| Number 454 | April 17, 2010 |
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This Week: War and Baseball
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Greetings, Well, it's another lengthy issue this week. Should I apologize to those of you who only budget enough time to read the standard 2,000 words? Or are you happy to be getting more for your money? If the former, you may prefer to print out the Notes for leisurely reading away from your computer. If so, remember that I make a printable version available on the Nygaard Notes homepage. A correction from last week's issue: I wrote that "the size of the overall Social Security Trust Fund will actually increase by about $90 in 2010." Actually, it will increase by about $90 BILLION in 2010. That's a little different than $90. About a billion times different. My apologies. The only thing good about a mistake this huge is that what I meant to say is hopefully pretty obvious. Still, no excuse for this kind of thing. I need a proofreader! See ya next week, Nygaard |
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Little Short of Insurmountable I don't think anyone could—or can—fully understand the nature of the United States' involvement in Vietnam without reading the classic 1972 book by Alfred McCoy, "The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia." Now, here is the U.S. again, in the country of Afghanistan. And here again, is McCoy, reminding us that "For the past five years, the Afghan opium harvest has accounted for as much as 50% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and provided the prime ingredient for over 90% of the world's heroin supply." McCoy published a short article a couple of weeks ago in which he wrote this week's "Quote" of the Week: "To understand the Afghan War, one basic point must be grasped: in poor nations with weak state services, agriculture is the foundation for all politics, binding villagers to the government or warlords or rebels. The ultimate aim of counterinsurgency strategy is always to establish the state's authority. When the economy is illicit and by definition beyond government control, this task becomes monumental. If the insurgents capture that illicit economy, as the Taliban have done, then the task becomes little short of insurmountable." I highly recommend the essay from which this "quote" is drawn: "Can Anyone Pacify the World's Number One Narco-State? The Opium Wars in Afghanistan." |
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I like baseball as much as the next person, but I don't see why public tax money should be used to build baseball stadiums. I bring this up right now because this is the week that the local major-league baseball team—the Minnesota Twins—is moving into their brand-new stadium. The stadium is called "Target Field" since "naming rights" were sold to Target Corporation for an estimated $125 million for 10 years. That's about $6 million per year. The total stadium cost is about $544 million, of which about $152 million will be paid by the baseball team's owners, and about $392 million will be paid by taxpayers in my county, which is Hennepin County, the county in which Minneapolis lives. This will be in the form of a county-wide sales tax. At the time the "deal" to finance the Twins stadium was struck, the owner of the team was a man named Carl Pohlad. At the time of his death in 2009 at age 93, his wealth was estimated to be "$3.6 billion, making him the 102nd-richest person in America," according to his obituary in the local newspaper. If you do the arithmetic, you'll see that the total cost of the stadium equals about 15 percent of the team owner's wealth. While I'm not too familiar with the ways of the super-rich, I don't imagine it would have been too difficult for a multibillionaire to put together a financing package equivalent to one-seventh the value of his assets. My net worth, for purposes of comparison, comes to something like $12,000. Could I put together a financing package of 15 percent of my assets—roughly $2,000—to build myself a stadium? I think I could, but I doubt that I could get the county to apply a sales tax to everyone to pay three-quarters of my cost. You get my drift here, I hope. Good for the Local Economy? No The arguments put forward by the billionaires who want the public to pay for their stadiums are many, but the most persuasive ones seem to be that sports stadiums are boons to the community, both economically and in terms of "civic pride." Sports teams "unite the community," they say, and bring money in. First, the economic argument: There are lots of studies on this, and all of the ones that are not done by interested parties show that sports stadiums bring no positive economic impact to cities or regions. Here I'll quote from testimony presented before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform back in 2007 by Brad R. Humphreys, a professor at the U of Illinois. He cited "a large body of evidence published in peer-reviewed academic journals," and then he testified:
Owners of teams often sponsor their own studies on the economic benefits of sports stadiums. Their studies usually project into the future, attempting to predict what will happen if their stadium gets built. It will surprise no one to learn that many of these studies predict great economic benefits from their proposals. Academic studies, in contrast, are generally done by analyzing the actual impact that stadiums have had once they are built. The positive studies, in other words, are based on hopeful speculation, while the negative studies are based on what actually happens. I was curious to see what the Twins said about the benefits we can expect from their stadium. They've been pushing for a new stadium since at least 1995, after all, so I figured they must have produced a study or two. Then I read in the April 5th Star Tribune, our local newspaper, that "The only economic impact study for the new ballpark was done by the Twins in 1997, and it has been lost, said team spokesman Kevin Smith." This would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. I'm surprised they didn't say that their dog ate the report. Maybe it wasn't positive enough. I don't know, I can't find a copy anywhere. "Overcome With Civic Pride" The economic benefits argument doesn't hold water, so that leaves us with the "civic pride" argument. As a local sportswriter put it last week, despite substantial opposition to the project over many years, now that it is built "suddenly 99 percent of the people are overcome with civic pride." Fawning local media reports do make it seem that way. There's not much to say here except for the fact that there is no relationship between "civic pride" and private ownership. The owners of privately-owned sports franchises often threaten to sell their team or move it to another state if they don't get their way (like, for example, if we refuse to buy them a new stadium). The threat of relocation puts a damper on whatever "civic pride" might attach to a team. Ask fans in Los Angeles, or Cleveland, or Baltimore, or any number of other cities that have seen their teams disappear. Even my own state of Minnesota lost its professional hockey team in 1993 when they moved to Dallas, of all places. Civic pride for sale! If there is an intangible public benefit to having a professional sports team in a region, why not let the citizens of the region own it? There are a few examples in professional sports of public ownership of a team, the Green Bay Packers football team being the best example. That team, based in a city of about 100,000 and tremendously popular in the entire region, is a publicly-owned nonprofit corporation. At the moment, that can't be done with a professional baseball team. As a 1998 report by Minneapolis's Institute for Local Self Reliance tells us, "Major League Baseball outlawed public ownership through an informal resolution passed in the mid-1980s when Joan Kroc sought to donate her baseball team, the Padres, to San Diego." (Joan is the widow of Ray Kroc, the owner of McDonald's.) So much for the franchise. But how about the stadium itself? The point is, if the citizens of a community are being asked to pay the costs of the facility necessary to have a franchise in the region, then some of the rights of ownership should belong to the "owners." If a stadium is a money-making proposition, then those who pay for it should make the profit. No? And, if a stadium is a money-losing proposition, then the people who feel the "civic pride"—and surveys would show, I'm sure, that it is not 99 percent of the county's residents—should pay the costs. One way to find out what percentage of the county's residents feel enough "civic pride" to be willing to pay for it would have been to have had a referendum on the proposed sales tax. And, sure enough, the law in Minnesota says that counties cannot enact a sales tax without a referendum. Perfect! Oops, hold on. According to a Star Tribune chronology, here's what happened on May 21 2006: "The state Senate, by a vote of 34-32, approves funding for a $522 million downtown Minneapolis stadium. The stadium will be funded with a sales tax increase in Hennepin County and put in place without a referendum, which supporters feared would kill the plan." Those "supporters" of the baseball billionaire got a "waiver" of the standard requirement. If it is true, as a letter-writer wrote to the Star Tribune, that Target Field is "a signature piece of architecture" for Minneapolis ("Think Rome, think the Coliseum; think Paris, think the Eiffel Tower.") then why must the city depend on the whim of the super-rich to construct such a structure, and then only if the public pays for most of it? In other words, since the residents of my county are paying for 72 percent of the costs of "civic pride," why don't we get to say what form of "pride" we get? This is the kind of thing that spurs great anger among many. Right now this kind of anger seems to serve as a recruitment tool for the Tea Party movement. But there's no reason why, if we do our work, that those recruits couldn't channel their anger in a more productive, transformative way. Coming soon: Public financing for a new FOOTBALL stadium for the Minnesota Vikings. The owners and their allies are already organizing for more "socialism for the rich." How about if the rest of us use the anger that will be generated by that push to organize for public funds for the rest of us? Like, for instance, we could start a movement in support of H.R. 4812 in the U.S. House, the "Local Jobs for America Act ." More on that in a future Nygaard Notes. |
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The United States and its would-be puppet government in Afghanistan are planning to launch "a long-planned assault on the Taliban's spiritual home in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar" in June, says the Associated Press. The AP adds that, "The two-month offensive will be a major test of President Barack Obama's new strategy in Afghanistan and a bellwether of the war in general." This comment brings to mind an earlier comment, this one from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. Speaking about Afghanistan back in February, he said, "This is all a war of perceptions. This is not a physical war in terms of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants." Those words were spoken in Istanbul where, according to the NY Times, McChrystal "joined Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to brief NATO allies just before the offensive began." The Times refers here to the offensive in Marja, Afghanistan, the outcome of which, said TIME Magazine "will reveal the chances of success for President Obama's revamped Afghan strategy." On the very first day of the Marja campaign, the London Telegraph announced that "The first stage of the biggest military offensive ever launched by NATO troops in Afghanistan has been declared a success." That was the early verdict, but later reports agreed that the Marja campaign was a "success" according to the only sources that matter to the U.S. media—U.S. military leaders. I'm certain that the coming Kandahar campaign will likewise be "declared" a "success." So, in anticipation of the next "success" in Afghanistan, I thought it would be worthwhile to have a look at the last "success" as it was portrayed in the media, the success in Marja. Since the media is most people's only source of information about Afghanistan, the media becomes a prime battlefront in the "war of perceptions." It's too early to say who'll win that "war," but it appears as though the U.S. public has lost the battle of perceptions that recently took place in Marja. Let's have a look. Headlines The battle of Marja—called Operation Moshtarek, or "Together" by the U.S. military—began on February 13th and ended... well, I'm not sure if it has ended yet. Anyhow, the tone of coverage was set in the first week, as is usually the case. Here are some headlines from that week: "Troops Seize Control of Taliban Territory" (Buffalo
News, NY) The Pentagon couldn't have asked for better headlines than those.
On February 14th the Los Angeles Times told us that "U.S. and Afghan commanders reported only scattered resistance from Taliban fighters, who boasted that they were holding off the massive coalition assault, despite evidence that they were retreating." The Grand Rapids Press on the same day said, "On the first full day of operations, much of the expected Taliban resistance failed to materialize." On the other hand, here is the Washington Post on that very same day: "U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers encountered pockets of stiff resistance and extensive minefields..." The Christian Science Monitor headline said that "Marjah Battle as Tough as Fallujah, Say US Troops." (That's the notorious Fallujah, Iraq, scene of fierce fighting and many casualties.) So, was there "stiff resistance"? Or was it more "scattered resistance"? Or did the resistance "fail to materialize" or even "retreat"? It appears to depend on where one lives, and which newspapers one reads. Most likely all of the headlines were accurate, as one can understand if one understands the nature of guerrilla warfare, which is waged by a militarily weaker force against a stronger force. I explained the nature of guerrilla warfare back in Nygaard Notes #409 "Classic War Propaganda: A Case Study." For the moment I'll only recall one small quotation from that article, this one from Ernesto "Ché" Guevara who explained that, in guerrilla warfare "The great desperation of the enemy army . . . will be to find something to receive his blows. Instead he will find a gelatinous mass, in movement, impenetrable, that retreats and never presents a solid front, though it inflicts wounds from every side." For those who don't understand guerrilla warfare—including, apparently, many of the embedded reporters in Afghanistan—an enemy using guerrilla tactics may appear to be "retreating" or it may appear that resistance to Operation Moshtarek had "failed to materialize." These are serious mis-readings of a serious situation. Not Seeing, But Believing The February 2nd New York Times ran a story with the headline, "In the Taliban, Marines Find Evolving Foes." The article spoke of a military sweep of some town or other, aimed at killing or capturing the "40 to 50 Taliban fighters" that "intelligence reports" had said were there. No luck, though, as the article explained that "the Taliban's fighters had proved elusive again." That's because, the Times concluded, the Taliban has "evolved" into "a canny but mostly unseen force" with "a persistent and cunning presence." Now, skip ahead two weeks to February 16th, in a Times report on the Marja offensive. The headline here was "Half of Afghan Town's Taliban Flee or Are Killed, Allies Say." This was on the front page, as was the February 2nd piece just cited. Not only has "the number of Taliban fighters in the area ... dropped by about half," but "Among the Taliban fighters still in Marja, American and Afghan officials said, morale appears to be eroding fast." The Times continued, quoting Col. Scott Hartsell, who was speaking to "a group of senior officers at a briefing near Marja." He said of the Taliban fighters, "They cannot feed themselves, they cannot sustain themselves—that is what we are hearing. They are calling for help, and they are not getting any. Pretty soon, they are going to run out of gas." That certainly sounds like good news in this "war of perceptions," doesn't it? Well, maybe, unless you can remember as far back as two weeks, when we just saw that the same newspaper told us that the Taliban had become a "mostly unseen force." Apparently, they can't be seen, but they can be counted, or else how would anyone know that "half" of them had fled or been killed? And not only could they apparently be seen, but our leaders have "heard" from someone or other who apparently has "heard" the Taliban "calling for help" and somehow knows that they're "not getting any." It was not surprising to read, later in the article, that "The details of the assessment... could not be independently verified." Hmmm... I wonder why not? Possibly because all the U.S. reporters in Afghanistan are embedded with the U.S. military, so there really is no one to whom they are willing or able to speak who might be considered "independent." Not only that, the military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported last August that the embedded reporters who are writing the stories coming out of Afghanistan were being "screened by a controversial Washington-based public relations firm contracted by the Pentagon to determine whether their past coverage has portrayed the U.S. military in a positive light." Reporters who might seek to "independently verify" the propaganda they're being fed might well not have made the cut. We don't even have to remember two weeks back to be skeptical of all of this seeing and hearing reported in this "assessment, the most extensive made public on the Marja operation." Later in this very article the reporter admits that "Some American officers said they suspected some fighters—especially the local ones—probably just decided not to fight. That is part of the nature of a war like this: if guerrillas decide to stay home, they are unlikely to be discovered." Did it not occur to the reporter to ask, if some fighters "stay home" and remain undiscovered, A) How does anyone know how many fighters there are, and B) How does anyone know how many of that unknown number are dead or have "fled"? As a tribal elder told the Times, "The Taliban have no specific uniform; they are like ordinary people. They can go anywhere, anytime." Again, this is guerrilla warfare; they are not "deciding not to fight." They are deciding when to fight. It would be a few days later, February 20th, that the Times would report that "the [Marja] operation was advertised, almost in neon lights, so far in advance and in such detail that there was none of the element of surprise that combat commanders usually prize." (Pay no attention to the headline cited above: "Surprise Offensive Befuddles Taliban") An offensive announced in neon lights is such a made-to-order unfolding of events for a guerrilla force that it makes one wonder what the real point of this operation was. We can see that this little mini-case study reveals a couple of things about the nature of the reporting of the Marja operation. First of all, reporters who witness standard guerrilla warfare tactics often mistake them for weakness, and then wrongly conclude that the pattern they are seeing is a pattern of the "success" of "President Obama's revamped Afghan strategy." Secondly, what reporters actually see—or don't see—in a war zone often takes a back seat to what they are told by official sources. Pick any news article you like and you'll generally see that virtually all of the sources are official U.S., NATO, or Afghan government sources. So we see comments like this one from the NY Daily News of February 17: "Soon, officials predicted confidently, Kabul will be back in full control of what had been the Taliban's new home base." [Marja, that is.] In sum, the reporting by the U.S. media on the February Marja offensive appeared at every moment to be almost entirely propaganda, passed directly from the mouths of officials hewing to a well-crafted "message" geared to winning the "war of perceptions." Is there any reason to think that the reporting on the next big offensive in Afghanistan will indicate anything other than another "success," which will then be used to justify ongoing funding for "Obama's new strategy in Afghanistan"? I don't think so, and next week, in Part II of this Propaganda from Afghanistan series, I'll look at some of the underlying forces that lead me to say this. |
