Lani Guinier became a household name in 1993 when Bill Clinton appointed her to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and then, under pressure from conservatives, withdrew her nomination without a confirmation hearing. Guinier is currently the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard University where, in 1998, she became the first black woman to be tenured at the law school.

Guinier’s latest book, Meritocracy Inc.: How Wealth Became Merit, Class Became Race, and College Education Became a Gift from the Poor to the Rich, will be published in 2007. This past summer, she offered a glimpse of her upcoming book in this interview with D&S intern Rebecca Parrish.

Rebecca Parrish: What is meritocracy? What is the difference between the conventional understanding and the way you are using the term in Meritocracy, Inc.?

Lani Guinier: The conventional understanding of meritocracy is that it is a system for awarding or allocating scarce resources to those who most deserve them. The idea behind meritocracy is that people should achieve status or realize the promise of upward mobility based on their individual talent or individual effort. It is conceived as a repudiation of systems like aristocracy where individuals inherit their social status.

I am arguing that many of the criteria we associate with individual talent and effort do not measure the individual in isolation but rather parallel the phenomena associated with aristocracy; what we’re calling individual talent is actually a function of that individual’s social position or opportunities gained by virtue of family and ancestry. So, although the system we call “meritocracy” is presumed to be more democratic and egalitarian than aristocracy, it is in fact reproducing that which it was intended to dislodge.

Michael Young, a British sociologist, created the term in 1958 when he wrote a science fiction novel called The Rise of Meritocracy. The book was a satire in which he depicted a society where people in power could legitimate their status using “merit” as the justificatory terminology and in which others could be determined not simply to have been poor or left out but to be deservingly disenfranchised.
dollarsandsense.org

Last year, the United States found 727,304 homeless people nationwide, meaning about one in every 400 Americans were without a home, according to the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2005 issued by the Information Office of China’s State Council Thursday.

The figures came from The USA Today published on Oct. 12, 2005.
“The Los Angeles County has become ‘the homeless capital of America,’ with the average number of vagabonds or people in shelters hitting 90,000 a day, including 35,000 people chronically homeless,” the report quotes an article of The Los Angeles Times on June 16, 2005 as saying.
“The United States dubs the world’s richest country, however, it maintains the highest poverty rate among developed countries,” the report says, given a study of eight advanced countries by London School of Economics in 2005, which found that the United States had the worst social inequality.

On the one hand, the report says, in recent years the fortunes of the rich have continued to rise in the United States. According to two new studies by Spectrem Group, a Chicago-based wealth-research firm, and the Boston Consulting Group, millionaire households (excluding the value of primary residences) in the United States controlled more than 11 trillion in assets in 2004, up more than 8 percent from 2003.
Meanwhile, the income of ordinary employees in the United States has seen a sharp decline, causing the increase of poor population. The data issued by the U.S. Census Bureau said that the nation’s official poverty rate rose from 12.5 percent in 2003 to 12.7 percent in 2004, with the number of people in poverty rising by 1.1 million from 35.9 million to 37 million, which means one in every eight Americans live in poverty. Poverty rates in cities such as Detroit, Miami and Newark exceeded 28 percent.

These problems indicate that poverty, hunger and homelessness are quite serious in America, worker’s economic, social and cultural rights are not guaranteed, the report says.
english.people.com.cn

There was good news for rich people yesterday, when an annual listing of the world’s billionaires showed there were more of them than ever.

The 793 billionaires making the 2006 list published by Forbes magazine is an increase of 102 on last year. And the rich keep getting richer, with their total net worth up 18%. The combined value of their billions is put at $2.6 trillion, a fraction less than the US federal government’s entire budget proposal for next year.
guardian.co.uk

WASHINGTON — As the U.S. enters its fourth year in Iraq this month, the annual cost of military operations is growing — even as the Pentagon assumes the number of troops there will shrink.

Monthly expenditures are running at $5.9 billion; the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan adds roughly another $1 billion. Taken together, annual spending for the two wars will reach $117.6 billion for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 — 18% above funding for the prior 12 months.

That escalation reflects the fact that America’s military today is a higher-cost war machine than the one that fought in Vietnam decades ago. But it has also produced bipartisan concern in Congress that “emergency spending” for Iraq has become a way for the Pentagon to meet other needs.
wsj.com

The US trade deficit ballooned to a record $68.5bn in January, far surpassing expectations and raising the prospect of a large drag on economic growth in the first months of the year.

The sensitive bilateral trade deficit with China climbed to $17.9bn in January from $16.3bn, a figure that is likely to hinder administration efforts to contain mounting frustration in Congress over the rising deficit, and create a tense backdrop for the official visit of Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, next month.

With President George W. Bush facing a revolt from congressional Republicans over the Dubai ports deal, the administration could find itself in a weakened position in its long-standing efforts to stave off punitive trade legislation against China. The Republican chairman of the Senate finance committee said last month he would begin drawing up a bill to deal with the growing array of US trade frictions with China.

“The American people need a Congress and an administration that will get tough on trade policy to rein in these runaway deficits,” said Benjamin Cardin, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives subcommittee on trade. “When you look at trade deficits in the context of growing foreign ownership of our national debt, you see that we’re increasingly beholden to the very countries whose markets we’d like to open to American goods. Unless we reverse this dangerous trend, we’ll soon find ourselves without negotiating leverage to promote our trade agenda.”
news.ft.com

China rejects US rights ‘hypocrisy’
China has rejected US criticism of its record on human rights in an official rejoinder which says racial discrimination and crime are still rife in America.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, denounced America on Thursday for what it called rampant violence and widespread discrimination against minorities, especially blacks, in its annual response to the US state department’s report on human rights worldwide.

“As in previous years, the state department pointed the finger at human rights situations in more than 190 countries and regions, including China, but kept silent on the serious violations of human rights in the United States,” the Chinese report said.

The New York City Housing Authority, landlord to more than 400,000 poor New Yorkers, is facing a budget shortfall of $168 million and has proposed narrowing the gap by charging residents new fees and increasing old ones for everything from owning a dishwasher to getting a toilet unclogged.

The authority says its operating deficit stems from enormous increases in energy and pension costs while its federal financing for public housing has been cut. Since 2001, the agency says, it has spent $357 million from its reserves to close repeated budget gaps; this year, for the first time, it no longer has enough reserves to cover the shortfall.

So it has proposed charging tenants $5.75 a month to run a washing machine, $5 a month to operate a dishwasher, $10 a month for a separate freezer. Parking fees will rise to $75 from $5 a year on April 1.

The authority plans to raise existing fees for dozens of services, like fixing damage to apartments beyond normal wear and tear, and to charge, for the first time, for things like rescuing lost keys from elevator pits after hours. The authority would like to put the fee changes other than for parking into effect around May 1.
nytimes.com

By Juárez Polanco; Translated into English by the author and revised by Nancy Almendras.

Ever since George W. Bush was given his first imperial leadership of the northern country (by people placed in the Supreme Court by his own father), I don’t know if I should laugh, scream or cry whenever I discover what he’s been doing and saying to the planet over which he reigns.

Yes, that is right: We laugh so hard that it hurts when we’re talking about the creator of bushisms, those brilliant thoughts worthy of anthology that are destined to live forever. The examples speak for themselves: “The future will be better tomorrow”; “It’s time for mankind to enter the solar system”; or among the most erudite, “More and more of our imports are coming from abroad”; and “A low number of voters is an indication that less and less people are voting”. The land trembles, sky eclipses and winds sing a triumphal march: he’s the Great Architect of a shadowy and illogical century, full of contradictions, deaths, and mostly, stupidities.

Bush’s latest came this week. Now it seems he told Bill Sammon, a The Washington Times correspondent, that Bin Laden helped him to win the November 2004 elections against John Kerry. This is in reference to the video broadcast aired four days before those elections, in which the leader of Al-Qaeda criticized Bush and reminded the US people about the 9/11 attacks, still fresh in North Americans’ collective memory. According to The Examiner, Mr. George said, “I thought it was going to help. I thought it would help remind people that if Bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.”

His logic and wisdom surpasses me by far. I’m thinking about the Latin-American dictators of bloody hands: using bushistic logic, the opposition of our people was an irrefutable indication that something had to be right with those dictators. I’m thinking about the Nicaraguan case (the country from which I come): the fact that Sandino didn’t want anything to do with the invading yankees, meant that something had to be right with those invaders. What a great judgment!

What’s right with Bush? His imperial conquests in Afghanistan, Iraq and now probably Iran? His colonizing trail disguised under a Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that will create in Central America and Dominican Republic more of what’s happening in Mexico, something called by his own ally, Mr. Fox, “inevitable poverty zones”? His telescopic sight of destruction aiming to Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and any other country that won’t say Sir, yes, sir?

Neither do I understand the logic of North American voters, because it’s clear that they’re alone too, under the aquiline tunic of their President. He has kept silence about multimillionaire bankrupts like Enron. New Orleans was erased from the map only because Bush didn’t want to do anything before, during and after Katrina. Thousands of jobs were cut as was, Medicare, Medicaid and education, simply to fatten even more the military spending for an invasion of a country. The costs have reached exorbitant and offensive numbers (US$ 244,577,928,372.00 is the cost of this war as of the moment I’m writing this article, according to nationalpriorities.org), causing the worst national US debt in recent years.

However, I do have an idea of why North Americans voted for Bush; they were motivated primarily by fear.

Whenever one is guided by fear, the irrational and rational blend easily. Fear alone could have given Bush an election that was already in Kerry’s hands, and there is no doubt that there was fear pervading US soil the day of elections. Both Bin Laden’s video and the continuous reiterations by the mass media of attacks and destructive images, along with those anthrax attacks that came and vanished, so effective and at the same time so ephemeral, helped build an atmosphere adequate not only for Bush’s win, but also allowing him to pass the National Security laws; the most far reaching and illegal laws of US history. Today, these laws squash human and civil rights, to include home privacy, freedom of speech, of religion, and academic freedom.. As an example,, in his recent State of the Union, Mr. Bush made public a plan that allows telephone and mail interventions without prior judicial warrant, as declared by US laws. Nevertheless, Bush is only formalizing what was previously being done. It’s no surprise that Chavez ironically calls him “Mr. Danger”.

This “Mr. Danger” who led his citizens into a war by claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, later acknowledging that he knew that they did not exist. This “Mr. Danger” who created lunar craters in Afghanistan in search of a “never found” Bin Laden. This “Mr. Danger” who has sent young soldiers to kill and be killed in an absurd war. This “Mr. Danger” who has suspicious oil businesses, and also has friends with suspicious oil businesses. There is so much to talk about him, that in my huge ignorance I can’t find what’s that right with him that he claims to have.

What Bush doesn’t know, or maybe knows too well to say it, is that polls show that the North American majority don’t believe in him anymore (in regards to financial and economical leadership, the handling of the situation in Iraq, and the war as the right road to fight terrorism). Bush knows he is a chosen (p)resident of the White House thanks to his dad’s friends and the influence of his brother Jeb Bush (Governor of Florida, state that technically gave him the victory in 2000). He also knows he was then elected as a product of fear, confusion and hate, and he’s so pissed off that he has no idea about what to say or do to hide it.

Like Umberto Eco said, we should not pretend that governments are led by philosophers and erudite people, but may rightly expect people with good sense and lucid ideas. Bush demonstrates that is easier and easier for leaders to gain the citizenry’s support by means of fear, distrust and hate, and more and more difficult to attain it through sincerity.

Among the minority who still believe that something is right with Bush, the most avid activist is he. We who are a minority according to him but a majority according to simple mathematics, those who live south of the imperial border (maybe in their own belly, as we have been swallowed so long ago), have and breathe another reality, a reality not waiting any magical bushism to camouflage the misery to which we have been directed.

We, Latin-Americans, confirm that something must be right with Mr. George Walker Bush, for in the end, and without him wanting it, he has united more and more people around the globe in solidarity and given them (given us) the clarity to know that Earth should not and will not be annexed to his Majesty Bush’s Empire, and that its inhabitants, I mean, us (and the US people excluded and forgotten), deserve and demand respect.

Yes, something must be right with Bush, something wonderful and prodigiously beautiful. The increasing union of people around an achievable hope is the best testimony.
axisoflogic.com

The second anniversary of the coup of elected Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide occurred in the midst of la carnival, a popular yearly cultural festival. Tens of thousands of Haitians from neighbourhoods all over the capital came out for the celebration, which included a performance by Haitian hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean. Last year, the planned festival was all but cancelled in Port-au-Prince amid political demonstrations and violence by the Haitian National Police, who shot and killed three participants in a peaceful demonstration protesting Aristide’s removal. This year, in the aftermath of the Rene Preval’s landslide win in the February 7th Haitian elections, the climate is noticeably calmer, even within some of the poorest neighbourhoods.

On Thursday, March 2nd, hip-hop star Wyclef Jean lead a delegation of individuals from Yele Haiti, the public works NGO founded by the hip-hop icon, into Bel Air and Cite Soleil, two of the poorest urban slums in the capital of Port-au-Prince. The next morning, Le Matin, a paper owned by Haitian industrialist Reginal Boulos, featured a cover photo of Jean standing arm in arm with Evans and Amaral, two “gang leaders” according to the caption, in Cite Soleil. Many of the artists and musicians accompanying Wyclef into Cite Soleil called for a new spirit of “reunification” of Haiti, presumably within the “troubled” poor neighborhoods surrounding Haiti’s capital.

Such optimism may seem somewhat premature, given the fact that on the same day as Wyclef’s well-publicized visit, the Haitian Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced without explanation that the planned March 19th parliamentary elections would be postponed indefinitely. This announcement echoes the announcements of past delays of the Presidential election, which was delayed at least three times before it was held in a state of massive disorganization on February 7th. The tallying of the votes for this election took more than a full week, and culminated in an explosion of street protests by poor Haitians and supporters of Preval after burned and charred ballots bearing an “x” under Preval’s name turned up in a dumpsite on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. The Provisional Electoral Council’s tally of votes had reduced Preval’s lead from its earlier tally of 61% to 48.7%, below the 50% required to avoid a run-off vote. Preval was declared President soon after by the CEP, under pressure from within and without as the international community began to recognize the fact that none of Preval’s rivals, most of whom taken from Haiti’s wealthy elite, had garnered anywhere near the electoral support that he had.
zmag.org

Lara, Venezuela- Rito Martinez a former guerilla fighter with flowing white hair and a long white beard stands in the town square of Sanare, a small mountain village. Sanare is located in the state of Lara, a state which lies roughly 200 miles southwest of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. Inspired by the revolution in Cuba Martinez along with thousands of other fighters in the 1960s took to the surrounding mountainside. In response the Venezuelan government pursued these fighters imprisoning or “disappearing” thousands of guerillas and their sympathizers. For 9 years Martínez was held captive in what he describes as “a rodent infested tunnel with prison cages.” Today the sons and daughters of Martinez’s generation carry forth their left wing legacy and earn Lara the reputation of being called the ‘most revolutionary state in the country.’

By utilizing oil money the Chavez government has implemented massive social welfare programs which have in turn caused an explosion of grass roots political activity. This process taken as a whole is referred to simultaneously as ‘the revolutionary process,’ ‘the Bolivarian process,’ or ‘the process of change.’ It is here in Lara, perhaps more so than anywhere else in the country, that ‘the process of change’ has made such dramatic strides. Lara therefore provides a glimpse as to how this process works and where it is taking Venezuela.
zmag.org

WARRI, NIGERIA – Gunmen dressed in black balaclavas and camouflage flak jackets approach in a boat. As it draws alongside, their voices can be heard singing. The chorus fades and they introduce themselves.
“We are the security men of the Niger delta,” says one of the men in the blue speedboat bristling with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. “Nobody is going to hurt you. We are everywhere in the Niger delta.”

The singing militiamen are part of the newly organized Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and are the latest expression of local resentment in a region of the country where tens of millions of dollars worth of oil are extracted each day, but most people live on only several hundred dollars each year.

The MEND organization, whose leadership remains a matter of speculation, appears to be better organized, trained, and equipped than any other group to emerge so far from this restive, swampy region.

“The way [the MEND militiamen] have been able to engage [the Nigerian military] in the last one month or so, the sophistication of firepower, it’s not child’s play,” says Kayode Komolafe, managing editor of Nigeria’s This Day newspaper. “What we have in this place is something aching. If we are not careful it could explode into greater warfare.”

Nigeria is the world’s eighth largest oil exporter and the fifth largest supplier of crude to the US. MEND’s recent sabotage of pipelines and other oil facilities has so far shut off over a fifth of the country’s oil output, steadily driving up world oil prices.
csmonitor.com