If It's Good Enough for Rockefeller

On Sept. 15 I attended a meeting here in Portland about fighting foreclosure in our neighborhoods. Present were representatives from citizens’ groups and a representative from the attorney general’s office. At the end of it, I had an idea about how we can turn the situation around. It depends on a legal precedent set by the Rockefellers. Hey, if it worked for them, it can work for us!

Facing astronomical foreclosure rates, dropping property values, and still-rising unemployment rates, what can we do? What if we get the states to take foreclosed properties that are sitting empty back from the banks—as they do for large commercial development projects—and fix them up for people who have lost their homes in the current economy? Oregon can’t afford to do this alone, but could partner with groups like Habitat for Humanity. Prospective residents who aren’t disabled could invest via sweat equity.

The Situation 

Even if you can’t stand numbers, please bear with me while I throw a few out there, because this will give you an idea of the size of the problem.

At the Sept. 15 meeting, I was told that the foreclosure rate is three times higher than it was during the Great Depression. Yes, it really is. This is according to the National Consumer Law Center.

The Case-Schiller Home Price Index (published by Standard & Poors) shows a decline in property values of 29% for the Portland area, and a 33% decline for the 20 cities they track. This was as of March 31. According to the Oregonian (March 8, 2011) 23.1 % of Oregonians owed more than their homes were worth. It’s even worse in some other states. Per a Bloomberg report on real estate, on May 9, 2011, 28% of mortgages in the U.S. were underwater. Figures went as high as 85% in Las Vegas and 73% in Reno.

The official unemployment rate is holding steady at 9.1%, while the actual total number of unemployed is 16.2% and rising. What’s the difference? The official rate tracks people who are unemployed and actively looked for work in the last four weeks. Total unemployed includes people who were too discouraged to continue looking and those who took part-time jobs or work well below their capacity (for example, flipping burgers instead of doing construction work).  Both figures are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, August 2011. There are five unemployed people for every job opening (NY Times, March 11, 2011).

If you’re out of work, you can’t pay the mortgage. That sends the foreclosure rate up, flooding the market with distressed properties.

The federal government made a lot of noise about a program to help homeowners, but they relied on voluntary action from the banks. I was told at the meeting that only 5% of borrowers have had their loans permanently modified.

At this point, it is important to remember that the banks wrote one fraudulent mortgage after another. They continue to write fraudulent foreclosure documents and have them signed by people who don’t even read them. And the government bailed out those same banks with billions of dollars of our tax money.

Even if you aren't out of work, underwater, or facing foreclosure, the situation has consequences for you and your home. When the banks foreclose on a home in your community, and nobody buys it because nobody can afford to anymore, the house sits vacant. The lawn becomes a waist-high jungle of thistles and dandelions. The building deteriorates. Leaks aren’t repaired, so rain may damage walls and floors. Thieves may break in and rip out copper pipe, appliances, or anything they can sell. They may even use the house as a hideout, meth lab, or base for fencing stolen goods. The value of every neighbor’s property continues to plummet, and everyone in the community is endangered, homeowner or not.

If you rent your home, and the bank forecloses on your landlord’s property, you can stay until the end of your lease. If you have no lease, you may have to leave within 90 days. In either case you will not be reimbursed for relocation costs. (This is according to the “Helping Families Save Their Homes Act,” signed by Pres. Obama in 2009.)

Overall, a grim picture. So what can we do?

The Proposed Solution

Not many people know that the land used for the World Trade Center was acquired by eminent domain. David Rockefeller wanted to build the towers, which would increase the value of his other assets in the area, such as the Chase Manhattan Bank building. As his brother Nelson was governor of New York, Rockefeller was able to get the state to take over the properties that were in his way. Hundreds of small businesses were displaced. Some of them fought the proposal all the way to the Supreme Court, but the Court refused to take the case.

What if our state takes over foreclosed-upon houses, and fixes them up for people who need them?

Nobody likes the idea of eminent domain. Very often it displaces homeowners or destroys thriving businesses, as it did in New York City. But the houses lost to foreclosure aren’t thriving. By evicting residents and leaving the houses vacant, the banks are acting to destroy communities.

The State of Oregon, no doubt like many other states, has no money to restore distressed properties. However, the state could cooperate with partners such as Habitat for Humanity, whose purpose is to build housing for, and with, the people who need it. People who want to live in the houses repossessed from the banks could put in sweat equity.

These houses should be reserved for people who have lost their homes through unemployment, disability, or outright fraud by the banks. They should not be made available to speculators—many of whom are already gobbling up foreclosed-upon homes at fire sale prices.

The banks will oppose this project, of course. They are likely to make exorbitant demands, for instance that the taxpayers reimburse them for the total amount of the mortgage rather than the actual value of the slum they’ve created. The mission and purpose of a bank is to conserve, and increase, its profit. They can't, and won't, let one penny go without a fight. In recent years, we have had ample reminders that a bank has no capacity to care whether Americans live on the street, or whether our neighborhoods rot. We can't expect any cooperation from the banks unless there is some way for them to profit from the project, either directly or in terms of marketing and public relations.

At the foreclosure meeting on Thursday, I proposed the idea—of acquiring foreclosed houses by eminent domain and working with Habitat for Humanity—to one of State Senator Chip Shields’ aides, Mary Briggs. She was enthusiastic, and has arranged a meeting for me with Senator Shields on October 12. I will also be sending this proposal to my local Representative, Tina Kotek, and trying to arrange a meeting with her.

What Can You Do to Help?

If you live in Oregon, send an email to Senator Shields at sen.chipshields@state.or.us and tell him you support this idea. Send another to Rep. Kotek, at rep.tinakotek@state.or.us. The more people who support it, the better chance it has of becoming a reality. If you live in another state, meet with one of your legislators and propose something similar.

Our Bodies Our Selves?

A recent article in the New York Times reported on transgender women, born male, who couldn’t afford the surgery they so desperately desired. They paid “pumpers” to inject silicone into their cheeks, buttocks, and chests so that they would look more like women. The injections might cost up to $20,000.  The pumpers, of course, were not licensed medical professionals. The equipment wasn’t always sterile. The silicone was sometimes industrial rather than medical grade, and because it was not encased in an elastomer shell it began to migrate throughout the body. (Even medically-approved breast implants can rupture and the silicone can migrate.) Some of these people died. Others were left disfigured, permanently disabled, or in constant pain.

Although the Times didn’t mention it, I’m fairly sure that transgender advocates would say that health insurance should cover the surgery as it is a medical necessity and should be available to everyone who needs it, not just the wealthy. In other articles appearing around the country, transgender prisoners are suing their states for this purpose.

In Portland, Oregon, where I live, an FTM is suing his insurance company. He has undergone some medical procedures and self-injects with testosterone, but still has ovaries. As a result, he is at high risk for ovarian cancer—the deadliest of gynecological cancers—and wants the insurer to pay for removal of those organs. Portland's mayor is backing a proposal to have the city pay for sex reassignment surgery for its employees.

The last article I’d like to mention appeared in Just Out, Portland’s LGBT newspaper. The story is about a little girl who started calling herself a boy and played only with boys. When she was ten, the mother took her to a “trans therapist", who said, “You have a little boy there.” As a result, the child was given a boy’s name and allowed to use the boys’ bathroom at school.

I don’t want to see desperate people dying at the hands of pumpers or from ovarian cancer. I believe we all have the right to decide what to do with our own bodies. However, I also believe that “transgender” is a cultural issue, not a medical one, and calls for cultural change, not a medical solution. Even with the best medical care, there are long-term consequences to removing healthy organs and injecting yourself with estrogen or testosterone.

In my youth, in the 1950s, I rebelled against a society that valued women only insofar as we measured up to the standard of beauty set by Hollywood and the advertising industry. We were expected to torture ourselves with extreme diets, girdles, nylons, spike heels, hair curlers that you had to wear throughout the night, eyebrow tweezers, razors, and deodorants. The ideal was to look and smell like a Barbie doll.

Women who could afford it tried to match their bodies to the cultural standard via plastic surgery. Jewish women of my generation were pressured to mutilate our noses so that we would look more like gentile women. Most of those who had nose jobs said they felt much better about themselves afterward.

Even more important than her appearance, a woman had to behave in certain ways:  don’t be too assertive, don’t be better at math than your brother, and don’t apply for an executive position.

In the 1950s, the concepts of male and female were grounded in a philosophical notion called essentialism. (I always hated philosophy in college, and I expect that some of you readers will, too. But please be patient with me here, because this turns out to be important.) Essentialism meant that you born with certain characteristics. A woman, for example, was naturally endowed with psychological passivity, and a preference for frilly pink blouses and secretarial work. If you didn’t express those characteristics in your behavior, you weren’t a real woman.

In the 1950s and for most of the 1960s, anyone who didn’t dress and behave in a gender-appropriate manner risked social ostracism, loss of employment, imprisonment, electroshock therapy, rape, and even murder. These days, people aren’t imprisoned or committed to psychiatric institutions for their sexuality, but gays are still vulnerable to all the other consequences. Transgender people suffer more than any other group from the cultural fear and hatred of sexual difference.

A generation ago, the child who was taken to the trans therapist might have turned out to be a butch lesbian. Now I expect that when she hits puberty, she will be considered for surgery and hormones. (I can’t bring myself to use the pronoun he in this situation.)

As a parent, I am frightened by this kind of early pigeonholing, and even more frightened by the medical consequences of early intervention. But I also remember the child that I was—a little girl who liked science. There were times when I wanted to be a boy, because I didn’t fit in with the girls, and because the options for women were so limited back then. Female relatives often said, “You should have been a boy.” If I were growing up now, I might feel pressured to accept a transgender designation. Instead, with the support of the women’s movement, I helped create space for women like me.

The feminist rebellion of the 60s and 70s was grounded in an opposing philosophical notion called constructionism. That is, all the characteristics society has attributed to women are constructed by the culture we live in. In plain English, feminist ideology said that someone born with a female body is a real woman no matter how she presents herself, who she does or doesn’t have sex with, or what she does for a living. The same is true for someone born in a male body.

The popular culture, though, is still wedded to essentialism. Liberal columnists—including female ones—went after the first female presidential candidate in language that reeked of sexism. For example, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times said that Hillary Clinton’s “message is unapologetically emasculating” and the Times news staff spent some time analyzing the “Clinton cackle.”

Despite the economic downturn, women are still paying doctors to “improve” their looks, whether by implanting silicone packets in their breasts or paralyzing their facial muscles with Botox. (Men also pay for cosmetic surgery, but in much smaller numbers.) Per the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 9.5 million cosmetic procedures were performed in 2010. This is down from 11.7 million in 2007, but the Society expects these numbers to rebound if the economy improves. Please note that this does not include plastic surgery for birth defects or deformities resulting from accidents.

I have met transgender people who were much happier after surgery. From a psychological standpoint, they were better adjusted. Like the women who had nose jobs and breast augmentations, they felt better about themselves afterwards. Each of them has only one life, and I would not want to deny them their chance at happiness. The question remains, though: what kind of society are they adjusting to? An essentialist society—one that says some dress and behavior is inherently male and other dress and behavior is inherently female—is profoundly anti-feminist. And that’s the society we have, despite some superficial changes in the last forty years.

Essentialism says that if your personality doesn’t conform to the cultural norm for someone with genitals like yours, change your body.

Constructionism/feminism tells us to learn to be at home in the bodies we have, and demand the right to be the kind of persons we are. It means that we throw our energy into changing the cultural norms. And since nobody can accomplish these tasks alone, feminism also tells us we must organize to transform society rather than seek individual medical solutions to our discomfort in the world.

As Evanescent as a Cloud

Sometimes the Devil offers you a bargain.

Lately I’ve been seeing ads for cloud computing. At first I wondered if it was a new way to predict the weather, or maybe something really abstruse like quantum mechanics. My geek brother said it means that your data is “up in the clouds somewhere.” Finally I figured it out. Businesses and research institutions use it to get more computing power. It is the way your email works, if you use a web-based email program like Yahoo.

What happens is that all your data—and the fancy applications you use to manipulate them—are stored in a cluster of computers owned by somebody else. You pay the cloud computing company for this service. Your machine only stores a simple program that accesses their computers. You save a lot of money, because you purchase a very simple machine without much memory. A large organization doesn’t have to buy expensive computers for each employee and make sure their software is licensed to each computer. They don’t have to spend a wad to repair their computers and keep them up to date.

Kindle is very similar. You own the little machine, but the book is stored on someone else’s computer. You pay Amazon a fee for the right to read an author’s work on your Kindle. It’s a lot cheaper than buying a print copy and you don’t even need a bookshelf. My publisher and my local bookseller tell me that everything is going digital these days.

I didn’t think much about it until I read that Amazon had removed some books from Kindle because the publisher decided they no longer wanted to offer those items in e-book form. (Naturally enough, they were works by George Orwell.) So if you happened to be in the middle of such a book, all of a sudden your screen went blank. You got a refund—but that’s just the same as if your local bookseller came into your house, took a book they’d just sold you off your shelf, and gave you your money back.

Not only that, your payment to Amazon (or any other digital book company) only allows you to read a volume a certain number of times before you no longer have access to it. You’ve got to pay up again. That’s fine if it’s just another silly mystery, but I maintain a small research library that I refer to over and over again.

Now think about all this in the light of our vanishing civil liberties. Imagine a future where physical books have all but disappeared. Where people own computers that are just one step up from dumb terminals. All their personal correspondence, receipts for tax purposes, business records, and databases are kept by cloud computing companies. If the corporatocracy doesn’t want you to read a book, they don’t have to ban it or burn it—they just stop making it available on your digital reader. If they want to put you out of business or squelch your little community organizing group, they just have the cloud computing company refuse to carry you or “inadvertently” erase your data.

So be warned, dear reader. Don’t get sucked up into the world of cloud computing, even at bargain prices. If you think you might care about a book, buy the print version. Otherwise you’ll find that economists like John Maynard Keyes, historians like Howard Zinn, radicals like Emma Goldman, or even novelists like John Steinbeck—or me—have disappeared. And if you try to organize your neighbors into doing something about this “brave new world,” you’d better communicate by carrier pigeon, because if you try the phone or the computer:

Every move you make

Every step you take

They’ll be watching you.

Fun with Oranges and Arabs

The funniest story I read in the past week was the one about a massive dust storm in Arizona. The weathermen dared call it a haboob, which is an Arabic term. Some Arizona residents were outraged. One even wrote, “How do they think our soldiers feel coming back to Arizona and hearing some Middle Eastern term?” No returning soldier has complained thus far, but perhaps they are temporarily preoccupied with other issues, such as PTSD, learning to walk with a prosthetic leg, or even finding a job in this economy.

They are bound to notice sooner or later, however. In the interests of making our troops—and civilian Islamophobes—comfortable, we probably should purge the language of Arabic influence. After all, we called sauerkraut “liberty cabbage” during World War I, and when we were miffed at France for not supporting the second Gulf War, we poured French wine down the sink and ate “freedom fries.”

Since we’re starting with food, we need to scrap marzipan and call it almond paste with sugar—uh-oh, sugar comes from Arabic, so let’s say evaporated cane juice instead. That way it even sounds healthier. Oranges are out—yes, it’s also from Arabic. I have no idea how to replace that word, or what to call the color in your child’s crayon box. And speaking of children, you’d better change the sign on your kid’s lemonade stand before you corrupt their little minds with foreign terms. Lemons, limes, and tangerines were named by Arabs.

We’ve got to rewrite our cookbooks, and get rid of artichokes, apricots, caraway seeds, saffron, sherbet, spinach, and tarragon. Hey, we didn’t like spinach anyway. It will be harder to do without coffee and alcohol.

Out of the kitchen and into the living room:  junk the divan, and stop calling that other thing a sofa. Use the word couch, even if it’s from (ugh) French. Check your closets, too. Clean out the sequins, sashes, your damask tablecloth, the gauze in the medicine cabinet, and anything made of cotton or muslin. That last word is a real no-no—it even sounds like “Muslim.”

I’m sure you know that algebra was invented by Arabs. It means “the ciphering,” but we can’t use the term cipher either. The Arabs even invented the numbering system we use, including zero. We should scrap it and return to a good old Western system. Try a problem in long division:  DLXXXIV ÷ XXXII. Oops, the result isn’t a whole number. Anybody know where to put a decimal point in Roman numerals?

The brightest stars in the sky were named by Arabs, but just because astronomers all over the world use those terms doesn’t mean Americans have to. We can auction off the naming rights to the highest bidder:  heavenly bodies such as Altair, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Fomalhaut, and Rigel (the list goes on) might come to be called Exxon, Walmart, Ford, Disney, or even—Goldman-Sachs!

On the other hand, maybe I’ll stick to haboobs.

There’s a Job for You

Are you a school teacher? Real estate agent in a dead market? A sales clerk whose store went out of business? Laid-off warehouse worker?

Despite all the talk about cutting government spending, Uncle Sam is hiring. You’ll get good pay, and good benefits if you’re salaried, and I’m not talking about jobs where your primary duty is to dodge bullets. And this is all on the taxpayer’s dime!

I did a little research and found thousands of openings in places where you won’t be put in harm’s way—not just in the U.S., but in cushy locations around the world, like England and Germany. There were also openings in a couple of dicey places (Egypt, Bahrain), but you don’t have to go there unless you want to.

Your job will be (putting it a tad impolitely) to service the military.

An army travels on its stomach, and if it runs beyond it supply lines, it starves. It brings cooks and supply wagons, and lives off the surrounding countryside (translation:  despoils the peasants). The military also travels on its gonads. Prostitutes have always been required to service soldiers, from the time of Rahab the harlot to the Korean “comfort women.” And not just prostitutes—military wives often accompanied their men. Roman officers stationed in England were allowed to marry and reside with their families on base. Ordinary soldiers didn’t have this privilege. Now they do.

Of course, many of the openings I found require very special skills, like doctor, nurse, physical therapist, civil engineer, etc. But others don’t.

Can you write Happy Birthday on top of a cake? Are you handy with the whipped cream? The Defense Commissary Agency is looking for 35 Cake Decorators. There are openings in Germany, England, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, and Turkey. Pay is $14.31-$16.70/hour.

Military families need to shop. And the Defense Commissary Agency says its mission, among other things, is to “encourage an exciting shopping experience” and “deliver exceptional savings.” To that end they are hiring everyone from sales clerks ($21,840-$28,392) to warehouse workers ($15.75-$18.38/hour). Jobs are in all the above countries, plus Japan and Egypt. If you’re having trouble stretching your unemployment check to feed the kids, consider these opportunities.

Did you know that the military operates hotels for both active and retired personnel, as well as Dept of Defense employees? They enjoy very nice lodgings at bargain rates, again paid for by your tax dollar. There are 12 current openings for Hotel Desk Clerk, most in the U.S. but four of them in Germany and one in Korea, at $7.25-$14.14/hour.

The Child and Youth Services dept of the military says it “supports readiness by reducing lost duty time due to conflict between parental responsibilities and unit mission requirements.” So while Daddy is dodging bullets in Afghanistan, he can be sure Junior is still getting a decent education. If you’re a teacher and tired of being blamed for the failure of your underfunded school, consider applying for the curriculum development and teacher training position in Germany, at $34,498-$43,827, with full benefits. If you don’t have those credentials, there are teacher aide positions in the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, and Belgium, at $9.50-$16.84/hr.

Finally, the military always needs to acquire more land. Real estate agents who can’t make sales in these times can find salaried employment ($40,093-$165,391) in Japan, Germany, Italy, and Bahrain.

For all of the above, check out the listings at www.usajobs.gov. The only catch is that the government won’t pay travel expenses, unless you are a highly-skilled professional. This isn’t a big problem if you’re looking for work on a military base back home. If your unemployment has run out, and your relatives are tired of supporting you, ask them to stake you to a ticket overseas. Good luck, and remember where your tax dollars are going while Grandma’s Social Security and Medicare are being cut. It’s all in a good cause, isn’t it?

A leg to stand on

I was conducting a survey of prosthetic limb makers for a client. One of the prosthetists I called told me the following:  some health insurance companies state up front that they will only cover $2,000-$5,000 for an artificial limb. However, a really functioning limb can cost $10,000-$40,000. If you call other health insurers, the agent will tell you what your coverage is--but only after she plays a recorded announcement to the effect that they “can’t be held to any statements that are made over the phone, and that the actual amount of benefits will be determined at the time the claim is submitted.”

So you order the best device that you can get within the amount that the agent says they will cover. Then when the bill comes in, the insurance company says they will only pay half, or even less. According to my source, this happens over and over again. You can't stiff your prosthetist, because the device doesn't last forever and you're going to need adjustments, new parts, and even a complete replacement in two to five years. What can you do? Mortgage your house (if you're lucky enough to have enough equity) so you have a leg to stand on? 


The prosthetist had a French name, so when I got good and angry, I mentioned the situation in France in 1789, and the fact that Thursday is Bastille Day. After I calmed down somewhat, I thought further back into history.... The first known prostheses were big toes, one carved from wood and the other made of linen, glue, and plaster, and found on Egyptian mummies. They date back to somewhere between the 7th and 13th centuries BCE. Both showed signs of wear, although the wooden one appears to have been more functional and the other more cosmetic. My sources didn't say what they cost back then.

Orwell springs eternal, but so does the spirit of liberty

Rulers of nations and upper crust people in general have always been good at creating propaganda to justify their positions. On Friday night Sylvia and I went to a showing of "Pray the Devil Back to Hell," a movie about how Liberian women banded together to end the war in their country, get rid of a bloodthirsty dictator, and institute democracy. That was in 2003. I recommend the movie to everyone--inspiring, uplifting. At one point the dictator, Charles Taylor, made a speech about how he was holding the country together and it would descend into chaos without him. We've recently heard the same speech from the dictators of Egypt, Syria, and Yemen.

In the U.S. we keep hearing propaganda about cutting taxes on the rich--that this will create jobs for the poor and lift up the economy. Herbert Hoover cut the tax rate to the lowest in modern history, and the Crash of 1929 followed. Tax rates for the rich have been going down almost to pre-Depression levels, and we've got the highest unemployment rate since the Depression. It doesn't seem to matter that the facts contradict the propaganda--it just gets repeated and repeated over the airwaves.

Of course the art of propaganda is a lot older than broadcast media. If you want to get real historical, check out the song for the carriers of a palanquin, which appears on the walls of the tomb of Ipi, a nobleman of the Egypt's Old Kingdom (2613-2181 BCE): "O palanquin of Ipi, be as heavy as I wish/It is pleasanter full than when it is empty!" I don't know who wrote that song, but I bet it wasn't the guys who had to carry the palanquin.

Another lie that's as old as history is sometimes called the "divine right of kings." The earliest mention of it that I can find is from the Sumerian king list, which says, "After kingship descended from Heaven, the kingship was in Eridu." (Eridu was one of the oldest cities in the world, founded around 5400 BCE.) The divine right lie lasted until the American and French Revolutions, but it never really went away. As late as 1909, a judge condemned New York factory workers who wanted their hours reduced from 65 or 75 per week to 52 per week, saying, "You are on strike against God." In other words, the existing social order was ordained by Heaven.

The abovementioned Charles Taylor insisted that he was in his position because God put him there. I'm sure that some form of the divine right lie serves to buttress the absolute monarchies of Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf States.

To which I can only counter by quoting the 14th Century English priest John Ball:  "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?...cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty."