Gadfly is Marty Aussenberg, a columnist for the weekly Memphis Flyer. Marty is a former SEC enforcement official, currently in private law practice in Memphis, Tennessee. (A full bio is below the fold.) Cross-posted at The Memphis Flyer.
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“There are only two families in the world, as my grandmother used to say; the haves and the have-nots.” –Sancho Panza in Don Quixote de la Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes
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Hey, you! Yeah, you, sitting in front of your TV or
computer screen, watching pictures of France burning. Maybe you’re not all that
upset that the French are getting what you consider to be their comeuppance for
thumbing their nose at “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” You may even revel in the
Franco-bashing statements made by Bill O’Reilly, including about the French
people’s supposed aversion to personal hygiene, and the fact that THEY DON’T
SPEAK ENGLISH (the uncivilized bastards). You’re probably smug in the assurance
that the French riots are just another one of those disasters that only happen
in some other part of the world.
I have some news for you: the same conditions which gave
rise to the rioting in France exist right here in the good old U.S. of A. In
fact, in some ways they’re even worse here than they are in France. We know that
racial and economic tensions can, and have, reached flashpoints in this
country. Los Angeles in 1992, the unrest in New Orleans that followed the
“natural selection” of African Americans as the victims of government ineptitude
following Hurricane Katrina, and the rioting in Toledo last month in response to
a hate group’s demonstration are just the most recent examples of a phenomenon
with a rich history, much of which has had a racial etiology.
The rioting in France is a manifestation of the
disenfranchisement of a significant subculture in that country, African and Arab
immigrants (i.e., black people in a white society), whom the government has
taken great pains to marginalize and relegate to second class citizenship
status. These immigrants, despite being French citizens, are already the
victims of a form of apartheid not unlike what existed in South Africa. But it
didn’t help that situation much when the French interior minister referred to
the rioters using a word as inflammatory to them as the “n” word would be to
African Americans here.
The uprising in France is also the natural consequence of a
worldwide phenomenon, but one which has gotten, and is getting, progressively
worse in this country: the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
A recent study by the United Nations Human Development Report Office shows
the bad news that of the 124 nations studied, the U.S. ranks 74th, behind
Vietnam, but the good news, that it still ranks slightly ahead of Iran. France
comes in at 34th. This mirrors similar studies done by the World Bank and by
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the latter of which shows that, of the 27 member countries, the U.S. ranks 24th. The disparity
is no more graphically illustrated than in the comparison of executive to worker
compensation. According to
a recent survey, executive compensation in the U.S. is over 400 times what
line workers make. That same comparison is only 15 times in France.
On virtually any measure you care to name, the equivalent
subculture in the U.S. to the one rioting in France enjoys a much lower quality
of life than the middle class. Unemployment levels, incarceration levels,
income levels, education levels, health levels are all disproportionately higher
among African Americans. The natural consequence of this increasing gap is,
inevitably, disaffection (to put it mildly), and, ultimately, violence.
Now, would you like a serving of “freedom fries” with that
dose of reality?
BIOGRAPHY:Mr. Aussenberg is an attorney practicing in his own firm in Memphis, Tennessee. He began his career in the private practice of law in Memphis after relocating from Washington, D.C., where he spent five years at the Securities and Exchange Commission as a Special Counsel and Trial Attorney in its Enforcement Division, during which time he handled or supervised the investigation and litigation of several significant cases involving insider trading, market manipulation, and management fraud. Prior to his stint at the S.E.C., he was an Assistant Attorney General with the Pennsylvania Department of Banking in Philadelphia and was the Attorney-In-Charge of Litigation for the Pennsylvania Securities Commission, where, in addition to representing that agency in numerous state trial and appellate courts, he successfully prosecuted the first case of criminal securities fraud in the state’s history.
Mr. Aussenberg’s private practice has focused primarily on investment, financial, corporate and business counseling, litigation and arbitration and regulatory proceedings. He has represented individual, institutional and governmental investors, as well as brokerage firms and individual brokers, in securities and commodities-related matters, S.E.C., NASD and state securities regulatory proceedings, and has represented parties in shareholder derivative, class action and multi-district litigation, as well as defending parties in securities, commodities, and other “white-collar” criminal cases.
Mr. Aussenberg received his J.D. degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and his B.A. degree in Honors Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Immediately following law school, he served as a Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellow with the Delaware County Legal Assistance Association in Chester, Pennsylvania.
He is admitted to practice in Tennessee, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia, before the United States Supreme Court, the Third and Sixth Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the United States Tax Court, as well as federal district courts in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. He is an arbitrator for the NASD, New York Stock Exchange and American Arbitration Association, has published articles (“Stockbroker Fraud: This Kind of Churning Doesn’t Make Butter”, Journal of the Tennessee Society of C.P.A.’s,; Newsletter of the Arkansas Society of C.P.A.’s; Hoosier Banker (Indiana Bankers Association), and been a featured speaker on a variety of topics at seminars in the United States and Canada, including: Municipal Treasurers Association of the United States and Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Government Finance Officers Association; National Institute of Municipal Law Officers, Washington, D.C. ; Tennessee Society of Certified Public Accountants, Memphis, TN; Tennessee Association of Public Accountants, Memphis, TN (1993)
.
Mr. Aussenberg has two children, a daughter who is a graduate of Columbia University and holds a Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University and is currently a student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and a son who is a graduate of Brown University and is working with a conservation organization in Marin County, California while he decides what to do with the rest of his life.
Mr. Aussenberg is an avid golfer whose only handicap is his game, an occasional trap shooter whose best competitive score was a 92, and an even less frequent jazz drummer.
Will the roosters come home to roost? When the effect of higher gas, heating, precription drugs, the housing(hosing) bubble, higher insurance, out of control credit cards, and the enabling act to give credit cards companies huge powers, settle in. America will see what France is now seeing. Only a matter of time. WAKE UP America.
THANKS for this excellent diary…. America only needs to connect the dots.
Its possible if the economy slows. A lot of people are paycheck to paycheck. The bankruptcy laws changed a perfect storm could put us over the edge. We’ve seen perfect storms in the past.
If they are ever stomped on…. Daily news suggests a slowdown of magnitudes that America cannot handle. Living in a small town, I see it daily. Quite simply for the average guy on the streets expenses are way up, incoming funds are down, and spiralling downward. Average people are broke, their safety net, credit cards; under attack. The wall approaches, most do not see it, just a glitch they say.. They do not see the games being played, people today have a rough time with simple math.
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Wikipedia link is not really fair as countries are compared at different levels of economic activity and more important varied years between 1990 and 2002. In past decade a lot has happened in ratio of high incomes to low income groups. For the U.S. under Bush this ratio has widened remarkably.
UNDP – Human Development Indicators (pdf file)
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
The comparison to apartheid is silly.
Go read Patrick Belton’s posts over at Oxblog
.
All in context of each nation and differences of development, as a comparison hardly works.
I’m thinking of equal opportunity to overcome the handicap from birth being born in a culture of poverty. Only possible to guarantee for most children by pre-school programs and quality education for all.
In many European countries and in the U.K. as well as the U.S., there are anti-discrimination laws and tools in place to act for equal opportunity when applying for a job. I heard numbers being quoted from France, by equivalent qualifications between applicants, minority groups have 20% chance of getting the job!
The housing for minorities and immigrants is a problem for the rich Western world, at least recognized since WWII, but in no way solved today. The ghetto forming is well known: Pruitt Housing project in St. Louis and Bijlmermeer in Amsterdam-South. The Dutch are not up to par, but society probably has forms of social control in place, to keep the volcano from erupting.
The local city government has done much to decentralize its administration to the ward level and have citizens participate in development projects and adaptations at the level of their own neighborhood. Excellent example in my diary with the proposed move of U.S. embassy into our neighborhood. The decision was overturned when 600 people came to a meeting with the city mayor and communicated all arguments why such a move was detrimental to all parties.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Gwynne Dyer at Commondreams said the following in an article:
“These are neither American-style race riots nor a Muslim rebellion. About half the kids burning cars and buildings are white, working- class, post-Christian French, and they get along with the black and Muslim kids just fine.”
If this is true, then clearly the apartheid comparison doesn’t hold, nor do a lot of others.
I recommend Gwynne Dyer’s writings most strongly. He’s a Canadian, long resident in London, and has been writing thoughtfully about the international scene for many years. He has a personal site, which–whoops–seems to be under reconstruction at the moment.
I was surprised to hear (during reporting on NBC?) that Britain and the USA are looked up to by the Arab’s rioting in France because both of those countries do not impose the same laws and barriers as France.
I’m not trying to underplay the problems in the US. An economic downturn would cause social unrest as during the Great Depression. Hopefully this will find an outlet in our normal political process – we vote the bastards out and fix the country rather than anarchy.
participate in our political process because they dont see politicians doing anything for them. Most of these are probably part of the poor underclass and if there were a major economic downturn they would almost certainly take to the streets rather than suddenly take up voting.
see the Repubs or the Dems doing much for most of us right now either. That’s what the Dems have to change.
Normally no one gets voted out. The incumbent protection process makes in unlikely that incumbents will be removed, so only open seats are really battle-grounds. Gerrymandering, for the most part.
One result is that the lower economic classes don’t bother to vote much, as they don’t think their vote matters. But they can be easily convinced that a riot on TV will matter.
Don’t count on American elections to inoculate us against riots. The elections are less and less useful as time goes by.
You are Dammed right gadfly. The gap, which is getting wider all the time, is our biggest domestic concern IMHO. Thanks for the posting! This lazy guy now has some stats to use, when talking to more conservatives friends.
Hope you notice how I end my remarks.
Income inequality — the worst since the Twenties in the US of A. And we all know what that led to, now don’t we.
is more likely to occur in 73 other countries than in the US. Wow. Bet you wont be seeing CNN mention that one.
Just a few weeks ago there were significant riots in Toledo, Ohio, which were largely ignored by the MSM. Although the trigger was a march permit granted to a white supremicist group, the result was a lot of young, leaderless, disenfranchised and impoverished people acting out in a very destructive way.
It will happen here again.
I am very interested in this
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