Mitt Romney's Cultural Illiteracy

I have to admit it: I love seeing Mitt Romney continually pummeled for his asinine statements made during his failed overseas charm offensive.  Rather than showing himself as remotely competent on foreign policy issues, Romney mainly showed himself to be offensive and out of touch.  Fareed Zakaria has a column in the Washington Post that looks at Romney's cluelessness and cultural insensitivity - even prejudice if you will - and ignorance about larger economic issues.  Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Romney just doesn't understand what makes most people - or most countries - tick.   As I have noted before, the more I see of the man, the more contempt I have for him.  Here are some column excerpts:

“Culture makes all the difference,” Romney said at a fundraiser in Israel, comparing the country’s economic vitality to Palestinian poverty. Certainly there is a pedigree for this idea. Romney cited David Landes, an economics historian. He could have cited Max Weber, the great German scholar who first made this claim 100 years ago in his book “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” which argued that Protestant values were the most important fuel for economic progress.

 

The problem is that Weber singled out two cultures as being particularly prone to poverty and stagnation, those of China and Japan. But these have been the world’s fastest-growing large economies over the past five decades. Over the past two decades, the other powerhouse has been India, which was also described for years as having a culture incompatible with economic success — hence the phrase “the Hindu rate of growth,” to describe the country’s once-moribund state.

Had Romney spent more time reading Milton Friedman, he would have realized that historically the key driver for economic growth has been the adoption of capitalism and its related institutions and policies across diverse cultures.

The link between economic policies and performance can be seen even in the country on which Romney was lavishing praise. Israel had many admirable traits in its early decades, but no one would have called it an economic miracle.  .  .  .  .  The miracle Romney was praising had to do with new policies rather than deep culture.

Despite all this evidence, most people still believe that two cultures in particular, African and Islamic, inhibit economic development. But the two countries that will next achieve a gross domestic product of $1 trillion are both Muslim democracies — Turkey and Indonesia. Of the 10 fastest-growing economies in the world today, seven are African. The world is changing, and holding on to fixed views of culture means you will miss its changing dynamics.

Social Prejudice Slows Economic Development

I've often maintained that prejudice and Bible beaters are holding back much of Virginia's economy. It's one thing to offer businesses a positive tax/financial setting to do business (Virginia rates high in these terms), but that alone doesn't close the deal in terms of attracting new, progressive businesses. Most of Virginia's growth remains in Northern Virginia where the liberal influence of the District of Columbia is just across the Potomac. The regions of Virginia that most need new investment and businesses are the very regions that are the most inhospitable to anyone who isn't a white evangelical Christian. And then the local leaders wonder why their economic development efforts are getting no where - e.g., Martinsville, Virginia and Southwest Virginia in general. Now a new report has tied a region's level of prejudice with under performance in the economic realm. CNBC has coverage on the report which ought to be required reading for Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonald and Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli who seem to go out of their way to make prejudice synonymous with Virginia in the minds of many. Here are highlights:
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The report found that there was a strong correlation between social inclusion, competitiveness and economic development, and argued that "prejudice, in whatever form – including racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance – irrationally destroys the value of human capital."
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While prejudice is something that rarely features in investment decisions, the destruction of human capital through social prejudice in the 21st Century is at least as significant as that the destruction of physical capital wrought by the Luddites, the anti-technology groups who sabotaged machinery during the industrial revolution, Donovan wrote.
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The relationship between prejudice and development is two-way, the UBS report said. Societies that are poorer are more likely to exhibit prejudice. "A more advanced society is less likely to be prejudiced and a less prejudiced society is likely to be more advanced," Donovan said. Extreme examples, such as the Apartheid regime in South Africa and the expulsion of South Asians from Uganda in the 1970s serve to highlight the negative effects of extreme prejudice, Donovan said.
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"This century is when we need to be a lot cleverer about how we achieve our growth. Human ingenuity is going to be the main driver of economic productivity in the 21st Century. We need to enhance productivity through human capital," he explained.
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"Hypothetically, what would happen if the secret of energy efficiency, or to greater food productivity is locked up in the mind of somebody who is denied the ability to develop because of their race or their religious beliefs or their sexual orientation? That's the sort challenge that we now face," Donovan said. As a micro-level effect of prejudice of this type, Donovan cited the example of Alan Turing . . . He committed suicide in 1954, "effectively denying the world of his intellect, his undoubted experience and potential achievements, and doing considerable damage to the development computing in the 1950s," according to Donovan.
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"We believe that this is a very critical issue, it's one that markets absolutely need to pay attention to and as far as investing is concerned, any society, or indeed any company, that exhibits prejudicial behavior is essentially sending out a major sell signal, as far as we're concerned," he said.
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Yep, Virginia under the Christofascist controlled Republican Party of Virginia is sending out a major signal to stay away if you're a progressive business owner. Virginia is also encouraging innovators and entrepreneurs to leave the state for more progressive regions. It's precisely why Hampton Roads is experiencing a brain drain of college educated young people who refuse to return to the Commonwealth after college. Is anyone taking notes in Richmond? Or are they too busy listening to Victoria Cobb and the hate merchants at The Family Foundation?

Martinsville Journey

As I indicated a couple days ago, I was in Martinsville, Virginia, in rural south central Virginia to argue a case involving a state employee discharged by the Virginia Museum of Natural History for being gay. I was aided on the legal research by the Washington, D.C., office of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender Project of the ACLU and having made the arguments we are awaiting a decision within the next week and a half or so. Needless to say I will be keeping my fingers crossed.

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Martinsville is a physically beautiful place located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Progressive, however, it is not and it truly makes Norfolk look like a bright shining cosmopolitan center of liberalism (which it is not) in comparison. As the case of the "Martinsville Seven" from circa 1950 reveals, Martinsville has dark elements in its past. Yet, by the same token, it's amazing what even the main stream media was like at that point in time. A Time magazine article from the time period described those who were supporting the efforts to clear the names of seven blacks accused and condemned for raping a white woman as "communists:"

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The well-greased Communist apparatus was making propaganda hay out of the Martinsville Seven—with suitable adjustments in the facts.

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It was a pretty scary world back then and it's encouraging that the nation and Martinsville have progressed from that period of time. It is ironic, however, that it is to that time period that the Christianists seem Hell bent on trying to return the country to.

Republican Women, Federated's View of Blacks

The ugliness of today's GOP just gets worse and worse. I am truly coming to view the party in its current form as nothing less than an evil that MUST be defeated. These people are beyond horrible. The above photo is via Andrew Sullivan who had this on his blog: This is in an official Republican Party flier:

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The October newsletter by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated says if Obama is elected his image will appear on food stamps -- instead of dollar bills like other presidents. The statement is followed by an illustration of "Obama Bucks" -- a phony $10 bill featuring Obama's face on a donkey's body, labeled "United States Food Stamps."