Thursday, November 15, 2007

Gadget Anarchy


When those who wish to monopolize the market place they like to claim to being doing it in the name of the 'free enterprise'. The reality is that there is nothing free about their marketplace, capitalism is about monopoly. They are in fact attempting to monopolize the market and restrict it to benefit from it. Which is why real advocates for a 'free' market are libertarians not capitalists.

To paraphrase Proudhon; Intellectual Property Is Theft!



Generals, Gadgets, and Guerrillas

The age of the media gadget is here, with Apple steamrolling the big distributors. But when consumers have the power to get content anywhere, anytime, for free, even Steve Jobs should be worried.

by Michael Wolff

Vanity Fair December 2007

A marketer would call this empowerment—as a consumer you’re getting the service you want at the time and place you want it, more cheaply than you could have ever hoped to get it, as well as, often, critical help in stealing the particular service or tune.

Men with big jobs in big corporations have a word for this anywhere-anytime (let-us-help-you-steal-it) breakdown in distribution norms: anarchy.


They’ve, in fact, had laws passed to inhibit it.

But more and more, as gadgetism explodes, as it undermines every fixed notion of who delivers what to whom, as the big men with big jobs try to develop their gadget strategies, it’s comedy too. Everybody in charge of distribution channels is running around like a chicken with its head cut off. People at music companies, television networks, movie studios, cable providers, phone companies, and satellite systems are all trying, vainly so far, to figure out their place in a gadget-driven world, and are, mostly, looking like fools. NBC, in a huff, recently pulled its stuff from Apple’s iTunes downloading service because it believes its shows are worth more than $1.99 apiece. Then, in an about-face, the network announced it will give away its shows for free—figuring that somehow they’ll rig it up, those technological geniuses, so that after you download a show to your gadget and you see it once or twice, the show will dissolve or explode, or some such.

And this is a good example of the products of capitalism and capitalist production creating the conditions for a hi-tech gift economy. One that is the basis of real communism that is the freedom from labour. Thus a real free market coordinated through the free association of individuals through disembodied production and disembodied distribution. The ultimate leisure society.

The full development of capital, therefore, takes place -- or capital has posited the mode of production corresponding to it -- only when the means of labour has not only taken the economic form of fixed capital, but has also been suspended in its immediate form, and when fixed capital appears as a machine within the production process, opposite labour; and the entire production process appears as not subsumed under the direct skillfulness of the worker, but rather as the technological application of science. [It is,] hence, the tendency of capital to give production a scientific character; direct labour [is] reduced to a mere moment of this process. As with the transformation of value into capital, so does it appear in the further development of capital, that it presupposes a certain given historical development of the productive forces on one side -- science too [is] among these productive forces -- and, on the other, drives and forces them further onwards.

To the degree that labour time -- the mere quantity of labour -- is posited by capital as the sole determinant element, to that degree does direct labour and its quantity disappear as the determinant principle of production -- of the creation of use values -- and is reduced both quantitatively, to a smaller proportion, and qualitatively, as an, of course, indispensable but subordinate moment, compared to general scientific labour, technological application of natural sciences, on one side, and to the general productive force arising from social combination [Gliederung] in total production on the other side -- a combination which appears as a natural fruit of social labour (although it is a historic product). Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production.

Marx Grundrisse Ch. 13



Beginning with cybernetics, and the resulting evolution of machine automation into personal computers, the internet, the resulting software and gadgets are all a glimpse of the shape of things to come; from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs.


Notes:
Raoul Victor
Free Software and Market Relations
But the logic of free software situates itself outside of exchange itself. When someone "takes" free software off the Internet, even if its production required millions of hours of labor, there is nothing given in exchange. One takes without furnishing any counterpart. The software furnished is not exactly "given," in the classic sense of the term, since the provider still has it after the taker has helped himself. (In this sense, the term of "economy of the gift" that certain people use apropos free software is incorrect.) There is indeed the transmission of a good, but with neither loss of possession nor counter-party. The foundation of capitalism, exchange, is absent. In this sense already, free software has an intrinsically anti-capitalist, potentially revolutionary nature.

But it does not suffice to be "anti-capitalist" to be revolutionary historically, as shown by the nostalgic anti-capitalist thought of a less dehumanized past. If free software possesses a revolutionary nature, that is also because its method rests on the concrete will to liberate the powers contained in the new techniques of information and communication. This method is the result of the simple acknowledgment on t he part of several universities that certain aspects of market relations gravely impeded their utilization. If this happens with electronic techniques and not with other techniques of production, that is not only because the scientific ethic contains non-market aspects but also because, and above all, in this domain it is very easy, and costs nothing, to ignore the market laws. In this sense, the method of free software situates itself inside the movement of history (in the measure in which the development of society's productive forces constitutes the only dimension that, "in the last instance," permits one to detect a direction in it), in the direction of the surpassing of capitalism.


"The center of the free software movement's success, and the greatest achievement of Richard Stallman, is not a piece of computer code. The success of free software, including the overwhelming success of GNU/Linux, results from the ability to harness extraordinary quantities of high-quality effort for projects of immense size and profound complexity. And this ability in turn results from the legal context in which the labor is mobilized. As a visionary designer Richard Stallman created more than Emacs, GDB, or GNU. He created the General Public License."

from E. Moglen, "Anarchism Triumphant", First Monday 4/8, 1999.



New Left Review 15, May-June 2002

Julian Stallabrass on Sam Williams, Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software. The iconoclastic hacker who is challenging Microsoft’s dominion, using ‘copyleft’ agreements to lock software source codes into public ownership. Cultural and political implications of treating programs like recipes.

JULIAN STALLABRASS

DIGITAL COMMONS


Stallman argues that while companies address the issue of software control only from the point of view of maximizing profits, the community of hackers has a quite different perspective: ‘What kind of rules make possible a good society that is good for the people in it?’. The idea of free software is not that programmers should make no money from their efforts—indeed, fortunes have been made—but that it is wrong that the commercial software market is set up solely to make as much money as possible for the companies that employ them.

Free software has a number of advantages. It allows communities of users to alter code so that it evolves to become economical and bugless, and adapts to rapidly changing technologies. It allows those with specialist needs to restructure codes to meet their requirements. Given that programs have to run in conjunction with each other, it is important for those who work on them to be able to examine existing code, particularly that of operating systems—indeed, many think that one of the ways in which Microsoft has maintained its dominance has been because its programmers working on, say, Office have privileged access to Windows code. Above all, free software allows access on the basis of need rather than ability to pay. These considerations, together with a revulsion at the greed and cynicism of the software giants, have attracted many people to the project. Effective communities offering advice and information have grown up to support users and programmers.

The free exchange of software has led some commentators to compare the online gift economy with the ceremony of potlatch, in which people bestow extravagant presents, or even sacrifice goods, to raise their prestige. Yet there is a fundamental distinction between the two, since the copying and distribution of software is almost cost-free—at least if one excludes the large initial outlay for a computer and networking facilities. If a programmer gives away the program that they have written, the expenditure involved is the time taken to write it—any number of people can have a copy without the inventor being materially poorer.

An ideological tussle has broken out in this field between idealists, represented by Stallman, who want software to be really free, and the pragmatists, who would rather not frighten the corporations. The term ‘free’, Eric Raymond argues in his book The Cathedral and the Bazaar, is associated with hostility to intellectual property rights—even with communism. Instead, he prefers the ‘open source’ approach, which would replace such sour thoughts with ‘pragmatic tales, sweet to managers’ and investors’ ears, of higher reliability and lower cost and better features’. For Raymond, the system in which open-source software such as Linux is produced approximates to the ideal free-market condition, in which selfish agents maximize their own utility and thereby create a spontaneous, self-correcting order: programmers compete to make the most efficient code, and ‘the social milieu selects ruthlessly for competence’. While programmers may appear to be selflessly offering the gift of their work, their altruism masks the self-interested pursuit of prestige in the hacker community.

In complete contrast, others have extolled the ‘communism’ of such an arrangement. Although free software is not explicitly mentioned, it does seem to be behind the argument of Hardt and Negri’s Empire that the new mode of computer-mediated production makes ‘cooperation completely immanent to the labour activity itself’. People need each other to create value, but these others are no longer necessarily provided by capital and its organizational powers. Rather, it is communities that produce and, as they do so, reproduce and redefine themselves; the outcome is no less than ‘the potential for a kind of spontaneous and elementary communism’. As Richard Barbrook pointed out in his controversial nettime posting, ‘Cyber Communism’, the situation is certainly one that Marx would have found familiar: the forces of production have come into conflict with the existing relations of production. The free-software economy combines elements associated with both communism and the free market, for goods are free, communities of developers altruistically support users, and openness and collaboration are essential to the continued functioning of the system. Money can be made but need not be, and the whole is protected and sustained by a hacked capitalist legal tool—copyright.

The result is a widening digital commons: Stallman’s General Public Licence uses copyright—or left—to lock software into communal ownership. Since all derivative versions must themselves be ‘copylefted’ (even those that carry only a tiny fragment of the original code) the commons grows, and free software spreads like a virus—or, in the comment of a rattled Microsoft executive, like cancer. Elsewhere, a Microsoft vice-president has complained that the introduction of GPLs ‘fundamentally undermines the independent commercial-software sector because it effectively makes it impossible to distribute software on a basis where recipients pay for the product’ rather than just the distribution costs.


Tangentium


TANGENTIUM is an online journal devoted to alternative perspectives on IT, politics, education and society.Tangentium tries to take none of these things for granted. We seek to discuss IT with a critical, political eye. We are not technophobes: far from it. Our intention to use the WWW in the most constructive, Web-literate way we can should serve as evidence (if not proof) of that. But we are aware of some of the great problems which can arise from taking the abovementioned as read.

We also base our discussions, wherever possible, on less orthodox political perspectives. Our favoured viewpoint is a general scepticism towards the political and corporate institutions which currently dominate society.


The Free Software Movement - Anarchism in Action

Asa Winstanley | 22.12.2003 23:45 | Technology

The Limits of Free Software
Asa Winstanley

Of course, the left is not a homogeneous mass;
some seem to have a more realistic view. For example, in an article from the New Left Review: "[although] the free exchange of software has led some commentators to compare the online gift economy with the ceremony of potlatch, in which people bestow extravagant presents, or even sacrifice goods, to raise their prestige, it fundamentally differs in that the copying and distribution of software is almost cost-free -- at least if one excludes the large initial outlay for a computer and networking facilities" [4].

December 19, 2005

Someone call Karl Marx

The means of production is in the hands of the masses and a revolution is under way

BRIAN D. JOHNSON



The iRevolution is reversing the engines of the Industrial Revolution, and repatriating the means of creative production from the factory to the open hearth of cottage industry. In fact, it could be argued that the home studio is fostering a democratic renaissance in the arts the likes of which we've never seen. Traditionally, the major cultural industries -- movies, TV, radio, music and publishing -- have been controlled by large corporations. If you wanted to be a filmmaker, broadcaster or rock star, you had to rely on the system to sponsor your dreams. Media conglomerates still monopolize pop culture, bankrolling production and distribution. But their grip on the creative process is slipping. With affordable pro technology, artists can create at home and distribute via the Internet. It's a phenomenon that Tyler Cowen, economics professor at Virginia's George Mason University, calls "disintermediation" -- a seven-beat word that means removing the middle ground between producer and consumer.

f open-source data and software invite the democratic overthrow of copyright, sampling is the engine of promiscuity that drives it. And it's changing self-expression the way the sexual revolution changed romance. In cyberspace, everything is up for grabs. We're filtering, filing and recombining data at an unprecedented rate. It's as if we're all busy editing the world -- at least those of us who are hooked up to the IV drip of the Internet. In just a decade or two, we've become a mass culture of file clerks.

In the iWorld, where Google is God, we all behave like tiny search engines, running on the internal combustion of data. Even economist Tyler Cowen admits his daily blogs are a rummage bin of recycled material. "Three-quarters of my posts are me filtering something I've read. I'm parasitic on other people. It's more like being an editor than a writer."

Yet the daily hit of readership is addictive. Cowen says that, like most of his colleagues, he's written scholarly papers that have been read by no more than 20 people. Every day he reaches 10,000 readers with his blog (marginalrevolution.com). He talks about crafting each instalment as if it were a pop song -- "there's always a hook." Just as the iRevolution is democratizing music and film, it's sweeping through the cloistered world of academics, and forcing scholars into the spotlight. The whole notion of "intellectual property," the mortar of academia, is under assault. "My gut feeling," says Cowen, "is that copyright as we know it will collapse."

magine a dance club where everyone's heartbeat is wired for broadcast, and the deejay mixes the amplified tribal pulse into the music. What kind of mass cardiac feedback loop would that create, especially if you factor in designer drugs? Or how about feeling your lover's heartbeat as a vibrating ring tone on your cellphone? Valentine's Day may never be the same. McLuhan talked about media as an extension of our skin. And his metaphor is taking on a more literal truth as technology becomes wearable. The iPod, the camera phone -- and My doki-doki -- are just the beginning. McLuhan's global village is shrinking into the global toytown.

As technology becomes more intimate in scale, the human body will be the last frontier of the iRevolution. The idea of the body as broadcast medium may sound far-fetched -- like something out of David Cronenberg's eXistenZ. But there's no reason to assume the new technology won't be incorporated into fashions of tattooing, piercing and cosmetic surgery. Inevitably there will come a time when wireless communication will be grafted and implanted as interactive media in the flesh. And McLuhan's playful spin on his famous slogan -- the medium is the massage -- will go deeper than he ever could have imagined.



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During the Sixties, the New Left created a new form of radical politics: anarcho-communism. Above all, the Situationists and similar groups believed that the tribal gift economy proved that individuals could successfully live together without needing either the state or the market. From May 1968 to the late Nineties, this utopian vision of anarcho-communism has inspired community media and DIY culture activists. Within the universities, the gift economy already was the primary method of socialising labour. From its earliest days, the technical structure and social mores of the Net has ignored intellectual property. Although the system has expanded far beyond the university, the self-interest of Net users perpetuates this hi-tech gift economy. As an everyday activity, users circulate free information as e-mail, on listservs, in newsgroups, within on-line conferences and through Web sites. As shown by the Apache and Linux programs, the hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of software development. Contrary to the purist vision of the New Left, anarcho-communism on the Net can only exist in a compromised form. Money-commodity and gift relations are not just in conflict with each other, but also co-exist in symbiosis. The 'New Economy' of cyberspace is an advanced form of social democracy.

Free, anonymous information on the anarchists' Net

By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: April 26, 2000, 1:15 PM PDT

London programmer Ian Clarke is putting a little bit of anarchism back in the Net.

Clarke and a growing group of allied programmers are creating a kind of parallel Internet called "Freenet," where censorship is impossible, surfers are anonymous, and content is moved and hosted automatically to points near the people who want it.

The nascent system is a kind of cross between the Net-speeding tools developed by Akamai Technologies and the Napster MP3-swapping software, which is now shaking the music world. Some developers say the mix has created a system that stores and moves content much more efficiently than the ordinary Web.

But at the network's heart lies its creators' conviction that freedom of information should be built directly into the networks, rather than left to the good graces of companies and governments. Freedom from censorship could protect political dissidents and other unpopular speech, but it also means Freenet could provide a safe haven for pornographers and copyright pirates.

And that's fine with its creators.

"Freenet can't afford to make value judgments about the worth of information," said Ian Clarke, the London programmer who began creating the network as a student thesis. "The network judges information based on popularity. If humanity is very interested in pornography, then pornography will be a big part of the Freenet."

Freenet is the latest entry, and perhaps the most ambitious, in a field of new "distributed" network services that are making themselves felt far beyond the technology community.

Programs like Napster, Gnutella, Scour.net's Exchange and others have brought individual computers into the role once played by massive Web hosting services. Want a song, or a video or an image? Instead of searching for it on a Web page, it's now easy to boot up a small program and download it directly from another person's machine.

On a technological level, that's already causing ripples as Internet service providers grapple with the implications of their customers' computers becoming content hosts in their own right. Cox Communications has threatened to drop some San Diego Excite@Home cable-modem subscribers who use the Napster music swapping software, noting that the software clogged its network.

The new technologies are making even more of an impression on the entertainment trade. Napster, Gnutella and their rivals have thrown a panic into the record industry, which sees music listeners trading song files directly, without buying expensive compact discs. Other industries, such as Hollywood filmmakers, also see themselves potentially threatened by the easy file swapping.

Freenet takes these earlier file-swapping programs a step further.

The system is built around the efforts of volunteers, who set up Freenet network "nodes," or connection points, on their own computers to store content. Once a song, document, video or anything else is uploaded into this system, it is distributed around participating computers, automatically stored in nodes near the users who ask for the content, and removed from machines where there is no interest.

The system is designed to be almost entirely anonymous. The actual content on any given host computer changes over time, and will ultimately be encrypted, so no host will know what is on his or her machine. The keywords used to search the network for files are also scrambled, making it extremely difficult for authorities to find out who is hosting what, or who is looking for what particular piece of information.

Critics say this anonymity could protect distribution of genuinely illegal material, such as child pornography or pirated software, music and movies.

While it's impossible to tell how many people are using the system at any given time, about 20,000 people have downloaded an early version of it in the last few weeks, Clarke says.

Anybody can load files into the system and have them hosted by the network's volunteers without paying for bandwidth or a Web site's server space. Clarke uses the example of a band that wants to put its MP3 files online, but can't afford Web space. The band could upload its song onto the system, and as long as people occasionally searched for the song, it would live inside the Freenet.

But others say this is simply transferring the very real costs of bandwidth and storage space to the volunteers in the network. That could make it difficult to keep people participating, as they see their own network connections slowed in the interest of other people's downloads.

"To technologists, that's sexy," said Gene Kam, a Wego.com programmer who is developing Gnutella software. "But to consumers, it's not as good as just logging in and getting free MP3 files."

Others say Freenet, if it is able to get out of its early stages, could be the final nail in the coffin for organizations trying to prevent online piracy. Since Freenet is wholly decentralized, there is no central company to sue for copyright violations. And because each "node" is encrypted, and users anonymous, it will be nearly impossible to track down any individual pirate or pirated work.

"If this takes off, then the (record industry) and (movie industry) are swiftly moving into a world where they have no hope of curbing what they see as a rampant misuse of technology," said Rob Raisch, chief analyst for technology consulting firm Raisch.com.

Industry analysts say the potential for this kind of system, which has added new twists to commercial Internet technologies, has yet to be realized, however.

"I don't think you should think of this as a content distribution system," said Peter Christy, a Jupiter Communications analyst who closely follows the caching industry. "You should think of this as a technology that will allow something else new and exciting that people haven't thought of yet."


A Brief History of the Future: The Origins of the Internet

by John Naughton
Published in the UK by Weidenfeld and Nicolson on October 1 1999.

The IBM lawyers were no doubt as baffled by this as they would have been by a potlatch ceremony in some exotic tribe. But to those who understand the Open Source culture it is blindingly obvious what was going on. For this is pre-eminently a high-tech gift economy, with completely different tokens of value from those of the monetary economy in which IBM and Microsoft and Oracle and General Motors exist.

"Gift cultures", writes Eric S. Raymond, the man who understands the Open Source phenomenon better than most, "are adaptations not to scarcity but to abundance. They arise in populations that do not have significant material-scarcity problems with survival goods. We can observe gift cultures in action among aboriginal cultures living in ecozones with mild climates and abundant food. We can also observe them in certain strata of our own society, especially in show business and among the very wealthy".

Abundance makes command relationships difficult to sustain and exchange relationships an almost pointless game. In gift cultures, social status is determined not by what you control but by what you give away. "Thus", Raymond continues, "the Kwakiutl chieftain's potlach party. Thus the multi-millionaire's elaborate and usually public acts of philanthropy. And thus the hacker's long hours of effort to produce high-quality open source".

Viewed in this way, it is quite clear that the society of open-source hackers is in fact a gift culture. Within it, there is no serious shortage of the 'survival necessities' -- disk space, network bandwidth, computing power. Software is freely shared. This abundance creates a situation in which the only available measure of competitive success is reputation among one's peers. This analysis also explains why you do not become a hacker by calling yourself a hacker -- you become one when other hackers call you a hacker. By doing so they are publicly acknowledging that you are somebody who has demonstrated (by contributing gifts) formidable technical ability and an understanding of how the reputation game works. This 'hacker' accolade is mostly based on awareness and acculturation - which is why it can only be delivered by those already well inside the culture. And why it is so highly prized by those who have it.


See:

Tick, Tock, We Live By The Clock

Technocracy In Canada

Not So Green Apple

Capitalism Creates Global Warming

Black History Month; Paul Lafargue


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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Technocracy In Canada


The Beaver, the Canadian History magazine has a great article on Technocracy Inc. in Western Canada. Here is a short excerpt.

Walter Fryers lives in Edmonton and leads the Technocracy chapter here. Which meets at the Stanley Milner Library Tuesdays and Sundays at 1:30 Pm



THE LAST UTOPIANS
by Ray Argyle

Technocracy promised Depression-weary Canadians an end to their hardship. But the offer came with a catch.

The abandoned farms and empty streets of Depression-ridden rural Manitoba filled the view through the windows of the railway coach as Walter Fryers, a twenty-three-year-old university student, journeyed back to Winnipeg.

It was the fall of 1936 and Fryers had spent the summer trapping muskrats in the delta of the Saskatchewan River, working for little more than “board and a bunk.” Now he was anxious to return to his science studies at the University of Manitoba.

During the long train trip from The Pas, the young student took to heart the dark reality of the dust bowl. It had been the hottest North American summer on record. Across the Prairies, dark clouds of dust rose off the drought-stricken land, burying livestock that lay dead and dying in the fields, and caking the faces of the hungry and haggard families who grimly trekked to the cities, leaving their devastated farms behind. Against this backdrop, Fryers pondered the failure of society to provide a better life for the millions impoverished by the Great Depression.

This continued to weigh on Fryers’ mind after he arrived in Winnipeg, with its bread lines and its boarded-up businesses. Here, a chance encounter — spotting a poster for a lecture on something called “Technocracy” — was to rapidly change the direction of his life.

The lecture introduced the young man to a radical new doctrine that seemed to satisfy his yearning for a scientific solution to the world’s problems. Technocracy’s adherents claimed it would eliminate want by putting power in the hands of a capable few — not politicians, but an elite group of engineers and technicians, known as the Technocrats.

Within months, Fryers was himself preaching Technocracy’s merits to the media. The Winnipeg Free Press gave front-page space to his declaration that the existing economic system was the root of the problem, because, in order for it to work, “a scarcity must be created and maintained. That is why, in a world of plenty, we have widespread poverty.”

Technocracy flared like a comet in the darkness of the dirty thirties, promising to replace a collapsing capitalist system with a non-political government of scientists and technicians. It attracted thousands of members in Canada, survived a wartime banning, and enjoyed renewed, but brief, popularity after World War II amid short-lived fears that Canada might return to Depression-like conditions.

Of all the protest movements that flowered in the Depression, Technocracy was a unique creation. Largely overlooked by historians and neglected by most political scientists, the movement never elected an MP or fomented a riot. But to workers without jobs and farmers without crops suffering through the hungry thirties, Technocracy’s proffered world of plenty seemed a utopian paradise: Unemployment would be a thing of the past and all would share equally in the abundance of the machine age. Sir Thomas More’s sixteenth-century conception of a “happy island” stricken of all poverty and crime might at last become a reality, thanks to modern technology.

Founder Howard Scott’s design for what he called the “Technate of America” did away with borders and merged the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America into a single nation under a regime of engineers and technicians. Political parties, along with money and all the trappings of the present price-based economic system — which Scott saw as incompatible with the distribution of industry’s output — would be things of the past. The economy would be based on energy (the capacity to perform work) and the new currency would be “energy certificates,” qualifying every citizen to an equal share of the continent’s wealth. People would work four hours per day, four days per week, between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five.

Technocracy spread quickly in Canada — although its strength here, as in the United States, was concentrated in the West. Eight chapters were soon organized in Vancouver, and the magazine Technocracy Digest was launched. Branches were set up throughout British Columbia, as well as in Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Hamilton, and Toronto. For many, Technocracy served as a fraternal organization. The Winnipeg Free Press reported on a 1940 technocratic wedding, noting the groom and his attendants wore Technocracy grey suits and “twelve men in Technocracy grey formed a guard of honour.” In Vancouver, a Technocracy orchestra was formed.

I disagree with the authors claim later in the article that the idea of the Technate, technocracy's model of governance over production and distribution systems, is authoritarian and anti-democratic. He mistakes representative parliamentary democracy as being the only form of democracy.

It is a technical model for production and distribution.Indeed the idea of the technate is the administration of things not people. Technocracy did not offer up a political system to replace capitalism per se.

And in fact in a paper I presented on Technocracy, Socialist Industrial Democracy and Syndicalism, available upon request until I post it, I showed that it coincides with North American models of workers control. That is the Technate can be adapted to be used by worker controlled industries as an alternative to the wage system. Especially in light of the Norbert Weiners applications of cybernetics to industrial production that was attempted in Allende's Chile.

The fact that it was popular in Western Canada shows again that radical alternatives to capitalism were sown here for most of the early years of the twentieth century. And that radicalism was NOT conservative individualism as the right wing pundits and other neo-cons of today assert.

Today many of the predictions of Technocracy about the crisis of energy demand in an advanced industrial society are being accepted as common knowledge; namely their assertion of the crisis of Peak Oil.


SEE:

Technocracy Inc. Predicted Oil Crisis Over 50 years ago



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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Flaherty's Tax Deception


The reason the Conservatives have a surplus is because income taxes remain high. The recent Flaherty roll back was only to the level that had existed under the Liberals.

Tax Fairness? Hardly. The rich continue to get tax breaks, the working poor face claw backs and the middle class pays more in taxes.

And other than the window dressing of rolling back the Conservative created GST (not eliminating it) not much tax relief came out of all the smoke and mirrors pre-election mini-budget.

Instead all that Flaherty did was dress up for Halloween as the Wizard of Oz.



The federal government's personal income tax cuts were relatively modest, and for the most part merely a rollback of the tax increases in his first budget, according to an analysis by a think-tank that was involved in preparing projections for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's recent economic statement.

And those measures will only temporarily ease the personal income tax burden, and not by much, and won't keep that burden from rising in the future, says the analysis Wednesday Global Insight's chief economist Dale Orr, which warns that burden will rise in the years to come.

"Finance Minister Flaherty is fond of telling us that Canadians pay too much tax," it said, noting that last week's economic statement promised about $60-billion in tax relief over the next five years.

However, almost 60% of that is the goods and service tax reduction, a cut that Global Insight say will do little to boost the overall performance of the economy.

"Only 18% is in personal income tax reductions," the report said. "From almost any perspective, the personal reductions in the economic statement were very small, smaller than they could have been, and smaller than they should have been."

The economic statement, which was widely perceived as a pre-election mini-budget, reduced the lowest personal income tax rate to 15% from 15.5%, retroactive to January 1, 2007. It also increased the amount people could earn before being taxed, providing $10.9-billion in personal income tax relief over the 2006- 2013 period, with about about half of it this year and next.

"What the Finance Minister Flaherty didn't tell us is that the lowest marginal rate was 15% in 2005, and in 2006 until the Conservative government raised it to 15.5% in budget 2006, to help finance the first GST reduction," Orr said, adding that the rollback of the earlier Tory tax hike accounted for almost 80% of the total personal income tax relief .

"Thus, this personal income tax 'relief' is relief only because the Conservative government took it away in their budget 2006, to have it restored again in the November, 2007 economic statement."

And the amount of "relief" is tiny relative to its impact on the personal income tax burden, which is measured as the proportion of personal income paid in personal income tax, and it's temporary, the analysis argues.

The rollback of the earlier tax hike reduces that burden slightly to 9.8% this year from 10.1%, but the tax burden will rise back to 10.1% next year as the projected increase in after-inflation earnings pushes more income into higher tax brackets, it said.

While tax brackets rise with inflation, any real or above-inflation increase in incomes, means more of that income is taxed at higher rates, Mr. Orr explained in an interview, adding that were it not for the re-indexing of the income tax system, which occurred under the former Liberal government, the tax burden would rise even faster.

"Roughly speaking, if personal income increases by five per cent, federal personal income tax collections will increase by about six per cent of $7-billion a year if the increase in personal incomes is evenly spread across the income distribution," it said. "Personal income tax collections ... are the proverbial 'cash cow'."

In fact, in recent years the faster growth in incomes at the upper-income level has resulted in personal income tax collections rising by closer to eight per cent for every five per cent increase in personal incomes, it said.

The analysis, for example, calculated that for every $100 increase in income an individual's income the government collects an extra $29 from an upper income tax-filer but just $15 from a low-income one.

The analysis was prepared for Global Insight clients which include governments of virtually all stripes and corporations, Mr. Orr said.

Canada's rich pay less in taxes than poor, report finds

OTTAWA — The era of tax cuts ushered in by federal and provincial governments in recent years have made Canada’s tax system so regressive that the country’s richest now pay the lowest rates of all income groups, says a report to be released Thursday.

The report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, an advocacy research group that has pressed in the past for more social spending and bigger taxes on corporations and higher-income Canadians, looked at what percentage of income Canadians pay in taxes to all levels of government.

The study shows that Canada’s progressive tax system has become less so between 1990 and 2005, and for the richest Canadian families — those with annual earnings of $266,000 a year and more — the era of tax cuts since the turn of the century has been like manna from government.

Those very rich Canadians paid 30.5 % of their income in federal, provincial and municipal taxes in 2005, as opposed to the 30.7 % for those with incomes under $13,523, the lowest 10 % of family earnings.

That’s a big difference from 1990, when the top 1 % of earners paid 34.2 % of their incomes in taxes, as opposed to 25.5 % for families in the bottom 10 %.

“The tax system as gotten less progressive,” said the group’s senior economist Marc Lee.

“There’s something in the overall tax system now that most people would find offensive. The idea that someone who is in the upper middle class is paying a higher tax rate than someone much wealthier is not fair.”

In last week’s mini-budget, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty cut the GST as well as personal, corporate and other taxes by $60 billion over five years, declaring that “Canadians pay too much tax.”

In recent years, several provincial government have also cut taxes, but in many cities, property taxes and users fees have been rising as local governments try to cope with rising costs and service demands.

The highest taxed Canadian families are those earning between $120,000 and $151,000, who pay 36.9 % of their income in taxes. This group is followed closely both those earning $57,460 and $72,299 — whose tax bill represents 36.5 % of their total income.

Lee said his report is different from other such analyses in that he included all sources of income, including salaries, inheritances, employer provided benefits and capital gains. As well, the report calculates all taxes, including property and corporate taxes and user fees charged by governments.

He said he chose the 1990 to 2005 timeline because the last time a similar methodology was used to analyze the Canadian tax system was in 1988, and because the 15 years covers a time of government deficit cutting and tax hikes, followed by several years of tax cuts.

The main finding is that on average, tax rates dropped by 2 % between 1990 and 2005 as both federal and provincial governments undid the tax increases of the 1990s with deeper and broader reductions.

But the relief wasn’t spread equally. Those in the top 1% of earners actually saw their tax bill drop by about 4%, whereas those at the very bottom saw the take rise by 5%.

Lee said although the lowest income earners generally pay no or very little income tax, they do pay a disproportionately high amount in relation to their income in sales taxes, property taxes and other government revenue generators, such as gaming and liquor sales.

Tax cuts by provinces was the main impetus behind the flattening of the system, says Lee, although federal cuts, such as the elimination of the 5% high income surcharge after 2001 also reduced progressivity.

Provincial taxes are less progressive than federal levies because of their greater reliance on sales tax and fees for such things as driver’s licences. As well, provinces generally have flatter provincial income tax rates.

“Provincial income tax cuts are the major culprit behind Canada’s eroding tax fairness, an important consideration given allegations by the provinces of a fiscal imbalance in Canadian federalism,” the report finds.

Upper-income earners benefited from a 2001 federal decision to eliminate the 5 per cent "high-income surtax" and from preferential treatment of capital gains from the sale of stock market shares and real estate.

The affluent were also better able to take advantage of increased allowable tax deductions for RRSPs, Lee said.

At the other end of the scale, low-income earners saw their tax rates accelerate as a result of increases in payroll, consumption and property taxes, as well as user fees.

The analysis concludes that there is scope for raising income taxes at the top of the income ladder to make the system fairer.

"Such changes would help to ensure those who can afford to contribute more for public goods and services valued by all Canadians can do so," the study says.


Tax cuts won't buy a cup of coffee
Analyst says savings for low-income earners are, at most, 39¢ a day

Unveiling tax goodies on mini-budget night, a beaming Finance Minister Jim Flaherty declared to a national audience that "these tax cuts will move some 385,000 people off the income tax rolls altogether."

Sound good?

It should. This kind of thing has been a staple of federal budgets for many a year.

But analysts scoff at this supposed manifestation of a government's goodwill toward Canadians at the bottom of the financial scale.

In fact, there's widespread agreement the tax changes introduced by Flaherty do little to improve the lot of low-income earners.

"Don't get sucked in by that," says TD Bank chief economist Don Drummond when asked about Flaherty's claim 385,000 people won't pay federal tax as a result of the Oct. 30 mini-budget. "Most of those people were paying $5 or $10."

He said he completely agrees with the idea that someone earning under about $14,000 should not be taxable. "But just bear in mind the amount of taxes they are paying. It's not a very meaningful statistic."

The main lever used in Flaherty's mini-budget to ease the tax burden on low-income Canadians was raising the basic personal amount that can be earned without paying federal taxes to $9,600 – an increase of $671.

The people supposedly removed from the tax rolls, then, are those whose taxable earnings would have been slightly higher than the old threshold of $8,929.

"There are people who would be just barely above the amount of the non-refundable credit, so, in effect, you put them in a zero tax position," says Hugh Mackenzie, a research associate with the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. "They're not eliminated from the tax rolls. The position that they find themselves in is that when they go through the tax calculation, they find at the end of it they don't owe anything.

"It's not as if these people are exempted forever from paying tax," Mackenzie added. "As inflation goes on and economic circumstances change, you could have a very similar income and find yourself taxable again."

In his mini-budget, Flaherty also said he is helping taxpayers by dropping the lowest personal income tax rate to 15 per cent from 15.5 per cent. This helps all taxpayers but is proportionately more helpful to those with low incomes.

But Flaherty's budget measures still aren't great news.

Cutting the lowest tax rate will return about $1.3 billion a year to taxpayers, notes Drummond. "When you've got 20 million paying taxes, $1.3 billion doesn't go very far."

However, he says, the Harper government decided to spend the money it had for tax cuts on reducing the GST another percentage point to 5 per cent.

With a GST cut, "there's no incentive to work, save and invest. In fact, if it gives any incentive, the incentive is only to spend more and consumption is not one thing the Canadian economy is short of by any means," Drummond said.

As a result, Flaherty's income tax moves do little for Canadians with the smallest earnings packets, economic analysts say.

First of all, it's universally noted the reduction in the lowest income tax rate to 15 per cent only reverses a tax increase brought in by Flaherty in his 2006 budget. Taxpayers are getting a benefit they would have received anyway had he not raised income taxes last year.

It's a similar situation with the increase in the basic personal amount to $9,600. Flaherty is only moving forward increases in that tax break put in place by the Liberals in 2005.

Taken together, the Oct. 30 measures will provide only very modest help for low-income earners.

The CCPA's Mackenzie estimates the mini-budget changes will result in a maximum income tax reduction for individuals of $242 in 2007, $187 in 2008 and $144 in 2009.

For a single parent, the maximum reduction is $298 in 2007, $184 in 2008 and $94 in 2009, he said.

And those savings will be less for anyone with an income below about $38,000 a year, Mackenzie said. So, as a result of the way taxes are calculated, Flaherty's income tax changes will amount to a gain of at most 39 cents a day for a single individual and 25 cents a day for a single parent, he estimates.

It marginally helps people with very small incomes, says Rob Rainer, executive director of the National Anti-Poverty Organization.

"But we're not going to see any major, substantive visual evidence on the streets, so to speak, of people really having their financial fortunes reversed by this," Rainer said.

Analysts and anti-poverty advocates agree that Canadians must go way beyond tax cuts if they are going to use government fiscal measures to effectively reduce poverty.

Reducing taxes for those at the low end of the income ladder only helps if governments refrain from cancelling out any benefits by clawing back income supports and social assistance as taxpayers' incomes begin to rise above the subsistence level, economists stress.

These clawbacks, designed to keep support programs from becoming too expensive, act as a disincentive for low-income workers to extend their hours or upgrade skills because the reduction in social benefits, combined with rising tax rates, leave them with less money. As a result, what economists call their marginal effective tax rate can reach the same level or higher than top income earners.

"You really have to get the effective rates on low-income people down," says Dale Orr, an economist with Global Insight. "Some of these people are subject to very high effective marginal rates because they lose tax credits and subsidies and things. So we really have to do something better for them."

The federal Conservatives have taken a step in this direction, introducing the Working Income Tax Benefit, a $550-million-a-year program designed to help eliminate some disincentives for low-income earners. However, critics say it needs to be expanded to be of maximum value to working families.


Federal government shows no interest in making Canada better
Lana Payne
The Telegram

Before kids even go to school, we expect them to connect the dots.
My daughter has been doing it for years and she’s only 6. When she’s finished connecting the dots, she is left with a clear picture that she then colours a multitude of shades and hues.
You soon learn, though, that children are very good at connecting other kinds of dots. At Thanksgiving, like most kids in the city, she was asked to bring items to school for the food bank. We talked to her about food banks and explained that not everyone had enough money to buy food, pay bills and buy clothes for their kids. And that food banks help, but they are not the answer.
This must have stayed on her mind, as a few days later she asked, out of the blue, if we had food banks because “rich people didn’t share enough.”
Canada’s not-so-new prime minister and his blustery finance minister are counting on us having forgotten to connect the dots.
They certainly don’t want us questioning their tax-cut agenda and the damage it is causing and will continue to have on the country’s social fabric.
They most certainly do not want Canadians contemplating this failed and flawed public policy.
Because if Canadians start connecting the dots, they may discover that despite tens and tens and tens of billions of dollars in tax cuts, they are still not feeling that financially secure.
Despite a 30-year unemployment low, despite more than a decade of government surpluses and despite unprecedented economic growth, Canadians are a worried lot — at least according to polling by the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives.
It may have something to do with all the debt families are carrying and a lack of household savings. Or it may be because real wages, excluding inflation, have not increased since the recession year of 1981-82.

Not shared
It’s no wonder Canadians are feeling a little shaky. After all, the country is generating more wealth than ever before, they see politicians giving away billions, but it isn’t filtering down to them.
And despite this failed and unimaginative economic policy of tax cutting, the federal Conservatives persist with the finance minister announcing at the end of October another $60 billion in tax cuts — almost 25 per cent going to corporations.
This is what Canadians do know and what Stephen Harper ought to fear.
They know how expensive it is to send their big kids to university or college because taxes haven’t been used to reduce the cost of post-secondary education.
They know that only the lucky and the fortunate can access affordable child care and early learning programs for their smaller kids. They know that tax cuts won’t repair mould-infested schools. They know tax cuts won’t build bridges or pave roads. Nor will they build hospitals, buy cancer-treatment equipment or pay home-care workers a decent wage. Tax cuts do nothing for homeless people, except keep them homeless.
And tax cuts for corporations do even less, except feather a few already cushy nests.
Canadians know that the last thing hugely profitable corporations need is more of their hard-earned cash. Yet the Harper Conservatives have done just that, handing over another $14.8 billion in corporate tax cuts, including to obscenely rich oil and gas multinationals.
It’s no wonder a study last week by the Centre for Policy Alternatives discovered that Canada’s tax system is becoming less and less progressive. According to the report, by economist Marc Lee, the richest one per cent of families pay a lower percentage of their income to governments than the poorest.
Lee’s conclusion was that Canada’s tax system, after years of cuts, now fails a basic test of fairness.
And this was before the Conservatives’ latest round of tax cuts, which had many economists warning that Harper had slammed the door on any new major programs.
What a waste. This money could have made a real difference in the everyday lives of Canadians. An average $200-a-year individual tax cut won’t buy a coffee a day. But collectively, it could have done a lot of good.
That’s, of course, if you are interested in making that difference in the first place.

Government doesn’t care
What is becoming increasingly clear is that Canada’s slightly used Conservative government has no interest in that. They are much too busy managing the public relations of a war, shutting out the media and playing politics.
And while they play politics — fencing with each other over who is the sharpest politician in the lot — another child’s sense of wonder is dimmed by poverty because government chose tax cuts over action.
And that is the whole problem. We have a federal government that doesn’t believe in government, and so most days are spent dismantling and diminishing government as a force of change.

The message to Canadians is: don’t look to Ottawa to be part of the solution.


Unfair burden on poor

EDITORIAL
TheStar.com


Whether taxes are high or low, they ought to be fair, with those with the greatest ability to pay contributing a larger percentage of their income than those with less ability to pay. Such a progressive tax structure has long been a core Canadian value – at least in principle.

But the reality of our current tax system tells a far different story.

In 2005, the richest Canadians actually paid a smaller share of their income in taxes than those who earned the least. In a country that prides itself on fairness, all levels of government took a combined 30.7 per cent of income in taxes and fees from those with incomes under roughly $13,500, but only 30.5 per cent from the top 1 per cent of Canadians, those with incomes of more than $265,800 a year.

In the broad middle between the poorest and the richest, the tax system was mildly progressive, which means that the very richest Canadians paid a lower overall tax rate than any other group.

These findings come from a new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which looked at changing taxes from 1990 to 2005, a period when the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer. Astonishingly, it found tax cuts had exacerbated that trend.

During this period of big tax cuts, the overall tax rate for most Canadians fell 2 percentage points. For the wealthiest, the drop was 4 percentage points. But while others were getting tax breaks, the poorest Canadians saw their tax rate rise more than 5 percentage points.

By their very nature, some taxes are regressive, hitting the poor harder than the middle class and the rich. Property taxes are one such tax and while they took a diminishing share of everyone else's income over the period, for the very poor they took a rising share, increasing to 5.9 per cent in 2005 from 5.1 per cent in 1990.

Sales taxes, which are also regressive, had the same effect. Rising more slowly than income for most Canadians, they increased significantly relative to income for the two lowest-income groups.

But if that wasn't bad enough, cuts in progressive federal and provincial personal income taxes favoured those with higher incomes, particularly the rich, at the expense of the poor. To create greater fairness, Marc Lee, the study's author, suggests hiking taxes on the rich.

But taxing the rich would do nothing for the poor. It is far more important to tackle poverty head on, and raising incomes of the 10 per cent of Canadians who live on less than $13,500 a year.


See:

Flaherty's Smoke and Mirrors

Tax Cuts For All

Tax Cuts For The Rich Burden You and Me

Tax Fairness For The Rich



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You Don't Need A Weatherman


To know which way the wind blows.

It's been blowing since yesterday. I know my wind chimes haven't stopped ringing.

This is what the American 24/7 cable channels call 'severe weather'.

Except it's Alberta. It's Edmonton. It's November. When we should have snow. We have above average temperatures. Rain. And now wind storms.

90 km an hour that's a hurricane by any other name. Except we are landlocked.

I call it Weird Weather.





Wind warning for: City of Edmonton-St. Albert-Sherwood Park
Issued at 5:11 AM MST TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007
STRONG NORTHWEST WINDS OF 60 GUSTING TO 90 KM/H HAVE DEVELOPED.
AN INTENSE LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM MOVED EASTWARD THROUGH CENTRAL ALBERTA OVERNIGHT. IN THE WAKE OF THE SYSTEM GUSTY WESTERLY WINDS HAVE DEVELOPED AND WINDS OF 60 GUSTING TO 90 KM/H ARE EXPECTED ACROSS THE WARNING REGIONS UNTIL MID AFTERNOON.

PLEASE REFER TO THE LATEST PUBLIC FORECASTS FOR FURTHER DETAILS.


SEE:

Environmentalists Caused Wildfires

Black and White



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Not So Green Apple


And what are the chances that Apple will blame China, where their phones are produced, for this? After all China bashing is all the rage in the US of A.

Apple’s iPhone contains hazardous chemicals and materials, according to the results of scientific tests commissioned by Greenpeace and released today. This is the first testing of an Apple product following the commitment by Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, to a ‘Greener Apple’, in May 2007.

An independent scientific laboratory tested 18 internal and external components of the iPhone and confirmed the presence of brominated compounds in half the samples, including in the phone’s antenna, in which they (1) made up 10 per cent of the total weight of the flexible circuit board. A mixture of toxic phthalate esters (2) was found to make up 1.5 per cent of the plastic (PVC) coating of the headphone cables.

The insight into the components of the iPhone is presented in the Greenpeace report, ‘Missed call: the iPhone’s hazardous chemicals’ This is the third time that Greenpeace has tested an Apple product since 2006. Similar analyses of a MacBook Pro and an iPod Nano also revealed the presence of brominated flame retardants and PVC in some components.

(1) Bromine: Whether in additive or reactive form, the presence of high proportions by weight of bromine in electronic components is of concern with respect to the disposal or recycling of end-of-life iPhone handsets, as even cross-linked organic-bound bromine can contribute to the formation of toxic chemicals, including persistent and bioaccumulative brominated dioxins and related compounds during thermal destruction or processing.

(2) Phthalates: The European Directive 2005/84/EC prohibits the use of di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate(DEHP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP) and benzyl butyl phthalate(BBP) in all toys or childcare articles put on the market in Europe (with a limit of 0.1% by weight).




SEE:

PC is 25 years old

Slaves To Ipod



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Mattel In China

The problem is not with China but with the outsourcing by American Corporations who then do not take responsibility for either worker or consumer protection for their products as the Mattel recalls showed this summer.

The fact is production in China is no different than production anywhere else. It is the corporations responsibility to insure safety standards are met both for workers and consumers. Instead cheap production has also meant a lowering of those standards.

In order to avoid responsibility for recalls the corporations, and the ineffectual Consumer Protection Agency in the U.S. would rather blame China.

Twenty years of the ideology of contracting out/outsourcing for profit meant that corporations relied on making record profits from lower standards abroad for quicker and higher profits. Now the chickens come home to roost. And again as typical of corporate bosses they look for others to blame.

Mattel did not meet safety standards for it's products and spent the summer allowing the blame to fall on China.


"China has received a lot of blame for the recalls in the West," said Hari Bapuji, assistant professor at the University of Manitoba in Canada and lead author of the report, "Toy Recalls -- Is China the Problem?"

"They do have problems, there is no doubt. But I think the blame they received was larger than their share of their responsibility for the problem."

This paper analyzes the data on toy recalls over the last 20 years and
finds that the number of recalls and the number of recalls of Chinese-made
toys have witnessed an upward trend. We examine the increase closely and
find that the number of defects attributable to design issues is much higher than those attributable to manufacturing problems. We contextualize these findings in light of the latest recall of toys by Mattel and make two major suggestions: first, ensuring the accountability of toy companies to improve their product designs and second, encouraging the development of global standards to enhance product safety.

Our analysis of toy recalls revealed that an overwhelming majority of the recalls
could have been avoided with better designs. Therefore, it is important to focus efforts on learning from the recalls that occurred in the past and minimize their recurrence. Our analysis also revealed that the presence of excess lead paint is a result of differences in the standards of exporting and importing country. These could be avoided through legislation and education.

Mattel HQ
Mattel says it was mainly to blame
Mattel has admitted that most of the toys recalled in recent safety scares had "design flaws" and that Chinese manufacturers were not to blame.

Why Mattel Apologized to China - TIME

BBC NEWS | Business | Chinese province 'may sue Mattel'

China's Guangdong province is likely to join a planned libel suit against the US toy giant Mattel, according to the China Daily.

Mattel recalled more than 21 million Chinese-made toys this summer, but later said that 85% of the recall was due to its own design faults.

Responsible Shopper Profile: Mattel


MONITORING MATTEL IN CHINA

By Stephen Frost and May Wong

Recently the Asia Monitor Resource Center published a report which assessed the way in which Mattel monitors its code of conduct. We called it Monitoring Mattel: Codes of conduct, workers and toys in southern China, and in it we tried to show the limitations inherent in the implementation and monitoring of codes in China (and perhaps elsewhere). We discussed many issues, but here I want to raise three of our major themes.

The first is that a chasm separates what we might call corporate Mattel and production line Mattel. The second theme, arising out of this, is that Chinese workers do not have a voice in the formulation, implementation, or monitoring of Mattel's code of conduct. The final theme is that despite some major steps on Mattel's behalf, there is still some way to go before the code and its monitoring could be called transparent.

Strengthening of Consumer Agency Opposed by Its Boss - New York Times

The top official for consumer product safety has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation that would strengthen the agency that polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools.

On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency’s authority, double its budget and sharply increase its dwindling staff.

Ms. Nord opposes provisions that would increase the maximum penalties for safety violations and make it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products, protect industry whistleblowers and prosecute executives of companies that willfully violate laws.

The measure is an effort to buttress an agency that has been under siege because of a raft of tainted and dangerous products manufactured both domestically and abroad. In the last two months alone, more than 13 million toys have been recalled after tests indicated lead levels of almost 200 times the safety ceiling.

Ms. Nord’s opposition to key elements of the legislation is consistent with the broadly deregulatory approach of the Bush administration. In a variety of areas, from antitrust to trucking and worker safety, officials appointed by President Bush have sought to reduce the role of regulation and government in the marketplace.

Nord clinging to her job as head of commission amid dangerous toy recalls

Nord also told a House Energy and Commerce panel that she did no wrong by accepting three free trips from industry worth thousands of dollars, saying it had been common agency practice with approval from CPSC attorneys.

“This practice, not common by me, is legal ... and was in place for 20 years, long before I came to the commission,” she told lawmakers who questioned her independence.

“Faced with limited enforcement dollars,” Nord said, “I would much rather spend $900 in a laboratory than on airfare and hotel.”

Profits valued over children's safety

By MARIANNE MEANS
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON-- It's a national embarrassment.

The Consumer Products Safety Commission is ordinarily not a controversial agency -- it is so small it operates largely in obscurity. But it has suddenly become a public outrage, a symbol of the Bush administration's cavalier attitude toward the public good when it conflicts with big business interests.

We have always known this is President Bush's basic notion of how to govern, but up to now we had seldom been hit smack in the face with it. The acting chairman of the CPSC, Nancy Nord, testified recently on Capitol Hill that the commission opposed congressional efforts to expand the agency's budget and powers in order to get a handle on tainted toys and other products flooding the U.S. from China.

Her indifference to the threat from lead-contaminated toys and other consumer items created a firestorm. It forced the administration to rush forth with an alternative plan that had been languishing for months. That plan would set up a system allowing most industries to police themselves but add more inspectors for companies with particularly dangerous products or bad safety records.

It is, predictably, far more limited in scope and authority than the congressional plan. But it will temporarily serve the administration's purpose of muddying the issue.

The decline of the CPSC is a shame. Congress proposed the agency at the peak of the consumer movement in the late 1960s, when the country was rebelling against the traditional concept of caveat emptor -- let the buyer beware. The public was tired of business getting away with shoddy practices and shoddy goods.

The major champion of the cause, Ralph Nader, was listed in a magazine as one of the nation's 10 "most admired" men and consumerism enjoyed support across political and philosophical lines. But then Nader, full of himself, made a major mistake. He endorsed the 1972 presidential candidacy of George McGovern and dragged his cause to the far left. As a consumer crusader, he was popular; as a potential presidential candidate, he was a disaster.

(And still is -- Democrats loathe him because his pitiful 2000 candidacy got just enough votes to do in Vice President Al Gore in Florida's tight contest. Yet he recently mused that he would like to run for president again next year because he saw no difference between GOP and Democratic principles. The man is an egomaniac.)

Meanwhile, the CPSC continues its drastic fall. Nord and her predecessor, Hal Stratton, have made several trips around the world on junkets financed by the industries they are supposed to be regulating.

Nord rejected the congressional offer of more money and authority. She warned that the bill "would harm product safety and put the American people at greater risk."

Nord's logic seems a little nutty.

The bill would increase the agency's budget from $63 million to $142 million by 2015 and increase its staff by 20 percent. It would raise the cap on penalties for safety violations from $1.8 million to $100 million, ban lead in kids' products and make it illegal to sell recalled goods. It would add whistleblower protections.

But she is used to viewing the world from the one-sided viewpoint of business. She is a lawyer who worked for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and in private practice for clients such as General Electric and other leading manufacturers and retailers.

Her agency is responsible for overseeing more than 15,000 types of products. But it has only 400 staffers, fewer than half the number when the agency was formally established in 1973. It has only one full-time toy tester.

The CPSC has been without a chair for more than a year. In March, Bush nominated Michael Baroody, a manufacturing industry lobbyist, to become chairman. He withdrew his name two months later rather than reveal his severance agreement with the National Association of Manufacturers.

Democrats are now calling for Nord to resign. She is certainly in an inappropriate job. But Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., warned that if she leaves, Bush might just forget to replace her and leave the commission rudderless and helpless. That seems to have been Bush's goal all along. To get real consumer protection, we will have to wait for a Democratic president.

Marianne Means is a Washington, D.C., columnist with Hearst Newspapers. Copyright 2007 Hearst Newspapers.