Hard Times: July 2008 Archives

Even the Big Three auto manufacturers in Detroit are rushing to replace their gas-guzzling SUVs with smaller cars, and developing new hybrids and electric cars.Toyota has announced plans to produce its popular Prius in the U.S. to help keep up with demand and reduce costs, while Honda is about to launch its first hybrid-only car. (Tangentially, Nissan's dealers now have so many Titan pickups sitting around unsold that Nissan is sending them solar chargers to keep the batteries from dying out of disuse!)

And the message at the Plug-In 2008 conference was that 100 MPG cars are just around the corner. If have a hybrid and you're willing to break your warranty, you could already have a 100 MPG car. But short of major modifications, you'll probably have to wait a couple years for an off-the-lot version.

In GOOD Magazine, Cliff Kuang says we should forget about a 100 MPG car for now anyway: "If you really think about it, the 100-miles-per-gallon innovation isn't as immediately effective as making a simple switch from a Suburban to a Civic. Just do the math: If you raise a guzzler's fuel efficiency from 15 miles per gallon to 35 miles per gallon, you save almost four gallons per 100 miles. But boost a fairly efficient car from 35 mpg to 100 mpg, and you save less than two gallons in the same distance. More importantly, the technology for all cars to reach 35 mpg is already here. The same innovations that in the last 30 years have made family cars into muscle cars can be easily deployed to save gas rather than boost performance."

Steve Wyatt, Associate Creative Director at Kenneth Cole Productions, linked to a new documentary about the Homeless World Cup

Farhad Warasta uploaded a photograph from a U.S. military training event in Afghanistan

David Alm mused on the future of race, social satire and the candidacy of Barack Obama and alerted New York-area readers to an oasis floating in the Hudson River

Kenneth Cole employee Evan Greenberg shared details of a plan by T. Boone Pickens to reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil

Andrew Huff weighed in on the newest scandal at FEMA

Liza Sabater linked to a video that explains how to deal with racism in everyday life

Heather Dumford, Media Marketing Manager at Kenneth Cole Productions, pointed out interesting new TV programs on Sundance and PBS

I've played football (aka soccer) since I was about the same height as a size five ball. After playing for many different teams at varying levels, one observation I've always made is the fact that from the minute you step on to the field, it's just 11 vs. 11; 8 vs. 8; 7 vs. 7; 6 vs. 6; or 5 vs. 5. Nothing else matters. It's plumbers kicking neurosurgeons, lawyers slide-tackling mechanics, and ice cream truck drivers scoring past recruitment consultants. Nobody cares about vocation, background or status - it's all about the game and trying to put that damn ball in the opposition's net more times than they put it in yours. It's what some people refer to as a "leveler."

Everyone is welcome and being part of a team provides players with a sense of camaraderie, loyalty and belonging. Nobody wants to let their team down. Everyone wants to be fit, healthy and strong so they can perform to the best of their ability. But what if the entire team was living on the streets. What if every player in the competition was not only homeless but also battling alcohol and drug addiction? Can they kick it? Yes they can.

Check out the poignant documentary, Kicking It, about the Homeless World Cup, where 20,000 homeless people are "competing for the right to be recognized as human beings." There's no way I, or any teammates I've known, could walk away from the field without thinking about how desperately hard their lives become again the second the referee blows the full-time whistle.

[video: "Kicking It" trailer]

With all the talk in recent years about immigration, the plight of native Americans has virtually disappeared from the headlines. But those problems haven't gone away.

Hence the relevance and power of Kent MacKenzie's 1961 film The Exiles, a documentary about a group of young native Americans who left their reservations in the late 1950s to live in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles. MacKenzie's film, which opened last Friday at the IFC Center in New York, couldn't find distribution when it was made and fell into obscurity, seen only by a handful of cinephiles over the past 47 years.

After a restored print was screened at the Berlin Film Festival in February, the film finally got the recognition it deserves.

Very much of its time, The Exiles straddles the line between documentary and fiction, featuring non-actors and authentic scenarios, but often staged, directed, and scripted by MacKenzie for dramatic effect.

Film afficionados will see a trace of Jean Rouch, Jean-Luc Godard, and even Robert S. Flaherty in this artful work of cinema. Its subjects appear to live their lives candidly, as if caught unawares by the cameras that follow them through the alleyways, squalid apartments, and nightclubs of their small piece of LA. Meanwhile, voiceovers remind us that, yes, this is a documentary and not a fiction film.

But as the best documentaries prove, there is no real difference. Both forms, when done right, have the power to teach us something about humanity, to affect us both intellectually and emotionally, and to show us life as it may be lived.

And The Exiles does all three with a light touch.MacKenzie does not go on and on about his subjects and their problems, or lay blame on those who displaced them. Rather, he simply presents their lives and lets them speak for themselves.

The Exiles may be a product of the early 1960s, but its message transcends history. No doubt, few will take the time to see the film during its brief run at the IFC, but those who do will be glad they took a chance on this near-forgotten documentary.

[Image: The Exiles film stills]

Suze Orman, financial diva, goes on the record at CNN and asks the questions that a lot of people have been asking of a lot of different players in the Bush Administration : "Why aren't the people who were supposed to be watching going to jail?"

You see, IndyMac is the second bank in the country to go under in less than six months. The first one this year was Bear Stearns. Since deaths come in threes, one has to wonder which bank will be the third one this year to hit rock bottom.

IndyMac was taken over by the Federal Reserve over the weekend. What is ironic about this crisis is that Republicans controlled much of Congress since the Reagan administration (1980s) and the advent of "trickle down economics" and "compassionate conservatism". This means that the Republican-led Congress controlled much of the legislation (or lack thereof) that laid the groundwork for the out-of-control lending that's been happening aggressively since the middle of the 1990s. And in many ways, they also changed the ideological composition of the Democrats who supported them. To get elected as a Democrat many politicians took "free-market" positions on matters of economic policy, ennabling Republicans to dismantle any oversight mechanisms and brand any regulation as "evil".

And yet it looks like the Republican's banking legacy will be indeed one of "socialized" and highly regulated institutions.

It was bound to happen. There is no way that the housing and mortgage lunacy could be sustained forever.

Do you know what a NINA is? It's a "No Income, No Asset" load. Yup. Banks couldn't give out enough of these loans to people.

Even though banks like IndyMac knew the people who were taking out these loans couldn't pay them back, they would wash their hands and make a a killing by selling out these bad loans in bulk to other financial institutions who would then make money when the mortgages would enter their adjustable rate phase. It's in the adjustable rate payment period that a lot of banks made a lot of money.

At the height of the lunacy, people were taking out second mortgages to pay the first one because housing values were skyrocketing all over the country. And as long as property values were up, the banks had everything to gain from one bad loan to another.

In other words, the banks got away with lending money under fraudulent pretenses all the while the different oversight agencies in the government where looking away, happy to let things be as long as people were making money.

It's why Suzie Orman asks why aren't these people going to jail.

No, according to the dozens of homeless men who daily use the M35 in Harlem to and from their homeless shelters on Wards Island.

When your livelihood consists of pan-handling for change, dropping what may take hours to earn for a single ride seems like a cruel requirement. Two dollars is a lot of money for the people who live in the shelters, and many of the MTA drivers who cover the M35 route agree.

So they've stopped charging them, suggesting that they instead drop a single penny in the box as a show of good faith (and to at least appear like they're paying to ride the bus).

But that doesn't mean the NYPD can't or will not arrest someone for not paying, if they are caught. Still, according to David Greene, who took the above photograph, during a demonstration on June 5th by half-a-dozen people from Picture the Homeless, a non-profit homeless advocacy group, police officers witnessed several people board the bus without paying the full fare but chose not to arrest them. Greene speculates that this may be simply because a photojournalist was present.

The Department of Homeless Services says it distributes about 150 MetroCards to residents of Wards Island's four shelters, and Volunteers for America, which runs three shelters, says it also helps in the effort.

But clearly, the efforts aren't enough if people are still protesting, or worse, immobilized by a prohibitive fare.

[Image: David Greene]

Kenneth Cole weighed in on how to solve the economic malaise in America

Guest contributor Andrew Huff highlighted an innovative new milk jug that may help save the environment

Louise Reid Ritchie contributed a photo from a Barack Obama rally in Oregon

Kenneth Cole Media Marketing Manager Heather Dumford profiled two politically-themed programs on PBS

Marc Schiller uploaded the trailer for a new documentary film about the Amazon

Warning : This Amnesty International advertisement about torturing by waterboarding may be too upsetting for some of our readers.

Christopher Hitchens is the curmudgeonly self-described polemicist and intellectual that most recently has been stationed at Slate.com. From his cyber column, he's been known to throw atheist molotovs to the theocrats of the American right wing and verbal judo blows to two of his most detested foes, the Clintons.

Yet even though he's no friend of the extreme right, he's been a defender of George Bush's foreign policy and a rabid apologist for the invasion of Iraq. Not of Abu Ghraib or torture techniques, but certainly for the war.

Which is why I find it fascinating (although not shocking given his propensity for pulling self-promoting stunts) that when asked by Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter if he'd like to be tortured with waterboarding by former military Special Forces, he gladly accepted :

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it "simulates" the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning--or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The "board" is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and--as you might expect--inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don't want to tell you how little time I lasted.

The men and women who show them their techniques for resisting waterboarding were training in the art of SERE, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Their lessons they learned in waterboarding were for survival. The didn't learn waterboarding so they could torture enemy combatants. They were taught waterboarding so they could survive it in the event they became prisoners of war.

Hitchens may be fool to support the Iraq War but he is not an unethical fool. His article is an argument for respecting the Geneva Convention and for the most basic respect for human rights even in the middle of a terrible war.

I have a lot of problems with a lot of what Hitchens writes but it's when he writes articles like this one that he earns my respect.