Weird Science

From ETHNOS – Fall 1997

Decoding America's Prescription for Failure

A Little Whistle Blowing Goes A Long Way

When economist Glenn Burress makes up his mind to do something, it’s as good as done. Sort of. Looking much like the quintessential, absent-minded professor, Burress is, in fact, the exact opposite. He is quite analytical about documenting every detail of every project he has worked on during his 30-year journey through economic policy in the United States. Details of the projects and details of every "expert" he has worked with are neatly chronicled in his files. His brain seems like a database from which he pulls information on the early days of economic reform, and he knows exactly where a particular document has been filed and why. His home office looks a lot like the local library, with books neatly arranged ceiling to floor, on shelves that have become the walls. His basement is just as packed with shelves of books and 15 file cabinets. He says he has to be thorough, otherwise he couldn’t fight so diligently to right the patterns and policies of economic wrongs he says the United States embarked on soon after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed by Lyndon B. Johnson.

Were it not for the volumes of carefully documented writings, policy documents and published articles, not to mention photographs of him testifying before Congressional committees, Burress’ tale of conspiratory economic policy, bordering on espionage, might be too crazy to believe. If he had his way, though Burress’ concerns and lawsuits would have been aired long ago in court, and then, he says, at least the general public would be wise to the reasons for America’s mercurial economic plight. Despite four trips to the U.S. Supreme Court, and its refusal to hear his case each time, Burress remains undaunted. His next filing will be in the World Court in 1998.

Burress claims that despite the revolutionary economic policy that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the United States reversed itself soon after the elections in 1964 and has been operating instead from policies more akin to those of the 1930’s. He says that it is by design and designed to keep African-Americans in particular, from gaining in economic power. He has been fighting now for more than 30 years to get these policies exposed for what he calls a racist prescription for failure.

Early Anti-Racism

Burress has become Sacramento’s resident economic expert and adviser. although he says he is more accurately defined as a "social systems analyst" with extensive study in systems science. He is working with a few African American organizations, serving on the Political Action Committee of the local NAACP, addressing conferees at the annual Black American Political Association of California (BAPAC) and assisting with letter writing campaigns that serve to put key officials on notice that the battles for economic justice and parity are not over.

This Cincinnati native says he started challenging authority as a kid, and before long it became a way of life.

"I was raised by cruel racists," he said. "My family members were Fundamentalists. They based their views on the Bible. I found this repulsive and refused to accept it."

Burress was 12 years old, and defiant. He would rise for school before the sun and everybody else and didn’t return home until after they had all gone to bed.

"To have had that experience, at such an early age, of challenging everything that came to you by authority…" his voice trails off. "It has become the story of my life."

Burress says he fought a similar battle when he arrived at Harvard University to complete a Ph.D. in economics.

"They knew why I was there, to challenge the economic profession." He said. "In my first paper I argued that their economic theory was racist. They were teaching what my parents were trying to teach me as a boy. Besides, economists had misinterpreted [English economist] John Maynard Keynes who, by the way, criticized the economists for what he called ‘the Negroid problem’ even before WWI."

Keynes, whose economic theories are ingrained in schools of economic study, wasn’t even an economist. His study was in philosophy, mathematics and literature. Still, today "a perversion of" his broad fundamentals of "modern macroeconomics" is accepted by most economists including those who do not share Keynes’ policy views or analysis.

"My Harvard professors called me aside after my first term and said they thought my ideas were brilliant but they said, ‘You’ll never get your Ph.D. from Harvard.’ So I resigned from the Ph.D. Program," Burress said. He returned to Cincinnati and to the mentor who had prepared him for the Ivy Leaguers, William W. Hewitt, "very famous in the economic profession during the 20 years following WWII."

Burress completed his Ph.D. in 1961 under Hewitt’s tutelage. A Ford Foundation fellowship enabled him to complete his dissertation on "Consumer Behavior." A letter to the editor, responding to a Business Week article led to an interview with editors at that publication. He would spend a year in the mid-60’s reporting for Business Week and gaining access to White House officials and CEO of major corporations and their economic advisors. Unlike fellow reporters, Burress had an intimate knowledge of the subject matter, and could ask probing and disturbing questions of the "experts." He did not, however, always get answers to those questions. He left Business Week in frustration and took a job with the American Bankers Association as chief economist. He said he was unable to get White House officials on the record for what he describes as racist economic policy. He also did not want to write around the truth.

Burress describes White House conversations with David Lusher, then chief of staff for the Council for Economic Advisors, in which Lesher would agree with Burress’ analysis off the record, then refuse to comment or lie on the record. He had similar experiences with economic advisers and CEOs at major corporations. On in particular told him: "We know that your policies will get us higher corporate profits, but we will take lower profits to keep the niggers from controlling this. If you give them economic power, they’ll control political power. The only way that we can keep control of both the economy and the economic system is to keep it depressed."

"When a society has had long-standing institutional oppression of, in this case, Blacks, they are over-represented among the poor and underclass," Burress said. "Anything that causes the economy to fail will hurt Blacks more than Whites, and anything that enables the economy to succeed will help the Blacks more than the Whites."

Burress defines the "prize" of the Civil Rights Movement as permanent and full parity for the average income of African Americans with that of whites at 100 percent. The country was on track [Civil Rights Act of 1964] with full parity projected within 10 years. The worst crime against African Americans, though, occurred when Nixon took office in 1969. Nixon redefined the prize while his economists used policy under the Employment Act of 1946 to undermine the entire Black race, he said.

Burress says economic scientists blew the whistle on Nixon’s racist jobs policy in 1969, warning that with affirmative action, Nixon had thrown a bone to individual African Americans while reducing income for all African Americans relative to whites.

"The median income of African American families relative to white families peaked in 1969 and since then has fallen sharply, to less than its 1964 level" Burress said. "In short, all gains for African Americans since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have been eradicated."

Since the passage of Prop. 209, the anti affirmative action law, Burress has filed an intervention complaint, charging attorneys on both sides of the issue with obstructing justice and suppressing evidence. He says doing away with affirmative action does nothing to rid the effects of racist economic policy. His suit, filed in San Francisco, was thrown out and he is now appealing.

Conspiracy Theory

Burress and fellow whistle-blowing economic scientists offered proof during the writing of civil rights era economic policy, that on November 15, 1964, new guidelines for policy under the Employment Act of 1946 were adopted with the intent of circumventing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That policy had increased employment opportunities for the middle class and poor, and it was to be reversed.

Sounding much like a science fiction movie, Burress talks about computers being programmed to maintain racism, just as computers in South Africa were programmed to maintain apartheid. He says the computers are programmed not to execute policy but instead, limit options to those that are oppressed: the middle class and the poor.

"There are no racial variables in the equations, but there are equations that separate the middle class and poor. African Americans make up a disproportionate percentage of these groups and so they are most affected," he said. "Since 1964 we’ve gone back to the ‘Harvard’ approach to economics which is based on the ‘30s and 19^th century economic theory. They [economic scholars] did to the Civil Rights Movement exactly what the ‘30s did for the Harlem Renaissance. Other countries have gone on with a scientific economic approach and we are becoming a second and third-rate economy."

Burress pulled from his files articles on 1969 Nobel laureates who developed mathematical and statistical models that now control economic policy options. The problem is that their models were based on economic prescription taught in academia but never tested. The Civil Rights economic policy was left to the Nobel Prize winners: Jan Tinbergen of Sweden, Ragnar Frishch, a Norwegian, and an American, Paul Samuelson. Their models or equations now govern Project Link, the computer database in the United Nations that also governs the 14 largest nations in the world, according to Burress.

"The Nobel Prize in Economic Science is the most important of all, in terms of our economic welfare, but if you use the Nobel Prize to destroy the economic system…" his voice trails off again. "It’s the worst kind of racism and the most dangerous. They are relying on the economists and the economists should be sued for malpractice."

"The problem of racial oppression stems from a broader problem of institutional oppression where the powerful oppress the powerless," he said. "In the universities this takes the form of those of us who have shown there is a non-racist way to manage the economy. We are the minorities among the scholars. We are treated in the profession the way Blacks were treated during slavery. In other words, we’re not allowed to write, not allowed to publish, not allowed tenure, and the result is that the entire educational system is programmed to presume that while we had this great change in our society in the 1960’s we were making all this progress and it all slipped away. Now we’re all brainwashed into believing that nobody knows what happened and nobody knows how to correct it or reverse it."

Fighting what was beginning to feel like a losing battle, Burress took a job with Texas oil lobbyists as an economic adviser, and started writing a column in the Journal of Commerce. It was 1974. This column got the attention of Congressmen Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and George Mahon of Texas, Chair of the House Appropriations Committee. Mahon made a special trip to Texas to talk with Burress about his analysis and invited him to testify before the House Appropriations Committee.

After his testimony before Congress in early 1975, Burress says he succeeded in getting President Ford to reverse policy and restore Kennedy policy. In May, 1976, however, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, convinced Ford to revert again to racist policy.

Humphrey died in l977. Mahon, 83 years old by then, felt he was just too old to be effective.

"Mahon complained to me that he would request the changes in bills that would come back reading exactly the same way," Burress said. "He suggested contacting the White House Office of Science, thinking that if the request came from the White House, the directive would be followed quickly.

"I began to think of the economics profession and the Nobel Prize Committee as fraudulent. I kept making forecasts that were correct and they were wrong, but winning Nobel prizes," he said.

Implement Plan B

Andrew J. Pettiflor, a 1973 Stanford University graduate from the graduate school of Systems Science with course work in the engineering of economic systems, is whom Burress found in the White House Office of Science. Their views were in sync, and they began working together to get new policies implemented.

He thought it would be wise to call in clergy to hear the case and respond by forcing the moral issue. Burress said none would call the White House, nor were they willing to get involved.

He kept pressing the issue, now with the Carter administration. Slowly, Burress’ life began to fall apart around him. His column was canceled; he was fired from his Texas job with the oil lobbyists. He received death threats on his own life and the lives of his children. He retreated to California, but his Anaheim apartment, was twice, mysteriously looted.

While preparing for a game of golf, Burress was arrested and charged, he said, first with driving under the influence and later with public drunkenness. He was thrown in the drunk tank where he was severely beaten into a coma. It took three brain operations and as many years of physical therapy to get Burress walking, talking, and feeding himself again.

Still, Burress stayed his course, and continued to fight. In 1984 he approached is own Unitarian Church for assistance and intervention.

"With all these connections I thought we were about to make a breakthrough," Burress said. "But in the end they concluded that I had had a nervous breakdown and was crazy."

In the end, it was reported in the national religious press that Burress and his wife, Dorothy, were crazed fanatics. It was also reported in the Sacramento News & Review that the couple threatened one of the church ministers that if he didn’t support them, they would expose his homosexuality. These articles led to the first defamation lawsuit.

"It really upset Dorothy, but I said great, now we can file a lawsuit", Burress said. "They used economic policy to destroy the rising of power of Blacks in ’64, then they did the same thing to destroy the power of Moslems in ‘77-’78," he said. "The economist, not the politicians. But the politicians and the clergy were participating in an unwitting conspiracy."

Despite the countless defeats, Burress says he is not defeated. He says he will take his fight to the International World Court and get it heard. He has no regrets. He says the fight has been long and hard, but it ain’t over.

"I think I have the best life. I’m doing exactly what my mentors did," he gestures toward their pictures hanging on his walls. "I don’t know anyone who I would trade this life with. It’s such a rich life. I have a close relationship with my children and I have my wife. A man could not do this unless he had a wife like Dorothy. I define myself as unfit for human consumption. My journey is too painful for anyone else to be involved. But here she is."