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41131 Vietnam's (meager) resources -- rank: 1000

Why is it so hard to believe that the U.S. really *was* fighting Communism in Vietnam? Why do we have to assume the war really was over some precious natural resource? The domino effect may have been ludicrous in strictly military terms, but if the U.S. hadn't spent the last 50 years destroying socialist and nationalist revolutions (and the USSR), the world would be a very different place. Doug

Document Size:	4817
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 2 09:26:35 PDT 1998

41132 Genovese group -- rank: 1000

Brad De Long wrote: >>In addition to Southern Agrarian tendencies (Genovese recently told the >>Times he would favor a movement toward southern secession... >> best, katha > >Do you have the source handy?... I have a file folder full of clippings from the Southern Partisan, a neo-Confederate magazine, by and about Genovese and his wife, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. You don't keep that kind of company if you're not sympathetic to Southern secessionist movements. Doug

Document Size:	4839
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue Jun 2 08:28:29 PDT 1998

41133 Abortion Litmus Test -- rank: 1000

Katha Pollitt wrote: >Where was John Sweeney? He sent Clinton a telegram the day before he signed the welfare bill asking him not to. Don't say he did nothing! Doug

Document Size:	4596
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jun 1 16:47:44 PDT 1998

41134 Tobin tax etc. -- rank: 1000

michael at ecst.csuchico.edu wrote: >The point of Feldstein-Horioka is not that capital flows are unimportant, >but that NET capital flows are small. For example, the IMF will give >Indonesia $40 billion. Suharto's net worth is about $40. So if he >manages to transfer his wealth out of the country, the net flow will be >zero. But Suharto's is a stock, the IMF's is a flow. It has to be positive in balance of payments terms or they couldn't pay the bills. I have to think about th ...

Document Size:	4978
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jun 1 16:40:14 PDT 1998

41135 Lyndon Johnson's potty training -- rank: 1000

Michael Perelman wrote: >I also recall that he interviewed his Treasury Secretary -- Was it Douglas >Dillon? -- while taking a crap -- perhaps confirming Norman O. Brown and >Freud's >ideas about feces and gold. He did that to then Air Force Secretary Harold "Bomber" Brown too. He'd have Brown, a real tightass, come in and talk to him in the crapper, which mortified Brown terribly. Hen then went back to the Pentagon pick B-52 targets. Doug

Document Size:	4936
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jun 1 16:11:24 PDT 1998

41136 welfare & sex work -- rank: 1000

Everytime I type the phrase sex work I think of David Polonoff, who used to be a writer (he wrote the great neocon seder for the Village Voice, "next year in Managua!"). When he heard someone at a rally use the phrase "culture workers," he said, "Culture workers? I got into culture so I didn't have to work." He's now a computer programmer. Anyway, prostitute/writer Tracy Quan says that the talk among hookers is that welfare reform has increased the number of sex wor ...

Document Size:	4997
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jun 1 11:05:13 PDT 1998

41137 Rorty reviewed -- rank: 1000

Brad De Long wrote: >>The harsh response to Rorty may have something to do with his >>penchant for gratuitous, con-baiting asides, such as the one in which he >>absurdly states that "we caused the death of a million Vietnamese out of >>sheer macho arrogance." In the course of the book, Rorty sets even >>liberal teeth on edge with such outlandish statements > >But we did cause the death of a million Vietnamese out of sheer macho >arrogance... And i ...

Document Size:	5235
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jun 1 10:19:18 PDT 1998

41138 Stripping (for) Education -- rank: 1000

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: >However, with the 'Welfare Reform,' won't the wages of sex industry workers >get depressed, I wonder? (Does Doug have stats on this?) I don't think there's an SIC code for sex work. But this is an interesting question, and I'll ask around. Doug

Document Size:	4702
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jun 1 08:42:56 PDT 1998

41139 Remedial Class Struggle -- rank: 1000

By coincidence, I just happened to be thumbing through the Spring 1998 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly, a sub to which is one of the perks of joining the American Association for Public Opinion Research, last night. In it is a review of polls on education in the U.S. over the last several decades by Jennifer Hochschild and Bridget Scott (respectively a professor of politics at Princeton and a senior [!] at Princeton). If the polls are to be believed, and god knows how flawed they are, there ha ...

Document Size:	5533
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jun 1 08:14:05 PDT 1998

41140 Rorty reviewed -- rank: 1000

Slate has a reivew of Rorty by ex-New Republic smarty-pants Jacob Weisberg. For those who've paid their subscription fee to Microsoft (damned if I can figure out why I did), the review is at <http://www.slate.com/StrangeBedfellow/98-05-29/StrangeBedfellow.asp>. Doug ---- A couple of choice excerpts: Out of Left Field Richard Rorty's call for a new popular front. By Jacob Weisberg (posted Friday, May 29, 1998) One does not ordinarily expect a slim volume written by an academic philosopher a ...

Document Size:	7584
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Mon Jun 1 08:05:45 PDT 1998

41141 ZinnTV -- rank: 1000

[this bounced] Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 16:08:58 -0700 (PDT) From: "C. Petersen" <ottilie at u.washington.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Message-ID: <Pine.A41.3.95b.980731160834.69704H-100000 at homer07.u.washington.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII look at this. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 11:34:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: zinn on tv from the sea times: The annoyingly ubiquitous Matt Damon and Ben Affleck h ...

Document Size:	5441
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jul 31 16:40:42 PDT 1998

41142 The Trust Fund Lives -- rank: 1000

Jordan Hayes wrote: >The so-called "trust fund" is getting close to one full >year of revenues. I trust Yahoo to get earnings right now >more than I trust that "trust fund" will ever be able to >be "paid back" ... What makes you think the U.S. government couldn't raise, say, $300 billion on short notice? That's less than 4% of GDP. The U.S. government would never default unless it were collapsing or revolutionary. What do you mean the trust fund won't b ...

Document Size:	4917
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jul 31 15:44:23 PDT 1998

41143 The Trust Fund Lives -- rank: 1000

Jordan Hayes wrote: >Exactly as I said: it is a fiction. That doesn't make it meaningless though. Accounting is a socially constructed truth. Doug

Document Size:	4516
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jul 31 15:37:21 PDT 1998

41144 Privatization Pep Rally -- rank: 1000

Max Sawicky wrote: >No disagreement there, though the politics >of 'zip' are tenuous. What position are the unions taking on SS privatization? Doug

Document Size:	4564
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jul 31 14:59:55 PDT 1998

41145 Soft privatization -- rank: 1000

Jordan Hayes wrote: >How come it's okay for private defined benefit programs but not >the biggest defined benefit program of them all? Unions don't >seem to have the problems you envision (how to vote the stock, >which manager to patronize, etc.); No they don't because the law requires them to depoliticize fund management completely. So workers' money is appropriated by a bunch of portolio managers, where it's managed and voted according to their class interests. Or, as the Old Man ...

Document Size:	5127
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Fri Jul 31 14:25:05 PDT 1998