The more you are able to engineer changes

Curt Guyette in Metro Times has an article highlighting an example of the corruption that the Occupy Wall Street crowd is protesting. This example is right here in Detroit.

The Ambassador Bridge, which links Detroit to Windsor, is not publicly owned. The private owner is a company headed by Matty Maroun. The bridge generates a lot of money for Maroun, who is a billionaire. Many public officials in Detroit, Michigan, Windsor, and Ontario see that the Ambassador Bridge will soon be inadequate for the traffic, especially the trucks that are so vital to trade between America and Canada. There is also the fear that a terrorist could take out the bridge, perhaps using 9/11 as an example, causing trade to halt. In addition, the existing span is about 80 years old. A new span needs to be built.

Maroun volunteered to build one next to the existing span. Ontario and Windsor flatly refused. Their end of the bridge doesn't connect directly to their highway system and they don't want any more trucks on the connecting road. Besides, if a terrorist took out one span it would likely fall on the other. They proposed another span two miles downstream. Canada even volunteered to pay Michigan's portion of the costs.

Such a bridge would, of course, be direct competition with Maroun's bridge and cause a drop in his income. If he can't build a second bridge, nobody is going to build a second bridge. So Maroun, using his vast wealth, has been running a disinformation campaign about the second bridge and has been busy buying state legislators. Even though Mich. Gov. Snyder is a strong advocate for the bridge the bills to authorize it have died in the legislature. Guyette notes:

The more money you have, the more power you get. And the more power you get, the more you are able to engineer changes that allow even more money to come your way.
…
If there is a more telling example of how concentrated wealth can be used to skew public policy, we'd like to see it. Just last week, a Michigan Senate committee effectively blocked a bill that sought construction of a publicly owned span downriver from Matty's Ambassador Bridge.

This is what Occupy Wall Street is protesting. It is also why infrastructure should not be in private hands.



Newsweek has a feature article by Andrew Sullivan about OWS. Sullivan was a bit put off by the "goddamn hippies," but has come to understand and appreciate -- and love -- what they're doing. He connects OWS to similar protests around the country and world, and even likens them to the Tea Party.

The theme that connects them all is disenfranchisement, the sense that the world is shifting deeply and inexorably beyond our ability to control it through our democratic institutions. You can call this many things, but a “democratic deficit” gets to the nub of it. Democracy means rule by the people—however rough-edged, however blunted by representative government, however imperfect. But everywhere, the people feel as if someone else is now ruling them—and see no way to regain control.

Later he wrote:

Add to this what can only be called an “accountability deficit.” The financial sector and its deregulated leverage binge in the Clinton and Bush years greatly benefited the top 1 percent. Much of this, we now know, was based on obscure mathematical formulas no one fully understood at best and were direct scams against their own customers at worst. What was Wall Street’s response? A furious attempt to resist any new regulation, a refusal to take full responsibility for the mess, and eager participation in a bailout paid for in part by their victims. Do we really need to understand why some have reached a snapping point—now that Wall Street is lobbying to repeal the one reform that reined it in, Dodd-Frank?

Along with Sullivan's article is an Occupy Wall Street photo gallery.



All that reminds me I heard a story recently (wish I had a link) in which someone found one important topic of agreement between OWS and the Tea Party. They both strongly support campaign finance reform.



Elsewhere in the same issue of Newsweek is a commentary by Niall Ferguson. He wrote we shouldn't protest the rich. See, here they are playing poker to raise money for a charter school in Harlem. It's a great charter school, with 94% passing the 5th grade math exams. Much better than the 60% in the public schools run by teachers who are members of a union that blocks reform. Aren't the rich wonderful!

According to the comments on the Newsweek webpage, CNN did a takedown this morning. I didn't find that story, so I'll do my own takedown.

* There has been a lot of news, at least in Michigan, that charter schools are not always better than public schools in the same neighborhood.

* Charter school students are self-selected and charters may have stiff entrance requirements.

* In this poker tournament the rich are using their charity to pay for one school. There are thousands of schools across the country (charter and public) who could use the money.

* The rich are doing a lot to make sure schools for the poor are failures and all public school teachers are poorly paid.

Anybody want to add a few shots? I'm sure there are more instances of idiocy.



Rob Tisinai, writing in his own blog, created a chart of income inequality and immobility for various countries. He used standard measures for income inequality and found a measure of immobility from The Brookings Institution. It is a measure of how easy it is for someone to change their financial circumstances. The ideal immobility is zero -- everyone gets a job based on merit and those jobs pay according to the worth of the job (and not skewed by inability to get an education or a corporation who shuts out competition). Denmark's rating is 0.15. The US has a rating of .047, which Tisinai explains:

Simply put (very simply put), on average, if my dad made $100,000 a year more than your dad, then I can expect to make $47,000 a year more than you. You and I enter the income race and — bang! – my origins gives me a $47,000 advantage.

Of the 9 developed countries in the diagram USA ranks highest in inequality by quite a bit. It is second highest in immobility, though UK is only a bit worse.

Another reason for the OWS protests.