My high school makes the news for the only time ever. And it is for a typically classy thing.
….Though to be fair, the town as a whole, and in particular the downtown which is part of my high school’s district has received coverage for leading the nation in strip clubs per capita. So that’s exciting.
Probably the greatest Greek filmmaker ever has died, killed by a motorcycle on the set of his film-in-progress. Angelopoulos received a good bit of publicity in the U.S. during the mid 90s, which is when I began to watch film. Landscape in the Mist is probably his most popular film and it’s one of the better road film movies (a genre that many find overrated and can definitely suck, but which I am inclined to forgive). The first Angelopoulos I saw was Ulysses’ Gaze with Harvey Keitel. Keitel plays a filmmaker traveling through the Balkans at the height of the violence. He ends up in Saravejo during the siege, leading to a wonderful scene of people walking around in the fog, feeling relatively safe. Angelopoulous’ films could be difficult to say the least and few have much distribution in the U.S., but he was a giant of film and will be missed.
I’m certainly not going to speak against Any Which Way You Can, which clearly provides the greatest chimp-Eastwood pairing we will ever see. And higher power of your choice knows that I would never say anything bad about a song written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, not to mention one performed by either David Frizzell or Shelly West, not to mention sung by both. And in fact, Oklahoma is one of my favorite states to drive around.
But Oklahoma sure has some crazy politicians. The state that brought you such necessary bills as outlawing Sharia law in a place that wouldn’t know a Muslim if he prayed to Mecca at the Oklahoma City Memorial has taken wingnuttery to the next level:
A bill introduced in the Oklahoma Legislature has some folks scratching their heads, as it prohibits “the manufacture or sale of food or products which use aborted human fetuses.”
Since the bill was introduced late last week by State Sen. Ralph Shortey, a Republican from Oklahoma City, corners of the Internet have been buzzing with the news, as people try to figure out two things: 1) is this real; and 2) is there any reason the bill might be needed?
I love this justification:
The senator says that his research shows there are companies in the food industry that have used human stem cells to help them research and develop products, including artificial flavorings.
“I don’t know if it is happening in Oklahoma, it may be, it may not be. What I am saying is that if it does happen then we are not going to allow it to manufacture here,” Shortey tells KRMG’s Nicole Burgin.
It may be, it may not be, who knows. But we’d better pass a law to make sure. Note that the same principle may also apply to Oklahoma-alien miscegenation. Our women will not commit interplanetary race suicide!
This is really too bad as well. My favorite abortion clinic is in Lawton. I was going to drive there next month in order to pick up a special fetus drawn from a woman fed only on butter and truffles for the 8 1/2 months before she was forced to undergo a partial-birth abortion. The blood from that fetus is great in soup. Since it feels pain, the stress is feels as the abortionist is beating it to death with a hammer adds extra flavor.
In what will likely be the only hockey-related post I ever write, let me say that Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas, who refused to attend his team’s meeting with President Obama, may be a teabagging wingnut of the first order. But you have to give him credit for his authentic 18th century capitalization stylings.
“I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.
This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government.
Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.
This is the only public statement I will be making on this topic. TT”
Now if he’ll only play goalie in a tri-cornered hat.
In case you were questioning how central Republicans’ anti-labor zealotry is to their program, they are choosing Indiana’s Mitch Daniels to deliver the state of the union response. Daniels is currently shepherding a right to work a person to death law through the legislature. Despite his odd choice not to run for president in 2012, the business leaders love him and he’s a likely candidate in 2016. John Nichols has more on why this all matters, particularly on the state-based campaigns Republicans are running to destroy working-class lives.
Interesting news out of Guatemala today. Efraín Ríos Montt, the former genocidal president and darling of right-wing America, will be forced to appear before a Guatemalan court, a move that could lead to charges of genocide.
It’s difficult to overstate how deep the United States is in the long-term destablization of Guatemala. The CIA-approved coup of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 began a long process of undermining the small nation, even today. You could certainly also argue that the Arbenz episode is merely a flash point in a relationship of exploitation that began with the banana companies in the late 19th century and goes on today. During the 80s, Reagan’s support of right-wing leaders in Central America, especially the evangelical Ríos Montt, is well-known. The genocide charge is appropriate, as during his rule, indigenous villages were eliminated under the general premise that Mayans were communists. During his year in power, nearly 600 villages were destroyed and thousands of indigenous Guatemalans killed.
Said Ronald Reagan about Ríos Montt: “President Ríos Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. … I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice.”
And it’s not as if Ríos Montt’s actions led the American right to reject the man after the fact. In fact, his daughter, a right-wing Guatemalan politician and defender of her father’s actions, is married to former Illinois Republican congressman Jerry Weller,.
Today, Guatemala faces a new period of instability due to the expansion of drug gangs from Mexico and El Salvador into their country and its unfortunately convenient stop on the drug highway to the United States. Whereas thirty years ago, people wanted to dismantle the police force because of its horrifying repression, today people are putting hope in the police as the one thing that could stand in the way of a new generation of shocking violence.
Forcing Ríos Montt to face trial for his crimes is not going to solve any of Guatemala’s enormous problems, but it might at least force the defenders of violence in that nation to think twice about their actions.
Colorado is reaching a bit of an odd moment in the short history of renewable energy in this county. In 2004, Colorado voters decided to create a sustainable energy requirement for the state. It’s been wildly successful, so much so that the state has about reached it. And now there’s very little incentive for the energy companies to continue investing in renewables. Without the state mandate, progress is beginning to stall out.
While the clear answer to me is for Colorado voters to raise the bar, this gets at larger problems with the American grid. The decentralized nature of American energy allows for local decisions, which can be positive but can also lead to inertia. A federal initiative to improve renewable energy sources in the states could have great impact, but of course won’t happen in today’s climate. At the very least, we must have the extension of government subsidies for wind and solar energy, both of which are scheduled to expire by next year.
A state like Colorado is both windy and sunny and there’s no good reason it can’t be producing a huge chunk of its energy from renewable sources. With the cost of renewable energy declining, consumer demand might do a good bit to promote its continued expansion, but this is one area where government can make a huge difference in people’s lives and in the environment.
Pathetically, I think the largest news outlet covering the Indiana right to work a person to death law is LGM.
Although the media is giving this story zero attention, Indiana labor is fighting like mad to stop Indiana Republicans from passing this law. Today, 10,000 people marched on the Indiana statehouse, rallying and vowing to make Republicans pay for eviscerating working-class rights.
This leads to another point. If I was a Republican strategist, there is a clear lesson in the lack of media coverage of the Indiana bill. Republicans should introduce their most loathsome bills in the states during presidential primary season every 4 years. Everyone will focus on the 14th debate between Republicans in South Carolina and media attention will be drawn away from even the most retrograde bills. That might not be true in the hottest early contest states like Iowa and New Hampshire, but in any of the last 40 states to vote, it’s a very good idea. So long as the clownshow continues, Democrats just aren’t going to pay attention to the terrible things Republicans are doing in the states.
I feel bad for the Baltimore Ravens defense. Year after year, Ray Lewis, Terrell Suggs, Ed Reed, Haloti Ngata, etc. put in amazing performances, but they are consistently sabotaged by the Ravens mediocre offense. At least they won in 2000, otherwise this would have reached almost tragic proportions.
There are lots of fingers to point in the Ravens’ offensive failure in the 4th quarter yesterday. How does Lee Evans drop that touchdown? The entire field goal attempt was a disaster–bad snap, holder couldn’t get the ball set straight, kicker misses by a mile. And then there’s Joe Flacco.
Flacco didn’t play a terrible game, though that interception wasn’t great. But he hardly played great either. As Scott mentioned yesterday, Flacco is no Tim Tebow, but he’s also not very good. Baltimore needs to be serious about upgrading the quarterback position to compete for a Super Bowl, but they are so close as it is and starting over at that key position would be such a process that I understand why they wouldn’t do it. And they won’t.
And that led me to thinking–when was the last time a team has been close to an elite team for so long, over a decade in the Ravens’ case, while struggling to establish anything decent at the quarterback position. Flacco’s obviously much better than Kyle Boller, but he isn’t really any better than Trent Dilfer and it’s not like Dilfer was a world-beater. The Ravens have survived with the same strategy for a long time–amazing defense and try to put together enough pieces on offense. And it works just well enough to leave them short of the Super Bowl.
Is there another example of this scenario in NFL history?
What is your vision of a 1970s union leader? Lane Kirkland and his lame leadership of the AFL-CIO? Jimmy Hoffa? A bunch of old men in suits?
One could hardly blame you if you had that in your mind. Every narrative tells us unions were moribund and bloated by the 70s. They all sold out or cared nothing but getting a little more in the pension plan for their members. They were ripe to be crushed by Republicans in the 80s, unwilling to put up a fight.
There is some truth to this to be sure, but it’s also a stereotype. There were some unions ready to throw major punches at the Republicans. And they provide some interesting lessons.
I’ve spent the last 3 weeks researching in the archives of the International Woodworkers of America for my book. It has been a very interesting time. I will be writing a series of posts over the next week or so on my impressions of this union, and unionism in general, based upon my time exploring this largely forgotten organization in depth.
I’ll start with this: whatever your idea of a 70s union leader is, it’s not IWA president Keith Johnson. Below is a small chunk from his address to the Thirty-First Constitutional Convention of the IWA in 1979. Keep in mind that this speech is not for the general public, but for the union leaders and the elected representatives of the locals attending the convention. So he didn’t necessarily have a strong reason to sugarcoat anything. Anyway, here is a bit from his talk:
“Let’s face it, profit is money and money is capital and people who control capital are capitalists.
Capitalists do not care if workers are crippled by unsafe plant environments.
Capitalists do not care if workers are thrown out of their jobs by log exports or antiquated equipment.
Capitalists do not care if the parents of workers must rot with untreated disease, or the children of workers die at birth.
Capitalists do not care if major groups of citizens are discriminated against at work or in the community.
Capitalists certainly do not care if union organizers are run out of town.
These are harsh words but they are conclusions compelled by the facts.”
Damn right.
Wait, didn’t the CIO kick all this crazy radical stuff out in the 50s? Well, yes, but some of the unions retained their radical tinge and in the 70s it resurfaced. The IWA is one of those unions. Talk about some honest words about the evil of capitalism. And it wasn’t just in 1979. Here’s a snippet from the 1982 convention:
“Who would have believed that the United States would again plunge into reckless adventurism in the Caribbean to protect the imperialist capitalists that have exploited those peoples for a century, a few short years after similar escapades in southeast Asia proved disastrous. Yet such an effort is escalating today, and is part and parcel of the world war by the capitalists against the people. I honestly do not know which is worse: the militarism of Reagan’s Secretary of State Haig or the gutlessness of Trudeau’s Secretary of State MacGuigan in this sorry spectacle.”
The IWA had Canadian locals, which explains the slam on Trudeau’s administration. But Johnson’s words would have hardly been out of place at a radical leftist convention. Now, the IWA did not necessarily work with hard-core leftist groups in these years, for reasons both cultural and structural. And it was getting absolutely destroyed by the timber industry collapsing around it. Which is why you’ve probably never heard of it. But here was a union leader ready to go 1930s-style at the conservatives. Keith Johnson should remind us both that our stereotypes of union leaders may in fact be caricatures and that unions, even as late as the 1980s, told truth to power in ways we can learn from today.
I don’t suppose Keith Johnson’s rhetoric would be very popular with the neoliberals and Democratic centrists of the world in 2012. But he stood up for working-class people, and not just white dudes either. He placed his union at the forefront of labor’s push for gender equality and affirmative action in the workplace. As one example, he ordered the use of gender specific language in union publications to end. And his words speak a lot of truth today. I’m actually not sure if Johnson is still alive today; I haven’t yet been able to find that out. He’d be pretty dang old if so. But he speaks through the 30 years to the Occupy generation. There’s so much we can learn from past union leaders, even the relatively recent past. Unions like the IWA may have had their issues, but they challenged capitalists to their faces. And we are less for not having them around today.
So the recall vote against Scott Walker will happen. But progressives are really worried about one unforeseen problem: there really isn’t anyone to run against Walker. The Wisconsin recall law is more of a new election than a straight recall. So Democrats need an opponent. The obvious choice is Russ Feingold, but as of now, Feingold has shown little to no interest. I’ve read a lot of worried columns in the last few days about this. The other choices seem to range from the blah Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, who lost to Walker in 2010, to the equally uninspiring David Obey to a bunch of little known state and local level politicians. There’s a campaign to draft Feingold, but he’s unpredictable so who knows if he’ll bite.
This led me to wonder why there isn’t a more active national campaign to develop the state bench. I follow state politics fairly closely (though I haven’t really talked about this much since I joined LGM) and you hear this all the time–the bench is weak. Isn’t it the interest of everyone for the party to take an active role in developing the bench. Ensure ways for up and coming politicians to get their voices heard. Give them important speaking spots. Get them on the right legislative committees.
I can see some problems with this for sure. A centrist Democratic party is perhaps likely to promote centrists rather than progressives. It could smack of cronyism and help create machines. So I can imagine arguments against this idea. At the same time, it also seems valuable to think of your state legislatures and mayors as minor leagues for potentially excellent politicians and for the national party to develop that talent in concrete ways.
My 25 day research trip to Oregon is over. I am sad to leave. This is one reason why.
Paul Campos, Above the Law 2011 Lawyer of the Year
Erik Loomis, HNN Cliopatria 2011 Best Series of Posts
