Year: 2006

Just before going to Oslo to collect his Nobel Prize for Economics in December 2005, Thomas Schelling was
interviewed by L.A. Times journalist Peter Gosselin about the challenges facing
post-Katrina New Orleans. The sheer
size of the reconstruction task is daunting, of course, but Schelling talked
about something different: the difficulties faced by individual evacuees trying
to decide whether or not to move back to the city: “It is essentially a problem
of coordinating expectations”, he said. “If we all expect each other to come
back, we will. If we don’t, we won’t. But achieving this co-ordination in the
circumstances of New Orleans seems impossible.”

Gosselin described the “circumstances of New Orleans” that Schelling was talking about. Washington,
he showed, had initially promised large-scale aid, but had then backed off from
those commitments, leaving evacuees to make tough decisions on their own. The New Orleans recovery became “a private market affair”.
Unfortunately, as Schelling said, the recovery was all about co-ordination, and
“There are classes of problems that free markets simply do not deal with well.
If ever there was an example, New Orleans is it.”

One of the things about co-ordination problems is that small
things can make a big difference. A relatively small kick at the right time can
give the process a start and help virtuous cycles to develop. As a result, the
right kick can pay benefits out of all proportion to its size. Once the ball is
moving in the right direction, people start to move back because others are
moving back, and each individual or family that makes the decision makes it easier
for still others to move back too.

Without a successful kick start, co-ordination problems are
prone to cycles that are vicious rather than virtuous. When uncertainty over
the future looms large, many evacuees will not return unless they know that
others are moving back too. As Republican representative Richard Baker said “It
does no good to stand up just one person or family, because there’s nothing
left where they once lived – no schools or grocery stores, doctors or banks,
police stations or fire trucks. We’ve got to go into the business of restoring
whole communities.”

After Katrina, two things were clear about the kick that New Orleans needed to get resettlement and rebuilding
started. First, it had had to come from Washington – the only level of government with the resources to provide it. Second, it had
to deal with the core issue of safety. As the New York Times said in an
editorial, 
“It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in
tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if
they don’t believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old
system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and
insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures
on the city.”

Early on, it looked as if Washington might be prepared to make the kind of commitment that was needed. The tone was
set by President Bush in a September 15 (2005) speech in New
  Orleans itself: “There is”, he said “no way to imagine America without New Orleans”, and he promised “one
of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.” “We will do
what it takes”, he continued, “we will stay as long as it takes to help
citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.”

These are fine words, but they needed to be backed quickly
with decisive, large-scale action. And they weren’t. The White House “sat on
its pledges all autumn, mumbling homilies about the limits of government.” The
Treasury refused to guarantee New Orleans municipal bonds, which had lost all their value, and as a result the mayor was
forced “to lay off 3,000 city employees on top of the thousands of education
and medial workers already jobless”.

Nine months after the storm, over half of the 500,000
residents of the city of New Orleans have not returned. There is little doubt about the fact of the failure.

* * *

But the story of the reconstruction is not just the story of Washington’s failure to provide
tangible commitment. Louisiana in
general, and New Orleans in
particular, are full of groups with their own agenda. There are some who see the failure of poor people to come
back to their homes as a good thing. In New Orleans itself, some of the richer residents wanted to see a different kind of city. In
the weeks following the flood Jimmy Reiss, the head of the city’s Business
Council, talked to Newsweek of “a once in an eon opportunity to change the
dynamic” of the city. He has been quoted as saying “Those who want to see this
city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way:
demographically, geographically and politically," […] "I’m not just
speaking for myself here. The way we’ve been living is not going to happen
again, or we’re out.” In short, fewer poor people and a smaller, whiter, richer
city.

The inability of free markets to help people return gives an
opportunity for agendas such as these to be driven forward, all the while
asserting that people are making their own choices about their futures. The
horns of the return-or-not dilemma are sharper for some than for poor people
than for rich people. Those without savings can least afford to make the effort
to generate the coordination and investment of effort and resources needed to
rebuild their own communities. A recent US Census study showed that the poorer
people tended to be driven further away from the city in search of affordable
places to live. And the
poorer areas of the city are in the more vulnerable areas, where continuing
uncertainty over issues such as insurance plagues any attempt at progress.

So it’s not surprising that Joseph Canizaro, another wealthy
property developer and prominent Bush supporter said as early as October 2005
“As a practical matter, these poor folks don’t have the resources to go back to
our city just like they didn’t have the resources to get out of our city. So we
won’t get all those folks back. That’s just a fact.”

And so it has proved. Overall, poor people have returned in
fewer numbers than wealthy people. In a city where the lines between rich and
poor are often the lines between white and black, those who have returned are
more likely to be white and wealthy than those who have not. New Orleans had a black population of 36% before Katrina,
now it has a black population of 21%.

Some would argue that Canizaro, in his role as head of the
urban planning committee of the Bring New Orleans Back commission, helped to
turn his blunt “that’s just a fact” observation into a reality. He lobbied for
a building moratorium in the hardest hit neighbourhoods while they proved their
viability: funds would go only to those neighbourhoods where at least half of
the residents had made a commitment to return. Such a moratorium just compounds
the Catch 22. Now no building can happen unless there are people willing to buy
or rent it. And no one will return to buy or rent unless they know there will
be a building for them. And we know who is affected most by such a criterion:
it’s the poor people again.

There was a bigger agenda behind the suggestion. Once these
areas had predictably failed to “prove their viability” the BNOB commission
proposed a new public agency that would have been “empowered to seize land in
areas that failed the challenge” (NYT). That is, homeowners who did not have
the resources to return would be doubly punished by having their land seized. A
visiting developer told the BNOB commission “Your housing is now a public
resource. You can’t think of it as private property any more."
The Urban Land Institute, a property developers’ organization, argued that the
mayor let the market reshape New Orleans,
and turn areas where redevelopment fails into parkland.

* * *

Washington’s
failure of commitment, the predictable failure of market mechanisms to help
people return to New Orleans, and
the exploitation of that failure to remake New Orleans in a different manner, is not a cheery story. There are, however, a few bright
lights in the picture.

The developer-led agenda for a smaller, richer, and whiter
city is meeting with some resistance. The BNOB plan was greeted by a public
outcry. Mayor Nagin, whose position is difficult to read and who is often happy
to go along with the inevitable co-ordination failure in the absence of real
commitment — he has said that anyone who really wants to will "figure out
a way to come back." —rejected the
plan, and according to the NYT the BNOB has hardly been heard of since. But
many of those who proposed it continue to be in influential positions, and
continue to have ways to meet their goals.

The main source of hope is strong community organizations. In
his LA Times article, Peter Gosselin wrote about Greek Orthodox community and
the way in which its church helped its members to co-ordinate their escape from
Katrina and their return afterwards. “By acting in concert, members of the
Greek community have in effect provided each other with an immense
self-insurance policy, guaranteeing that if one family rebuilds, others will.”
Community activist groups such as the ACORN Katrina Survivors Association have
helped to give people the means to co-ordinate their own return and a voice to
influence the way that New Orleans is being rebuilt, campaigning for a right to
return.

The future still looks grim for the survivors of Hurricane
Katrina. But if the residents of New Orleans are to be a part of the rebuilt city, and if Washington is unwilling to help, then it is groups such as these that hold the key to
success.

I don’t usually post about Iraq, because I don’t really have anything to offer. But I could not help contrast the idea that the killing of Zarqawi is somehow significant with the following two pieces.

First, from the best blogger in the world at Baghdad Burning.

We heard the news about the dozens abducted from the Salhiya area in Baghdad. Salhiya is a busy area where many travel agencies have offices. It has been
particularly busy since the war because people who want to leave to
Jordan and Syria all make their reservations from one office or another
in that area.

According to people working and living in the
area, around 15 police cars pulled up to the area and uniformed men
began pulling civilians off the streets and from cars, throwing bags
over their heads and herding them into the cars. Anyone who tried to
object was either beaten or pulled into a car. The total number of
people taken away is estimated to be around 50.

This has been
happening all over Iraq- mysterious men from the Ministry of Interior
rounding up civilians and taking them away. It just hasn’t happened
with this many people at once. The disturbing thing is that the Iraqi
Ministry of Interior has denied that it had anything to do with this
latest mass detention (which is the new trend with them- why get
tangled up with human rights organizations about mass detentions,
torture and assassinations- just deny it happened!). That isn’t a good
sign- it means these people will probably be discovered dead in a
matter of days. We pray they’ll be returned alive…

Another piece of particularly bad news came later during the day. Several students riding a bus to school were assassinated in Dora area. No
one knows why- it isn’t clear. Were they Sunni? Were they Shia? Most
likely they were a mix… Heading off for their end-of-year examination-
having stayed up the night before to study in the heat. When they left
their houses, they were probably only worried about whether they’d pass
or fail- their parents sending them off with words of encouragement and
prayer. Now they’ll never come home.

There’s an ethnic cleansing
in progress and it’s impossible to deny. People are being killed
according to their ID card. Extremists on both sides are making life
impossible. Some of them work for ‘Zarqawi’, and the others work for
the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. We hear about Shia being killed in the
‘Sunni triangle’ and corpses of Sunnis named ‘Omar’ (a Sunni name)
arriving by the dozen at the Baghdad morgue. I never thought I’d
actually miss the car bombs. At least a car bomb is indiscriminate. It
doesn’t seek you out because you’re Sunni or Shia.

We still
don’t have ministers in the key ministries- defense and interior. Iraq
is falling apart and Maliki and his team are still bickering over who
should get more power- who is more qualified to oppress Iraqis with the
help of foreign occupiers? On top of all of this, rumor has it that the
Iraqi parliament have a ‘vacation’ coming up during July and August.
They’re so exhausted with the arguing, and struggling for power, they
need to take a couple of months off to rest. They’ll leave their
well-guarded homes behind for a couple of months, and spend some time
abroad with their families (who can’t live in Iraq anymore- they’re too
precious for that).

And second, from Juan Cole at Informed Comment:

Zarqawi had been a significant leader of the Salafi Jihadi radical
strain of Islamist volunteers in Iraq, and had succeeded in spreading
his ideas to local Iraqis in places like Ramadi. He engaged in
grandstanding when he renamed his group "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia," even
though he had early been critical of al-Qaeda and had a long rivalry
with it. For background, see the Zarqawi file.

There
is no evidence of operational links between his Salafi Jihadis in Iraq
and the real al-Qaeda; it was just a sort of branding that suited
everyone, including the US. Official US spokesmen have all along
over-estimated his importance. Leaders are significant and not always
easily replaced. But Zarqawi has in my view has been less important
than local Iraqi leaders and groups. I don’t expect the guerrilla war
to subside any time soon.

Baqubah is dangerous not because of
Zarqawi but because it is a mixed Sunni-Shiite and Kurdish area that
had Baath military installations and arms depots, and enough Sunni
Arabs from the old regime know about them to work them against rising
Shiite and Kurdish dominance.

On the other hand, there have been
persistent reports of a split between the main arm of the guerrilla
resistance, the Sunni Arab Iraqis, and Zarqawi’s group.

Al-Hayat reports today [Ar.]
that groups in Fallujah have launched attacks on Zarqawi followers
there after the latter attacked the al-Husain Mosque in the Askari
quarter two days ago, destroying the tomb of the founder of the mosque
within it. (Salafis influenced by Saudi Wahhabism despise attendance at
saints tombs, insisting on a Protestant-like elimination of all
intermediaries between human beings and God. Many Islamists in Fallujah
are actually Sufis, who value saints in the way rural Catholics do.) An
attempt by the radical Salafis to destroy the mosque (on the grounds
that it had been tainted with polytheism) was stopped by the "1920
Revolution Brigades," a local ex-Baathist group. There was a running
gun battle between the two.

Zarqawi’s group had also tried two
days ago to attack a Fallujah police station, but they were repulsed by
local tribal youth. The battle left two cars burned and 4 dead from the
tribe of Al-Bu `Isa.

The contrast between the dregs we get on the news here and these kind of comments is astounding. Read the two of them, and it’s clear that this event will have no effect whatsoever on the level of destruction in Iraq.

I’ve been reading these writers for a couple of years or so. Both have shown a steady progression towards disillusionment, anger, and despair over the state of Iraq. Watching Juan Cole go from moderate, academic observer to outright fury has been quite something.

It’s not quite clear whether Andrew Potter agrees with the American Enterprise Online when he posts pieces of an article that is part of their issue Attack of the Snobs. AP himsels makes no comment, but my guess is that he approves of the article in some sense, or else he’d say so. The article itself is entitled In Praise of Ordinary Choices. Given AP’s love of tweaking eaters of organic foods, my guess is that he’s on board with the American Enterprise Institute on this one.

Nevertheless, and much as I enjoyed most of Rebel Sell, he would be wrong. The AEI piece is MarketThink at its crudest.

First, let’s get past the sneers. There’s the title "Attack of the Snobs" itself, of course. Then organizations opposing Wal-Mart are "a regular terrarium of screamers".  The leaders are "Kerry and Dean assassins and union activists" — two groups of people it’s really hard to tell apart, I’m sure. Wal-Mart’s success has come about "contrary to snotty stereotypes,… not by piling clip-on ties and plastic shoes ever deeper on tabletops, but rather via intensive, inventive, high-tech management". I don’t know anyone who believes that snotty stereotype, so I think AEI are indulging a few stereotypes of their own. Then they have graphics showing a drawing of a placard with "Suburbia is Rape!" on it — not a real placard, mind you, just the American Enterprise image of what a placard might be. Once you get past that stuff, you’ve thrown out 80% of the AEI papers.

But there is a bit left over. And in that bit there is a big assumption right at the heart of "In Praise of Ordinary Choices" that persists in the other articles I’ve read from the issue (ie, those that are free).  Which is that we’ve somehow chosen our cities and living environments, and that the fact so many people shop at Wal-Mart means they approve of everything it does. That’s what they mean by "ordinary choices", and that’s why they start the lead article by saying "The problem with most writing about cities is that people go out and say, ‘Here’s what I like’, and the corollary to that is usually, ‘This is what cities ought to be’." In contrast, the AEI believe that our preferences as revealed in our "ordinary choices" are reflected in the growth of cities. They praise author Robert Bruegmann, saying that he

"observes carefully, and shows respect for the billions of small judgments made by ordinary citizens in the course of their daily lives—choices which have cumulatively created the complex "horizontal" communities that Americans now call home."

This is wrong in two ways. First, it is basically an assertion that the good things about places where we live [and yes, there are good things] came about because of free-market choices, though even south of the border cities are a mix of market-driven development and urban planning. So that assertion is wrong. Second, it asserts that as long as we have free choice, we’ll get the kind of cities we want. But even if the AEI believes this, Andrew Potter knows that’s not how individual choice works. He wrote a big part of Rebel Sell based on the problems of arms races and collective action problems, in which individual choices lead to bad results.

Robert Bruegmann himself makes the same kind of assertions. "Europeans are moving into suburbs in increasing numbers… In country after country across Europe, consumers are demanding the convenience of longer store hours, shops closer to where they live, and easier access by automobile. The result is a proliferation of large supermarkets, shopping centers, discount centers, and Big Box retail outlets like Wal-Mart or Target". The implication is clear, in context, that because people want longer store hours, they are somehow voting for the Big Box outlets and the environment they bring with them. But that implication is false. It doesn’t follow.

Or in "Live with TAE", Witold Rybcynski is quoted as saying "Sprawl has got good and bad sides, but it’s what we’ve chosen as a people" which is also simply not true.

So let’s be clear. To oppose the developer-driven, market-driven model of city growth that the AEI is promoting does not make you a snob (or an assassin come to think of it). And to observe that we live in sprawling cities doesn’t mean we’ve chosen them. I hope AP agrees, but I fear he doesn’t.

Cut the Chatter noticed my thing about blogging being egotistical, and wrote something much better in reply. Basically, he says that

• yes there is a bit of ego in it [agreed – who am I kidding if I say there’s no ego involved in writing]
• he doesn’t really care if people read his stuff [I wish I could say the same, but my constant checking of sitemeter gives me away]
• he enjoys it. And that’s reason enough.

Except he says it better.

The other thing he says is that he enjoys reading other people’s blogs. Which I do too. There’s the ones I read because they are about a subject I’m interested in, which makes sense. I read the Mobile Enterprise Weblog because I’m interested in mobile computing, and I read StageLeft because it’s a left-wing Canadian take on politics. The ones that have really surprised me are the ones about daily lives though. My favourite along those lines, which is now being turned into a book, is Random Acts of Reality, which is by an emergency medical technician working for the London Ambulance Service. Whenever I think my job is stressful, I just have to read his and I stop worrying about my own job. Like a few days ago:

I went to a stabbing yesterday – while we’d normally wait for the
police to arrive to escort us into the house, the way that the job was
sent down to us over the computer terminal let me think that I could
safely approach.

The doorbell was answered by a young man with an obvious wound to the upper arm.

Getting him onto the ambulance I learned that he had ‘come clean’
to his long-term girlfriend about cheating on her two years ago. During
the course of the argument she had then stabbed him in the arm with a
kitchen knife…

My advice to everyone is that you shouldn’t have an argument in the kitchen…

My brother likes a similar one by a policeman, "PC Copperfield" of "Newtown", whose day includes things like this:

I had to accompany a burglar to the local hospital because an injury he
had sustained in the course of one of his crimes had become infected
(poetic justice indeed). I had to sit handcuffed to him in the waiting
room for an hour or so and eventually had to answer the call of nature.
I removed my end of the handcuffs and attached them to the immovable
waiting room chair before going to the toilet and collecting a few
things from the car. On my return he said he felt humiliated, like an
animal.

People of Newtown, I do what I can.

And then there are those other ones you just come across where someone is writing about their trip to Canada’s Wonderland or whatever, and it’s fun to read it. I really don’t know why that is. Kind of like looking at other people’s photos on Flickr. Sometimes you find links to entertaining things like apartment music. It’s a real timesink, but an enjoyable one.

– and no, I’m not writing and reading this stuff at work. I’m off today.

Yappa Ding Ding is all in favour of Bob Rae for leader of the Liberal Party. I’m no Liberal Party member, so my views count for exactly what you paid to read them. But I can’t agree with this.

It’s not that I think Bob Rae left the province a smoking wreck or anything like that – although the man himself suggests that the NDP doesn’t know how to govern ("The NDP are good at how to distribute the cake, but not how to make  the cake."). Rae Days aside, the popular picture of the NDP provincial government of the time doesn’t have a whole lot of relation to the reality.

It’s something else that bothers me. It’s this whole thing of people joining parties at the top. To hear Bob Rae, or Belinda Stronach, or Jean Charest, suddenly start talking about the traditions of the Liberal Party just makes my stomach turn over. Here is the front page of his web site:

The Liberal Party of Canada is one of the world’s great political
institutions, and I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to seek its
leadership. During this exciting and important time for Liberals, I
encourage you to play an active part in the Party’s renewal and
leadership process.

Excuuuuse me. Is that what you thought all those years you were with the NDP? Or would you say it about any party that might provide you with a route to power? 

I know, it’s not like a political party is a sports team that you support through thick and thin for no good reason whatsoever, even when they let their manager go to the competition and so waste next year’s chances of reaching the premiership, the idiots. I mean what were they thinking? It’s obvious that Billy Davies has a huge amount to do with the near triumphs of the last two years, and PNE lets him go without a murmur? Jokers.

Sorry – what was I saying? Oh yes. Changing your mind is OK, but either his political past counts for something or it doesn’t. Bob Rae seems to want the best of both worlds – he wants to disavow his NDP past ("I drifted" he says)  and yet his only real qualification as a potential prime minister comes from his NDP background and all the work that those in the NDP did to put him in the premier’s office. As someone who knocked on a fair number of doors in that campaign, I resent his attitude – he wants to capitalize on the work that many volunteers did, and yet discredit it at the same time.

Bookslut points to an article in The Times by Libby Purves on how bookstores (in the UK) have publishers caught in a prisoner’s dilemma when it comes to promoting books, and as a result readers are stuck in a market for lemons. Here is an excerpt:

Reports have “revealed” the so-called secret fees paid by publishers to
booksellers in order to get books stocked, “chosen” and recommended by
the big book chains.

That W H Smith’s “book of the week” title, which attracts you as
if it had won a prize, has been bought and paid for. The publisher
handed over £50,000. Waterstone’s Book of the Week accolade is £10,000,
less for ecstatic mini-reviews. Borders charges for “fiction buyer’s
favourite”. Smaller sums buy other levels of prominence; only some
local staff “picks” are related to actual content. It is not uncommon
for a catalogue to recommend a title warmly before the compiler has
even seen it. A pre-Christmas push costs £200,000 and a big campaign
double that. One publisher told a newspaper: “We’ve got to play by the
rules because we need them.” It is considered suicidal not to join in.

…Seventy per cent of promotional budgets go on furtive payments to
bookshops. The message to the author is: “Nobody would read you if we
didn’t pay, so shut up grumbling.” To the reader the message is: “You
are a fool pig, guaranteed to go for the shiniest swill-bucket.” To the
newspapers who publish bestseller charts it is simply: “Gotcha!”

Most of these charts cover sales in one particular week, so
they favour the fast-selling and heavily displayed. They are no index
of pleasure or even real popularity. It is not uncommon for a book to
reach high rank one week and live off that glory (“surprise soaraway
bestseller for tragic Gwendolen”) when in fact it has shifted fewer
hardbacks than another book that never got near the top 20 because it
sold more gradually.

Well, so be it. Bookselling is a trade; it is sad but not
criminal that it operates like one, cutting deals to maximise profit.
It is sad but not surprising that big booksellers do not care that
their practices are widening the gulf between hyped authors and the
rest, squeezing out new writers and truncating the careers of those who
fail to return the publisher’s investment fast enough. They do not care
that the literary double-or-quits economy prevents the slower, organic
growth of writing careers.

The responsibility spreads wider, though. You would think
that, knowing how skewed the trade has become, book page editors would
question the status quo as journalists do in every other area. You
would think that their mission was to seek out interesting new books
while scornfully ignoring hype-fests. There is little evidence of this,
except in some odd and praiseworthy corners. Journalists like to feel
they are up there with the “buzz”, even if the buzz is largely
artificial. Where reviews do diverge from the well-trodden track of the
week’s “key” books, it is often only into a cosy circuit of settling
old scores, or bigging up friends who will soon return the favour. This
is often undeclared, which shocks the strait-laced American media (read
the New York Times arts ethical policy online, boys, and hang your heads).

Newspapers and magazines are also magpies, attracted to the
glitter of the young, the pretty, the well-connected, the celebrity. If
Keira Knightley publishes a novel tomorrow it will not go short of
attention, while if a new Orwell or Greene emerges from the ranks he
may fall back unnoticed. There are some flukes, but even notable “word
of mouth” successes often turn out to be no such thing. And the moment
an unhyped book starts to move, the big chains will be on to the
publisher with display offers they dare not refuse. All success becomes
a commodity.

This fits with what I’ve seen, and with my argument in Chapter 9. Other reports (which I can’t find now) suggest that compared to ten years ago, more books are published now than used to be, and more titles are carried (in some form or other) by bookstores. But the total volume of books sold is about the same as it used to be, and of that amount more goes to just a few bestsellers. It’s what happens in a market when you don’t know what you’re buying. Book buying is going, apparently, from being a high-information market to a low-information market.

On the down side, it’s kind of a depressing view of the book industry. On the up side, it’s a great excuse if No One Makes You doesn’t do that well.

Libby Purves, by the way, wrote my favourite parenting book, How Not To Be a Perfect Mother.

I was out in the front yard just now, trimming some miniature pine trees we have (to keep them miniature) when, all of a sudden, one of the branches moved.

Then it moved again.

What had looked like a slightly darker area of the tree was, in fact, a mass of caterpillars. And yes, they were throbbing, rhythmically.

You want proof? I’ve got proof. Here. Look at this. I put a video up on You Tube (my first posting there).

Watch the Caterpillars

Each caterpillar is about 2 cm (3/4 in) long. I’ve no idea what they are or whether I should be killing them. They’ve been doing the synchronized throbbing thing for about an hour at least now.

Two questions:

Q1 – Will use of the phrase "throbbing caterpillars" lead to a spike in traffic to this site?
Q2 – Is Great Throbbing Caterpillars a great name for a band. A. Yes.