Richardson: An Obstacle to Renegotiating NAFTA?

This is totally off topic, so please forgive the post to this thread, but I wanted to be sure to get this information out to all Fieldhands ASAP, as this is a story I would like to see get national play. 

Inside Edition contacted me after they saw my post over on Fieldhands and on Facebook about my getting screwed by The Hilton on my inauguration hotel reservations I booked back in May.  They are looking to potentially do a story on this topic. 

Their reporter, Joe Enoch, just contacted me and I did a phone interveiw on what happend to me.  If you, or someone you know, has experienced issues with their hotel/condo/house rental for the inauguration, please contact him on Facebook or at the email address below ASAP.  This is a legit story.  I called Inside Edition corporate HQ, and confirmed that they have this guy on staff.

http://www.facebook.com/inbox/readmessage.php?t=1041036194228#/profile.php?id=64402280

Joe Enoch (New York, NY) wrote
I am with the TV show Inside Edition and am looking for consumers who feel they were ripped off by hotels that changed their reservations. Please message me via facebook or my personal e-mail at: joseph.enoch@gmail.com ASAP with your story and contact info.

Here is an article he wrote for the Boston Globe from Nov 25, 2008 about five things President Obama should do to prove that he is serious about human rights.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/1...

Does anyone have an idea what direction Obama might go with the Sec of Agriculture?  My gut tells me it's going to be someone who is totally in the back pocket of agri-business. 

Not that it matters, but the president in the photo with Bill Richardson is Felipe Calderon.  The man who brazenly stole the last election from Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and whose principal task is to privatize PEMEX and sell it to the lowest bidder.

It's an AP photo taken by Alfredo Guerrero on November 20, 2006 during Richardson's visit to Mexico City.

found an 11/20/08 letter to Nancy Pelosi from Human Rights Watch re same:

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/KSAI-7LL4V4?OpenDocument

NAFTA has Rahm Emanuel's mitts all over it.

There aren't many Democratic Congressional candidates who can claim that they personally thwarted the agenda of organized labor in the most critical legislative battles of the past decade, but former Clinton White House aide Rahm Emanuel can--and does. Northwestern University, where Emanuel has served as an adjunct professor of communications studies, identifies him as the man who "coordinated the passage of NAFTA." In addition to getting the North American Free Trade Agreement "ball across the goal line," as Emanuel likes to put it, Clinton's former senior adviser for policy and strategy was also a point man for the Administration in fights with unions over granting China most-favored-nation trading status and over fast-track negotiation of a hemispheric free-trade-area agreement that union leaders call "NAFTA on steroids."

From Trade Fights by John Nichols, 2002.

John Nichols reported on Nov 11, 2008 in The Nation: "Obama's new chief of staff shows that he intends to carry the Obama program forward -- not his own."

This column has expressed plenty of concern about the selection of Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel to serve as President-elect Barack Obama's chief of staff. Emanuel, whose record and reputation are those of a rigid "New Democrat," was the pointman for the Clinton White House's free-trade agenda. And, in Congress, he has been a reasonably steady supporter of the Bush administration's trade policies....

From Rahm Emanuel Makes the Right Move on Colombia Trade Deal

it's Obama who ultimately will have to answer for it.

As I just posted in the other thread (don't have a link bc it's still in moderation, if you could add one I would be appreciative) -- I don't see the actual lines of power and accountability here as obvious.

So I would ask: To whom will Obama have to answer, what power or leverage do those people have in relation to him and how -- realistically -- would that power actually truly be mobilized?

http://www.moneyline.com/article/newsOne/idUKTRE4A47CS20081105

Someone I wish PE Obama had as an advisor....

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/08/081208fa_fact_macfarquhar?currentPage=all

Jesus - Thanks. You're of course correct. I must not have had enough coffee early this a.m. when posting that!

Michelle - The lines of power and accountability are not obvious because they don't really exist. However, should President Obama not comply with his stated promises, the power of the narrative - "he broke his word" - would be extremely damaging to his capacity to govern and be trusted on his word in the future.

Since the comeback to the many voices that expressed disappointment with some of his staffing choices so far has been - both from Obama and his top advisor Axelrod - that it will be the President setting policy, not the staff, I think it would become a particularly brutal narrative, one that could topple his presidency altogether. On the other hand, I think this is a guy who cares about being trusted for his word, and thus it is healthy to outline and put into the heads of the public and the media what exactly the promises made were, so that they have the yardstick by which to judge him on.

to fill the slot of United States Trade Representative

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/

what does that say about Obama's trade policies?

Add one more wrinkle to the discussion of NAFTA's fate in the upcoming administration.  CQ reports that California Rep. (and Ted Kennedy ally) Xavier Becerra has accepted Barack Obama's offer to be the U.S Trade Representative.

Becerra's record on trade is mixed, having voted for NAFTA, against CAFTA and for the Trade and Globalization Assistance Act of 2007.  He gets consistently strong marks (ratings from 90-100) from organized labor for his voting record, and in 2006 had this to say on the floor of the House:

Mr Speaker, I hate to say it, but I think it’s become very obvious that our system for devising trade agreements so very important to this country’s functioning around the world, has not only broken, but is broken completely. Today, we have a trade regime, which has led to the largest trade deficits this country has ever experienced. The latest report is that the trade deficit for the month of May was almost $64 billion. We purchased $64 billion more in goods than we were able to sell to others around the world. We are on pace this year to have a trade deficit that is larger than $800 billion. We’ve never faced that before, but we continue to put forward trade agreements like these that leave us naked to competition that is neither free nor fair.

“Today, Mr Speaker, you find that for every six ships that China sends laden with goods into this country, only one of those six ships returns to China with American goods in it for Chinese purchase. And we continue to bring forward trade deals like these that say simply this when it comes to protecting the rights of workers whether in this country or in the country that we’re reaching an agreement with: ‘enforce your own laws.’

“And even though we know in most cases, many of the countries, including Oman, do not have laws that protect their workers, which will mean that our workers will suffer as well, we continue to move forward with these agreements.

“Yet if you’re not convinced that these trade agreements and the regime itself now that we use is broken, look at the provision that was included in this agreement that allows a company that has substantial business activity in Oman to operate our ports.

“It is time for a change. We need a new direction when it comes to our trade policy. Not only for our workers, but for the health of our American companies that have to compete in this world where artificially other companies and other countries are gaining advantage over us because they are not following the rules. This is another example of why we should reject trade agreements that don’t protect America’s interests, whether security-wise or otherwise.”

We shall see if this rhetoric is reflected in the actions of the office of the trade representative, but it seems to me that Rep. Becerra represents a substantial step forward from Rob Portman.

...what do you mean by "encouraging" re: that statement from Bill Clinton's office?  Reminder, I'm a NYer so I'm doubled down in the vested interest department.  Cheers.

Yes and yes, he'd be a great trade representative and negotiator.

And Josselyn, I found the statement from Clinton Inc. that the former president isn't interested in the NY senate seat because it would take away the only consolation prize of Senator Clinton's promotion to Secretary of State: getting the drama out of the Senate! (It would also cause all kinds of sticky wickets regarding conflicts of interest and the deal signed with the Obama organization that it would be able to vet all of Bill's speeches prior to their being delivered.) I found it encouraging, also, because the timing of it suggested that his not seeking the seat was part of the ultimate deal for Senator Clinton to serve as SoS.

There are so many good candidates - I like Caroline Kennedy or Nita Lowey the best - to fill that NY seat in the US Senate that I think it would be wasted if handed to the former president, who also has health issues that might not presage much longitude in the seat (another reason if pushed I'd pick Kennedy over Lowey).

I also like Nita Lowey.  She is rep for our district in NY.  She is very responsive and I respect her positions on many issues.  Caroline Kennedy would also be an interesting choice.  My initial guess was that it might go to Andrew Cuomo, though I'd much rather see it go to Lowey or Kennedy.

she took her name out of the proposed list of candidates to fill Hillary's senate seat yesterday

One of the most convincing arguments I heard about why Bill C. won't go for the NY Senate seat boils down to the Clintons' proclivity to amass wealth.

When Bill can earn millions annually for shooting his mouth off at corporate love-fests [and feel important to boot], why in the world would he take a Senate seat where his income would be drastically reduced, at the same time his wife is earning a measley six-figure salary as a government bureaucrat?

No, regardless of all the "vetting," Bill And Hill are going to come out of this far more wealthy than when they went into it. I just don't buy that his is all about the good of the country, given the track record of these folks.

Americans [not all, but many] like to look down at Latin American politicians for their sorted corruption. But the game is played here as well -- just with a slightly more Calvanistic slant.

In other words, in the states, position more often than not merits, or at least leads to, wealth [predetermination and all that], where it might be somewhat the reverse in older cultures that cling to more of a Spanish empire model and the notion of neo-nobility.

And Bill and Hill, if anything, are good protestants in that sense -- even if it's only a show.

Just my opinion -- but I don't think it's a variable that can be left off the table in this case.

I was sorry Nita Lowey took herself out of the process. I think RFKJr if he doesn't go to EPA would be a good choice, and a touch of good history! Would prefer to see Caroline Kennedy as Ambassador to the Court of St. James (London) where her grandfather was also Ambassador.

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/12/obama_will_announce...

Bill Clinton replacing his wife to become the junior senator from N.Y. is as likely to happen as Clint Eastwood replacing S. Epatha Merkeson on "Law & Order." It's not going to happen, never was going to happen and it's absurd to think it was even remotely in the cards.  C'mon, the former most powerful man in the world is going wait his turn to ask questions on some committee for 5 minutes, take marching orders from Give 'em heck Harry Reid and flirt with Debbie Stabenow in the cloak room?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/01/AR2008120102891_pf.html

low turnout.

KD

http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2008/12/caldera_to_head.html

Steinberg almost assuredly isn’t whom Clinton would have picked on her own. Like Greg Craig, Steinberg has roots in the Clinton administration but gravitated toward Obama during the primaries. Steinberg, who was on the progressive side of the Clinton administration, can hardly be considered a loyalist. If anything, he’d be a good bridge-builder between the two of them, and a likely candidate to smooth over any feathers that get ruffled. The pick probably portends a healthy working relationship, as the Washington Post indicated today.

But perhaps the more interesting aspect of Greg’s reporting is that the Obama people don’t want to see progressive bete noire Richard Holbrooke in the deputy job:

“They don’t want him,” the source said of the Obama team. “The collateral damage that he brings is too great for them to want to deal with. There will be a role for Holbrooke, but not as deputy.”

KD

If the Washington Post is right, Holbrooke may be sent to South Asia to deal with India and Pakistan (also via Washington Independent)

Thanks for the reply. Your focus on narrative gives me a lot of food for thought; narrative has come up for me in my own recent re-analysis of what is going on. Creating narrative is a totally foreign world to me, and I can only sort of glimpse the actual details from the sidelines. So, the specifics you mentioned are out pretty much out of my league of understanding (except from a distance, squinting).

But I can say this: I hope that anyone seeking to meet Pres-elect/President Obama on the playing field of narrative doesn't in any way under-estimate his huge and extremely effective skill base in this arena. Narrative creation and working with narrative may actually be the strongest of his many extremely strong skills, in my analysis.

http://thepage.time.com/pool-report-of-emanuels-press-briefing-on-nga-meeting/

For folks wondering about the USDA and the possible Secretary of Agriculture as well as for those who participated and/or read the previous discussion here when the Defenders of Wildlife ad about Palin and aerial gunning of wolves came out, here is the link to an excellent essay by Michael Pollan written as a letter to PE Obama:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html 

It is cogent, reasonable, and really brings the issues together, such as agribusiness, sustainability, energy, world hunger, health, national security, and our debased relationship to nature and other species, etc., given how easy it is to lose sight of them as fundamentally interconnected and urgent when they are reduced to simple US centric "culture wars". 

A confluence of events today got me thinking about the state of California politics again - specifically the word that Xavier Becerra might join Obama's team and Arnold making a big deal about the state of the CA budget today at the Gov. meeting.

The question is - who do we want running the show in California as our next Governor?

I've posted my answer to that question in a diary I just posted at Daily Kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/12/3/04358/9094/474/668722

The food policy and ag policy issue is very important to me. Thanks for the link. I would really like to get organized around this topic.  I live in Vermont so I'm sure I could get a good group together to do something to pressure on this issue.  Anyone else interested in organizing around this?  We could start a temporary discussion on field hands to see what would be the next steps (we could look for folks on dKos and on my.barackobama.com, and a blogger sympathetic to this issue - policy wonk Ezra Klein).

KD

I hope whoever seeks to meet Obama on the playing field of narrative DOES underestimate him...so he can stomp them! Narratively speaking, of course.

I'm interested.  I'm in greater NYC (but went to UVM and wish I were still in VT).  I'm on Fieldhands so will check over there for more info.

Joel - I don't think we should confuse ourselves thinking that the Obama campaign was able to engrave a narrative in stone and bring it down from the mountaintop getting everybody to march in line with it.

The process was - and always will be - more haphazard than that. Events happen to impinge upon or bring out the natural essence of any narrative.

Obama, for example, didn't script the YouTube debate question about willingness to meet with US-shunned foreign leaders, but it ended up providing him with an opportunity to make a bold statement, separate himself from Clinton on foreign policy, cause the Clinton camp to overreact in ham-handed ways, and rise to the occasion. That only was able to happen - to become part of his narrative - because he embraced it at the moment, with no time to plan or strategize his answer.

If he had, conversely, answered, "no, I would not meet with those people without preconditions," the campaign very well might have gone differently. It was, in that case, the YouTube citizen-questioner that set the narrative.

The Obama campaign benefited greatly not just from its own determined narratives, but to the many media viruses in harmony with it: The "1984" viral video, the "Obama girl" viral video, Andrew Sullivan's "Goodbye to All That," and, yes, some narratives crafted from this keypad and many others collectively wrote the narrative.

The danger for the Obama camp is that it can continue crafting brilliant narratives, but if it doesn't inspire others to build upon them and craft surprise twists to keep it all interesting, the best narrative will fall if it stands alone. Obama kind of entered into a angel's bargain with much of the creative class. If he loses that creative class, he will lose his power to control the narrative.

He lost it, for example, between Iowa and New Hampshire, and not just because Clinton's teary-eyed moment made itself a strong counter-narrative, but also because (and his staff has admitted this publicly) his campaign went from field organization mode to media message mode, and that's where it lost some momentum. By South Carolina, the field organization narrative had reasserted itself, and the rest is history (with some ups and downs along the road).

That's why I replied to Michelle that it would be a very dangerous gamble for Obama not to comply - or at least show demonstrable serious sweat and effort trying - with his campaign promises. The "he didn't keep his promises" narrative is much stronger, potentially, than any counter-narrative that he or anybody could come up with.

While I've long been among the first to say "don't underestimate Obama or his team," that was also when he had the narrating wind at his back, because he was making the right moves. He has to continue doing that, or his sails lose the force that moves the ship forward.

Basically, he "organized the narrative." What does that mean? He got a critical mass of media virus constructors working in harmony with his own, albeit autonomously (and having those autonomous forces of agreement adds greatly to the authenticity and credibility - and thus the traction - of his messages).

Governing provides a whole new set of danger zones - Bermuda Triangles of the Narrative, so to speak - that he's got to navigate now without losing the ability to inspire others to reinforce it. Fortunately, those others are made up of many that will insist that keeping his promises is the debt to be paid in order to continue inspiring that work.

I don't really understand how to recognize narrative in this context, but this ad totally rocks and, to my untrained eye, drives the narrative of addressing global warming and the economy.  It works on so many levels. Most glaringly it speaks directly to the people who are most resistant to the idea.

https://secure.repoweramerica.org/page/contribute/repowerad

Democracy in Action has a letter to PE Obama that you can sign.  It encourages him to select Michael Pollan as Ag Sec. http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/642/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1737

Count me in!

Thanks, Tien, for the link.

Also, I apologize for being such a Luddite (my students tease me constantly). I will learn how to embed links properly. Sorry, Al, for not having figured that out yet. 

Al, I am still speaking in a language I don't really understand here -- so I hope you and others will forgive me if I don't make any sense.

My assessment of Obama's narrative-related skills comes in large part from what I have heard/read about his organizing efforts. Specifically, how the organizing operated in relation to people's "stories."

In my assessment, he has a deep and very precise sense of how to connect his goals (eg getting elected as an example) with his own and other people's "stories" and the stories that this nation tells itself about what it is and should be.

He does this in a way that gets underneath what I would call the upper layers of narrative (the cognitive parts?) and down deep into emotion and desire. This is extremely powerful, from what I have seen.

This is a consistent aspect of his approach from what I can tell. I remember reading things during the election season about how he and his campaign people realized the power of his "story" in affecting voters in order to achieve his goals -- I don't have the link but maybe it in was one of those Rolling Stone articles?

And consider this piece from Dreams From My Father: he wrote of people's stories as providing the people he was organizing with "some central explanation of themselves."  He wrote that the stories he was hearing, "taken together, had helped me bind my world together, that they gave me the sense of place and purpose I’d been looking for." [both quotes from Dreams from my Father 190-91]

So from what I can see, Barack Obama understands the underneath layers of stories/narrative in an incredibly precise way. From what I can see, he knows that narative is most powerful when connected with selective and crafted parts of stories that get to people at some pretty deep emotional/spiritual levels.  He also has a sense of the collective -- what the collective that is this nation desires and feels at this level of meaning and stories.

Simultaneously, he is extremely pragmatic and goal-driven -- fully capable of using this deep knowledge of the underneath dynamics to get people to feel and do in alignment with whatever is needed for the goals he is working toward. Maybe not everyone, but enough for what is needed for those goals.

So. When I speak of not underestimating him, I am mostly speaking about this deeper layer of skill and knowledge that I have seen. It gives him an advantage in general. And, it gives him a special and specific advantage whenever others either do not perceive these underneath layers, or do not think they are as important as they are.

But. I don't know if we are speaking about the same thing. I don't understand what you mean by "narrative" so maybe what I am talking about is something else.

Also, Al, the situation as you perceive it appeals to me-- to the extent that I can even get what you are saying -- because it is less open to misuse of the tremendous structural power that the governing system of this country vests in its leaders. And since you do understand this narrative thing which is a foreign country to me, I hope that what you are seeing is in fact the case.

I took noticed of his paragraph en español. Is this the first time we hear about this side of the world while the announcements of these positions.

Nuestro voto ha sido nuestra voz 

A los millones de habitantes de América Latina y El Caribe, hay que reconocer nuestros nexos y recordar la importancia de un hemisferio unido

Michelle, Marshall Ganz has valuable insights re:Organizing, power of story, narrative. Wonder if any of the Fieldhands who were OOF are ready or allowed? to talk about this.

http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k2139

Orlando, this is the translation supplied by my OS X widget - did it come close?

"Our vote has been our voice 

To the million inhabitants of Latin America and the Caribbean, it is necessary to recognize our nexuses and to remember the importance of a united hemisphere"

If so, what do we think this means in terms of NAFTA?

I am finding the discussion of narrative and also Michelle's comments and questions to be very interesting. Michelle, I appreciate your continuing the conversation even though you aren't confident in your understanding of it all.  

Joel (@ 9:21) if I have understood some of Michelle's comments correctly, I think she may be concerned that it is us who may get stomped and not just the bad guys. Michelle, do I have that right?  And if so, is that still a concern for you?

Barack Obama has been talking openly since 2003 of how the Dem party needs a narrative. He and Axelrod are excruciatingly aware of how narratives get made and until I see otherwise, I have to believe they understand the downside if promises aren't kept.

But for understanding what a narrative is I have often found this to be very interesting even though it is from the UK. The author, David Boyle, talks about a narrative being a story, about big ideas, explaining big ideas and framing the debate.

Or see Robert Reich on Democratic narrative or Paul Waldman .

Matt Bai's book, The Argument, I believe talks about narrative but the one big weakness of his book is that he doesn't define early in the book what he means and doesn't mean by his term "the argument".

http://www.businessweek.com/election/2008/blog/archives/2008/12/obama_reportedl.html?campaign_id=rss_daily

First Read provides the following translation:

To our Latino community, thank you for your support and your confidence. Thank you for your votes for our candidate, who is now our president-elect. As he told us 'Yes we can.' Our vote has been our voice. This election has demonstrated our strength and our unity. We have to continue fighting for our rights, while we pursue the American Dream for everyone. To the millions of people of America, Latin America and the Caribbean, we must strengthen our ties and remember the importance of a united hemisphere.

It may be just as well if the new Secretary of State is not the one primarily dealing with Latin America...

Narrative is a well-developed and researched concept in mass-communications theory -- where it is referred to as "Agenda Setting Theory."

This is from a North Carolina State University professor's Web site:

Agenda setting theory emerges from communications studies and focuses on mass media influence on setting political agenda, as articulated in the seminal article by McCombs and Shaw (1972), which through content analysis of a local election documented a high correlation between media agenda and the public agenda - a correlation corroborated in numerous studies since. Their 1972 article coined the phrase "agenda-setting." Subsequent agenda setting theorists have followed their lead in contending that the media agenda influences the political agenda more than vice versa.

Among the key components of "narrative" or agenda setting are gatekeeping [controlling what information is actually transmitted, or not]; salience [defining what message, or narrative, is stressed in the information transmitted]; framing [controlling the context, or frame, of the information presented in the media].

Prior to the advent of the Internet, the agenda-setting tools were all in the hands of the mainstream media. Post-Internet, however, the tools are much more widely dispersed -- though the mainstream media still has, arguably, the anointing power.

In other words, the MSM have lost sole control of the gatekeeping function, and to an extent, the ability to determine salience, but, because of old reader/viewer habits and their vast economic resources, the mainstream media is still quite dominate in framing the news -- though often after it has left the gate absent their control and achieved a high degree of salience via the blogging world, etc.

At that point, the NYT or Wash Post will step in to "anoint" the message, but also apply the MSM frame, or context, to that message -- which often is quite different from the frame set by the Internet originator of the information.

[Of course, in the online world, this process is just as often working in the reverse, with bloggers reframing a MSM message already out of the gate that has achieved salience.]

And the upshot of all this "narrative' dynamic [and it is dynamic, changing, with the balance of power in flux between mainstream and Internet realms -- hence the pain being experienced by local dailies] is that media agenda-setting does affect political policy. That's what mass communications research is showing, or as the prof above says in his outline: the media agenda influences the political agenda more than vice versa.

But remember, it's all a theory. What matters is what actually happens.

Boy, I'm glad I read all the most recent entries, because I was about to type that we needed to back up and try to agree on what we mean by "narrative" in this conversation.  Thanks, Jeff and Bill! That's very helpful.

Nancy - I agree with you and disagree with myself (or my last comment). Mine was an impulsive post and not very well thought through. Anyhow, I'm glad for the ongoing conversation as I think it is a very worthy topic.

Addendum: This is for sure one of the most thoughtful and alert comment sections in the blogosphere. In most comment sections my lazy statement would have been passed over and ignored...not here. I think that's great! Way to take it to a higher level, everyone!

"for sure one of the most thoughtful and alert comment sections in the blogosphere" by Joel:   yes siree!  thanks to Al for setting the tone and to all for keeping it going!

Here's one of the resources from that Marshall Ganz site linked above by Suzy Shure that to my eyes precisely describes the Obama approach to narrative that I was trying to describe earlier (note: it takes a while to load even on my new fancy DSL, it's a 24-page pdf that should be easier to load but IMO well worth the wait/hassle):

Professor Marshall Ganz, Organizing Course (2006): Motivation, Story and Celebration (pdf)

I don't agree with Ganz's universalizing assumptions in this description -- that is, I perceive what he is describing as a culturally specific approach to storytelling etc, and I have various opinions about that that are beyond the scope of this discussion here.

But anyway, I find this 24-page chapter to be a stunningly accurate description of what I have observed/heard about from the Obama campaign on the layer I was trying to get at above.

I would strongly encourage any action around "narrative" to take this layer into account in a very serious way. It is clear to me that what Ganz is describing has been put into practice very directly by the Obama campaign and is something that Pres-elect Obama deeply understands and implements with tremendous skill.

(I do understand that Ganz was a primary architect of Camp Obama and that whole thing, is that right?)

Also, my girlfriend was raised evangelical Christian and she and I have started talking about the similarities between this approach and those she experienced and observed in that context. Really fascinating (and I must admit, to me somewhat chilling) similarities. And I don't think the similarities are any sort of a secret, since I am pretty sure I heard a discussion on public radio a couple of weeks ago -- on a Sunday afternoon is all I remember of the specifics -- where this comparison was made.

And actually, if my memory serves me correctly, I am almost certain that Ganz was actually interviewed for that show, or at least directly cited and credited with being one of the main movers of the approach under discussion.