Low Culture is a website dedicated to up-to-the-minute (well, sort of) satirical commentary on news and trends and the like. It's highly irreverent and funny. Here is an example, a favorite posting of mine by JP, which comments on Reagan's death a few months back.
Oh, also, I am a part-time author there too. So, go check it out every once in awhile.
This map just came out today, it illustrates the circulation of FOI laws worldwide. With the pending efforts in yellow and the already established in green, it gives you a good picture of how the majority of the world is now considering information access as a viable and important goal. It's definitely a sign of things.
I received some help recently from Cecilia, reading and editing my corruption chapter, still in progress, though truly expanded into 2 chapters. The biggest help was just going through parts of my writing where i made incomplete connections or wrote about things without much of a logical explanation or linkage.
In one chapter, I almost offhandedly referred to a debt crisis from the early 1980's and Cecilia simply wrote "where?" Wanting to know more about this myself, I started doing some more research. There's always a threat that this kind of thing could lead you astray. But for one, it's relevant and for two, it's interesting. It's especially relevant because Poland was involved.
Basically, in 1982 Poland went bankrupt. Mexico too. As did Romania, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and a bunch of others. They all defaulted on their loans in the billions of dollars, money owed to Western banks. It was a crisis that hit just about every non-oil-exporting developing country in the early 80's. It was mostly shocking to me to read about the complete lack of accountability for these loans. Banks were handing out money without asking for much information, especially when it came to Soviet bloc countries where economic data was a state secret anyways. Of course, it all stemmed from a heinous cycle of loaning to balance trade deficits and Western bankers passing off all of their debts onto developing countries. I will bracket all heinous acts for the time being because I am currently interested in openness and transparency, the lack thereof before the debt crisis and the increasing importance following it. The crisis appears to be an important landmark event in the transformation of development policy towards "neoliberalism" & structural adjustment policy promoting markets.
Can anyone lend a helpful source or sources for this line of research? I'm reading a general story of the debt crisis, Debt Shock (1984) by Delamaide. I found an IMF history, the Silent Revolution by Boughton (2001), and The International Debt Crisis in Historical Perspective (1989) by Eichengreen and Lindert. I have yet to find a decent analysis of information issues, secrecy and transparency, as they relate to the crisis.
at the moment, i'm working through refining my arguments about the study of corruption as it changed from the 60's through the present. if anyone knows much about the history of political science, please feel free to enlighten me and us.
james scott in 1969 and samuel huntington in 1968 argue that corruption can be a good thing for underpriviliged social groups in less developed countries because it can offer them ways to put forward their political interests and effect policy change or implementation practices.
about 20 years later, while admitting that corruption may have one or two positive uses and complete eradication may cost more financially and socially than allowing a few things to slip by, robert klitgaard completely dismisses any debate on whether corruption helps or hinders 'development.' the academic obsession with this question, according to him, has moved from puzzlement to annoyance, as no one had systematically attempted to describe ways to curb corruption. by analogy, he uses poverty and smoking, moving the academic question from, is smoking (corruption) bad? to, how can people be helped to stop smoking (corruption)?
again, i keep at this question, how and why did this transformation of interests take place? the academic is another arena, its shift in interest is as much evidence of my arguments than anything else. after all, huntington and scott focus on politics, klitgaard looks at governance and economics. H & S seek political stability, klitgaard seeks efficient/good governance through transparency. H & S make no mention of transparency. why not? not simply because they didn't want to rectify the corruption problem (which i guess they didn't really see as a problem), but i doubt they would consider transparency as a good way to stop corruption anyways.
to get transparency to work, you need, according to klitgaard, systems for gathering and analyzing info (esp. audit info), information agents(auditors, evaluators, and inspectors (i.e. spies!)), and info from clients or the public (informants). Further, Klitgaard suggests that agencies reverse the burden of proof, making the accused guilty until proven innocent! to top it all off, no gifts and more formal relationships.
this is getting weird. but klitgaard is not completely crazy. he suggest using an "optimal" amount of anti-corruption devices. so, for example, if the social costs are too high (such as, i would guess, the erosion of trust due to paranoia), then it is not worth fighting. not that corruption or social costs can be quantified for optimization, but that's another issue...
an aside: how long do you keep working away at a long chapter until you need to stop and work on another chapter? while i could attempt to polish until completely finished, it might also be to my benefit to step away from the chapter, slowly, and nobody gets hurt. it's not just a matter of finding new perspective later on, but also creating such inertia or hatred of the topic after being so obsessed with it for so many weeks. any ideas on how long to work on each chapter?
when will the media leave michael powell alone? it's the question on very few lips, but nonetheless, here are the remarkable recurrences (oh, where to begin?):
Associated Press article "Pentagon Censors 'Right to Know' Video" by Ted Bridis
concerning my post from last week
Richard Posner, US Court of Appeals 7th Circuit & U. of Chicago Law School, wrote an insightful book review of the 9/11 Commission Report for the Sunday NY Times And I put my 2 cents in and got a response printed in the NY Times from Posner on a question I had (question #3).
my friend davy runs an awesome magazine called Found! He couldn't be here for the RNC, so he sent his minions to go find things (namely a guy named David Meijklejohn and myself). Whitney Matheson from the USA Today interviewed us and even made a short video online here
that's it for now, i'll keep you posted with anything else. in the meantime, if you'd like an autographed headshot, please send a SASE to...
oh, c'mon