This Week:

Quote of the Week

A Word on Nader, Voting, and So On

The Anti-Headline or Reading Between the Lines or Decoding the News

Greetings,

The piece on the local telephone company this week was supposed to just be a little tidbit about a weird headline, but it became much longer. Perhaps that is because I came to see what a fine illustration of "decoding the news" it could be. Or perhaps it is just my way of dealing with my personal frustration at my lousy service. Either way, I think there is a lesson there. And I feel better now after writing it down!

I somewhat reluctantly say a few words this week to add to the blizzard of words on the election campaign. I say "reluctantly" because I fear my words will get lost in the blizzard. But I hope that many Nygaard Notes readers are strategically ignoring most of the droning and focusing on the good stuff. Hence my few hundred words.

I am not reluctant at all to encourage Minneapolis residents to vote Yes on two referendums on the ballot this year. We've gotten our tax rebates from the State; now is our chance to make a collective agreement to give some of it back in the form of a minor tax increase for a new downtown library and improved community libraries and -- in the case of the schools – the continuation of a small tax that will keep class sizes small and make our teachers' jobs somewhat more doable. Vote Yes on both! For more information on the schools referendum from the "Yes" perspective (I couldn't find a source for the opposition!) call 612-668-0491 or visit the website at www.voteyes4kids.com. For more on the library vote, contact the Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library at (612) 630-6170, or visit the website at www.mpls.lib.mn.us/referendum.asp.

See you post-election,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

"With elections, you lose, you lose, you lose -- and then you win -- and thus all those losses weren't really losses at all, but were, instead, part of a process of building eventually definitive support."

-- Z Magazine's Michael Albert, in an essay on ZNet entitled "Lesser Evil?"

A Word on Nader, Voting, and So On

Reader Betty wrote to encourage me to say something about "the pressure on Nader supporters to vote for Gore," which is making her angry. I would say that those who do decide to vote for Ralph would do well to consider the nature and source of the "pressure" that they are feeling. Then imagine for a moment what might actually happen if a person like Ralph Nader were to become President. There's a lot to be learned there about the limitations of a simple electoral victory.

If there is one theme to which Nygaard Notes returns again and again, it is that there are enormous institutional forces at work that shape the society in which we live. These forces are neither "natural" or "inevitable," but they are very powerful. The only way we can hope to challenge them is by mobilizing and organizing citizens on a large scale, and not only in opposition to those forces, but in favor of positive alternatives. Without such organization, any attempts that Ralph Nader, or anyone else, might make to change the status quo would be doomed to dismal and demoralizing failure. And the constraints on the actual President, whether it's Bush or Gore, will depend on the same thing.

I hesitate to say too much about the whole presidential election thing, since I believe that others have already said pretty much all that needs to be said. Here, for example, is an excerpt from one of the best essays I have seen, discussing the idea of a vote for Gore as a vote against George W (a.k.a. the "lesser evil" discussion):

"What is odd...about the lesser evil discussion is that it stacks the deck against third party politics by simply ruling out, tout court, the whole reason for Nader's campaign, its whole logic and purpose, and thus its real value -- and not only in the long term, but in the short term as well. That is, the discussion most often assumes that the only thing that matters about an election is who wins it -- not the election's impact on constituencies supporting or opposing candidates, and on movement organization and commitment.

"It assumes, in other words, that nothing substantial can ever be accomplished electorally (or otherwise, with just a little tweaking of the argument) unless it occurs by some kind of overnight miracle that wins all things sought in one swoop. If Nader could win, the argument goes, then it would be okay to vote for him, but we can't participate in the extended process of work and organizing needed as a prerequisite to later winning major gains and even eventual electoral power. The discussion denies that with elections, you lose, you lose, you lose -- and then you win -- and thus all those losses weren't really losses at all, but were, instead, part of a process of building eventually-definitive support. And, more, the discussion denies that the supposed debit of having pushed some elections in the short term from tweedle dumb to tweedle dumber (and more vile), were not such large debits as they might seem, either, because the electoral swing to the right was offset by the fact that tweedle dumber then had to operate against a far more aroused and organized populace constraining his options."

That quote is from an essay by Z Magazine's Michael Albert, in an essay entitled "Lesser Evil?" I recommend reading the whole thing, which can be found on ZNet at: http://www.zmag.org/ZNETTOPnoanimation.html. (Search for the phrase "Albert on Lesser Evil?") Also on that site are lots of other great things about Nader, third party politics, and so on.

Albert's argument was the argument I was making two weeks ago, on a less grassroots level, when I was encouraging you to cast your vote for your local Democrat for the U.S. House or Senate. Progressive leadership in key committees is more important to me than whichever one of the Big Two actually becomes President. An energized population can help rein in whichever conservative President we end up with.

So this election is like any other: The bulk of the work occurs before and after the election. Whoever you vote for, the meaning of your vote will be determined afterward, by what you do to hold the winners accountable. And by what you do to create an environment in which today's losers can be tomorrow's winners.

The Anti-Headline or Reading Between the Lines or Decoding the News

Utility "deregulation" -- that is, the removal of any remaining illusions of public control over utilities in favor of complete corporate domination -- is unfolding exactly as critics of the Free Market have long predicted. Understanding that the Market demands, before all else, that each company maximize its short-term profits, it should come as no surprise that the process of "deregulation" will bring 1) poorer service, and 2) higher costs. That is, for most of us. Why is this predictable? Let's have a look at an article that appeared in the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) of October 3rd. Although it isn't likely that the article was intended as an illustration of the negative effects of utility "deregulation," a careful reader can nevertheless learn a lot.

"Qwest Pledges More Jobs" read the lead headline in the Business section, with the sub-head adding, "Phone Company Says Better Service, New Facility on the Way." As anyone in this part of the country knows by now, Qwest is the new name for our local telephone company, since they purchased our previous phone company, US West, this past June. US West was somewhat famous for bad service, and the new Qwest appears to be continuing the tradition. In fact, the service is so bad that it made the front page a couple of weeks ago in a Star Trib article headlined "Service Complaints in the Twin Cities Challenge Qwest." The article quoted many unhappy local customers, including one woman who says that Qwest's customer service should be called "anti-customer service." [Conflict of interest report: I personally have spent time recommending to many people that they try to avoid doing business with US West/Qwest when they have the choice, and the same week this article appeared I was on the phone to Qwest's anti-customer service in a vain attempt to get some relief from their latest screw-up. As of this writing my attempt appears hopeless.]

So I perked up when I saw the October 3rd headline about "better service,"and read the lead paragraph which said, "Qwest Communications promised Monday to hire additional technical and service workers in Minnesota and to build a new business-oriented Internet facility in Minneapolis." It kind of gave me the impression that Qwest had finally seen the nature and extent of the mess they had inherited from US West, and was "pledging" to do something about it. Then I read the article, and – lo and behold! – it said something quite different indeed. About 2/3 of the way through I found the following paragraph: "The Minnesota jobs would be part of a group of up to 500 new jobs Qwest promised the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) it would create in exchange for its approval of Qwest's acquisition of US West." So their "pledge" of "more jobs" sounds a bit more like a fulfillment of a regulatory order. If you're having difficulty understanding the problem with the tone of this article, imagine a headline reading, "Convicted Murderer Pledges To Go to Prison."

It's not that the article was devoid of information. In the second-to-last paragraph we learn that Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio "acknowledged public dissatisfaction with the former US West local telephone service." Although the article doesn't say so, this might have had something to do with the PUC's requirement that Qwest improve their service by hiring people to provide it.

In the final paragraph we learn that someone at the Qwest press conference, which was the impetus for the Star Trib report, asked Nacchio about "allegations from some former Twin Cities sales consultants, who sell new phone services, that Qwest pay-cuts had forced representatives to work harder and give poorer service." Nacchio "said the company had rearranged pay structures but that didn't necessarily mean lower pay for all employees."

I think this calls for a Nygaard Notes Corporate Decoder Hint: "Raise" means workers get more money. "Pay cut" means workers get less money. "Rearranged pay structures" is probably intended to be corporate ConfusingSpeak intended to be meaningless while allowing the corporate spokesperson to avoid two unpleasant options: lying or admitting guilt. In this case, "rearranged pay structures" most likely means "pay cuts" for most, since the CEO declined to deny the charge, preferring instead to say that it didn't "necessarily" mean pay cuts for "all."

Earlier in the article it was pointed out that Qwest would be investing some undisclosed amount of money in a new "CyberCenter," which "will be the size of four football fields" and "will function as a business-oriented Internet data center."

Re-Working the Puzzle

So how can this article be seen as an "illustration of the negative effects of utility ‘deregulation,'" as I said earlier? Well, if we rearrange the order and emphasis of the facts that are there, then make some modest attempt to connect them to what we already know, the picture begins to come into focus. There are some easily-discovered things that are not in the article that could shed some further light on the subject, but let's stick with what we have in front of us to produce the Nygaard Notes version. Here it is, in summary:

Qwest, like all large corporations, must produce the largest possible return (i.e. "profit") for its investors, or else it will not survive. (If Qwest took on some debt in order to purchase US West, that would make the need to maximize short-term profit even more compelling.) The two easiest ways, in the short term, to increase profits are to 1) Increase revenue, and 2) Decrease operating costs.

One of the most common ways to cut operating costs is to pay your workers less. Since the time-honored corporate tradition of massive layoffs seems to have been legally prohibited in this case, as a condition of the merger, Qwest has apparently chosen instead to cut their workers' pay, forcing them "to work harder and give poorer service." This tactic, known in labor circles as "speedup," no doubt fattens the company's bottom line, but almost always results in greater workplace stress, more injuries, and lower-quality work.

Meanwhile, the energy of the company is being redirected to improve service for the most profitable customers any corporation can have: other corporations. One of the reasons that phone service has been regulated in the past is to assure that individual residential users and those in rural areas would be assured of relatively high-quality service despite being the utility's higher cost (i.e. lower profit) customers.

The article points out that the Qwest CEO was in town "to meet with employees, customers, and Gov. Jesse Ventura." I don't know which "customers" he was meeting with, but Jeff "30-Bucks-A-Month" Nygaard sure didn't get an invitation. Nygaard Notes would have reported which "customers" were present at the press conference, as that would give a hint of who is important and who is not in the new world of Qwest. The huge investment in "business-oriented Internet data centers" (24 of them nationwide) at the same time that their poor service is front-page news is further indication that Qwest is targeting the business community as their primary customers.

The prediction of deregulation critics has been that the newly-liberated companies would forsake their rural and residential customers in favor of their more-profitable corporate customers, and this article seems to tell us that this prediction is coming true, if you read between the lines.

Nygaard Notes Alternative Headline: "Telephone Deregulation Taking Toll; Qwest Speedups Degrading Local Service."