HeadCount Blog

A Santa Fe economist has some sobering facts and figures for you.

It turns out that New Mexico is losing jobs more than a hundred times faster than the state’s Economic Development Department is creating them – and you could probably extrapolate those grim numbers to many other states.

According to this must-read story in the Santa Fe Reporter, Samuel Bowles, who runs the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute, also has numbers suggesting that economic inequality in the United States runs twice as high as in Sweden. And that the chances of someone in the bottom 10 percent of society rising to the top 10 percent is a little more than one percent. Which is to say that social mobility is increasingly difficult. Jobs guarding the rich, however, are increasingly available. According to the increasing disparity in income, Bowles argues, nearly one in four New Mexico jobs is dedicated to keeping people in line, either as police, guards, or corporate IT spies.

Does education help? Not according to Samuel Bowles. “Being willing to sit in a boring classroom for 12 years, and then sign up for four more years and then sign up for three or more years after that—well, that’s a pretty good measure of your willingness to essentially do what you’re told,” he says.

Three more numbers, none of them lucky:

42
38.8
46.4

The first is how many years have passed since Bowles was inspired by [Dr. Martin Luther] King to “put his heart and his head together” and study economic inequality.

The second is the Gini measure of inequality for the US back then, a level comparable to other wealthy nations like Japan or Israel today.

The third is the most recent US Gini, as calculated by the Census Bureau. It’s at a level comparable to the Philippines, a former colony of islands where every other person lives on less than $2 a day, or Rwanda, an even poorer country in Central Africa that was home to a genocide 16 years ago—a country whose name is often synonymous with hopelessness.

According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), President Obama’s 2011 National Drug Control Budget is requesting $15.5 billion “to reduce drug use and its consequences.” This represents an increase of $521.1 million, or 3.5%, over 2010. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition notes that the upcoming budget allocates in money in almost exactly the same proportions as in previous years, a “nearly two-to-one budget disparity that heavily favors spending on law enforcement and punishment over public health strategies like treatment and prevention.”

Although Obama’s new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, declared the “drug war” a thing of the past, telling the Wall Street Journal that, “We’re not at war with people in this country,” the new budget suggests it’s drug war business as usual at a time when discretionary funding for everything except the defense budget is being frozen. Meanwhile, states – and even countries, such as Mexico – are increasingly looking to legalize marijuana for both medical and economic reasons. (Fourteen states have already done so to date.) Spending on federal drug control is down about $3 billion from 2001, however.

An ONDCP press release characterizes the new figures as “balanced and comprehensive.”

“The new budget proposal demonstrates the Obama Administration’s commitment to a balanced and comprehensive drug strategy,” Kerlikowske added, in the advisory. “In a time of tight budgets and fiscal restraint, these new investments are targeted at reducing Americans’ drug use and the substantial costs associated with the health and social consequences of drug abuse.”

This seems more than fair: If you’re a Latino citizen (and even if you’re not), HeadCount partner Voto Latino would like to share twenty-five free tracks with you in exchange for pledging to participate in the 2010 census.

The Latino community has been traditionally undercounted in past censuses, which means political underrepresentation and underfunding of education, health, and employment opporunities in this community. Businesses use census information to identify markets, cities use it to determine infrastructure needs, and the government uses it to draw up electoral districts.

Voto Latino emphasizes that the census form, which comes in the mail and takes about ten minutes to fill out, neither asks about immigration status nor shares information with other government agencies. While there’s certainly plenty of things to be paranoid about as an immigrant these days, the census is not among them.

Here’s what you’ll get for your pledge:

Pitbull – “Across the Waters”
Morrissey -“When Last I Spoke to Carol (Toy Selectah mix)”
Aventura – “Su Veneno”
Mos Def – “No Hay Nada Mas”
Los Tigres del Norte – “El Emigrante”
Jaguares – “Visible”
Rodrigo y Gabriela -“Hanuman”
Juan Luis Guerra – “La Travesia”
Ozomatli -“Believe”
Los Tucanes de Tijuana -“Los Illegales”
Paulina Aguirre -“Esperando Tu Voz”
Ruben Blades – “Las Calles”
Kinto Sol – “Voy a Sacudirme”
Os Mutantes – “Querida, Querida”
Nortec Collective – “Tengo La Voz”
Antibalas – “Che Che Cole (Makossa Mix)”
Los Amigos Invisibles – “Mentiras”
Ceú – “Grains de Beaute”
Maleco Collective – “Yo Soy La Voz”
Panda – “Solo a Terceros”
Pacha Massive – “If You Want It”
Brownout – “Ayer y Hoy”
Hip Hop Hoodíos – “Agua Pa’ La Gente”
Alvaro Torres – “Te Sueno Grande”
Reyes del Bajo Mundo – “Cuanto Cuesta”
Mishka – “3rd Eye Vision”

Arianna Huffington thinks we should move our money out of the six banks that hold 60% of our gross domestic product – Bank of America, J. P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, U.S. BC – and into small local banks or credit unions. Assuming you have any to move.

Huffington’s Move Your Money movement represents a grassroots response to the large banks’ reluctance to loan money or refinance mortgages after having repaid most of the $700 billion TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) funds taxpayers floated them last year. At the same time, they’ve also been raising fees willy-nilly, picking customers’ virtual pockets ten bucks or more at a time while handing out record bonuses to top executives. It certainly feels like an abusive relationship, as Huffington pal Bill Maher observes in this video. (I certainly felt abused after a year-long struggle to refinance our mortgage involving three banks and one small claims court filing).

Money movers argue that banking locally is better for the community. Plus local banks and credit unions usually offer sweeter deals on credit cards and checking accounts than big banks, along with more personalized service. And you’re keeping your money in your own neighborhood, which has been proven to have multiple economic benefits. Moreover, President Obama has promised to give smaller banks $30 billion in order to extend credit to small businesses.

Some skeptical economists, though, note that even thousands of people moving their money is still only a drop in the bucket as far as these banks’ holdings are concerned. If anything, you’re only punishing yourself with inconvenience. And of course you’re only transferring your funds from one bastion of capitalism to another. But the Move Your Money testimonials page is rife with anecdotes about people taking gleeful pleasure in letting their money speak for them.

Move Your Money makes it easy for you. Just enter your zip code and choose a local casheteria from the list of banks and credit unions that pops up.

It’s not about punishing corporations – because corporations, as everyone except the Supreme Court realizes, are not people. It’s about improving your personal financial scene.

If you haven’t yet watched President Obama’s lively and engaging Q&A during a GOP retreat last Friday, what are you waiting for? (Or you could just catch the high points, with an obviously delighted Jon Stewart, below.)

Yes, political points aplenty were scored. But more importantly, Obama was modeling a type of civil discourse that, so far as I can recall, hasn’t been much in evidence during the past quarter-century, if then. The Republicans came prepared with their written talking points, while Obama responded extemporaneously for the most part, like a jazz improviser, with respect for the ideological differences separating him from his opponents.

Obama’s most important observation, however, may well have been his thoughts on the guaranteed mutual destruction assured by the current political climate. His presence at the Republican confab demonstrated a real alternative, one that both sides of the aisle would do well to emulate. But I’m not holding my breath.

So all I’m saying is, we’ve got to close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality. I’m not suggesting that we’re going to agree on everything, whether it’s on health care or energy or what have you, but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don’t have a lot of room to negotiate with me.

I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you’ve been telling your constituents is, this guy is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that’s going to destroy America.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Parke Puterbaugh and I have at least a couple of things in common. We’ve both covered music for some of the same magazines, and we’ve both written books either with or for or at least tolerated by Phish.

The Phish Book, published in 1998 and, ahem, currently out of print, was a collaboration with the band, who kindly submitted to long hours of interviews in order to let the band tell their its story in their own words amid a lot of stunning photographs.

Parke, on the other hand, went the biography route, having previously worked as Phish’s unofficial in-house writer for album-release biographies, press releases, and festival playbills. His new book Phish: The Biography, covers the band’s earliest days through its breakup and subsequent reunion last year. Where I caught the band at what many still consider to be the peak of its career, Parke carried through the trials, tribulations, and unexpected redemption. It’s a terrific tale, almost a love story, about a band, its community, and the forces that draw them together and/or tear them asunder.

We two helping, friendly chroniclers spoke recently about our respective tomes and the ever-evolving nature of all things Phish.

Richard Gehr: You write in Phish: The Biography that Rolling Stone didn’t run the Phish feature that they’d assigned you for nearly two years, which must have been frustrating. Why do you think the mainstream music press resisted reporting on the band for so long, despite their obvious popularity?

Parke Puterbaugh: I got the assignment in 1995, at which point they were ready to do something big on the band. Between assignment and delivery, however, there was a shakeup in the music department and the new guys who came in – Keith Moerer and Jim DeRogatis – their orientation was much more indie-rock. I think Phish were somewhat of a victim of indie-rock snobbery. Even so, they realized they had to run something on them, and every half-year or so Moerer would call up and say, “Hey, I think we’re going to run that Phish feature after all. Can you freshen it up for us?” And I’d be sent off to some big event of theirs, like a New Year’s Eve concert, and totally redo the story and bring it up to date.

It was a blessing in disguise, as it turned out, because I really got to know them and it laid the groundwork for doing the book by giving me the opportunity to write for them. Every so often their management would call me to write an album bio or “Phishbill” or something along those lines. I did that two or three times a year starting in ‘96, and basically continued through the breakup and even afterward with some of the solo projects. So I have no complaints about how that Rolling Stone episode turned out, because when the piece ran, it was an enormous story. It may have been one of the last huge rock ‘n’ roll features in the magazine. It all worked out, oddly enough.

Gehr: I always felt that few bands were as indie as Phish were during the nineties. I wrote a piece about the Grateful Dead for the Village Voice in the eighties, and my take was that the Dead were unfashionable for all the wrong reasons, because no band is more indie or do-it-yourself than the Dead had been when they had their own label. And I always felt the same way about Phish even though they were on Elektra. You can tell that their relationship with Elektra was almost completely on their terms – and practically invisible except for Elektra distributing their albums. They did their own tour support, didn’t make videos, and existed in their own cave within the Warner Records empire.

You also write books about wetlands and beaches. How does that overlap with your music writing?

Puterbaugh: I double-majored in English and sociology as an undergraduate, but I’d always been interested in the environment. So I got a Masters degree in environmental science, which was an outgrowth of some travel books I’d been writing about beaches. I was fascinated with the notion of development at the beach, about why it’s a bad idea. I didn’t really understand the science of it, so that propelled me to get my grad-school degree in environmental science with a concentration on coastal-zone management, coastal geology, barrier island formation, that kind of thing. It was wonderful; I really loved studying that stuff. I was starting from scratch and had to take two years of undergraduate science courses just so I could qualify to enter grad school.

So I was writing books on the California and Florida coastlines concurrent with music writing. In fact, I was in grad school when the whole Phish assignment started. I’ll never forget coming back from seeing them at Red Rocks, going to a class and the professor saying, “Parke, I understand you write about rock ‘n’ roll. Have you ever heard about this band called Phish, but it’s not spelled with an ‘F’?” and I said, “Yes, coincidentally I’m writing a story on them at the moment and I just got back from seeing them play. Why do you ask?” And he said, “One of my students is the sister of somebody in the band.” And it turned out to be Kristy Manning, Trey’s sister. So he got us together for lunch and I got to know Kristy independently of this Phish assignment. These strange coincidences happen all the time with Phish. Read the rest of this entry »

In addition to their Music for Relief track, the Dave Matthews Band is offering five previously unreleased live track for sale on its website. The Haiti Relief Project EP (and a limited-edition T-shirt) will benefit Dave Matthews’s Bama Works Haiti Relief Fund. The EP costs only $5.

Moreover, proceeds from all other merchandise the band sells TODAY will also go to Haiti relief efforts.

The staff of Ants Marching, the Dave Matthews Band fan forum, helped select the versions the five songs that appear on the EP. The art, which also appears on the Haiti Relief Project T-shirt, was donated by designer Adam Larson of Adam+Company.)

The Haiti Relief Project features five previously unreleased live tracks from Dave Matthews Band. The collection kicks off with “Butterfly,” a song Matthews wrote for the film Because of Winn Dixie and performed solo in this 2007 recording. It’s followed by a 2004 version of “Cry Freedom” featuring a powerful performance from LeRoi Moore, the group’s saxophonist, who passed away in 2008. Three tracks captured on the band’s 2009 summer tour – “Out Of My Hands,” “Lying In The Hands Of God” and “Dive In” – are also included.

And here’s the track list:

1. Butterfly – recorded08.28.2007 / Verizon Wireless Amphitheater Kansas City / Bonner Springs, KS (Dave Matthews, solo)
2. Cry Freedom – recorded 07.31.2004 / Sound Advice Amphitheatre / West Palm Beach, FL
3. Out Of My Hands – recorded 07.19.2009 Alpine Valley Music Theatre / East Troy, WI
4. Lying In The Hands Of God – recorded 06.12.2009 / Saratoga Performing Arts Center / Saratoga Springs, NY
5. Dive In – recorded 09.10.2009 / Greek Theatre / Los Angeles, CA

As part of HeadCount’s “What’s Your Issue?” campaign, we publish regular updates on each of six issues. The following is our latest Health Care Reform update.

Since the last health care update, MTV’s reality show “Jersey Shore” and the character “The Situation” have been fist pumpin’ their way into the cultural spotlight. Perhaps it’s just what America needs right now. But the health care debacle is still the situation in politics – one that has changed a bit since the last update. The Democrats’ health care reform efforts got stopped in its tracks when Republican Scott Brown won an upset victory in the race for the Massachusetts Senate seat previously held by the late Ted Kennedy. With that, Democrats lost their sixty-vote super-majority in the Senate, which means they can no longer prevent a Republican filibuster. This could mean we’re totally back to the drawing board on health care reform. No wonder the country is looking for a little escape and entertainment. So let’s have some fun with health care and Jersey Shore.

* The Situation went on The Tonight Show and nicknamed Conan O’Brien “The Solution.” Well, what’s the solution now for health care reform? An option supported by some Democrats is a quick vote on the same exact bill the Senate approved, meaning it would not go back to the Senate for another vote. But Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said the current Senate bill would not receive the necessary House votes. Led by President Obama, other Democrats support a pared-back health care bill containing only those provisions that are not controversial. These provisions would include pre-existing conditions coverage, a national insurance exchange, a Medicare amendment and the expansion of Medicaid. On the other hand, many Republicans reject the idea of a slimmed-down version of the current legislation and call for just starting over.

* So the question is what does the PUBLIC want? What do YOU want? Where is YOUR voice on this matter? The latest Rasmussen reports indicate that 58% of voters now oppose the plan supported by President Obama. As for popular aspects of reform, more than 70% support creating a new national insurance exchange and requiring health insurance companies to accept applicants with pre-existing conditions. As for the least popular aspects, the majority of voters strongly reject Medicare cuts and excise taxes on “Cadillac” health plans provided by employers. Also not to be overlooked, 78% of voters expect it to cost more than projected.

* The music community has been pumpin’ its fists as well. Musicians in Vermont have assembled a CD with proceeds benefiting the Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign of the Vermont Worker’s Center.
HeadCount band Nine Inch Nails is hosting the story of Eric De La Cruz on the main page of their website. Eric died last year partly because he was unable to obtain health care due to a pre-existing condition.

Want to know more? You can follow our daily headlines on Twitter or check out our Health Care Reform Issue page. If you want to try a little democracy in action, email your Senators and Congressional reps. ‘Cause Health Care Reform is a situation that’s worth pumpin’ your fists for.

Last fall, we had a poll measuring how many of you had health insurance and where you got it. About 35% of you said you were without insurance, and it kicked off a great stream of comments posted online. We’re now going to start asking a new question every few weeks. We invite you to participate in the poll and, if so-inclined, expound a bit on why you answered the way you did.

This month’s community question deals with sustainability and climate change. Here goes:

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Howard Zinn, who died of a heart attack yesterday at age 87, was an Air Force bombardier before becoming a politically engaged historian, civil-rights activist, vital Vietnam War opponent, prolific writer, indefatigable instigator, and probably the country’s best-known demystifier of American mythology, largely through his best-selling 1980 book, A People’s History of the United States. As others have said, he was a historian who made history and we seemed to be in the middle of a Howard Zinn revival at the time of his death.

In Democracy Now’s excellent rapid-responsive tribute to Zinn, the poet Alice Walker recalls her former professor speaking to a crowd in Atlanta, where he taught at the all-female Spelman College from 1955 to 1963. “Well, I stand to the left of Mao Tse Tung,” he declared to his staunch, pre-civil rights audience, admitting something close to a hanging offense at the time. Noam Chomsky, Zinn’s less entertaining but equally brilliant and provocative close friend, says of Zinn, “He was fearless, he was simple, he was straightforward. He said the right things, said them eloquently, and inspired others to move forward in ways they wouldn’t have done….He could look back on a life of real, unusual achievement.” Last year The History Channel screened The People Speak, a documentary inspired by ordinary people who fought back against the powers that be. It was narrated by Matt Damon and featured readings and performances by Eddie Vedder, Bob Dylan, Lupe Fiasco, Josh Brolin, Viggo Mortensen, Danny Glover, Pink, Morgan Freeman, Benjamin Bratt, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, Marisa Tomei, Bruce Springsteen, and John Legend.

The point of civil disobedience, Zinn says in the documentary inspired by his 1994 autobiography, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, is “to upset people, to trouble them, to disturb them.” He was a rabble-rouser for sure. But even more, according to Naomi Klein, “He was everybody’s favorite teacher, the teacher who changed your life. But he was that for millions and millions of people….We just lost our favorite teacher.” Zinn, Klein adds, taught people “to believe in themselves and their power to change the world.”

For what may be his last published piece, The Nation recently asked Zinn what he thought the high point of President Obama’s first year has been, as well as its biggest disappointment. His reply is especially resonant the morning after Obama’s impressive State of the Union address last night:

I’ ve been searching hard for a highlight. The only thing that comes close
is some of Obama’s rhetoric; I don’t see any kind of a highlight in his
actions and policies.

As far as disappointments, I wasn’t terribly disappointed because I didn’t
expect that much. I expected him to be a traditional Democratic president.
On foreign policy, that’s hardly any different from a Republican–as
nationalist, expansionist, imperial and warlike. So in that sense, there’s
no expectation and no disappointment. On domestic policy, traditionally
Democratic presidents are more reformist, closer to the labor movement, more
willing to pass legislation on behalf of ordinary people–and that’s been
true of Obama. But Democratic reforms have also been limited, cautious.
Obama’s no exception. On healthcare, for example, he starts out with a
compromise, and when you start out with a compromise, you end with a
compromise of a compromise, which is where we are now.