Pope trashes capitalism for the New Year

At left: I know he is technically Pope Benedict XVI, but to me, he will always be Cardinal Ratzinger, ideological hit-man for the Vatican.

And today, he did some ideological sermonizing that few expected. Now, this is the kind of New Year's Day sermon I can get behind.

Lots of people are surprised, quoting and misquoting right and left (if you'll pardon the expression) and so I went to the Vatican website to get the actual text verbatim:

[The] world is sadly marked by hotbeds of tension and conflict caused by growing instances of inequality between rich and poor, by the prevalence of a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated financial capitalism, as well as by various forms of terrorism and crime, I am convinced that the many different efforts at peacemaking which abound in our world testify to mankind’s innate vocation to peace. In every person the desire for peace is an essential aspiration which coincides in a certain way with the desire for a full, happy and successful human life. In other words, the desire for peace corresponds to a fundamental moral principle, namely, the duty and right to an integral social and communitarian development, which is part of God’s plan for mankind. Man is made for the peace which is God’s gift. All of this led me to draw inspiration for this Message from the words of Jesus Christ: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’ (Mt 5:9)

...

The splendour of the face of God, shining upon us and granting us peace, is the manifestation of his fatherhood: the Lord turns his face to us, he reveals himself as our Father and grants us peace. Here is the principle of that profound peace – “peace with God” – which is firmly linked to faith and grace, as Saint Paul tells the Christians of Rome (cf. Rom 5:2). Nothing can take this peace from believers, not even the difficulties and sufferings of life. Indeed, sufferings, trials and darkness do not undermine but build up our hope, a hope which does not deceive because “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (5:5). May the Virgin Mary, whom today we venerate with the title of Mother of God, help us to contemplate the face of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. May she sustain us and accompany us in this New Year: and may she obtain for us and for the whole world the gift of peace. Amen!

The reviews are coming in fast and furious; some predictably stating that the Pope's New Year's address "left many scratching their heads"... while others approvingly quoted his words and nodded in agreement.

~*~

In other news: Carolina kicked Michigan's ass! (You shoulda heard the whooping and hollering in the Mellow Mushroom today.) And Georgia beat Nebraska, which was welcome news in my household.

It's going to be an interesting year. :)

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Zomney: He needs brains

This has been viewed well over 5 million times already, so you have probably seen it by now. But I couldn't resist sharing it.

Joss Whedon on Mitt Romney and Zombie Apocalypse



He has a point, of course.

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Is college worth it?

One of those subjects that interests me a great deal, is whether a college degree is "necessary" or not. Lately, as the price of (even a mediocre) education skyrockets, the question is a getting a new and respectful hearing. Megan McArdle's in-depth Newsweek article on the topic, has prompted extensive discussion.

I am one who has often had my jobs supplanted by college grads. Frequently, these kids couldn't even decently proofread their own ad copy. I have trained college grad after college grad, many as dumb as dirt. It seems they are getting dumber, too... I think this is probably because the actual value of a degree is less than it used to be. I have trained numerous college grads who barely made it through (sometimes taking much longer than four years to do so), but by God, they had that almighty sacred CREDENTIAL that meant they should make more than I do; never mind that they couldn't even answer a customer's simple questions. (One college grad argued with me that there was no such thing as vitamin B-5. Really.) The dimwitted arrogance of "I have a degree and you don't; so I know everything and you know nothing," is worthy of a whole separate post. I collect such stories. Another big problem with college degrees is that the holder of said degree seems to believe that IQ points were magically bestowed when the degree was conferred... which is more proof of stupidity.

I am also one who has lied on occasion (especially in the pre-digital era) and claimed a college degree I don't have. It never seemed to make any real difference in anything an employer expected me to do. Such unnecessary college degrees (say, among video store clerks) are simply about gate-keeping; making sure that People Like Us are the only people in the break-room. The fact that I was easily able to pass as People Like Them, would suggest that it's the (apparent) fact of the degree, nothing tangible that is learned in the actual process of obtaining one.

From McArdle's piece:

Unsurprisingly those 18-year-olds often don’t look quite so hard at the education they’re getting. In Academically Adrift, their recent study of undergraduate learning, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa find that at least a third of students gain no measurable skills during their four years in college. For the remainder who do, the gains are usually minimal. For many students, college is less about providing an education than a credential—a certificate testifying that they are smart enough to get into college, conformist enough to go, and compliant enough to stay there for four years.

When I was a senior, one of my professors asked wonderingly, “Why is it that you guys spend so much time trying to get as little as possible for your money?” The answer, [writer/economist Bryan] Caplan says, is that they’re mostly there for a credential, not learning. “Why does cheating work?” he points out. If you were really just in college to learn skills, it would be totally counterproductive. “If you don’t learn the material, then you will have less human capital and the market will punish you—there’s no reason for us to do it.” But since they think the credential matters more than the education, they look for ways to get the credential as painlessly as possible.

True. Learning itself often seems to be beside the point.

I have lost count of the number of times I have been reading some 'complicated' (but not really), obscure or arcane book (i.e. Jean Paul Sartre) and have been asked by the resident college grad in my office (accompanied by furrowed brow): "Are you reading that for a class?" The idea that one actually reads something "difficult" for oneself, for pleasure, is utterly foreign to them. Sometimes, when I reply "no"--the puzzlement is evident, and they continue, dumbfounded: "Then why are you reading it?" I hardly know what to say. (Tellingly, it is usually the 'uneducated' redneck in the office who giggles, at this point.) They usually punctuate these questions with, "All of that is behind me now! Whew!" or some other amazing comment, expressing relief that they will never have to READ A REAL BOOK again. (Wow, wasn't that shit HARD?) Some have proudly bragged to me they got through their entire college years without actually finishing a single one. I have never doubted it.

Nonetheless, I was surprised to read on Brad DeLong's blog (check the comments), that questioning the nature of COLLEGE UBER ALLES is now regarded as a conservative viewpoint. As Tim Gunn would say, this worries me. Back in the 60s/70s, liberals and radicals made this argument first, offering the common-sense observation that working and living in the real world--as well as a variety of interesting 'learning experiences' (this era marked the birth of that now-common expression)--also conferred 'an education.' I wasn't aware that questioning authority is now up to the right wing. (And how depressing is that?) Are liberals-on-the-coasts THAT out of touch with the situation on-the-ground? Do they interact with college grads from schools that never expected them to do math without calculators, or spell without spellcheck? I don't think they have.

More proof of the disconnect between elite liberals and the great working-class unwashed... and that makes me uneasy.

~*~

Further, there is the increasing importance of teacher evaluations, and whether they are a good or bad thing for education. What does it mean that students now determine whether a teacher stays employed? Is this an education worth paying big bucks for, one that has been "voted on"?

In the New York Times, former Duke professor Stuart Rojstaczer writes:

Student evaluations are a poor indicator of professor performance. The good news is that college students often reward instructors who teach well. The bad news is that students often conflate good instruction with pleasant ambience and low expectations. As a result they also reward instructors who grade easily, require little work, are glib and chatty, wear nice clothes, and are physically attractive. It’s generally impossible to separate all these factors in an evaluation. Plus, students will penalize demanding professors or professors who have given them a bad grade, regardless of the quality of instruction that a professor provides. In the end, deans and tenure committees are using bad data to evaluate professor performance, while professors feel pressure to grade easier and reduce workloads to receive higher evaluations.

In the mid-90s, I had a short-term temp-job processing teacher evaluations for a technical college. I fed the evaluations with the penciled-in answer-dots into a "reader" (which often spit them right back out at me... just like when you stick your dollar in the vending machine and it spits it back for having a crease in it) ... and then made pie charts on a Model-T-Ford-like-Mac, breaking down the teacher-ratings from the students: Excellent, Good, Fair, Below Average, Sucks. Then I deciphered the written gibberish from the students ("I like Mrs X, she is hot!", "Mrs X needs to stop talking about her cat all the time, some of us HATE CATS!" etc etc) and typed it up separately. Then I stapled the pie charts to the comments. (Yes, it was Model-T level stuff, indeed, but I remember thinking how high-tech the pie charts were!)

And do I need to tell you, how many times the teachers came sneaking in, asking WHO I was working on? ("Have you reached the computer/engineering/CAD department yet?") If I answered that I was working on their department, their eyes would go boinnnngggg (like a Tex Avery cartoon) and they would frenetically rifle through the papers (that I had carefully separated into piles, of course, causing me hours of extra work) looking for their own students' names and replies. My skinny, ADHD-supervisor would attempt to circumvent this extracurricular activity, keeping the door open from her adjacent office (where she liked to listen to Aerosmith) and bust them when they did this... scurrying in and shooing them away like kindergartners, reminding them of rules, rules, rules: YOU ARE BREAKING THEM. They didn't care. They did it virtually every day I had the job. (Some departments, I could see, were far more nervous than others; the nursing department was impervious and never showed up a single time.) The rifling of my careful piles of papers continued, and since my supervisor could SEE that this was not MY fault, I often got paid overtime.

I finally got the message, loud and clear, that their jobs were at stake. One teacher started groaning as he looked at his pie chart, his mortgage payment obviously hanging in the balance. One of them asked me if there was any way to fudge the replies, which I pretended I hadn't heard, just as skinny-supervisor bounded through the door and banished him from the room.

I remember a short, stolen conversation with one such crestfallen teacher, as I whispered (Aerosmith momentarily drowning us out) that his pie chart looked okay to me. He whispered back, shaking his head, that OKAY/FAIR was not good enough, you had to have blah-de-blah percent of GOODS... FAIR does not cut it. (I remember being surprised, since I am the product of a lifetime of FAIR public school teachers, and I still know every single one of my state capitals.)

What does this mean, that the opinions of students now dictate whether college instructors get to keep their jobs? (Even in a field like AUTOMOBILE ENGINE MECHANICS?!?)

Might this lead to getting softer and softer on the students?

And take note, this was at the dawn of the online era. "Rate My Professors" and other such sites that rate instructors publicly (and anonymously) had not even been invented yet.

~*~

In today's economy, we now have the sordid spectacle of employers demanding that bartenders and appliance-salesman have college degrees. As a result, we have a class of people who used to self-select out of college and go to work in factories, choosing to trudge through the torture of college, simply to avoid becoming unemployable. Since there are no longer any factory jobs in the USA, such a person is now at loose ends, and preyed upon by all the fake colleges promising a college credential during TV commercials. (Since these particular working-class folks haven't already been hanging out with the college-set, as I have, they are not quite aware that all college degrees are not equal, and some are barely regarded as real degrees at all.)

College is a racket, straight up. The costs are rising, and increasingly staggering. People graduate and can't find work. Worse, due to the magical degree in their hands, they think a job is promised to them. Thus, when they do get work, they expect it to be a certain KIND of work--the exalted occupations promised on the glowing TV commercials. When expected to mop floors with the rest of us, they are unexpectedly indignant: I didn't spend four years in college for this! they fume. As a matter of fact, you did. You did it to get hired, and now you are hired... now, mop.

I know, you didn't read Twelfth Night and go into six-figure debt to push a mop, and do you now see how ridiculous that was?

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Color Fear

I watched an old interview of Jimmy Breslin on C-Span over the weekend, originally aired in 1991.

I just loved what he said, and decided to quote the last segment of the interview in its entirety.

It's as true now, as it was in 1991... as it was in the time he is describing, the 50s.

[C-Span CEO Brian] LAMB: You said earlier that you can't go a day without writing about and thinking about race in New York City.

[Jimmy] BRESLIN: Well, it hits you in the face in New York City. It's all there is.

LAMB: OK. Is the problem -- and I don't know whether you call it a problem or not -- but will the problem be solved?

BRESLIN: It's a very new problem, and we've got a long way to go with it.

LAMB: Why is it new?

BRESLIN: Well, it didn't start until -- when did it start in New York City? I told you a movie was made in 1950 that only had two blacks in it -- shoeshine people -- and now we're in 1991 and we're beginning to see how many are there. I found in doing the research for this book, the John Deere Company in Iowa gave me their company newspaper and a lot of old press releases from the largest train ever to carry farm equipment in the United States in whatever the year was then. It left Des Moines with 141 flatcars filled with the John Deere 99 cotton picker, and it went to the South, to Atlanta, where there was a huge civic celebration there, and it went all across the South depositing these 99 -- the first shipment, largest in the history of the nation. Each machine did the work of 90 field hands, and they went all across the South. Now, and here it came, into New York they came, these sad-faced women with their arms leaden from carrying babies and a long ride.

Day coaches from Jacksonville, buses from Spartanburg; they came from Durham, in the tidewater area of Virginia. Into New York they came and they changed the city. We were unprepared for them, the city was unprepared. The city didn't even know what was happening. Congressional people on agriculture committees didn't know what was happening. Nobody knew what was happening. It was a huge movement, and it happened without any public notice. Into New York they came.

Where else would you go if you were chased off a farm? Where else would you go -- to Knoxville or to Atlanta or to Boise, Idaho, or Casper, Wyoming? You'd go to New York! Where else would you come? And they came.

This was a city that had a reputation of feeding and clothing anybody who couldn't make his own way, but it never was prepared for this. Then at the same time you had into New York from San Juan, they came on the so-called chicory lights. It came in late night flights from San Juan, loaded to the gunwales. They landed -- the airport then was called Idlewild, not even Kennedy. The cold wind would blow across the tarmac from the Atlantic Ocean across Jamaica Bay, whip across them as they came out of these planes dressed in short-sleeved sport shirts and flowered summer dresses, the women. Somebody from the Bronx would run up and throw a coat around them. I remember there was the fellow mentioned here -- Jimmy Cannon, wrote that they were 'summer people in winter clothes,' coming into New York.

These two from San Juan and from the South together formed the greatest number of people to enter the city of New York that we ever had at one time -- greater than anything from Ireland or Eastern Europe or Southern Italy, much greater. All here, and we didn't know what to do with them because they weren't white. You could take a whole load of Jewish people from Eastern Europe who couldn't speak the language and dressed strangely with their beards and hats, and you could take them and put a statue and have songs and poems and pictures -- dramatic things. Extol them forever. You could take the Italians from Calabria and from Naples -- great. Couldn't speak English -- who cared? They were great. Any Polish that came in, great.

Here came Americans but they weren't white -- wow, here we go.

Now, that isn't that long ago that the real numbers started coming in. They were coming up in the late '40s and into the '50s, but when those trains with this farm equipment really started to come, now it was a crush and we got hit with it. Now we're in something that nobody has ever done before. We're trying to somehow survive and have economic and share economic and political power. We're not asking people to love each other. I don't think you're ever going to get anyone to love anybody anyway. Forget that. Let's just live together and see what happens. That's 100 years. When you say that's 50, 75 years easy, nothing can be done. It's going to be a long, long, long thing.

LAMB: Why do the whites and the blacks, when they don't get along, why don't they get along? What is the reason?

BRESLIN: Color fear on the part of the whites.

LAMB: Color fear?

BRESLIN: That's where it starts. Also stubborn refusal on that word "color fear" to realize it's one other thing to admit it and to do something about it.

You can tell a guy if he has a job just by looking at him. The guy walking up the street, if he's working, forget it. You can tell by a look. A glance tells you a working man, and a working man doesn't do anything but go home from his job. There's no crime if people are working. Unheard of. Nobody working at a job with any chance in life goes out and does anything wrong. They don't do it. It just doesn't happen. If they would have this color fear, if they would begin to put it in their minds that hey, you don't have to be afraid if the guy is working. The whole word is jobs. You know that. What am I telling you? You sit here every night and know it. What, am I telling you something new? That's the only political word worth discussing is jobs.

LAMB: We've only got a minute or so. If Damon Runyon were living today, would he have trouble writing?

BRESLIN: No, not at all. How could you have trouble with what's going on today? And also his style of writing going right down to the street, you'd come up with the same one word.

If the guy ain't got a job, he's not going to behave. If the guy doesn't have bread, he's going to steal it. Now, let's face it. He was writing about people who came in from Texas. Miss Temple Texas gets off a bus on a Friday, meets a guy and comes around on Monday morning with a brand-new mink coat and says, "Look what I found in the subway." Well, they were coming in from out of town and making it. Now, all you need is somebody coming in from the south end of Brooklyn, or his family that followed him, who gets ahead -- gets some bread and gets ahead in the world. There's no trouble. Jobs. He would understand that. If the guy is working, everything's all right.

I'm confident in that.

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Thoughts on Fake Schooling

This lovely Wisteria patch is blooming beautifully--right outside the WFIS radio studios in Fountain Inn--home of the Daisy Deadhead radio show. (Podcast is up!)








There was a bright pink Packard parked in a yard on East North Street for about three weeks or so... I kept meaning to park and take a photograph of it, but the neighborhood gave me pause. Not for nothing do Catholics call the area around Bob Jones University "Ulster"--and I try to whiz through Ulster fast enough that nobody can take a shot at me. Even though I really wanted a photo of the pink Packard (something I'd never seen before), I knew the only places to park would be (eeep) church parking lots. And they'd likely ticket me for trespassing, if their security cameras got a good look at my dreaded lefty bumper stickers. Ulster plays for keeps!

So, I am sorry to say, I did NOT get a photo of the fabled pink Packard. I wonder what the sale price was?

For more news of Ulster, check out the new blog "BJU News"--which actually gives us the real news, not the okeydoke offered up by local BJU-subsidiary, the Greenville News.

And speaking of the Greenville News, Sunday's piece on tech colleges offering job training was SHAMEFUL in its lack of reporting and total acceptance of the status quo. It was one long commercial for technical colleges, as their recent piece on BJU's spring opera season was one long commercial for Bob Jones University. Do they even understand the difference between reporting and press releases? Do they have any clue what real newspapers write about? Have they ever seen the New York Times, or even the Spartanburg Herald?

Sometimes the Greenville News reads like a series of gushing travel pamphlets, advertising the upstate.

Here is my correction to the comical piece titled Tech schools offer path to jobs, lure for industries:

Once upon a time, companies trained their own employees. Really! But as they grew bigger and bigger (read: greedier and greedier), they didn't like paying people to learn, and decided to cut out this (pricey) introductory first step. So, they successfully dumped this expensive first step onto the tech colleges.

Greenville Tech has a Michelin building, for instance, paid for by Michelin to train the Michelin employees. This way, the EMPLOYEE must pay for their own training! Is that capitalist ingenuity or what? The tech college makes a profit and Michelin has a continuous stream of already-trained, job-ready applicants. You can get hired right out of school, just like Goldman Sachs hires kids right out of Harvard.

Unlike those mad Harvard skillz, however, working-class skills do not always transfer to other jobs. Michelin and BMW manufacture things their way, using their own patented materials and procedures, and have their own corporate culture. Experience in these companies may or may not transfer to another job. But that is not the concern of the tech schools. They've made THEIR profit, after all.

So, you have a continuous stream of working class people who must be constantly trained and re-trained. This sets up a revolving door of tech college attendance, as workers must PAY to receive job-training that may not even get them hired, especially in today's economy. It's a pretty good racket, and the Greenville News obviously wants to do their part in keeping that revolving door moving, and keeping those profits rolling in.

But a RACKET it is, and wouldn't it be nice if someone came out and said so?

Sitting here sorting laundry and watching LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT reruns, I am inundated with TV ads for countless cheapy tech schools that offer various vague degrees in "management" and so on. They invariably feature an almost-middle-aged woman of color who looks triumphant and borderline-weepy as she graduates, all while talking about making life better for her children. They know exactly who is unemployed right now, and they have geared these endless commercials for THE TECH COLLEGE RACKET, specifically to them.

Yes, I know someone must draw the blood, style hair, take care of the very old people, change oil in vehicles, prepare restaurant menus and all of that... and they need to be trained to do those jobs. Thus, I suppose these commercials should not make me as angry as they do... but they do. I resent the naked emotional manipulation of desperate unemployed people; the idea being communicated that this economic situation we are all in right now, can be instantly fixed, just by paying a fee to a fly-by-night school nobody ever heard of. All we need is MORE TRAINING.

All we need to do, say the commercials, is STAND UP AND TAKE CONTROL of our lives, at long last. Right?

Right?

Until the next economic crisis, that is. Who, I always wonder, will these people from the fly-by-night colleges be managing with their spanking-new phantom management degrees?

Are there any employees left to manage?

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Where do we go from here?

At left, our Occupy film series is pretty well-attended for Republican Greenville! Last Wednesday we viewed the historical account, A Force More Powerful (Part 1). This coming Wednesday evening we will be featuring Part 2... be there or be square!

These will be at the Hughes Library in downtown Greenville, SC.




Our Occupy Greenville meeting yesterday was endless. It was rainy and cold, so we went to the Coffee Underground and had one of those interminable "What Is To Be Done" meetings. (The Yippies, goofing on Lenin, used to name these meetings, What Is To Be Undone.) Although I feel that I must attend such meetings, I have never particularly enjoyed them. (Note: I described the meetings-glut period of my life in this post.) Why can't we just DO THINGS and come up with ideas as we go along? Damn, I miss the Yippies with every fiber of my being... we never had to have mountains of meetings.* We made shit up in the car, by the time we arrived someplace, we were ready. All this verbiage, all this dithering, all this arriving at consensus (sorta) and stuff, argh.

Just do it. (Apologies for stealing an advertising slogan, which by the way, they stole from ordinary basketball players and NASCAR drivers.)

Speaking personally: I would like to physically occupy foreclosed homes, something Occupy Atlanta has been doing. Others seem to eye this concept with skepticism, and would actually prefer to confront rich CEOs personally, as the Verizon strikers so memorably did. My consigliere confides in me that he is skeptical of that approach; he worries that the right-wing will successfully paint us as whiners, jealous of an individual's wealth, rather than successfully connecting-the-dots to an unfair system that denies workers the fruits of their/our labors (while making CEOs so untouchably rich). We would have to depend on the mass media to make that point. Can they do that? We have been surprised at how the media has used Occupy's talking points, for instance, the now-well-known "60 Minutes" piece on the robo-signing of mortgages would likely never have happened at all, without the force of Occupy Wall Street.

And the Beat Goes On. Please show up at the film series, we need you to get involved! (commercial) And what do you think we should be doing at this juncture? COMMENTS WELCOME!



*Yes, admittedly, this is because we were all alike and thought the same, as I said in this old comment a couple of years ago.

**PODCAST of Saturday's radio show is up, have a listen.


~*~

Yesterday, driving down the street in the awful cold rain, I suddenly heard "Far East Mississippi" on WPCI, the most amazing radio station in the universe, and I was suddenly happy happy happy as the proverbial clam.

Last month's piece on the infamous Ohio Players album covers is here (CAUTION: they were something else). This incredible piece of music comes from Contradiction (1976) (warning: another naked lady on the album cover, feeding a horse this time).

If you listen, you can hear the Great God of Funk, who decided to come down from funk heaven (in George Clinton's Mothership, one assumes!) and consecrate this music, which is how it got to sound like this: Unbelievable!

Enjoy!

Far East Mississippi - Ohio Players

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Hello America

I filed for an unemployment-benefits extension today, which I did not know was even possible. I learned of my extension-eligibility from a very helpful state employee at the Greenville-area One-Stop center yesterday.

And so, I girded my loins and prepared for today's long bureaucratic process at the unemployment office, where I have not been since November.

I am always somewhat obsessed with bean-counting the minute I enter the unemployment office. It is just so glaringly obvious. Today, about 50 people, give or take (very hard to count precisely, since people are constantly entering and exiting)... with only three white men in attendance, and they all appeared to be over 40. The rest of us, women of all colors and ages, and black men, all ages.

As I said, interesting.

Ever since I started counting, the results have been more or less the same.

My question: Are the young white men really staying employed en masse during this economic crisis, or are they too proud to apply for unemployment?

~*~

At left: Interior of Greenville Mall, around the time I worked there. (from Deadmalls.com)




The One-Stop center is in an old shopping mall, McAlister Square, that has been utterly transformed--you might say the building was recycled. I used to take my daughter there when she was a child; I recall St Patrick's Day and Halloween events that she loved. And now, when I walk in, it is still jarring to me that it is no longer a shopping mall. But I am so glad they managed to find some good purpose for it.

There is a website that I find fascinating, Deadmalls.com, since I am one of those people who actually worries about the proliferation of big-box stores and malls. I often wonder WHAT ON EARTH we will ever do with them.

Ever since I read JG Ballard's Hello America, I've wondered what these entities will be in 100-200 years from now. I imagine the enormous suburban office buildings chopped up into tiny apartments; I see the big-box stores turned into homeless shelters for hundreds of people... or possibly turned into hospitals, schools, or condos. What else could you do with them? Simply knock them down when they are no longer needed?

Greenville Mall, where I worked for awhile and had one of my fender-benders, is now gone; torn down some time ago. It was once the big deal around here, and now it is history. I think of it as a symbol of the fleeting nature of fads and fashion and why it's futile to try to be cool. (Buddhist aside: Empty malls that once attracted the moneyed young, filled to overflowing with hustle and bustle, are a good subject for anicca [impermanence] meditation.)

Cool lasts for a week or a day, and then something else is cool. I always tell people, I was totally cool for about an hour in the late 70s, during which time I visited both Max's and CBGB's. But the hour passed, and I descended back into my usual uncoolness.

It was a nice hour while it lasted.

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Haley Watch: Nikki wastes another $1M, needs tutorial in how to govern

This just in from the intrepid Renee Dudley of the Charleston Post and Courier:

SC Gov. Haley dictated health panel finding
Outcome ordered before committee met
BY RENEE DUDLEY
rdudley@postandcourier.com
Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Gov. Nikki Haley dictated the conclusions of a committee charged with deciding how the state should implement federal health care reform before the group ever held its first meeting, public documents show.

Now, some of those involved in the dozens of meetings are calling the entire planning process a sham that wasted their time and part of a $1 million federal grant.

In a March 31 email thread that included Haley, her top advisers and the committee member who eventually wrote the report, Haley wrote, "The whole point of this commission should be to figure out how to opt out and how to avoid a federal takeover, NOT create a state exchange," which is eventually what happened.

A central part of the federal health care overhaul, an exchange is a marketplace where various insurance plans eventually will be sold.

The emails were released to the newspaper Friday afternoon in response to a Nov. 16 public records request to the S.C. Department of Health and Human Services.

The newspaper had made a nearly identical request of the governor's office in May, but the office did not include the emails in its response.

The documents show a first-term Republican administration focused on public perception of its handling of the Democratic health care reform law. They also reveal the tight control Haley and her top aides exercise over other state agencies, requiring media inquiries to various state departments to pass through the governor's office for inspection.

"Oh my God, we just threw $1 million away here," said Frank Knapp, who participated in the meetings as president of the S.C. Small Business Chamber of Commerce. "This confirms this whole thing was an effort to justify the million-dollar grant, but the reality is they had no intention of even exploring whether the state should establish an exchange -- which is exactly what the grant called for."

Through a spokesman, Haley said she had no time to be interviewed Tuesday or today for this story. Spokesman Rob Godfrey said the governor's office responded fairly to questions about the committee.

"She has a lot to do over the next few days in preparation for the holidays," he said. "It's just a matter of a tight schedule."

Godfrey did not respond to questions related to the email discrepancy. In an email, he wrote, "The governor calls it watching out for the citizens of our state as we try to deliver the most health care for the least amount of money."

Lack of oversight

In a March 10 executive order, Haley established the nonpartisan South Carolina Health Planning Committee to "build trust and consensus among stakeholders" and to decide "whether or not the state should establish a health insurance exchange."

States that decline to set up their own exchanges are subject to federally run ones beginning in 2014.

Members of the nonpartisan committee and its four subcommittees, who met more than 30 times over the past seven months, did exactly that. In a report sent to the governor two weeks ago, the panel rejected the idea of a state-run exchange, saying South Carolina has few incentives to be a "first-mover" nationally.

Instead, it would "encourage and facilitate ... private exchanges," the report said.

It is unclear whether federal health officials will accept the private solution, but consumer advocates have raised concerns about lack of oversight and regulation. Insurance exchanges are the state- or federally-established marketplaces where health coverage will be sold to individuals and small business employees beginning in 2014.

Copied on Haley's March email thread was S.C. Health and Human Services Director Tony Keck, an influential member of the Health Planning Committee established by executive order.

Read it all.

I told yall NOT to vote for this woman, didn't I? (sigh) Her wanton mismanagement just gets worse and worse.

Here is the short version:

The newly released emails enraged consumer advocates, small business leaders, local economists, taxpayer watchdogs and S.C. Press Association officials this week.

"They took the money on the pretense they would conduct an objective analysis of whether the state should do the exchange or not," said John Crangle, executive director of Common Cause of South Carolina. "But they decided what they were going to find before they even started the research process."

This seems to be Haley's standard method of governance.

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A Good Idea

Thanks again to Yellowdog Granny!

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A quick note to the Occupiers: what not to do

Back in the day, the Yippies taught me how to behave if I was arrested, which I wasn't. I was also taught how to avoid arrest, what to say and how to act. After studying the tales of Amanda Knox, the West Memphis Three, and Dr Conrad Murray (currently on trial in the death of Michael Jackson), I decided I needed to go over these points, especially since kids might be getting arrested in occupations all over the country.

As these cases point out, what starts out small could end up big, big, big. Never assume you are not a suspect in something else that you never heard of. Never assume that anything is "obvious"--nothing is. Never assume you could not be charged with something you didn't do, that such things are all in the movies. They aren't. Ask those three guys from Memphis, how it can play out.

Most important rule: Be polite to the cops. Do not insult them and call them flunkies taking orders, etc, as much as you might want to.

Keep in mind Orwell's society in ANIMAL FARM: the police were the dogs. Lots of people thought this was just his way of being mean and sarcastic, but really, he meant they were the guardians and watchDOGS of the state. As the late, great activists Ben Masel and Steve Conliff used to tell me: Remember, some dogs you can make friends with, and some you can't. Some are poodles and some are rottweilers. Learn the difference, immediately, as you would if you were trespassing in someone's yard. Because when you demonstrate against the state, you are perceived NOT as someone taking their own government into their own hands at long last, but as a trespasser going where you do not belong. It's wrong, and it's fascist, but it is nonetheless true in modern-day America. (Once again, the Founders spin madly in their graves.)

The rottweilers will be on the streets, the poodles will be behind the desks. Although the rottweilers choose the dangerous work, the poodles are the ones who often keep things running smoothly and make countless internal decisions. BE NICE TO THEM. They are working people, just as we are, worried about their pensions and retirement, just as we are. Many are in deep sympathies with the occupation. Do not antagonize them. Establish connection ASAP; if you are a New Yorker, talk about New York with the New York cop: "Where did you grow up? What neighborhood are you from?" As New Yorkers know, neighborhoods are important. Listen to them, did he say "How bout them Yankees?" to somebody, as he was booking you? You LOOOVE the Yankees. Yes, you do!

Does he have tattoos? Ask about them, show him yours, talk about them. If you have children, mention them, and if he mentions that he has children, chat about them.

From Occupy Together.



If you are a veteran, talk about this immediately (ideally, you should be wearing a button that announces this)... asking about his everyday-weaponry is a good intro to letting a police officer know this about you. If you are a Republican, try to stick this into the conversation too, "Wow, I didn't know they arrested Republicans!" and laugh about it. If you write a blog, say so: "This will be a hellacious story on my blog! Well, I wanted hits, now I'll get em!" (I know at least one person who believes this fact cut her loose; they didn't want to read about themselves.) If you do write a blog, segue into blogger mode at the time of arrest: get names of all arresting officers and their job descriptions, ask "Can I quote you on that?" Alternative newspapers had this role, back in the day. And I think it is likely very much the same today: They simply would rather not deal with you.

And finally, we get to Dr Murray, Amanda and the West Memphis Three. Study and learn from their mistakes.

Seriously. I hope I do not have to tell you not to start making out with your also-arrested significant-other in the police station, even if the whole police-inquisition thing makes you hot. DO NOT DO THIS. Amanda will back me up, I'm sure.

Do NOT call your girlfriends on the phone while you are in the police car. DO. NOT. DO. THIS. Turn off the phone and give the situation your full attention. Dr Murray NOW knows, they were listening to his sexy phone calls and ready to throw the book at him... but at the time, he just thought "Wow, what a mess!" The fact that he has so many girlfriends and so many kids, is now being used as evidence against him: See, he needed the money and so didn't challenge Michael Jackson's drug demands. It is doubtful the prosecution would even have formulated this line of prosecution, if he hadn't serially-phoned all his girlfriends (even in the ambulance, can you BELIEVE?) and attracted copious police attention in doing so. THEY CAN USE ANYTHING AGAINST YOU and it isn't simply what you say, but what you DO. Therefore, do as little as possible.

Damien Echols (of the West Memphis Three) recently talked about how his flip, heavy-metal teenage attitude made things worse for him, at the time of his arrest. If you dress like a goth (as he did), DO NOT DO THAT for your trial. Look like the most wholesome person in the world. Buy eyeglasses and look calm. I've written about how I had to put a rosary in my car to keep from getting run over or beat up (due to lefty bumper stickers) here in hyper-conservative upstate South Carolina. You might consider wearing a cross or a crucifix. (a cross in the south, a crucifix in New York)

Do not wear a t-shirt that is too incendiary, gross or insulting. If anything, I would counsel one that starts conversation. Some old-school demonstrators think it is always best to wear one associated with a group, since this makes you appear like a member of the group (even if you aren't) and thus protected. (An unaffiliated demonstrator is a sitting duck, DO NOT go in there alone or without back-up!) I have an Amnesty International shirt that I keep for just such occasions: AI members are the LAST people they want in their jail. Too much aggravation! I know it saved me on at least one occasion.

Most important: Do not be proud, lose the ego. This is not just about you. You are doing this for US; you are doing this for ME. You are representing all of us, the disenfranchised 99%.

I am proud of you, so please make me even more proud: please be careful and watch your backs. We need you here with us, whole and strong.

Good luck, and I love you. Namaste.

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Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

From Occupy Together.

Published on Sunday, October 2, 2011 by NYC General Assembly

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
by NYC General Assembly

This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011, with slight adjustments in wording on October 1, 2011:

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

~*~

Reposted from Common Dreams, and retweeted to the world.

How to help the occupation.

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Save the Mauldin Open-Air Market!

At left: Joel Ann Chandler, owner of the Mauldin Open-Air Market, presents Mauldin (SC) City Council with 2800 signatures of her customers, as well as others who value local small business. (Monday night, Sept, 19, 2011) Chandler has operated the market for 30 years, and the land has been in her family since the 20s.


We attended the Mauldin City Council meeting last night, to help a popular local businesswoman try and SAVE her business, which also happens to be an indispensable upstate treasure. Democracy in action! Well, we'll see how it goes.

Chandler called into my radio show on Saturday morning, and talked about the planned land-grab at length. I went to shop at the Open-Air Market myself on Sunday (check out those fabulous cherry preserves and yummy cashew brittle!) and spoke with Chandler about the upcoming hearing, and then decided to attend it myself.

Some background, from a Sept 7th news report:

Longtime Produce Vendor Takes On SC-DOT
Market Owner Worries Project Could Hurt Business
by Gabrielle Komorowski, WYFF News 4 Anchor/Reporter

MAULDIN, S.C. -- The South Carolina Department of Transportation plans to widen an Upstate roadway -- but not without a fight from a feisty produce vendor.

Joel Ann Chandler has operated the Mauldin Open-Air Market on Butler Road for 30 years.

The SC-DOT wants to widen the intersection and the nearby area where Butler Road meets Corn Road and Brides Road. The area includes the road in front of Mauldin High School.

Chandler said the changes would make it difficult for her tractor trailer to safely deliver produce. She said the SC-DOT wants to convert a nearby embankment into an access driveway.

"It's going to be hard for us to even get out in the road without red lights; dangerous. Kids are running across the road all the time over here," Chandler said.

Chandler also said much of her customers' parking space would be eliminated. "If people have that much trouble getting in and out, you know eventually they won't come," Chandler said.

Chandler has collected more than 1,000 signatures from others opposed to the project. She plans to send the signatures to Governor Nikki Haley.

Tommy Elrod, program manager with SC-DOT, said the project would make the entire area safer.

"She'll have a 40-foot wide commercial driveway and it will be well defined, so to me, that's much safer. You won't have traffic in and out of her business mixing with pedestrians standing at the corner waiting to cross over," Elrod said.

Elrod said the project is not set in stone.

"I'll continue to work with Ms. Chandler and try to come up with access that eases her concerns," Elrod said.

Construction is tentatively scheduled to begin next summer.

Mauldin mayor Don Godbey listened politely, but sounded rather tepid in his response, assuring Chandler at the Council meeting that he had "advocated on her behalf" at a recent Department of Transportation meeting. And that means what exactly? One of the Godbey's associations is with GPATS, which is one of the culprits responsible for this little land-grab scheme. I don't know whether Chandler knows that or not, since I just discovered it myself, doing a websearch on GPATS. In light of this fact, I find it a bit disingenuous, that when Chandler mentioned the organization in her comments to Mauldin City Council, Godbey stayed silent and didn't see fit to let folks know that he is in cahoots with them.

City Councilman Michael Reynolds took the time to thank Joel Ann (none of the other council members did) and complimented her for doing everything correctly. He sounded sad, though. I think he sees the handwriting on the wall. I am also quite skeptical, since I know how Greenville County is, when they want some ordinary person's land: ruthless. But I am hopeful... Joel Ann is a good person who has done much excellent work in the community and has many friends. Chancey Lindsey-Peake of Banana Manna breads, made a statement of support, explaining that Joel Ann has provided a working livelihood to many local vendors and small businesspeople like herself.

Complaint: Conservatives frequently purport to believe in small business, and yet, do not actively support businesses that reflect the culture of the south; the community itself. They will let Walmart destroy my neighborhood, but they won't go out of their way to stop this insanity. Why? Where were all the conservatives last night? And in truth, it wasn't only them: Why was it up to two Green Party members to represent the Left? Where are the Democrats and other progressives who claim to believe in BUYING LOCAL?

It is these kinds of sneaky, incremental moves and land-grabs that have Walmartized the country. If we want to roll that back, we have to start supporting people like Joel Ann. Please shop at her market and let her know that she has your support.

SAVE THE MARKET!

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Haley Watch: Nikki and Michele have a slumber party!

At left: BFFs Nikki and Michele trash the NLRB and foment anti-union sentiment at a recent SC Town Hall meeting.




I debated whether that was a sexist title, and then I thought, wait, WHO am I talking about here? Two of the most pernicious political women in the country. Therefore, I reserve the right to invoke sexist slumber party jokes! (Sorry about that yall, but I just can't be politically correct ALL the time.) And seriously, it does sound like that to me. Can't you just imagine all that right-wing giggling, as they huddle together in their jammies, popping popcorn and conspiring to deny even more rights to labor unions and gays?

Makes me slightly nauseous to think about it:

Michele Bachmann had some face-time with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on Sunday night, dining with the governor and coveted endorser and staying over at the governor's mansion, according to a source familiar with the get-together.

It's not the first time of late that Haley has appeared with Bachmann — she recently made a surprise showing at the presidential candidate's town hall forum in the state.

The latest get-together came as Rick Perry, who is crowding out Bachmann in attention and with tea party activists, is holding a town hall in the Palmetto State with Rep. Tim Scott.

Rick Perry notably missed Jim DeMint's Tea Party Extravaganza in Columbia yesterday, since much of Texas is currently in flames. I respect his decision to stay in his home state to deal with the wildfires, even if he is nervous about debating. As Texas governor, he really needs to do his ELECTED JOB first.

And besides the slumber party (Aside: Since they are both so pro-war, maybe I should call it Slumber Party Massacre, which I'll bet you feminists didn't known was written by none other than Rita Mae Brown), there is plenty more where that came from.

((drum roll)) THIS is the big enchilada we have all been waiting for!!!

Yes, I know. I roped you in with vague promises of Republican girl-romps, and now, I get all economically-serious on your asses. More apologies. Things can't be girly fun all the time, you know.

Or maybe it can! Let's go to EUROPE on the people's dime! Yee-ha!

I KNEW she was a fiscal fake (since she has never held a real job), and now we have proof of it. I am printing the following article from the Charleston Post and Courier in its entirety, for emphasis. (And thanks to SC Progressive Network for always being on the case; damn, I loves you guys!!)

European vacation or legitimate business? Haley's fiscal priorities under fire as summer 'jobs' trip detailed
BY RENEE DUDLEY
rdudley@postandcourier.com
Monday, September 5, 2011

Gov. Nikki Haley's weeklong trip to Europe in June in search of "jobs, jobs, jobs" cost South Carolinians more than $127,000. But the governor and her entourage of more than two dozen returned without any finished deals to bring new employers to the Palmetto State.

Daisy pauses to scream: TWO DOZEN? Christ, Hillary didn't even take that many people to freaking Bosnia.

Haley, who captured the governor's office preaching fiscal restraint, spent the cash so she, her husband and the rest of the state's contingent could stay in five-star hotels; sip cocktails at the Paris Ritz; dine on what an invitation touted as "delicious French cuisine" at a swanky rooftop restaurant; and rub elbows with the U.S. Ambassador to France at his official residence near the French presidential palace.

The South Carolina group also threw a soiree at the Hotel de Talleyrand, a historic Parisian townhouse where they feted foreign employers in hopes they'd set up shop in South Carolina. The Department of Commerce billed the $25,000 event as a "networking opportunity for members of the South Carolina delegation."

"It was a great party," Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt said in an interview last week.

Expenses from the trip still are being submitted, Hitt said. The $127,000 figure represents spending only by the Commerce Department, which covered many but not all of Haley's expenses, he said.

Daisy is hereby reduced to sputtering. (This hardly ever happens.)

This is a nakedly greedy, self-serving and self-involved politician who is zealously cutting services to disabled people, so she can eat nice food in France. Where, if I am not mistaken, Marie Antoinette was from.

Nikki needs to go read about what happened to HER.

It's unclear exactly what Haley accomplished during the taxpayer-funded excursion. Many documents released Monday to The Post and Courier in response to a July 7 Freedom of Information Act request were heavily redacted.

During a press conference -- unrelated to the trip -- Friday afternoon in Charleston, Haley told the newspaper the state "closed two deals" while abroad. She referred further questions to the Commerce Department.

We'll be looking forward to hearing about those deals, Governor. Why no big-ass bitchin press conference, like the one you had to announce that Amy's Organics was moving here to the upstate?

Put up or shut up. Show us the money!

In a follow-up interview Friday, Hitt said the state, in fact, closed no deals. Two agreements involving foreign employers are in the works, he said. He provided no details.

Spending criticized

Critics called the mid-June trip an inappropriately timed junket: It took place at the zenith of legislative debate over the tightest budget in recent history.

Benefits of the trip for South Carolinians -- who confront an unemployment rate of almost 11 percent -- are unclear, said the critics, who include a respected state senator from the governor's own party and a Columbia Tea Party organizer.

John Crangle, executive director of South Carolina Common Cause, asked, "What did they bring home from the hunt?"

Crangle, whose organization is a government ethics watchdog, then answered his own question: "They came back with an empty whiskey bottle," he said. "Or I guess since they went to the Ritz it was an empty Champagne bottle. They had a good time at the state's expense."

S.C. Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian said Haley was "channeling Marie Antoinette."

"Has the average South Carolinian ever stayed in a $650 a night hotel or spent almost $4,000 in one week on airfare?" Harpootlian said. "Her response to the people who footed the bill would be, 'Let them eat cake.' "

Like they say, great minds think alike.

Or is it just such an obvious comparison in these harsh economic times?

S.C. Sen. Tom Davis, a Beaufort Republican, called the logic of economic development trips "flawed."

"If you get the fundamental things right -- solid education and health care -- capital will come to the state," Davis said. "Those are the functions of government. Not creating jobs. ... It's a socialist state when the government's core function is to create jobs."

But Hitt, the Commerce secretary, defended the excursion as a "vital link" for attracting foreign employers to South Carolina instead of other nearby states.

"We have to go out and market ourselves," he said. "It's a tough game to play."

Following repeated requests, Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey said Thursday he would "find three to five minutes" for a phone interview with the governor, but by Friday Godfrey said in an email "the governor is not available." Godfrey said in the email that the governor had offered the newspaper an "exclusive opportunity to accompany the delegation" to Europe to "cover, first hand, the productivity of the trip." The newspaper declined.

Godfrey had requested an emailed list of questions for this story, but he did not respond to them. In a statement, he said: "Governor Haley will never miss an opportunity to talk about our great state's business opportunities to companies across the world -- and that's what her trip to Europe was about."

The newspaper briefly spoke with Haley after finding her at the Charleston news conference Friday.

Accomplishments?

Haley and the two dozen-member South Carolina contingent traveled to France and Germany the week of June 18. They attended the International Paris Air Show at Le Bourget and toured BMW headquarters in Munich.

A daily itinerary shows the governor and her staff scheduled more than 20 meetings in France and Germany, but the details are heavily redacted because they contain "confidential proprietary information," the governor's attorney said in a letter. Among the only unredacted business meetings were appointments with Boeing and BMW, which already have large operations in the state.

Haley's office cited no expectations or results involving the mission, although the newspaper specifically requested both in its Freedom of Information Act letter.

The governor had planned to discuss economic development progress with the media during her trip. Her itinerary twice shows time set aside for "availability with South Carolina media." But the time slot was 10:45 a.m. Paris and Munich time -- that is 4:45 a.m. South Carolina time.

Actually, I think they call that being a garden-variety DUMB ASS.

Haley did, however, express her hopes in a YouTube video shot at the Paris Air Show on June 20. In it, she said Boeing's arrival in South Carolina has fanned the interest of "so many suppliers who are looking to do business here." She continued: "We will continue to work on jobs, jobs, jobs, but just know that everybody in this beautiful city is talking about our beautiful state of South Carolina."

The state's official overseas economic development missions date to the 1960s, when the textile industry's decline made officials scramble to find replacements, said Douglas Woodward, a professor at the University of South Carolina's Darla Moore School of Business.

"It laid the groundwork for the revitalization of the state's economy," said Woodward, who specializes in economic development studies. "German chemical companies and BMW put us on the map. Before that, I'm not sure that Europeans would know where we are. ... The benefits can be enormous, but it takes time."

Critics, though, are wary of vague benefits, saying state officials shouldn't waste taxpayer cash on overseas trips while simultaneously approving deep cuts in education and health care spending.

"It's hard to know whether or not there was any benefit to these trips," said Crangle of Common Cause.

Allen Olson, an organizer for the Columbia Tea Party, said he wants to know how the money was spent.

"If there was waste, we have a problem," he said.

Upgrading to compete

South Carolina has had a presence at the Paris Air Show each year since 2005. Gov. Mark Sanford, who took at least one major international trip each year he was in office, had attended.

The Commerce Department did not respond last week to a request for Air Show spending details for each of those years.

This year, though, the state had some upgrades.

For the first time, South Carolina abandoned the standard booth in favor of a "chalet," an area with shared conference rooms, business equipment, private bathrooms, a patio and a "beverage service," Hitt said.

"My view was that we needed something different. ... It's more professional," said Hitt, a former BMW executive who filled the Commerce post in January. "The things we did this year are the things we have to do to be successful."

By comparison, North Carolina's commerce department got a booth and sent seven people to the Air Show, spending about $112,000, according to a spokesman for that state. Georgia sent two people and had no booth, a spokeswoman for that state said.

Neither state's governor attended the show.

Critics such as Harpootlian, the Democratic party chairman, said ancillary industries connected to Boeing and BMW would be unswayed by the governor's visit to Europe. Suppliers would follow the major industries to the state regardless, they said.

"At this point you don't have to go pitch them," the Columbia attorney said. "They will come here."

But Hitt said South Carolina must make a grand appearance at the show to compete with nearby states like North Carolina and Georgia for the new employers.

"It's naive to think people will show up no matter what," Hitt said. "Simply responding to emails and phone calls -- it's not the way it works."

Harpootlian countered that argument, saying, "You can recruit employers without staying in a five-star hotel."

Hitt, who originally denied the group stayed in five-star accommodations, said, "We have a special rate we worked out."

The average daily rate for the governor's hotels was $430, according to the Commerce Department.

More perks

When they weren't dining out, Haley and her entourage had "warm meals" delivered to their hotel rooms. They used the "VIP access" at the airport, according to an itinerary. Airfare to and from Europe cost about $1,530 per person, according to travel receipts from the governor's office.

Some members of the group also traveled by plane and train while in Europe, trekking to the German cities of Munich, Dresden and Stuttgart. Airfare from France to the German cities cost about $2,000 for Haley alone, the records show.

Michael Haley -- the governor's husband, who is a technician for the South Carolina National Guard -- paid his own travel expenses, according to Commerce Department. He traveled by train to the German cities, where he attended meetings with the U.S. Europe and Africa Commands. Hitt, the Commerce secretary, said those meetings also involved economic development.

Commerce officials said 27 people were in the South Carolina delegation, which included staffers and security agents from the governor's office, managers from the Commerce Department, S.C. Sen. Hugh Leatherman, a Florence Republican, and Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin. The group charged more than $5,100 in per diem expenses to the state, according to the Commerce Department.

About a dozen members of the group represented the state's regional economic development "alliances." Eight of those groups, which receive a share of tax dollars, contributed $8,000 apiece to help cover the trip's expenses.

Additional overseas economic development trips are on the horizon.

Hitt said last week he is planning a trip abroad later this month. He said the governor would not be attending, but he declined to provide any further details.

Haley's June trip, her first overseas trip as governor, is not likely to be her last.

India is one location she has considered. Haley met Meera Shankar, the Indian Ambassador to the U.S., in Washington, D.C., earlier this year, according to a March press release posted on the ambassador's website. At that time Haley said she wanted to "visit India along with a trade and business delegation," the release said.

Renee Dudley for Pope! Great expose of a TOTAL FUCKING PHONY.

Read and pass along please!

So here I am, unemployed, scrambling for peanuts, as my husband's taxes pay for Governor Haley to eat gourmet French foods and have warm meals delivered to her room. Why am I not surprised the Tea Party Queen is just another liar?

As one of my favorite modern philosophers once said, Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

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Support the 45,000 Verizon strikers!

At left: Local powerhouse activist and good friend SHEILA JACKSON! GO SHEILA!


Yesterday, 45,000 Verizon workers went on strike, and I joined a picket line sponsored by the Communication Workers of America in Spartanburg. (Photos here.)

Customer service work, which I know a few things about, can be very grueling and intense. People deserve to be PAID DECENTLY for (see link) "introduc[ing] principles of mechanization and industrial engineering into a much wider array of service transactions than was hitherto possible"... i.e. the basic organization of the factory assembly line, brought into mass telecommunciations.

If people work on an assembly line, they deserve to be paid as well as my father, UAW member who also worked on an assembly line. Customer service work is simply the high-tech, mass-telephone-version of the assembly line.

What you should know:

>> Workers in 8 states and the District of Columbia are on strike, represented by the Communication Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

>> Verizon's annualized revenues in 2011 are $108 billion, with net profits of $6 billion. The concessions demanded from workers equal about $1 billion, working out to an approximate $20,000 per family, per year. Many of these concessions concern health benefits and pensions, benefits promised to workers.

>> Verizon paid no taxes last year and in fact received a $1.3 billion-dollar TAX REBATE!

>> The top five Verizon executives earned $258 million over the past four years.

>> CWA statement: "For the American economy to recover, we need to work together to solve problems. But if profitable companies like Verizon keep sending jobs overseas and cutting compensation for ordinary, middle-class workers, while paying executives big bucks, we can't begin to build an economy that works. CWA and IBEW members are prepared to return to work when management demonstrates the willingness to begin bargaining seriously for a fair agreement. If not, workers will stand together and continue the fight."

>> Verizon has scabs of course; the economy insures that. From company-droid statement: “In anticipation of this development, Verizon has activated a contingency plan to ensure customers experience limited disruption in service during this time.”

But I'd like to ask Verizon customers to disrupt their OWN service, if possible.

Can you hear us now? :)

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Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age by Susan Jacoby

First of all, I want to make it clear that it is sheer coincidence that I am criticizing another atheist today; this makes two-in-a-row, and I realize that looks bad. As I have said many times, I love the atheists for keeping us honest and forcing us (okay: me) to cut the perpetual starry-eyed routine. However, I have just read a very good book by an atheist, but I'm afraid her atheism has compromised the book, so I have to say so.



Susan Jacoby's fascinating NEVER SAY DIE: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age, is one of those books I have been waiting for, and didn't quite realize it until I found myself hungrily turning pages and consuming it all in one afternoon. Interestingly, I finished it right after my doctor-visit and a lecture (not the first) about my cholesterol.



Do I see the numbers? Yes.



My weight and glucose are way down... but that damn LDL number creeps up and up. "If diet and exercise are not enough..." echo those damn TV ads from evillll BigPharma. Yes, they mean ME, now.



My 35-40 lb weight loss over the past 18 months, coupled with my devoted Swamp Rabbit Trail hiking, was supposed to magically make my cholesterol number go down and... (stares uncomprehendingly at the printed lab results that announce my HDL/LDL) well, it didn't work. I am pleased I am no longer a diabetes risk, but... well, shit, it's always something.



And that is a very good description of aging, "it's always something"... in this hard-nosed book that debunks and deconstructs the various Hallmark-greeting-card myths of aging, Jacoby plows right in. As one of those dedicated atheist-rationalists that takes no prisoners, she decimates several of the major aging myths, and not a few of the minor ones. For example, if you are an asshole in your youth, there is no reason to think you will age gracefully into a nice person with appropriate old-age "wisdom" -- and vice versa. As evidence, she offers (on one hand) Henry Kissinger, who is ancient but still defending genocide with aplomb. On the other hand, she offers Jimmy Carter, who continues to contribute to and enrich our world in so many ways. Certainly, these are excellent examples, and she has no argument from me. My grandmother always said old age simply made you "more of what you are"--and Jacoby seems to agree.



Jacoby is careful to use the terms "young old" (which would be me) and "old old"--which are people in their 80s-90s. She believes the "young old" are used for propaganda purposes, so that (basically young and middle-aged) people can point to them/us with relieved sighs and reassure themselves they can "stay active" while growing old and spry. By contrast, nobody puts the "old old" in TV commercials and nobody seems very glad to see them. They are carefully segregated from the rest of us. She writes at length about the problem of loneliness in old people, as their friends and loved ones die off all around them.



One thing I found disturbing in Jacoby's book, is the casual way she accepts this. She does NOT accept other states-of-affairs as unchanging (in fact, she tells us she intends to go out as an "angry old lady"), without thorough questioning--so why is this particular fact just offered as a given? Perhaps because she simply states that she would not change her life for her aging mother, just as her mother had not changed her lifestyle for her aging mother. However, she does note that her grandmother DID take care of her great-grandmother. Somewhere along the way, "we" (there's that famous punchline: "Whatcha mean We?") stopped doing that. We did? (Did someone mention economic class?) Actually, lots of people didn't. The professional classes, the educated class to which Jacoby belongs, people who have book contracts and write regular columns for the Washington Post, did that first. People with important careers found that they could not (would not) be bothered with aging relatives. That was a deliberate choice that Jacoby made, but it is in no way a given.



"Old old" people are more segregated than ever, and that is because advanced capitalism demands total mobility from everyone, so we end up moving all over the world to get and keep jobs. Of course old people are warehoused, who else is going to look after them? (A possible good side effect of the economy tanking, might be that fewer people are forced to move around so much, and old people might actually be able to stay in real homes.)



One of Jacoby's chapters is alarmingly titled, Women: Eventually the Only Sex. Women overwhemingly overpopulate the "old old" ... social and political concerns about aging are basically about the future of women and how we will live in our final decades; as we all know, the guys check out earlier. Jacoby echoes my own feelings in how modern feminism, profoundly uncomfortable with aging, does not see the economic debates over Social Security and Medicaid to be directly concerned with women, even though WE are primarily who these programs are about... young feminists are preoccupied with sex, reproduction and other youthful pursuits, and it is unlikely we will get them to understand that this is THEIR future too. And that reminds me of another thing I disliked in the book, Jacoby's request that we lay off older men who prefer younger women, using some half-baked pseudo-Darwinian excuse about how men are visual and require more and more to turn them on as they age. Excuse me, but so? It takes me more and more too. If I can refrain (as most women do) from pinching boys on the ass and/or asking them to get married, I think most older men can show some restraint as well. The fact that they don't is because men don't need to exercise restraint... RESTRAINT is not masculine, after all. I am not sure why feminist Jacoby found it necessary to cut men slack in this one area in which they decidedly DON'T NEED ANY, but ... (yeesh)



From Jacoby's website, a summary of the book:

The author offers powerful evidence that America has always been a “youth culture” and that the plight of the neglected old dates from the early years of the republic. Today, it is urgent to distinguish between marketing hype and realistic hope about what lies ahead for more than 70 million Americans who will be over 65 in just twenty years. This wide-ranging reappraisal examines the explosion of Alzheimer’s cases, the uncertain economic future of aging boomers in a shaky economy, the predicament of women who make up an overwhelming majority of the oldest—and poorest—old; and the absence of control over dying in a society that devotes a huge proportion of its health care resources to medical intervention in the last year of life—even when there is no hope that the person will ever recover.

One amazing fact she offers is that even among Catholics, a majority support assisted suicide.



Since I am giving this book a (mostly) good review, where do I think Jacoby got it wrong? Exactly where an atheist would get it wrong: In not covering the role of religion in the lives of very old people. ESPECIALLY when she discusses depression and loneliness and other negative emotional states. Does religion help with these? (they do in young people) She totally avoids the question. I realize the answer may well be "no"--but I would like to see an honest airing of the question, preferably accompanied by some stats (which I realize would be difficult to obtain; like a nice meal, religion is a subjective experience, pleasant for some and pure hell for others)... but I am intelligent and self-aware enough to know that *I* will become a religious fanatic of some sort in my old age. I am trying to work it out so that I will not be an annoying type of religious fanatic, but a benign presence or (at best) one that people might take some comfort from. But I know already, that religion is my opiate, and at the end of my life, I will be administering opiates (all kinds) in spades.



What does atheism offer? I think yall might consider "atheist congregations" of one kind or another, for the social needs of atheists. Sweet Mormon, Baptist and Catholic ladies will come to visit you when you are old... In fact, I visited the late Monsignor Baum myself, about a week before his death (he gave me a blessing in Latin, he seemed to have forgotten the words in English, which I actually found charming) --even though I barely had time to wipe my butt in those days. But I made visiting him a religious priority.



Question: Do the atheists have ladies with angel-food cakes standing ready to visit the old atheists? (If not, yall really need to get to work on that.)



And if the atheists say, fuck angel-food cakes, we don't need people to visit us when we're old, well, maybe that is the major difference between them and the rest of us. They expect us all to be as hard-assed as they are, and we just can't do it.



Does religion make old age better or worse? And I don't simply refer to the religious practices of the old person in question, I also refer to religion as a social force; do not underestimate the importance of hundreds of Sunday School classes going to visit the old people and sing them songs.



I know I'll just love seeing them, when it's my turn.

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