So it begins: NO to Larry Summers appointment

I've always suspected the progressive netroots should not simply 'disband' after the Obama victory. Obama isn't really an end point for progressive causes, merely a transition, indeed a beginning.

Now, I don't hate Summers because of his politically insensitive and inaccurate comment regarding women in the sciences at Harvard. A silly statement and ill thought out, but not really damning enough to prevent consideration of Summers for a cabinet post. I'd suggest that he was simply unaware of the evidence for implicit bias that probably directly impacts hiring decisions for women in these occupations.

As Virginia Valian, a professor at Hunter College in New York, writes. "Many people think of bias as something that is deliberately intended and motivated by negative views of the group in question. Since they see themselves as intending to treat people fairly, and are unaware of unintended bias, they believe that bias does not exist."

So it's a subtle defense, but effectively, using this Summers could defend himself against being a complete ass, just being somewhat idiotic and misinformed on one point.

No, the real reason to tell Summers to find a day job is in the stint he served at the World Bank. That has me deeply concerned.

As A Seigel and Max Blumenthal at the Nation point out, this is the critter who thought sending dirty industries to undeveloped areas was such a brilliant idea.

when at the World Bank, Summers wrote a memo advocating exporting polluting industry and toxic pollutants to Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs), a concept which is fundamentally at odds with any concept of environmental justice and blindly ignorant of the potential and imperative for 'clean' developmental prospects. If Summers still holds to any of the concepts he put forth in that memo, he simply should not be considered for a Cabinet position.

Here's the memo.

I'll make this brief. This is a horrible idea. It's hideously short sighted and immoral and while I might expect it of someone like Paul Wolfowitz who has ethics of a latter day Joseph Stalin; I would hate to someone like this in the Obama administration.

Obama can do better, we can do better. PostScript:

After the memo became public in February 1992, Brazil's then-Secretary of the Environment Jose Lutzenburger wrote back to Summers: "Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane... Your thoughts [provide] a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional 'economists' concerning the nature of the world we live in... If the World Bank keeps you as vice president it will lose all credibility. To me it would confirm what I often said... the best thing that could happen would be for the Bank to disappear." Sadly, Mr. Lutzenburger was fired shortly after writing this letter.