She Saw Something, She Said Something, She Got Her Walking Papers

The titans of finance are always looking for new ways to make a quick buck off the suffering and sweat of regular people. They've destroyed the housing market, they've destroyed jobs, they've obliterated trillions of dollars in household wealth since the debacle of 2008. Now they're in Stage Two, which consists of sifting through the national ruins and salvaging the collateral damage. And lo and behold! There's some mighty distressed human capital and bargain basement real estate out there, ripe for the corporate picking. It's called the American public school system.

In the wealthiest country in the world, where nearly a quarter of all children are still deemed officially poor, the circling vultures are smelling the desperation and voraciously grabbing what they can, while they can. They're stealthy, they're sneaky, and they are counting on us not noticing or caring.

But thanks in large part to the Chicago teachers' strike, those of us who weren't paying enough attention are now getting a much-needed crash course in the war against public education. We've already heard more than we can stomach about Mayor Rahm Emanuel's quest to gut his city's public schools and transform them into charters in order to enrich his wealthy cronies. His divide-and-conquer crusade, pitting parents against unionized teachers, is not working. As of this writing, a settlement was reportedly near -- and the teachers are the ones with the smiles on their faces.

But that's just one battle, and the war still rages. Among the casualties is Barbara Madeloni, the director of Secondary Teacher Education at UMass, Amherst. Because she and her students balked at being used as guinea pigs in a multinational corporation's experimental teacher certification program, her contract has not been renewed for the next academic year. The fact that her college happens to be located in one of the most politically progressive areas of the country does not bode well. It is only because Dr. Madeloni is protected by a union that her employer couldn't fire her outright.

The professor and her students decided to opt out of participation in Pearson's Teacher Performance Field Test, which evaluates candidates based solely on a brief videotape and canned essay questions designed to discourage creative thinking. It lets a bunch of corporate suits sitting in expensive office space thousands of miles away make a ton of money by paying retired/laid-off teachers $75 a pop to decide the fate of an aspiring educator they've never even met.

 After the New York Times ran a story about her protest last spring, Barbara Madeloni suddenly found herself out of a job. The corporate overlords and their accomplices in state government and higher public education were apparently not well-pleased that, in her words, she "saw something and said something."

My conviction that I had to resist and speak out has been growing with my increasing awareness of the danger we are in. I see what is happening in K-12 schools, the profound distortions of teaching and learning, the abuse that is testing and its impact on teachers, students, parents and administrators. I sit in meetings with people who have the power and protections to speak out and stop what is happening, and I listen as they make a choice to side with those in power, determine through a twisted rationality that ‘we need standards’ and ‘there has to be accountability’ and ‘our practices need to be data driven’ all while closing their eyes and ears to the evident human misery these measures are creating. My courage comes from my outrage and my fear. My fear for the future of the greater good is much stronger than my fear for losing my job. I also gain courage from the Education Radio Collective, whose members support me, inspire me and give me a place of safety. As well, the national connections in educator activism, both online and at Occupy DOE have helped me to know that I am part of something bigger, that I am not alone. In some ways, however, it doesn’t feel like courage. It just feels absolutely necessary.

(Did I mention that Barbara Madeloni is also a Sardonicky reader/commenter?)

Alan Singer of Hofstra University has written a chilling overview of the Pearson conglomerate for The Huffington Post. Among other tidbits, we learn that Seif al-Islam, son of late Libyan dictator Muanmar Gaddafi, has a major financial stake in the company. The ill-gotten gains of one of the worst human rights abusers in modern history are helping subsidize an epidemic of what amounts to institutionalized child abuse. Because, let's be blunt: the "creative destruction" of public education, Rahm-style, Pearson-style, is indeed a form of child abuse. As the old public service TV commercial said, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." And the global financial cartel is laying waste to entire generations of young minds, all in the quest of the Almighty Dollar.

Why else do you suppose Rahm sends all three of his own children to a private school where they refuse to teach to the test, and where they have three libraries and seven art teachers to serve a student population of 1,700?

The underserved public school students of Chicago and other financially strapped cities, on the other hand, often don't even have a library. The elites can thereby pivot and blame the teachers for low reading scores! And when brave people like Barbara Madeloni speak out against the injustice, they're thrown to the curb. But they can never be silenced.

"The Chicago teachers know exactly what is up and who they are fighting" Dr. Madeloni emailed me yesterday. "And if they didn't, Obama's man Rahm told them so: these are Obama's Race to the Top policies that he using to try to strong arm the unions, make a land grab with schools closings, and complete the privatization of the public schools. This is a terribly important struggle and we need to be with them all of the way."

There's a petition up at Change.Org asking that UMass renew Dr. Madeloni's contract. You can sign it here.



Postering at UMass.... "I have the most amazing students," says Dr. Madeloni



The Spam of Bam

Even though hip-hop divas rarely email me, this just arrived in my spam bucket today. (parentheses added are merely my own peevish little thought balloons.)

Sender: Beyonce Knowles.

Subject: I Usually Don't Email You. (I, Beyonce, am letting you know right off the bat that emailing common people is beneath me. Consider yourself blessed.)

Message:

Karen --

I  usually don't email you (hey-- that's the title of my next hit single!) -- but I have an amazing invitation I have to share. (it's actually just one more variation on the BamScam lottery, but please bear with the pretentious fun.)

Jay (I naturally assume you know who he is) and I will be meeting up ( way cooler than just meeting) with President Obama for an evening in NYC sometime soon. (I can't be bothered to give you the exact date, but Page Six* has the scoop.) And we want you to be there! (the exclamation point signifies that I/my minion is futilely straining to sound sincere.)

I've had the honor of meeting (not meeting up with) President Obama and the First Lady a few times -- and believe me -- it's an opportunity you don't want to miss. (Watching me, Beyonce, from your nosebleed seat in the last row, meeting up with them.)

Until midnight tonight, if you pitch in $15 or whatever you can, you'll be automatically entered to be flown out to join us. (and if Obama for America does happen to pick your name out of the hat, you will be carefully vetted by his operatives to make sure you're not a Code Pinko, have no missing teeth, or are otherwise unfit for our venue.)

Don't worry about the airfare and hotel, it's taken care of. (Phew....I was sweating bullets)  And you can bring a guest. (who will also be rigorously vetted.)

But the countdown is on -- this opportunity ends at midnight:

(more linkage to givegivegivegivegivegive)

Can't wait to meet you!

Love,

B

At the very end, in extremely tiny print is the message that no purchase is necessary to be entered to win, because that would be illegal and unethical in the extreme. Offer void where prohibited and patent pending and we hope you rubes won't read this but givegivegivegivegive. No refunds, no exchanges. This offer cannot be sold to a Third Party because that would be a spoiler. 

*Okay, here's the lowdown. The partay will be at Jay-Z's 40/40 Club on Sept. 18, and with any luck, the Sept. 17th anniversary of Occupy will still be going strong. Because, as you may remember, Jay-Z just dissed OWS, even though he'd made a bundle selling his special Occupy t-shirts.  According to the Post, 

We hear the event will be intimate and capped at 100 guests who will shell out $40,000 per ticket to dine with the commander-in-chief and hip-hop royals. Earlier the same day, Obama is scheduled to attend a reception where families can pose for a photo with him for a $12,500 contribution. A rep for Jay-Z’s West 25th Street club had no comment. We’re told the campaign stop will be Obama’s last in New York before the election. But does this mean the president will miss Jay’s concerts at Brooklyn's new Barclays Center at the end of September?

Meanwhile, the New York Times is dishing on Bam's big-money donors and his failure to properly "stroke" them during appointments. Apparently, satisfying the thin-skinned elites is a tricky proposition.

Oh, and if you still had any illusions that President Obama is even remotely pro-labor, employees of Jay-Z's bar are suing him over wage and hour violations. At best, the lawsuit alleges, he cheated them out of overtime. At worst, he never gave them a paycheck at all. Even his defense lawyer is suing him for nonpayment. He got shut down by the health department for a day in July. In a separate case, the New York City Workers Compensation Board slapped him with a fine for not paying insurance for his own personal cooks and maids. Jay-Z reportedly earned $80 million last year.  

But givegivegivegivegivegive. They'll fly you right out. 

Links / Open Forum

Bibi and Barack are feuding, the crazy Florida pastor is on the loose, people are rioting over a cheesy movie, Mitt Romney is running for president on the Likud ticket, and the Democratic Party is finally outing itself as a group of anti-labor corporate shills by refusing to stand with the public school teachers and the poor kids of Chicago.

The maelstrom of current events reminds me of that old Sheldon Harnick song called "The Merry Minuet." It was written in 1949, and recorded in the 60s by the Kingston Trio -- one of whom remarked in this clip that the lyrics were as timely back then as they were way back then, and even pre-back then.  The crap of life is forever. "The whole world is festering with unhappy souls," the lyrics go. We have been threatening to annihilate one another ever since we first started roaming the earth.

Meanwhile.....

The Chicago teachers' strike has become the national symbol of the battle of corporations against people. It's the best thing to happen since the Occupy movement. It provides irrefutable proof that the two major political parties are two sides of the same corrupt coin. Paul Ryan hearts Rahm Emanuel, and droves of people are calling out the bullshit just in time for the election. But as far as the mainstream media are concerned, this strike proves that there is no incident of social upheaval that cannot be tied to how it will personally effect Barack Obama. Even the neoliberal New York Times has dropped all pretense and outed itself as an anti-union administration mouthpiece But some truly insightful reporting can be found here and here.

The Romney and Obama campaigns are shocked and outraged at the attacks on the American embassies.... or rather, shocked and appalled at each other's shock and outrage.  There is no tragedy that cannot be tied to the presidential horse-race, even on the phony 9/11 holiday truce.

And here's more on the Grade Z movie that started it all.

Yep... as the song says, we can certainly be thankful, and tranquil, and proud.

Eleventh Nine Eleven

What with all the hoopla of the campaigns and party conventions, September 11th kind of snuck up on me. I am ashamed to admit that before President Obama reminded me about the looming celebration of mass murder, glorious Americana style, it had totally slipped my mind. After all, didn't the event reach its orgiastic zenith last year in the wake of the bin Laden assassination? Some irrational part of me just assumed that from then on out, it would just sort of tastefully lurk beneath the surface of our collective super-ego.

No such luck. Obama dusted off his earnest Keeping Fear Alive and Loving It screed again today. Forget about his fiscal scold of an acceptance speech the other night, when he insisted we elected him to tell us the unvarnished truth instead of what we want to hear.  Because it's that time of year again, when politicians let their cynical patriotic fervor go hog wild. It's the time of year when any sense of shame or adherence to the truth goes right out the window. It's the time of year when I really, really cringe in embarrassment. Anyway, here is the transcript of Barry's latest Very Special Sept.11th Retrospective. (he has promised to shut up on the day itself, even though he and the Mittster plan to be there for the usual solemn, touchy feely let's all get along for one day, photo op.)

This week, we mark the eleventh anniversary of the September 11th attacks. It’s a time to remember the nearly 3,000 innocent men, women and children we lost, and the families they left behind. It’s a chance to honor the courage of the first responders who risked their lives – on that day, and every day since. And it’s an opportunity to give thanks for our men and women in uniform who have served and sacrificed, sometimes far from home, to keep our country safe.

This anniversary is about them. It’s also a time to reflect on just how far we’ve come as a nation these past eleven years.

On that clear September morning, as America watched the towers fall, and the Pentagon burn, and the wreckage smoldering in a Pennsylvania field, we were filled with questions. Where had the attacks come from, and how would America respond? Would they fundamentally weaken the country we love? Would they change who we are?

(The very first question that entered my mind when the first plane hit the tower was "Wow, someone must sure hate the Americans in general and our predacious capitalist system in particular. What outrage could we have perpetrated that could have brought them to this extremity?" Also, where is the president's outrage that so many of our first responders have been laid off due to government austerity, and have been unable to access medical care thanks to no universal health insurance?)

The last decade has been a difficult one, but together, we have answered those questions and come back stronger as a nation.

(We started two wars costing over a trillion dollars and at least 50  times more lives than were lost in the 9/11 attacks -- and we're still counting. We will be in Afghanistan for at least another decade. This last decade has been a very profitable one for Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex.)

We took the fight to al Qaeda, decimated their leadership, and put them on a path to defeat. And thanks to the courage and skill of our intelligence personnel and armed forces, Osama bin Laden will never threaten America again.

(We put them on a path of blowback against the United States that is exponentially increasing with every secret Drone attack that kills innocent people in countries with which we are not even at war. America is in more peril than ever before. With every bombing that kills somebody's innocent mother, father, brother or sister, we create future generations of countless bin Ladens. Our moral standing in the world has taken a huge hit since 9/11. The initial good will and sympathy expressed by the international community has been plummeting ever since. Our very own Nobel Laureate president is no longer viewed favorably by much of the world. )

Instead of pulling back from the world, we’ve strengthened our alliances while improving our security here at home. As Americans, we refuse to live in fear. Today, a new tower rises above the New York skyline. And our country is stronger, safer and more respected in the world.

We are fighting terrorism with terrorism. Far from strengthening our alliances, American bellicosity is creating more enemies. As Americans, we live in a state of manufactured fear every single day. We are patted down and x-rayed at airports. People protesting economic inequality in Occupy encampments and at closed partisan conventions are arrested and put on Terror watch lists. The president has declared that he can extra-judicially arrest or kill anyone, anywhere in the world. The National Security agency is building a brand new repository in the Utah desert in which to store the email and Google searches and data trails and  cell phone conversations of every man, woman and child on the planet. Never before have our civil rights been more jeopardized and trampled upon.)

Instead of turning on each other, we’ve resisted the temptation to give in to mistrust and suspicion. I have always said that America is at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates – and we will never be at war with Islam or any other religion. We are the United States of America. Our freedom and diversity make us unique, and they will always be central to who we are as a nation.

(The United States is attacking and killing Muslims abroad and spying on them here at home. Obama's national security advisor has gone out of his way to praise the New York City police department's illegal anti-Muslim surveillance. The Obama administration has deported more undocumented immigrants than any previous regime and has prosecuted a record number of whistleblowers exposing government waste and corruption. The Department of Homeland Security had turned a blind eye to the growing right wing terror threat in these United States out of a sense of not wanting to offend right wing politicians. This country has not been this deeply divided against itself since the Civil War. Just take a look at the theatrical presidential sweepstakes: mistrust and suspicion are the rule, vicious money-fueled attack ads are poisoning the discourse.) 

Instead of changing who we are, the attacks have brought out the best in the American people. More than 5 million members of the 9/11 Generation have worn America’s uniform over the past decade, and we’ve seen an outpouring of goodwill towards our military, veterans, and their families. Together, they’ve done everything we’ve asked of them. We’ve ended the war in Iraq and brought our troops home. We brought an end to the Taliban regime. We’ve trained Afghan Security Forces, and forged a partnership with a new Afghan Government. And by the end 2014, the transition in Afghanistan will be complete and our war there will be over.

This entire paragraph is a bald-faced lie. The reaction to the attacks bankrupted this country and eviscerated the Bill of Rights. Since only one percent of our population has joined the all-volunteer armed forces, the vast majority of us have no real clue about the horrors the government is subjecting them to: endless deployments, drugging them to keep them awake and alert, irreversible brain damage and mental illness and an increase in suicides, an epidemic of sexual assaults against female troops that is going unaddressed and unpunished. The Afghan Security Forces are turning against us and killing our troops in the field. The transition in Afghanistan will not be anywhere near complete by 2014. The United States has promised a presence there at least through the next decade. Americans are trying retain indefinite control of the military prison on Afghan soil. We will continue to launch drone attacks from our bases in Afghanistan.)

And finally, instead of turning inward with grief, we’ve honored the memory of those we lost by giving back to our communities, serving those in need, and reaffirming the values at the heart of who we are as a people. That’s why we mark September 11th as a National Day of Service and Remembrance. Because we are one American family. And we look out for each other – not just on the difficult days, but every day.

(Instead of turning inward with grief, we have neglected the people here at home and directed our voracious military machine ever outward, with close to 1000 bases worldwide. We have expanded our power and machinery in new narco-wars in Africa and Latin America. We look out for our defense contractors and war profiteers every single day, because we are now in a permanent state of war. There will be no more normal days.) 

Eleven years later, that’s the legacy of 9/11 – the ability to say with confidence that no adversary and no act of terrorism can change who we are. We are Americans, and we will protect and preserve this country we love. On this solemn anniversary, let’s remember those we lost, let us reaffirm the values they stood for, and let us keep moving forward as one nation and one people.

(Oh, would he please just shut the hell up.)

The Audacity of Treading Water

I think I figured out why the party planners decided to move the big bash indoors last night -- and it had nothing to do with the weather. The venue of a football stadium is usually reserved for rock concerts, Papal Masses, sporting events, or happy victory rallies. The most Obama could muster was a full-throated endorsement of Meh. He waxed nostalgic for another centrist grand bargain of deficit reduction. Picture the Emperor in the coliseum drawling the following to the hungry jobless unwashed masses:

Independent experts say that my plan would cut our deficit by $4 trillion. (Cheers.) And last summer I worked with Republicans in Congress to cut a billion dollars in spending, because those of us who believe government can be a force for good should work harder than anyone to reform it so that it’s leaner and more efficient and more responsive to the American people....

Now, I’m still eager to reach an agreement based on the principles of my bipartisan debt commission. No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. I want to get this done, and we can get it done.

Maybe his handlers figured the crowds would go wild, and not in a good way, when he evoked memories of the despised Cat Food Commission. It was Co-chair Alan Simpson who famously derided Social Security as a "milk cow with 300 million tits". And the other co-chair, Erskine Bowles, is a serious Paul Ryan fanboy. As commenter Pearl pointed out, does Obama even want to win the election?

The Secret Service likely was having conniption fits over security anyway, and when they got an advance copy of the speech, the whole shebang went into full emergency lockdown mode. The part of the speech with Obama wind-bagging about all that frackable gas lurking in the earth beneath our feet sent Earth, Wind & Fire running for their lives. 

Charlotte, N.C. had been transformed into a virtual militarized zone in which cops from thousands of miles away outnumbered spectators, handfuls of protesters, and various and sundry marginalized citizens. It was a dystopian scene where journalists attempting to take photographs outside the parameters were being threatened with arrest. Patting down 60,000 ticket-holders to Obama's Bank of America speech would have presented a logistical nightmare. And there would likely have been more than a few catcalls when President Obama embraced catfood, inexcusably ignoring the humanitarian crisis of unemployment, the epidemic of foreclosures, and the fact that one out of every four American children is now officially poor. It would have been embarrassing to have cameras pan over all the dispirited homeless people who were bound to have scored a few tickets.

Better to have several thousand loyal partisans in funny hats cheer in a heavily guarded convention center than a city full of freethinkers boo in an open-air space. A stadium speech might have totally upended the ultra-careful scripting of the previous three days, in which almost every speech by every "rising star" seemed to have been crafted by the same P.R. flack. Nonfiction may have reared its ugly head, roared its terrible roar and gnashed its terrible teeth. And it wouldn't have had anything to do with the president's bland rendering of "Where the Wild Things Are" at the White House Easter Egg hunt this past spring.

I wasn't even going to post today, such was my profound state of ennui -- but my spirits were briefly lifted this evening when I got my very first call ever from the Quinnipiac pollsters! I was able to loudly and categorically state for posterity that, contrary to Obama's delusions, I Do Not Give One Shit About the Deficit! Well, that wasn't the exact question, but you get my drift. I was also able to reveal that I would have no problem voting for a Black Hispanic Muslim Mormon Born Again Christian gay person who also happens to be an atheist and morbidly obese -- but was strongly opposed to both Obama and Romney. As I told the pollster lady, I do refuse to  accept a choice between stagnating with Barry or sinking with Mitt. But since that wasn't an option, I think she marked me down as "Not Sure." Or confused, or uncooperative.

Whatever. Osama bin Laden is underwater, and so are you.

Contra-vention

The dial on the cognitive dissonance meter just went haywire and exploded into the stratosphere. Hordes of otherwise intelligent people have suddenly decided to take political conventions seriously. A religion of the absurd has been born. Its dogma is that Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. We're all better off than we were four years ago, because the Party Leader has decreed it. Yippee.

A reader commenting on Nicholas Kristof's New York Times column today, which grades President Obama's first term, distilled the zeitgeist nicely: "I am very proud of our President. I will add my voice in agreement to the thousands who shouted 'Yes' at the convention when asked if they are better off today than they were on January 19, 2009. Only those who are brain-dead, memory disabled, or decided to hate the President before he even took the oath of office would answer no to that question."

I get that we are supposed to parse that "better off" meme and define it as the individual miserable parts not counting as much as the glorious sum --  but how do you suppose this new campaign talking point feels to those who've lost their homes, their health insurance, their health, their jobs?  Why more people aren't expressing how insulted they feel is beyond me. I guess I must be really behind the times, not getting with the new make-believe program of happy days are here again.

And Bill Clinton is getting rave reviews for his speech, mainly because he is better at explaining things than Barack Obama, and he is not totally addicted to a teleprompter. He actually praised the failed "Grand Bargain" of trillions of dollars of cuts balanced by a few paltry increases in revenue,  called for a reanimation of the Catfood Commission of austerity, bragged about his heartless Welfare to Work program, and insisted there is such a thing as "structural" unemployment (lots of good jobs, too few qualified people.) And the crowd roared. But I guess the cult of centrism is better than total annihilation by Romney and Ryan. Your choice is between a slow death by a thousand cuts and a quick rub-out.

And while you're picking your poison, or just being a spoilsport by refusing to choose between the two evilisms, let me just share a heartwarming email I received yesterday from Michelle Obama. She got rave reviews for feeling our pain, but suggests that we need to suffer a little more for The Cause. Instead of helping a friend in need or otherwise indulging ourselves, we should send more cash her way.

Karen --

I know your life is full -- with work, or school, or family -- and yet you still find the time to help out when you can.

You may have a tight budget, but you give what you can afford.

A woman recently told the campaign her family skipped a pizza dinner at their favorite place so that they could make a difference in this election.

That is the commitment that drives this campaign..

If you can support Barack with a donation today, please know it makes a huge difference. If we win, it will be because of what you did at moments like this.

And if they lose, I guess it will be all my selfish fault for not forcing my kid to give up pizza night for Lent Obama.

But back to death. Obama has finally been confronted about his "Kill List" by a renegade local reporter. The president dissembles in his usual glib newspeak fashion, simultaneously refusing to confirm that he kills people and bragging that he kills people. Watch the clip here. 

Need further antidotes to the political propaganda? Glenn Greenwald, Michael Wolff, Matt Stoller, and  Glen Ford are just what the doctor ordered.

Meanwhile, please feel free to vent with all the contrarianism you can muster.

The P Word

Deep within the bowels of the Democratic party platform are a few  gratuitous paragraphs about the need to eradicate poverty in America. The document also pays lip service to gun control and climate change, two other verboten topics in this year's presidential contest between the two apparatchiks of the One Percent.

But this political manifesto, like others before it, is more of a Christmas wish list than a literal agenda. Like the Bible, party platforms are cobbled together and hammered out over time by several different factions with diverse agendas. Also like the Bible, they shouldn't be taken literally. They're aspirational things, peppered with a lot of fiction. What is not in them is often more telling than what is.

But thanks in part to the Democrats' odd choice of Charlotte as its party city, that dreaded P word is in evidence right out in the open. That is because there is a dearth of hotels and motels to house all the conventioneers. So when the rich people came to town looking for lodging, the poor people previously housed in the city's temporary digs have been unceremoniously kicked out of them. Charlotte's homeless population skyrocketed an unbelievable 40% in 2010 and another 20% last year -- an increase caused in large part by impoverished rural families fleeing to the city to take advantage of its shelter system.

News reporters converging on the city can't help but notice all the poor people living on the streets. They are literally tripping over them on their way to the heavily policed elite events.

The New York Daily News tells the story of Lakia Ramsey, who was forced to take refuge in a church when her welfare motel jacked up its rates without warning. "They kicked us out like we were trash," the 28-year-old mother of two small children told the News. Another family had been renting a room and paying for it from the husband's low-paying restaurant job in Charlotte. They are now sleeping on a cement loading dock in order to make room for the out-of-towners.

Poverty is so rampant in what is known as Wall Street South that the Charlotte News Observer even has a specialized indigence beat. Fred Clasen-Kelly, the reporter who writes about poor people, was himself interviewed by Democracy Now! this week. He said that Charlotte is big on boosterism, trying to tout itself as a booming city in the New South. The propaganda campaign has been so effective that struggling people have flocked to this ephemeral Mecca hoping to find a better life. And the same big banks that caused so much misery and hardship in the first place now literally loom over hordes of people sleeping on the streets and waiting in bread lines.

The ironic part (he says) of being here at the convention is all these thousands of people going to very fancy parties with lots of suits on are really less than a mile away from the city’s largest homeless shelters, in places like Crisis Assistance Ministries, where people go for financial assistance to get—to stop eviction and to keep their power on. And so, it provides quite a contrast if you walk just a short distance from the convention site and the corporate towers that are downtown. Every morning, in these places like Crisis Assistance Ministries or the homeless shelter, you’ll see hundreds of people lined up outside waiting for food, waiting for money to be able to stay in their homes.

According to an Observer story co-written by Clasen-Kelly, members of the Occupy movement have been trying to recruit the city's poor people to join in their protests, without much success. The poor often have no faith in politics and may suffer from physical ailments preventing them from marching. Others have to work at more than one minimum wage job just to keep body and soul together, and haven't the spare time to demonstrate. The article didn't mention that the massive police presence in Charlotte also tends to put a damper on resistance by people for whom police brutality is an ongoing reality of daily life. After the Occupiers and conventioneers leave, they'll be stuck there. 

But they're still for President Obama, who despite their disappointment in him, is more palatable than Mitt Romney. For the marginalized minorities, Obama is the thin patina of aspiration covering their layers upon layers of despair.

Hugs, Not Thugs

To give you an idea of how mushy the movement in Labor Movement has become in the past several decades, take a gander at how the unions are behaving in anti-union North Carolina this week. Instead of aggressively demanding stuff like collective bargaining, a living wage bill and job protection, they're eager to demonstrate their "soft side" to the voting public. (Translation: Wall Street, corporations, and slanderous Republicans.) The once-great AFL-CIO has actually set up a "Hug a Union Thug" booth to demonstrate how quietly they plan to go into that good night. And there's a website that couldn't be more conciliatory if it tried:

While several unions are boycotting the convention because the Democrats chose a right-to-work state (with the lowest union density in the entire country) for their quadrennial confab, the heavy hitters  are there with their whiffle balls and bats. People like AFL-CIO Chief Richard Trumka, who often whines that the Democratic Party has betrayed the unions, writes vociferous letters blasting job-killing free trade deals, and vows to withhold contributions -- and then eagerly endorses their candidacies all the same. Where else can they go? Wa-a-a-a-a-h.

The union people on display in Charlotte have sadly devolved into performance artists for the purpose of President Obama's re-election. According to The Hill's Kevin Bogardus, the labor groups are "trying a mix of celebrity, social media and humor to polish up the labor movement’s image in the eyes of everyday people".

MaryBe McMillan, secretary-treasurer for the North Carolina State AFL-CIO, said the state labor federation wanted to break down stereotypes regarding union members by dishing out the hugs.

“We see this as an opportunity to dispel that stereotype that union members are mean, scary and violet. (sic) What better way to disarm folks than to hug them?” McMillan said. “Union members take care of you in the hospital, deliver your packages and sit next you in church. We are just average folks.”

Oh, no. That dreaded phony populist "folks" word has insidiously crept even into the parlance of workers' rights. Give me the Purple Meanies any day.  From Jimmy Hoffa tough to McDonaldland's plummy Grimace character tender, is just about correct. The shrinking violet-not-violent unions are now just fine with people working at temporary minimum wage jobs rather than having no jobs at all. Just think of all the poor unemployed people in Charlotte getting pocketfuls of change from the Hollywood celebrities and professional athletes and A-listers of all stripes converging in town this week, to see and be seen.


North Carolina is so anti-labor that the United Nations International Human Rights Committee has condemned a Jim Crow-era law on its books forbidding public employees to  collectively bargain. And here you were wondering why President Obama did not join the protests against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker trying to do the exact same thing.

Labor journalist Mike Elk, writing for Working in These Times, has an excellent piece about the Democratic Party's sellout of the labor movement. While some workers in Charlotte were putting in dangerous amounts of overtime at low pay to prepare for the convention, he says, the irony is that unions were treated well in Tampa for the GOP orgy of the oligarchs. It seems that Florida still does have collective bargaining rights.

Read the whole article. His description of DNC Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Shultz's canned endorsement of labor and her subsequent running away from his pointed questions would be hysterically funny if it weren't so depressing. The conventional wisdom among the unionists, Elk says, is that they're going for Obama for the simple reason that he is a slower bleed compared to Mitt Romney's "bullet to the head."

Even the unions not attending the convention are careful not to use the word "boycott" for fear of hurting Obama's re-election chances. They're just passive-aggressively not showing up. Among them is the International Association of Machinists, which came up with the idea of Labor Day in the first place.

So, Happy Labor Day, everybody. But when it comes to hugs not thugs, all I can do is shrug.


Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your McJobs



Ozymandias Obama

A gigantic sand sculpture of President Obama has arisen from the vast wasteland of corruption known as Wall Street South. It was supposed to be a Mount Rushmore-type homage to the 2008 grand prize winner of Ad Age's Marketer of the Year contest. Sadly, it's turning into a reprise of a certain sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Oh, how the mighty are crumbling.

Just when you'd gotten resigned to the sight of the erstwhile liberal class marching in ovine personality cult lockstep with the Big Sellout, Barack Obama's right-wing side has at last been dented. Literally. 

Because, wedge-issue feminist pandering from Democrats notwithstanding, Mother Nature herself is singularly unimpressed and definitely not fooled. Maybe you were smugly assuming that she favors the Blue Team just because she so obligingly pre-empted the first day of the GOP's orgy. But she is plenty pissed that the president, too, has turned out to be such a bellicose arch-conservative. And she is absolutely livid that while she's suffering through the climate change, he seems to have lost interest. So it was no surprise that the massive sand sculpture of Himself being constructed in Charlotte, NC suffered some damage yesterday when a sudden rainstorm hit the Democratic convention city.

 The vaunted center of the malleable edifice is carefully protected from above, but the right side was left vulnerable to attack by an angry squall arriving from the left. The wind-driven downpour obliterated the sharp right elbow he'd previously used to jab those marginalized purist ideologues. And although most of the right-sided aspect survived largely intact, the face was dimpled with unsightly pockmarks. And the poetical sneer of cold command remains. As He Himself is so wont to intone, "there's still a lot of work to be done." The sand statue, like the presidency, is being defended as a work in progress. Lots of smoothing over, lots of soothing platitudes, lots of folksy schmoozing with the masses.

Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, And Despair!

Could the storm damage spell payback for the choice of anti-labor North Carolina as the site of the convention? Could it be discontent with the fact that the government is taking extraordinary rendition to a whole new level by proclaiming the convention an "extraordinary event" and squelching protest? Could it be outrage that while a mere statue of Mr. Sandman-Send-Me-a-Dream Obama has a protective roof over its head, millions of ordinary people have lost their homes to foreclosures and mortgage fraud by banks? Could it be disgust that the president will be giving his acceptance speech in Bank of America stadium? (yet another edifice constructed with the ill-gotten gains of the unpunished lords of finance.)

That the Democrats' unscripted Clint Eastwood moment has arrived even before the official start of their propaganda party may well be a harbinger of better things to come. We can only hope. And protest, and resist, and march. It's only natural.

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ta Ta, Tampa

I am not hung over from the tempest in the tea party pot because I did not indulge in the mendacious merriment. Well, not a lot anyway. I had the equivalent of about half a drink. My daughter and I wasted an hour last night, turning the sound down on the TV, and making up our own dialogue. For example, when Newt and Callista appeared, we had them selling their 498 Regnery books, discussing hairspray and its effect on their brain cells, shilling religious DVDs and autographed pictures, and generally talking dirty. But we turned the volume back up when the Mormon people came on with stories of how Mitt would occasionally deign to visit their relatives in the hospital. Particularly heart-rending was the one about how he helped a dying 16-year-old draft his will so that he could legally leave his gun to his little brother. Another time, he showed up at a congregant's house to help him move, even though he had a broken collarbone and was totally useless. An audience of millions of people were told that the self-effacing Mitt never, ever advertises his good deeds. We learn about them through osmosis. 

Gail Collins of the New York Times quipped that Mitt is the type of annoying neighbor who keeps showing up at your house with unwanted offers of help and all you can think is, My God, now I'm going to have to invite the guy over for dinner.

I finally watched the Clint Eastwood monologue. It's a conversation with an invisible Obama, with a non sequitur about getting out of Afghanistan tomorrow thrown in for good measure. At first you think you're watching an Aricept commercial. Then again, since the whole Republican campaign involves raving about a socialist Obama who unfortunately has never existed in the real world, maybe Clint is just funning with us, performing a parody of the typical Republican senile white guy. Here's the clip in case you're interested.

The much-touted outbreak of anarchy and terrorism in the streets of Tampa did not occur. It was confined to the arena itself. The "I Heart Mitt" signs, the funny hat people, the enraptured faces of the conventioneers, the grimacing Nixon-masked Romney were the real scary deals. Therefore, it was somewhat confusing that the only people ousted were the Code Pink hecklers. It turns out that there were more paramilitary thugs guarding the infrastructure than there were protesters. The looming hurricane reportedly kept the busloads of ordinary human beings away. 

 I am paraphrasing somebody (Dorothy Parker? Molly Ivins?)* when I think I can safely say that the only truthful words spoken during the entire Fellini-esque nightmare were "and" and "the." And even those two are debatable.

*(It was Mary McCarthy dissing Lillian Hellman. Thanks to Robert S. for this link.)

The Glory of Deceit

You know that Paul Ryan went too far last night when even Fox News is calling him out as a liar extraordinaire. He lied blatantly, he lied with a straight face, he lied with abandon. But the crowd roared. The whoppers don't matter. Just look at the expressions on the faces of the Gopper conventioneers. Pure, unadulterated enthusiasm masks their fear and anger. So bring on the mendacity. The Democrats, more circumspect salespeople, are skilled tweakers of the truth, while the Republicans openly brag about their disdain for wimpy facts.

Paul Ryan fans belong to the same hungry subset who elevated the turgid potboiler "Fifty Shades of Grey" into a runaway hit. It's a Harry Potter-like phenonemon for the majority of American adults who are proud non-readers. Both soft S&M and magic, be they financial, social or sexual, always sell, especially during hard times. There are some people who enjoy inflicting pain, and there are even more people who are fooled into thinking they deserve it and can even learn to enjoy it, given half a chance. It's the basis for all religion. Suffer now, go to heaven later. Give up your social safety net now, become a millionaire someday. It's the Rapture, stupid.

 When the prospect of pain is delivered through the persona of a folksy, halfway-decent looking politician or preacher who smiles a lot, there are always true wanna-believers who can be lulled into magically thinking that their own best interests are part of the equation. When the collection plate or the voter ballot is presented to them, they willingly give out of pure faith.

And as our politicians and their spinmeisters are reminding us over and over and over again, these are fine family men. Their wives and children seem to adore them. So we project ourselves onto the stage of non-existent middle class Americana and hope against hope that some day, our own prince will come.

The Queen's Speech

I didn't watch the "Powerhouse Ann Romney WOWS!!" (according to the HuffPo) speech last night, because I can only take the Gopper Gala in dribs and drabs. I watch for a bit, and the specks of spittle coming out of the TV make my eyes feel all gritty, and I get as teary as Ann Romney when she writes out a tithing check.

But I have forced down my bitter bile, and watched it a day late and about as many dollars short as the Romneys' tax contributions. Are you surprised to learn that I was unimpressed?

Before going into the red meat ( I Heart Mitt and So Can You) of Ann's speech, let me get my obsession with dangling modifiers out of the way. This FLOTUS wannabe really needs a better speechwriter. An example:

As a mom of five boys, do we want to raise our children to be afraid of success?

No way! We, the Matriarch of the Upper Quintile of the Top 1% of Entitled American Manhood, shall not raise Welfare Wimps. Hear Us Roar! 

And just in case you didn't already know it, Ann and Mitt do not have a "storybook" (read: fairytale) marriage. They have a real marriage. And she actually shakes her expensively manicured, blood-red talons at the unworthy marriage folks (living in sin/gay) out there in Amurikah. She assaults you with the contrived hardships of her life, she bitterly laughs "heh heh heh" when she dwells upon eating off an ironing board in a basement apartment. There were apparently days that the nanny got sick and the Quints raised their voices. It actually rained in Romney World! But those were the good old days. She is proud to be a Welsh coalminer's granddaughter, and a daughter of a man who built it himself, and the wife of a man who built it himself with a trust fund. She fails to mention that Mitt's grandparents were on welfare for awhile when they fled back over the border from Mexico.

And not to be subtle about hubby's woman problem, Ann shrills "I love you women!" in about the same tone of voice that Tom Cruise used to proclaim his love for Katie Holmes before he jumped on Oprah's couch. And the camera pans over all the be-raptured female audience members, each holding an identical handmade "I Heart Ann" sign. 

Why do you people begrudge Mitt his success? If he took her out on a date and brought her home safely without pawing her, he should be a good-enough, non-serial killer date for you too. He works harder in order that we may work less hard, whatever that means. (actually she stumbled over that bit in her haste to get through what had to be a tormenting experience, and blurted out "It's true Mitt's been sex.... successful."  Hmmm.) Sorry, Ann. Just because you say he acted like a gentleman with you, doesn't mean he won't try to screw the rest of us.

The really freaky part of her speech was the backdrop, with monstrous blow-ups of Mitt and Ann standing stiffly side by side as teenage sweethearts. It was kitschy Art Deco, kind of like Leave it to Beaver getting lost in Fritz Lang's dystopian Metropolis. Ann came across as an aggrieved June Cleaver sticking up for her husband-son, Wally. The scamp always makes her laugh, heh heh heh. The "laugh" came out as a plaintive wail rather than a heartfelt guffaw. 

Then it's blessedly over. Mitt appears and hugs her, and they walk toward the giant blow-ups, which suddenly fade away. And then all we see are their silhouettes trying to find an exit from the stage.



We Are Wives, Daughters, Mothers, Sisters... We Serve Man!



Storm and Stress

Sturm und Drang: a romantic artistic movement in which subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion are given free expression in reaction to the perceived constraints of rationalism. In other words, Eternal Presidential Campaign Theatre. 

In the latest episode, President Obama portrays the rational adult character who calmly "addresses" Hurricane Isaac, pretending to negotiate with yet another irrational force of nature. According to the White House, he is taking the usual balanced approach. Choosing between a Category Five monster and a wimpy tropical storm, the president will split the difference, and proclaim victory when Isaac makes landfall as a Category Two. So eat your peas, Gulf Coasters. He has a three-day campaign swing ahead of him. As the New York Times tells us today, it's hard out there for a philosopher king.

Meanwhile, the irrationalists of the GOP are in full lunatic mode as they cavort in Tampa. Dueling coverage of the hurricane and the convention will exhibit the schizophrenia of the Republicans in all their split personality glory. TV screens will be literally split between the latest updates from the big-government evil National Weather Service and the big-spending deficit hawk anti-government hoarding phonies. New Jersey Gov. Chris "Incredible Hulk" Christie will be overshadowed by the ghost of Katrina. He will be upstaged by George W. Bush in absentia, as an audience of 16,000 corporate media stenographers (three per delegate) looks on.

And then there's the ultimate split personality: Mitt Romney. At this stage of play, there is simply no putting him back together again. Binyamin Applebaum surmises that he is being pulled in two different directions. But it's more like a hundred.  He is a living bundle of contradictions collapsing under the weight of his own flimsiness.

But forget all that. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus reminds us that it's all bullshit anyway. As long as they're "nimble" about it and take that vaunted balanced approach, what with Isaac and all, fooling some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time is the best one can hope for.

"We have the ability to make alternative plans if we have to, but right now we feel that our message of the American dream and fixing this economy and putting ourselves on the right track for the future of this country — I think it’s a positive message and it’s a message that will always be good. When we’re optimistic about the future and how we’re going to fix this great country and put people back to work, it’s a message that works all the time."

Incidentally, the Google search for NimbleMitt brings you to an ad for an arthritis glove. It deadens pain with a combination of heat and snake oil.

Fugitive from a Chain Gang

When Joe Biden warned that the GOP wants to put y'all back in chains, he was not kidding. Just check out the oligarchic orgy getting underway in Tampa. So how ironic is it that former Florida Republican Governor "Chain Gang" Charlie Crist defected to Barack Obama yesterday. What a slap to the party that had thrown Crist under the bus for being too gay-rights and pro-choice.  What a huge coup for Obama, who has made centrism and compromise with Republicans his raison d'etre, even a major theme in his re-election campaign.

But about those chains. Crist, who has developed a well-deserved Romneyesque reputation as a flip-flopper, was still bragging as recently as three years ago about his glory days as "Chain Gang Charlie."  Back in the 90s, when he was a freshman state senator, Crist was instrumental in reviving prison chain gangs after they'd been nationally banned in the 1940s for being too inhumane. Crist's rejuvenation of forced prison labor was also largely condemned as racist, not only by the NAACP, but by prison officials and even some conservative Southern editorial boards. According to one contemporary news story, Crist's fetish for penal slavery had its start in the first blush of his youth. While on a family road trip, he'd become inspired by the sight of a gang of prisoners in leg irons.




Chain Gang, South Florida Reception Center, circa 1995

 The draconian punishment became his cause celebre. He made it his business to investigate the coddled lives of Florida prisoners. When the inmates got wind of what the silver-haired reformer was up to, he got so rattled that he conducted subsequent prison visits disguised as Groucho Marx. Vickie Chachere of the Tampa Tribune wrote: "They were saying my name. They were saying, "That's Senator Crist,' " the St. Petersburg Republican would later recall. "It was a little unsettling."

There's no better way to appease a crime-fatigued public than treating them to the sight of shackled men filling potholes and picking up trash off the highways, Crist boasted. Plus, chaining prisoners together in a forced labor detail helps lower the recidivism rate, he claimed. (it doesn't) "It's harder to get any righter than that," he fondly reminisced in 2009.

Crist had a front-row seat to the very first chain gang revival on Nov. 22, 1995, when a group of inmates chopped brush in the Everglades. (And now he will have a front-row seat and a speaking gig at the Democratic National Convention!) From the L.A. Times archives:

 What we want to do is tell people that if you commit a crime in Florida, if you're convicted of committing that crime in Florida, Florida will punish you, you will do your time and it will not be pleasant," Crist said.

At a time of growing public anger over crime, Florida became the third state to bring back the form of forced labor that was eradicated nationwide in the 1940s because it was considered inhumane.

Many likened it to slavery; some still do.

Unlike Alabama, Florida prisoners aren't shackled together. Instead, each prisoner's ankles are chained together and their 20-person work groups are monitored by three guards. Arizona has introduced a similar system.

Chain gangs are being used as punishment for breaking prison rules. Those chosen may be maximum-security inmates, but none will be sex offenders, prior escapees, first-degree murderers or the physically or mentally ill. So far, no women are scheduled for the details.

No sunscreen during 10-hour days under the scorching Florida sun. No bug repellent in the mosquito-infested Everglades.

Just water, baseball caps, gardening gloves and thick leather pants to guard against snake bites.

(snip)

Stan W. Czerniak, assistant secretary for operations at the Department of Corrections, said he was unsure chain gangs would be the deterrent Crist wants and questioned whether they were worth the increased manpower necessary.

Inside the prisons, two guards can oversee up to 144 inmates. On the chain gangs, three guards are needed to supervise a crew of 20 prisoners.

So -- another phony deficit hawk, eh? Paging Paul Ryan. And no women inmates on chain gangs! -- that'll win him the female demographic right there. 

Charlie's Chain Gangs were disbanded after only a year. The only locale that still allows such hard prison labor is in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Maricopa County, Arizona. And even there, chain gangs are entirely optional on the part of prisoners.

 Chain Gang Charlie has now "evolved" into pretending to realize that his beloved GOP is just as inhumane now as he was back then. Plus, he lost to Marco Rubio in the Senate race. So he has become a centrist kool-aid cult member, singing the praises of his DINO soulmate -- Barack Obama. It doesn't hurt that Obama is a grand compartmentalizer in his own right, able to successfully argue for prison strip-searches for minor offenders, able to pick and choose assassination targets, able to oversee a War on Drugs that sucks up record numbers of minority men into a privatized penal system, able to ignore the humanitarian crisis of unemployment and foreclosure fraud and poverty as long as he pays homage to a "balanced approach" to cutting the social safety net.

From Crist's Tampa op-ed:

I'm confident that President Barack Obama is the right leader for our state and the nation. I applaud and share his vision of a future built by a strong and confident middle class in an economy that gives us the opportunity to reap prosperity through forced hard work and personal responsibility. It is a vision of the future proven right by our history of slavery.

We often remind ourselves to learn the lessons of the past, lest we risk repeating its mistakes. (Hide your true agenda). Yet nearly as often, our short-term memory fails us. (And thank God for the epic short-term memory loss of the American people, given my own history.)

Thirsty for a Little Chained Social Security COLA?