Hasta La Gadget!

The 65th National Book Awards ceremony was held on Wednesday evening, with winners named in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature. Here are the winners:

Fiction: Phil Klay, Redeployment (The Penguin Press/ Penguin Group (USA))

Nonfiction: Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Poetry: Louise Glück, Faithful and Virtuous Night (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Young People’s Literature: Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books/ Penguin Group (USA))

The honorees were chosen from shortlists of five contenders, announced in October, which had been whittled down from longlists of 10. This was only the second year in which a longlist for the National Book Awards had been publicized, though other prominent awards have taken the step in previous years. The Man Booker Prize, for example, first announced a longlist in 2001 and has continued to do so.

This year, the nonfiction longlist, and shortlist, stirred up the most chatter. Not only did the nominees include Roz Chast’s graphic memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, the first comic book to be a finalist in the nonfiction category, the nonfiction list was otherwise entirely male. This significant gender imbalance drew heavy criticism, with Slate’s Katy Waldman noting that “The skew is especially notable given that, in general, the NBA is recognizing more and more women.”

The shortlists showed an eye toward variety in other respects, however; the fiction category included a postapocalyptic, dystopian novel, a debut short story collection focusing on the military, and two-time fiction nominee Marilynne Robinson’s latest work.

Here are the shortlists:

2014 Finalists for the National Book Award for Fiction:

2014 Finalists for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature:

2014 Finalists for the National Book Award for Poetry:

2014 Finalists for the National Book Award for Nonfiction:

In addition to the long-awaited reveal of the winners of the National Book Awards for fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature, the evening honored Ursula K. Le Guin with the 2014 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Le Guin, a celebrated science fiction and fantasy writer who has experimented with form and genre while crafting exquisite and thought-provoking literature, previously won the 1973 National Book Award for Children’s Literature. The Foundation’s Medal recognizes her lifetime of contributions to the literary field, which range from short stories to novels, poetry to essays, adult fiction to children’s books, and which embrace the freedom of the human mind to explore the limitless expanses of fantasy as well as gritty realism.

Le Guin, who was introduced by author Neil Gaiman, gave a rousing acceptance speech that celebrated the power of fantasy and speculative fiction to capture an ever-changing modern world. “We will need writers who can remember freedom,” she predicted. “Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality.” Le Guin also spoke pointedly about the importance of literature as an art form, rather than as a commodity. She took indirect jabs at Amazon and even publishers, denouncing the practice of charging libraries more for e-books than customers. “I’ve had a good career,” she said. “Here at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river.” Le Guin’s strong words drew applause and even, at one point, a yell of “We love you!” from a member of the audience.

The evening also honored Kyle Zimmer, the founder of First Book, a nonprofit that provides low-cost or free books to children, with its 10th Literarian Award. The award recognizes her work building First Book into a vital resource for underprivileged children with limited access to books.

The ceremony was hosted by the popular children’s author Daniel Handler, who is perhaps best known under the nom de plume Lemony Snicket.

Chances are good that you have diabetes or know someone who does. Even if you don’t, you’re paying for the care of millions of people with diabetes through your taxes. It’s a disease that affects people of all backgrounds, income levels, and, increasingly, ages, and it costs our country nearly a quarter trillion dollars every year — that’s well over the total yearly revenue of electronics giant Apple.

New statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 29 million Americans have diabetes and another 86 million have prediabetes. Hardest hit are Native Americans, followed by African Americans and Latinos. They are at far greater risk for heart attacks, blindness, amputations, kidney failure, painful nerve symptoms, and loss of a decade of life compared with those who do not have the disease.

But a recent report has found that one simple prescription could help reverse diabetes, improve blood sugar, and lower weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol. It could allow the 115 million Americans with diabetes or prediabetes to dramatically reduce their medications or get off them entirely. And all this is possible, the analysis found, not with a new magic pill, but with tried-and-true, simple changes to diet.

A team of researchers from the United States and Japan, including the Physicians Committee’s Susan Levin, MS, RD and myself, published a new meta-analysis showing that a plant-based diet significantly improves diabetes management.

Combining the results of six prior studies, we found that a plant-based diet boosts blood sugar control considerably. Among the studies analyzed was our 2006 NIH-funded trial, which found that plant-based diets could improve a key indicator of blood sugar control called hemoglobin A1c as much as 1.2 points in 22 weeks. No drug comes close to offering those with diabetes this kind of relief.

The new meta-analysis focused on longer-term effects and combined the results of all available studies. The benefit of leaving meat out of the diet was as much as 0.7 points in some studies and averaged about 0.4 points overall. These numbers may seem small to those unfamiliar with the disease, but anyone with diabetes knows that such an improvement is truly profound.

If diet changes are so effective, why aren’t more doctors prescribing plants before pills?

Some wonder whether patients will stick to a plant-based diet. Well, studies show that patients are actually eager to make the switch. Why? Unlike conventional “diabetes diets,” vegan diets do not require counting calories or limiting carbohydrates. There’s no portion control or strenuous exercise routines. We tell our diabetes class and study participants that they can eat as much as they want — and as much whole wheat pasta, whole grains, and brown rice as they want — as long as they’re not eating animal products or lots of added oils. The diet is simple and clear, and it’s easier than ever to follow.

Plus, the “side effects” are all good. Weight comes down, blood pressure improves, and blood pressure and cholesterol drop. Best of all, low-fat, vegan diets provide freedom from the tedious routines of taking medications and injecting insulin.

That’s why doctors at Kaiser Permanente, the largest managed care organization in the United States, recently recommended that every patient receive information on plant-based diets. Doctors who lack the time or knowledge to prescribe a vegan diet can refer patients to registered dietitians and to plentiful online resources.

We can tackle diabetes at a policy level, too. Existing frameworks for improving nutrition in America, such as the National School Lunch Program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), could be better used to promote the consumption of disease-fighting foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes. Taxes could help curb consumption of unhealthful foods — the precedent has just been set by Berkeley’s soda tax and the Navajo Nation’s junk food tax.

As worrisome as the new statistics are, the solutions to the diabetes epidemic are at hand. With a plant-based diet, we could help tackle the disease once and for all.

In the last few years we have been regularly treated with the phrase TO BIG TO FAIL.

That term was used to describe certain types of financial institutions which, IF they failed, would likely wreck such havoc throughout our economy and the world that they could NOT be allowed to fail.

And, governments would step in and prop them up financially until conditions changed enough for them to proceed again independently under stricter rules.

Now we seem back to business as usual and concerns about size have receded back to their historical invisible corners of consciousness.

Left behind from that intense period of TOO BIG TO FAIL were the questions of why institutions were allowed in the first place to get too big and what could/should have been done to prevent them from getting that big.

The questions then that drew the most attention were more regulations about balance sheet management and regulation, not the many other serious questions of problems with gigantism.

As we look back at the past 100 years there are several amazing examples of TOO BIG FAILS.

The first point to address is lack of nimbleness and inability to adapt to changes in the world around them.

Sears may be example A. In 1900 they were still tiny but they saw the catalogue business and RFD and mass buying of product and rapidly became the largest retailer in the US. After WWII Sears was impregnable. Then Sam Walton came along with Walmart seeing opportunity in small town America enabled by brilliant inventory and logistical management and low prices. Today Sears is all but dead selling itself off piece by piece. And, now Amazon is out there knocking on Walmart doors saying, “let your fingers do the walking”.

Example B is IBM. It became the biggest and best computer company in the world. In the late 1970s personal computers were getting started. A young man named Gates was in over his head and early in the 1980s he was prepared to sell his Microsoft to IBM for $50,000,000. IBM declined seeing no future in personal computers and software by itself. WOW? Most likely if IBM had acquired Microsoft, the Microsoft story we know would never have happened. But Apple would have.

And, then came Google with a fantastic search tool but no obvious way to monetize it. That all changed and now Google is the biggest innovator in its field. But, they too got blindsided by social media.

In financial services similar problems occurred. AIG got too big for its britches and Merrill Lynch did the same. Some money managers –Fidelity–got so big they could barely buy or sell without distorting the markets they were in. Those problems are ongoing.

Similar things happened in the steel and auto industries. We all are generally familiar with the causes and consequences of those problems.

The second point to address is what if anything either the private sector or government could or should do to dampen the effects of gigantism.

Teddy Roosevelt 100 years ago more or less attacked the problem based on the underlying issues of illegal restraint of trade. Size was obviously an issue as well. Today antitrust issues are a lot less relevant in this arena for several reasons–political as well as economic. Doctrine today disbelieves in government playing any role of consequence in managing issues relating to size of private enterprise.

That said there is growing evidence as indicated above that strongly suggests there are serious questions about the impact of size of enterprises on the progression of innovation and progress in society.

The simplest way to deal with TOO BIG TO FAIL is to start by understanding that TOO BIG FAILS in and by itself.

That suggests to me that we should begin to seriously address how to deal with just plain and simple TOO BIG!

One hundred years ago, the world was on the brink of World War I. Airplanes were just being figured out, tanks had yet to be made or used, dreadnoughts of the sea were in mass production and cavalry still used horses and spears.

The war broke out in a peculiar way, with mistakes and miscalculations on all sides. And, quickly the fights slithered into muddy trenches, where literally hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides were killed, on some days more than 50,000.

At the same time, modern medicine was still in its infancy and the ability to save and fix injured soldiers was extremely limited. As a result, there were, in addition to the dead, hundreds of thousands of limbless and completely disabled former soldiers.

Social standards were still rudimentary compared to today. Women’s rights were just emerging as an issue.

Finance was still in its early infancy – JP Morgan was just getting organized to create giant industrial elephants, despite Teddy Roosevelt’s trust busting. A bond was a bond and no one had ever dreamt of something called a derivative in finance. Oil was also in its infancy. Navy ships converted from coal just as the war started.

International law was pretty much limited to treaties and borders. Virtually nothing existed in the form of transnational governance.

President Wilson was a much respected intellectual leader and did his best. The US finally entered the European war in 1917. At its conclusion, he sought the creation of a League of Nations. The US Senate did not get it. Wilson died crippled like a lot of soldiers. In forging the peace that ended WWI, the seeds were sown for World War II.

Despite the fact that everything listed above was pretty well known and understood in quite tangible form, the leaders of the world then had a lot of difficulty coming to grips with the nature of the challenges and how to deal with them.

Fast forward past World War II to today. World War II was in many ways a delayed continuation of World War I.

The issues, problems and challenges were still pretty tangible and the US under Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership mobilized quickly and after great effort and a fraction of the loss of life compared to WWI, peace came in 1945.

Since WWII, we have seen the Korean and Vietnam wars including some early stirrings in the Middle East. And then Iraq and Afghanistan. Still those wars and related problems were pretty old fashioned in how they were seen and dealt with.

Today, it looks very different and we the people of the USA and our leaders are looking at a haze of shadows:

ISIS is phantom like. Now you see it now you don’t. Planes and tanks have a hard time finding the enemy. How do you find and decapitate the enemy’s leaders? It took ten years to find Osama bin Laden. Will it take ten years to deal with ISIS? How much of a threat can ISIS become to us in the meantime?

Modern medicine is amazing [though all screwed up] and along comes Ebola. We still are not getting clear answers about whether it poses a serious threat to the United States. This is a virus long known to have serious ability to spread and become a deathly plague.

Women’s issues are far advanced but now a debate is underway about when and how a young man and woman can reach a legally binding agreement of consent in the heat of drug and alcohol passion. That is a seriously tough question to sort out, short of abstinence which it seems is unlikely given nature’s powers.

International law has become very cloudy. National borders are moving around at the whim of unrestrained leaders and the UN and US have few useful tools – that do not boomerang – -to deploy.
And, lastly finance is a deep puzzle. Derivatives, hedge funds, zero interest rates, a central bank going deeply into debt to stimulate the economy are all uncharted waters, with unknown consequences.
What is common to all these changes in the last 100 years?

1- Vast complexity compounded by modern communications, the internet and social networking.

2- Everything is a shadow of something else. And as more things become intangible, they also become less understandable to the majority of people.

3- The interconnectedness of all the moving parts has completely buffaloed our governance system into dreadful stalemates of misunderstandings.

4- We as a people fall into a trap of concentrating on only those issues which impinge on us in the moment, so that anything resembling a national consensus on anything really important to everybody seems very elusive.

5- Lastly, we seem to be trying to hold our elected leaders to a standard that might have been suitable 100/50 years ago but is essentially impossible in today’s world.

What does all this add up too and what might be done about it?

It adds up to a world of constant shadow boxing, which leads to endless frustrations and a deep sense that we are headed helplessly in the wrong directions.

What might be done to deal with all this confusion?

For President in 2016 we should go beyond the usual political types and be looking/hopping for an enlightened person not wedded to the past or simply romantic about the future, who has passion, energy, curiosity and understands this new shadowy world.

Where are you Teddy Roosevelt?

Election 2014 was a sad replay of 2010. And it didn’t have to be that way.

In early summer 2010, three progressive economic activists – myself, Dean Baker, and Robert Kuttner – met with Obama political adviser David Axelrod in his tiny office in the White House steps away from the Oval Office. We told him what he already knew from polling: despite the success of the President’s stimulus plan in preventing economic disaster, Americans were still not feeling any improvement in jobs and wages. We understood White House economic advisers were arguing for more action to create jobs and spur the still weak the economy, but the political operation was resisting.

So we made our case: President Obama should put forward a bold job-creation program, including investment in infrastructure and new energy technologies, aid to fiscally-strapped states that were then laying-off teachers and cops, and perhaps even a plan for direct public service jobs. Axelrod listened politely and then told us it wasn’t going to happen. Americans wouldn’t support more public spending, he claimed, and told us even some Democratic Senators wouldn’t vote for a bold jobs plan like we were proposing. It would never pass.

We told him they didn’t have to pass the big jobs plan in the 2010 Congress. Instead, we urged him to think of it as a way to show the voters what is really needed – beyond the initial stimulus – in a longer-term battle revive the badly damaged economy and to begin to create the new industries of the future. And it would show voters that Democrats were leading the fight – against Republican obstruction – for a continued effort to put Americans to work. It would allow the President to stump the country, like a modern day Harry Truman, asking voters to elect a new Congress that would continue the fight to overcome the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes.

Baker, Kuttner and I left the White House having failed to convince Axelrod. The White House election jobs message featured “Recovery Summer” activities featuring President and cabinet members telling economically stressed voters that the initial stimulus program would soon produce results people could feel. Obama’s message to voters was “Have faith. The jobs and wages part of the recovery is coming.”

On Election Day, 2010: Democrats watched in agony as they lost six Senate seats and over 60 seats in the House, transferring majority control from Nancy Pelosi to John Boehner. In a press conference the next day, the President declared the lesson of his “shellacking” was that he hadn’t made enough progress in creating jobs.

In 2012, with the President on the ballot, Axelrod made the election a choice between man-of-the people Obama and private equity, job-destroying, Mitt Romney, so clearly dismissive of 47 percent.
The Rising American Electorate came out in record numbers.

Flash forward to today: the 2014 election was just as disastrous as 2010. Many observers now agree that Democrats again lost big because they failed to offer a clear economic message to economically insecure voters – and they once again failed to attack Republicans for sabotaging action to create jobs.

But what economic message?

Some analysts argue Dems should have bragged more about how well the economy has recovered from the 2008 financial crisis and recession. But, to the extent Democrats had an economic message voters could hear, that was it. President Obama, repeatedly tried to show voters that the economy is growing, and Democrats should be given credit for the economic recovery.

Voters had another view, expressed bluntly on a popular t-shirt: “What recovery?” Exit polling found that two out of three voters still believe that the country is going in the wrong direction. Of the 48 percent of voters who told exit pollsters the nation’s economy was “not so good,” 58 percent voted Republican as against 41 percent who supported Democrats. And of the 22 percent of voters who thought the economy was “poor,” a whopping 79 percent voted Republican. Democrats were clearly not seen as having fixed the economy – and, perhaps more importantly, Democratic candidates again failed to remind voters of the many ways Republican obstruction, austerity, and government shutdowns had sabotaged the recovery.

Progressive Populists Need to Lead the Fight for an Economic Agenda.

The big lesson in all this: progressives can’t afford to just let Democrats craft the message, while we attend to voter turnout and local initiatives. And let’s be clear, there has been a tendency among progressive groups to let the President call the shots on what we should (and should not) organize around. During the fight for the early stimulus program, they wanted us talking about job creation. After it passed – and especially after President Obama turned deal-making and offering to cut Social Security and slash spending to get a “Grand Bargain” with Republicans to reduce the deficit – our push for action on jobs was not so welcome at the White House.

Over the last several years, many groups, understanding that big transformative ideas were off the official table, started to elaborate an agenda of smaller White House-approved ideas they called the “middle-out agenda” for prosperity. They advanced a set of (mostly) good reforms and ideas aimed at helping middle class and poor families on the sort-of-Keynesian argument that “a strong and stable middle class is the key driver of American economic growth.” The Middle-Out Economics page of the Center for American Progress elaborates a variety of these proposals, from raising the minimum wage to “enhancing worker protections” to paid family leave to expanded apprenticeship opportunities for Millennials.

Most of these ideas are good priorities for progressives, and it can be argued that, over the long term, success in passing these reforms would put more money in middle class pockets and even give people the economic security to spend more and stimulate the economy – over time. Two big important parts of this “middle out economics” – the women’s economic agenda (paid family leave, equal pay, and other proposals) and raising the minimum wage – were the focus of a lot of progressive organizing. And they proved to be very popular with 2014 voters – even if those same voters elected Republicans.

But without an overarching agenda for economic growth, job creation and higher wages for all Americans, most voters were content to blame the party in power for the fact that the economy was still making them feel insecure and profoundly worried about the future for their children.

Not Every “Growth” Plan Will Produce Jobs and Better Wages.

If we want to win, progressives need to fight for a bold “Jobs and Growth and Wages” agenda. But we will have competition. Republicans aggressively claim that their old proposals for dramatic budget cuts, tax cuts, and regulation cuts will unleash a wave of economic growth and job creation.

And conservative Democrats are talking about jobs and growth too. Third Way put out a post-election memo called The Democratic Party After 2014 (sorry, not on the web) in which they rather dismissively described the 2014 Democratic message as the “fairness agenda,” and argued persuasively that, while many people see fairness as a good thing, “voters want growth and prosperity.”

When we look at the Third Way agenda for growth and prosperity, the devil is in the details. Under their encouraging theme of Make it here, sell it there, they call for “increasing public investments that drive private sector job creation” (good) and “owning the global clean energy export market, from renewables (good) to nuclear (dumb). And they also call for “reforming the tax code so business doesn’t flee the country (which could mean cracking down on inversions, but, knowing Third Way, more likely means cutting corporate income taxes).

But under the theme they call Modernize the Safety Net, these conservatives make the vague case that we must “modernize” health care and Social Security – so that we can “leave room in the budget for critical investments.” On health care, progressives have repeatedly made the case that a more comprehensive and efficient health care system can reduce drivers of future deficits. But for conservative Democrats, what they often mean is cutting Medicare costs by raising the retirement age. And on Social Security, the Third Way organization has been an aggressive advocate of proposals (like the Obama “Grand Bargain” plan) to cut benefits by messing with the cost of living index – although they ran for the hills when they criticized Senator Elizabeth Warrren for coming out for expanding Social Security and many groups, including mine, fought back.

Conservative Democrats’ proposals to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits are not part of a growth agenda. They would depress the economy. And progressive proposals to put more money in seniors’ pockets in an expanded Social Security and Medicare system would stimulate growth. And making rich people pay a little more to finance the system by “raising the cap” on payroll taxes is not only more popular, it would not hurt growth.

There’s a more important debate to be joined here: the Third Way tries to force a false and politically destructive choice: if we want to “make room in the budget” for public investment to spur growth, they claim, we need to cut the safety net. That’s the same argument Republicans and austerity mongers like Peter G. Peterson and his “fix the debt” campaign have been making for years. Republicans (and maybe Third Way?) make the same argument about infrastructure investment: “Slash taxes on the money multinationals have stashed abroad, and we will make them use some of that windfall tax savings on infrastructure.” It didn’t work when it was tried before. And their general trickle-down “cut tax rates for the rich and corporations” agenda, which was also tried and failed before, requires that Americans take on faith that this time those funds will be invested in job-creation and not to pad corporate profits and private savings of the rich.

Conservatives have their plans for economic growth, but they are they have been tried and they kill jobs and lower wages. Progressives must lay out and fight for our better, more popular and more effective agenda for jobs, wages and growth. But our dialog with voters can’t feel like just an intellectual exercise of who’s got the better plan for growth. We are talking about people’s lives and the future of our country. In the words of Senator Elizabeth Warren, the wealthy and powerful and the big corporations have “rigged the system” so that whoever we vote for, we get their austerity agenda.

• Americans voted in 2008 for Barack Obama to end the financial crisis and revive the economy. But while he was able to pass a stimulus and save the financial system, the banks stopped him from breaking them up – and the GOP prevented him from taking the next step and investing in the next generation of jobs and industries.

• Worse yet, Republicans didn’t even get blamed for obstructing a round-two jobs program, because powerful interests convinced the President to turn to deficit deals.

• Democrats attack GOP politicians (like Mitt Romney) who outsource jobs to other countries, but days after this disastrous election, the White House joined Republicans (and big corporations) to push another job-killing trade deal.

• Polling shows Americans overwhelmingly favor requiring multi-national corporations to make a larger contribution in terms of taxes to help finance needed public investment, but the emerging bi-partisan consensus for “tax reform” would produce, at best, no new revenue, or at worst, even less revenue for America’s needs.

The economic priorities Americans really care about should shape our economic message, as outlined by Senator Elizabeth Warren in a post-election email to supporters, about how to “un-rig” the rigged system.

The lobbyists’ agenda is not America’s agenda. Americans are deeply suspicious of trade deals negotiated in secret. . . They have been burned enough times on tax deals that carefully protect the tender fannies of billionaires and big oil and other big political donors, while working families just get hammered. They are appalled by Wall Street banks that got taxpayer bailouts and now whine that the laws are too tough, even as they rake in billions in profits. If cutting deals means helping big corporations, Wall Street banks and the already-powerful, that isn’t a victory for the American people — it’s just another round of the same old rigged game.

Yes, we need action. But action must be focused in the right place: on ending tax laws riddled with loopholes that favor giant corporations, on breaking up the financial institutions that continue to threaten our economy, and on giving people struggling with high-interest student loans the same chance to refinance their debt that every Wall Street corporation enjoys. There’s no shortage of work that Congress can do, but the agenda shouldn’t be drawn up by a bunch of corporate lobbyists and lawyers.

Americans understand that building a prosperous future isn’t free. . . They want us to make investments that will pay off in their lives, investments in the roads and power grids that make it easier for businesses to create good jobs here in America, investments in medical and scientific research that spur new discoveries and economic growth, and investments in educating our children so they can build a future for themselves and their children.

In speeches since November 4, Senator Warren quotes the findings of post-election polling by Hart Research for the AFL-CIO. Here’s the good news we can build on in the fight for jobs and growth and good wages.

75 % want to increase funding for public schools from pre-school to college.

73 % want to raise taxes on corporations’ overseas profits to ensure they pay as much as on US profits.

62 % support increasing Social Security benefits and requiring high-income people to pay Social Security taxes on all wages – like the rest of us do.

62 % support raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations to fund important economic priorities.

62 % want to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour.

57 % favor ending tax loopholes that encourage US companies to send jobs overseas.

55 % want to spur the economy by brining immigrant workers out of the low-wage shadows and contributing fully to our economy through comprehensive immigration reform comprehensive.

67 % say public investment in key economic priorities is a more important priority than cutting taxes.

And by 80 percent to 13 percent, Americans feel politicians do too much to support Wall Street financial interests and not enough to help average Americans.

Those views, held by strong majorities of Americans, represent support for a progressive populist program for jobs, growth and good wages that we can fight for.