Hurrahpertif Tuesday - Miers, Top Intellectuals, Labor's Casualties

By Meteor Blades

Colorado Luis offers a fresh perspective on the Harriet Miers’s nomination in his Unqualified is the New Qualified. An excerpt:

That brings us to Harriet Miers, a (white female) graduate of Southern Methodist University School of Law who worked her way up in private practice all the way to being managing partner of a large Dallas corporate firm, was Texas Lottery Commissioner, and held various positions in the current Bush White House. I personally have no problem with having an SMU grad on the Supreme Court; I certainly don't believe that the elite law schools have a monopoly on legal talent. And in theory I have no problem with Sen. Harry Reid's suggestion that the White House go outside the conventional nominee pool in choosing a successor to Justice O'Connor.

But this is where I get pissed off. Let's go back to the Clinton judicial nomination wars, where credentialism was frequently offered by Republicans as an excuse to block or delay judicial nominations. Credentialism was the main justification for Orrin Hatch warning Clinton off of nominating José Cabranes to the Supreme Court. You see, although Judge Cabranes went to Yale Law School and had been a Professor at Rutgers Law School before taking a position as general counsel and a member of the law faculty at Yale, his fifteen years of experience as a judge as of 1994 had all been at the district court level -- and as Hatch explained to Clinton, this lack of credentials would cause a fight between Clinton and Senate Republicans. Clinton ended up sending Cabranes to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and put Breyer on the Supreme Court, thus opening the door to over a decade of Republican mischief that has taken advantage of what has now become a pathological obsession by mainstream "Hispanic" groups to get that long-overdue "first Hispanic Supreme Court justice" nominated.

Thus, the Clinton years established (or should have established) that significant experience at the Court of Appeals level is now a minimum requirement to be considered for the position of Supreme Court Justice. It's an example of "rising standards" within a credentialist framework -- the same thing, at a higher level, of rising LSATs at the most competitive law schools.

To fully appreciate Colorado Luis’s argument, you gotta read the whole thing.

Last month, the journal-magazine Foreign Policy and the British Prospect issued a call for their readers to choose the top five from its list of Top 100 Public Intellectuals. From the results of the top 20, I can just about guarantee there will be screaming across the spectrum:

1) Noam Chomsky; 2) Umberto Eco; 3) Richard Dawkins; 4) Václav Havel; 5) Christopher Hitchens; 6) Paul Krugman; 7) Jürgen Habermas; 8) 8) Amartya Sen; 9) Jared Diamond; 10) Salman Rushdie; 11) Naomi Klein; 12) Shirin Ebadi; 13) Hernando de Soto; 14) Bjørn Lomborg; 15) Abdolkarim Soroush; 16) Thomas Friedman; 17) Pope Benedict XVI; 18) Eric Hobsbawm; 19) Paul Wolfowitz; 20) Camille Paglia.

How many arrrrggghs can you muster?

A decade ago, the Los Angeles Times reassigned its last labor reporter, and it’s rare that a labor story makes it to the front page. But today, one did:

U.S. Labor Is in Retreat as Global Forces Squeeze Pay and Benefits

The forces affecting Delphi and GM workers are extreme versions of what's occurring across the American labor market, where such economic risks as unemployment and health costs once broadly shared by business and government are being shifted directly onto the backs of American working families.

Four years into an economic recovery, workers across America should be riding high. Instead, they're facing new demands to surrender hard-won benefits and agree to wage concessions. Companies say these cutbacks are essential to stay competitive in an increasingly globalized economy.

In recent weeks, there have been numerous examples — and they aren't limited to manufacturers.

Grocery workers at the 71-store Farmer Jack chain in Michigan agreed to take a 10% wage cut to make their operation more palatable to a new owner. Hundreds of workers at a hose plant in Auburn, Ind., approved a $2 cut in their $18-an-hour pay to keep the plant open. Police officers in Wyandotte, Mich., agreed to a three-year wage freeze and to pay more for healthcare.

Call it “leveling,” call it the inevitable consequence of global capitalism, call it whatever, the pain is immense, and we’ve just gotten started.

Comments

[Meteor Blades]

Want to retrieve customer service jobs from India? No problem. Just be willing to work for $8,000 a year and we can set you up in Omaha.

[emptywheel]

My $.02 on the intellectuals. I had to do work extensive on both Eco and Havel for my graduate work. Eco, in some of his "hipper" work was nothing but a post-Marxist ignoramous. Who certainly didn't do his homework. And Havel, well, as I've said to the blogmates, he's only my third or fourth favorite Czech dissident. He was ineffective as President.Even worse, he has joined the new Committee on the Present Danger, which puts him in the company of the best Neocons. Why did Havel score big but Mandela doesn't show?

And FWIW, I have a lot of big disagreements with Habermas (he too didn't do his history homework). But it's respectful disagreement.

[Mimikatz]

In the period that wages have stagnated, CEO pay is up 600%, I read today. Income inequality is just getting worse, and with the pie shrinking from inflation and slower growth, and people not making the connections between their own economic position and recent economic policies, it will be some time before it gets any better.

[emptypockets]

what's a public intellectual? The phrase makes me think of Walter Lippmann, hardly seems suited to the blog age. I've heard of 12 of the top 20 names; have some association of who they are for 9 of the top 20; to my recollection in the last decade have heard, read or seen maybe 3 of them. Are they not public enough or am I not intellectual enough?

[emptywheel]

~pockets,

It's humanities and politics heavy. You scientist types, I guess, don't count as intellectuals (where is Page when I know she'd thwap me for that statement?)

[janinsanfran]

I was in Detroit working with labor folks when the UAW givebacks hit the front pages. Talk about folks kicked in the stomach. The anti-union Detroit Free Press crowed. Here's a sample: "The fallout from Monday's deal will be felt by every Michigan schoolteacher, municipal worker or other employee whose wage-and-benefit package was modeled on the auto industry contracts of yesteryear. Say goodbye to the paternalistic employer that promised cradle-to-grave security."

Yes -- we are supposed to work for whatever they want to pay and be grateful.