Authoring Failure:

Every cloud has its silver lining, so if you could just manufacture more clouds and if you have the right companies, you could harvest all of that silver.

Last fall, Harper's published Naomi Klein's "Disaster Capitalism," an adaptation of her book, The Shock Doctrine (Metropolitan Books), which lays out a case for collusion between government officials and private enterprise to exploit disasters around the world. The argument is extremely convincing and is a must read. This past December, Klein was interviewed by Charlie Rose, which you can see here.

The article begins with a quote from Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman: "Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around." Friedman, it should be stated, believed in the privatization of very nearly everything.

Manipulating the News:

Today's New York Times reports on the Pentagon's efforts to control the flow of information. In order for democracy to have a chance at succeeding, there must be a steady flow of accurate information. No one doubts this, although even under the best of circumstances democracy can still fail, sometimes dramatically. Large groups almost always produce average results at best, and sometimes those are inadequate.

The Pentagon, like their masters, the current residents of the White House, remember all too well the role the press played in bringing about change during the 1960s and early 1970s, from racial integration to the fall of the Nixon administration, has sought to control the flow of information since the Reagan administration, when reporters were denied access to Granada.

Today's story focuses on the Pentagon's hand picking of military analysts to present information from the major news outlets:

Hidden behind [an] appearance of objectivity … is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used … analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.

If you read far enough into the article, you begin to uncover the connection between the Pentagon's efforts and the Naomi Klein article referenced above.

The New Is the Old:

In the good old days, operators of coal mines had no employees. They subcontracted their work. When you went to work in the mines, you weren't an employee, you were self-employed. Thus you could be exploited to the extent that the owner of the mine was able to get away with. If you got hurt in the owner's mine, that was your look-out, as my grandfather explained. If you needed a shovel, you bought it—at the mine owner's store, naturally.

It took a hundred years of pitched battles, including at times open warfare, for the workers to unionize and find success at turning back this sort of exploitation, only to find that while the United Mine Workers of America may no longer be exploited in this fashion, plenty of other workers continue to be.

Today's New York Times reports on FedEx Ground, and how that company is using this method to not only exploit their employees, but is likely cheating the government out of hundred of millions of tax dollars, including undermining Social Security.

WalMart is cited as the chief example of this form of exploitation, but the model is an old one.

On Education: "Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis." — George W. Bush, CNBC, April 2000.