – I haven’t lived there in 11 years – I’d be on a limited income so I’d buy organic occasionally whenever the price seemed reasonable; maybe making up 10% to 20% of my purchases. Every little bit helps; every time you choose organics, you’re improving you’re chances for a long and healthy life.

Here in Cambodia it’s sometimes easier to eat clean, sometimes harder. Many Cambodian farmers use pesticides but have no idea what the proper dose is because all the labels are in foreign languages. On the other hand, last time I went to the public market to buy veggies I spied a worm on a green vegetable I was looking to buy. The woman who owns the market stall was taken aback… eeew… when I showed it to her but I was happy to see it and purposely bought that stalk… evidently no pesticides on that one. Cambo cows eat grass, real cow food, not GM corn. There are no pig or chicken factories here where living conditions for the animals is so bad they have to be fed massive doses of antibiotics just to keep them alive.

Packaged food in Cambo comes from all over the world. At various times I’ve seen breakfast cereal from France, Germany, New Zealand, Argentina and Egypt as well as the US. Occasionally, there’ll be organic cereal from Germany or France at a reasonable price. The Egyptian brand says GMO free, so I buy that. Needless to say, I almost never buy packaged food from the US, since anything produced there that contains corn, soy or canola also contains GMOs; though I can’t resist an American candy bar on a rare occasion. Once in a while other organic foods will appear; if I’ve got the money in my pocket, I’ll take it. There are no specialty food shops in my small town. There are some in the capital but they are few and far between and have very limited offerings.

They are beginning to learn about organics here and many farmers are being taught the necessary skills, so I expect it will be easier to eat organic in the future. Meanwhile, I think it’s worse to be fanatic than eat what’s available, as long as you remain conscious of what you’re doing. Without any recourse to science, my feeling is if you try to eat healthy – lots of fruit and veggies – and choose organic whenever you can, get proper exercise to stay fit, avoid pharmaceuticals whenever possible and use recreational drugs and alcohol in moderation to counter life’s stresses, then you’ve got reasonable chance of beating the odds. After all, some people smoke tobacco all their lives and don’t get cancer.

That won’t work for everybody. Some are doomed no matter what they do: they’re predisposed in their genes or at a young age carcinogens were introduced into their bodies and had taken hold. Still, living right will make the challenges they face easier to handle. Some years ago I visited a friend in his mid-sixties who had recently had a mild heart attack. He had made a serious adjustment in his eating habits. When cooking chicken for dinner, he removed the skin and explained how he absolutely minimized animal fats in his diet. I asked him what his previous cholesterol level was, he said 340 which is almost twice safe levels. With his changed diet, he had another good ten years.

If, alternatively, you are stubborn and have to have your bacon and eggs for breakfast every day in spite of being a old coot and knowing (or being in denial) that you are eating a cholesterol bomb which might eventually have dire consequences, and at the same time you reject the lettuce on your plate thinking it’s only there for decoration, not for actually eating, then you are testing the gods and you might well fail the test. If you think life is not worth living without your daily triple-cheese-bacon-burger or the equivalent, then stop and think what life would be like confined to a wheelchair because one side of your body has been paralyzed from a stroke or heart attack.

Maybe some of you are familiar with Ram Dass. Previously, as Richard Alpert, he was one of the original Harvard acid heads. After blowing his mind, he discovered Hinduism, found a guru and not long later became a guru himself. He wrote a book back in the sixties called Be Here Now which had a profound effect on my life. Be here now, be where you’re at, whatever you’re doing, do it right. In the early 2000s I saw him speak not long after he had had a stroke which paralyzed half his body and confined him to a wheelchair. Though he was a brilliant speaker, it was difficult listening to him because it sometimes took him a long time to formulate and voice the ideas in his head. He spoke of how being a respected guru and spiritual teacher he thought he was above mundane concerns over diet and lifestyle. He learned the hard way that nobody is. You don’t have to be fanatic or absolutist about what you eat, but you are wise to be smart.

Ponder spending the last ten or twenty years of your life in a debilitated, dependent state stuck in a wheelchair or dying a horrible death from cancer and hopefully that’ll inspire you to buy organic whenever you can afford it and eat your damn veggies!

  

Romneybot

One of the most insensitive, clueless and just plain warped statements Romney has made in the campaign was when he spoke in Israel and said that the reason why Israel had a per capita income of $20,000 while the Palestinians only had $10,000 was due to a superior culture. To begin with his numbers were off by a factor of ten: The true numbers are $31,000 for Israel, $1500 for the Palestinians. You’d think someone in his entourage would take a minute to do an internet search to get the correct numbers. His statement was roundly criticized by many Israelis, and rightly so.

In the event, I’ve been pondering for quite a while how culture impacts a nation’s intellectual and economic advancement. Why is it that some nations are hopelessly poor while others are fabulously wealthy?

All peoples are not the same, all cultures are not the same, though political correctness places taboos on us making certain types of judgments and assumptions.

But even before you start judging a nation’s cultural status based on per capita income, you’ve got to step back and check for outside forces that might’ve affected those numbers. In the case of Israel versus Palestine, you have Israel, an already wealthy nation that receives $4 billion per year in military aid as well as an additional large amount more in private donations from Jews around the world and ‘Palestine’ – in quotes because it’s not a nation – which has been under military occupation for 45 years during which time it’s seen its land stolen, its water stolen, its access to the outside world strictly controlled by another country, which decides, based on how much pressure or difficulty it wishes to burden the Palestinian people with, what can be imported and what can be exported, it’s people subjected to more than 500 checkpoints in an area equivalent to Delaware, America’s second smallest state, so that merely going from one village in your ‘country’ to another is regularly designed to be a frustrating and humiliating experience, where guards routinely make Palestinians, including the elderly and pregnant women, wait out in the elements - women have been forced to give birth out in the open because the guards won’t to let them through to nearby hospitals, where... well I could go on and on and on, but suffice to say it’s a ludicrous comparison to make considering the circumstances.

However, it’s entirely possible that, even on a level playing field, Israel would have a higher income than a true, free Palestinian state. Culture undeniably has an impact on a people’s drive for financial success, though concurrently, financial success isn’t the only determinant of the value of a culture. It’s especially dangerous, not to mention morally and philosophically corrupt to try to equate a nation’s value based solely on its income.

First a little digression on per capita income. There are two ways to calculate it. One is to simply covert local currency to dollars. That method seriously understates quality of life in developing countries, since a dollar goes a lot farther in a poor country than in a rich. Before you come to the third world, you just can’t imagine how people can survive on $800 per year, Cambodia’s current nominal per capita income. But I can go to a local produce shop, which is a bit more expensive than the public market, and get two tomatoes, a small green pepper and an onion for 35¢. The same is true for almost everything produced locally. The second is Purchasing Power Parity in which the skewing against poor countries is corrected by adjusting for the greater purchasing power of a dollar in those places. On that basis Cambodia’s income is more like $2400 per year.

Back on subject: Qatar, calculated by PPP, has the highest income in the world at about $100,000. Does that mean Qatari culture is three times better than Israeli culture? Or merely superior? German income is close to $40,000. Do we really want to suggest that German culture is superior to Jewish culture because their income is higher? In the cases of both Germany and Israel there are special circumstances that have brought their income down. In Germany’s case they spent fabulous amounts of money in the cause of bringing East German society up to western standards. In Israel’s case they’ve spent vast sums on their colonization project in the West Bank and concomitant occupation and suppression of the Palestinian people. Still, setting the mitigating factors aside, one may well have a ‘superior’ culture when it comes to income and maybe other factors also. Every race, nationality, culture is different.  

Income is an essential factor in determining a country’s progress and advancement. Without a certain minimum income some people will be hungry, or be without access to education or health care. But that doesn’t mean a low income country has an inferior culture, only that it either isn’t focused on income or mitigating factors have brought income down.

Cambodia’s current poverty is mostly a result of its sordid history. Back in the sixties the country was one of the area’s wealthiest. While nobody but the Khmer can be blamed for the gruesome years of the Khmer Rouge, their takeover of the country did not happen in a vacuum. In the early sixties, King Sihanouk abdicated his throne to become the country’s political leader. That time was the heyday of Cambodian culture. While he wasn’t faultless, he was a respected and often revered leader; he also was a leftist with affinity for Mao and communist China. This did not sit well with the CIA so they staged a coup in 1970 in which the former king was deposed and Lon Nol, an imposingly corrupt right-winger was put in his place. That in turn did not sit well with the Khmer Rouge and the king who sided with the KR. Nixon’s ‘secret’ Cambodia bombing campaign in which more bombs were dropped per capita than any time in history, gave the KR a fantastic recruiting tool and sealed Cambodia’s fate. BTW, 40 years after the bombing ended Cambodians are still dying from UXO’s, unexploded ordnance, left in the countryside. The US always has the money to start new wars but somehow can’t find the relative pittance needed to clean up after the old ones.

While only the Khmer people could produce a Pol Pot, it’s reasonable to conjecture that the KR might never have been able to take over had the US not intervened in Cambodia’s affairs. Cambodia’s $2400 per year per capita income doesn’t compare favorably with the US income of $45,000, but is it entirely culture that made the difference? Had Cambodians been left to their own devices, they would be far above that figure today, but who knows exactly where they would stand?

Cambodia’s people may not compare in income, social advancement or intellectual attainment but it’s a hell of a lot easier to live here than in the states. The atmosphere is friendly, easygoing and relaxed, exemplified by the fact that the country has 26 public holiday days a year and that underestimates how much time people take off for Khmer New Year. The official holiday is three days but the private schools I taught at scheduled a full week off and nobody ever showed up for classes the last couple of days before the scheduled break. And that also doesn’t include Chinese New Year, a three day unofficial holiday that almost everyone who can takes off. We celebrate the new year three times in Cambo.

Speaking of the Chinese, when it comes to financial success, they undeniably have a superior culture. Nearly everywhere you go in southeast Asia they control a disproportionate share of the businesses and own an outsized share of the wealth. But does that mean their culture overall is better? For instance, when Chinese summon a waitress they use the term for servant and it’s always spoken in a gruff haughty voice. In contrast when Cambodians do the same they use a word that roughly translates as good person and they speak naturally.

I could go on, I intended to go on, but I’d just get into trouble. Suffice to say, there’s a lot more to culture than income. Leave it to vulture-capitalist Romney, the richest man ever to run for president, to see value exclusively in terms of material wealth.