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Skip Bayless: Sage

[ 50 ] February 11, 2012 | Erik Loomis

How does a guy like Skip Bayless keep working? Actually, I guess I know. He combines pugnacity with a complete lack of shame. I guess that makes good TV for a company like ESPN that has no interest in accountability or intelligence. In a related question, how does Stephen A. Smith also have a job?

Anyway, here’s one example of Bayless’ genius from 2001:

Two or three years from now you’ll look back and think: How could [Michael] Jordan have not taken DeSagana Diop No. 1? Diop is the one athletic freak in this draft. Diop is the only man alive age 18 or above with the potential to be better than Shaquille O’Neal.

Yeah, that’s definitely a question I’ve been asking for the past decade.

Summers

[ 48 ] February 10, 2012 | Erik Loomis

It would be challenging to find a Democratic Party figure I loathe more than Larry Summers. There are so many reasons. Here’s one more:

Prior to joining the Obama administration as the director of the White House National Economic Council, Larry Summers faced a barrage of criticism after it was exposed that he received hundreds of thousands of dollars from major banks for a series of speeches he gave in in 2008. Despite this conflict of interest, the administration expressed full confidence in Summers’ role as a chief economic adviser to President Obama, telling the public that he was primarily interested in crafting economic policies that help “families across America.”

Summers has since left the administration, and is once again on the corporate speaking circuit. Last June, he appeared at the 2011 World BPO/ITO (Business Process Outsourcing/Information Technology Outsourcing) Forum, which took place in Jersey City, New Jersey. The Forum featured participation, attendance, and/or lectures from executives from many of the world’s top corporations — including AT&T, Pfizer, Coca Cola, Home Depot, and Morgan Stanley — in a number of meetings and presentations about outsourcing labor services.

….

With the unemployment rate at 9.4 percent, Summers compared critics of the outsourcing of American jobs to “luddites who took axes to machinery early in England’s industrial revolution.” Unfortunately, the full of text of Summers’ remarks is mysteriously missing from the website — particularly odd given the fact that most of the other keynotes are posted online.

Of course, Summers doesn’t understand what the Luddites actually believed in any more than the average person on the street, but that’s hardly surprising. Equally unsurprising is his pompous dismissal of the United States’ millions of unemployed people who might hesitate at a global labor policy that has enriched the world’s 0.1% at the expense of the rest of us.

But I’ll tell you, it sure is inspiring to have a man with views so sympathetic to working-class people as the head of President Obama’s White House National Economic Council. If Summers does get appointed to head the World Bank, well, for working-class Americans happy days are here again! And the world too, since this is a man who once signed a memo saying “I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.” Your 2012 Democratic Party!!!!

How Blue-Green Alliances Are Made

[ 7 ] February 9, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Over the past two weeks, port truck drivers in Seattle have refused to work for many reasons, ranging from very low pay to terrible working conditions. The Sierra Club has issued a press release in support of the strikers, noting:

“The Sierra Club stands in solidarity with these brave individuals and in support of the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports, an alliance among national and local environmental organizations, truckers, labor unions, and faith leaders promoting economic and environmental justice for our ports.

“The 400 truck drivers of Seattle and Tacoma are among the 150,000 port truckers around the country who struggle daily to make a livelihood for themselves and their families. Port truckers are classified as ‘self-employed’ which leaves them – rather than the corporations they work for – responsible for their aging and deteriorating trucks. These trucks are not only a hazard for those that are driving them, but they are also a significant source of air pollution and have created a pollution ‘hot spot’ in South Seattle, putting the entire community at risk.

In the 1970s, many unions worked closely with environmental groups over issues of workplace safety. Sick ecosystems lead to sick people. So-called blue-green alliances made a lot of headway. That became strained in the 80s with organized labor’s decline and the counterculture taking over much of the environmental movement, creating scenes like the Pacific Northwest forests, with a formerly invigorated blue-green alliance in tatters, with radical environmentalists like EarthFirst! both showing complete indifference to workers’ lives and their forcing mainstream environmental groups to shore up their wilderness bonafides to hold off the upstarts.

You may say that a press release doesn’t mean a lot, but to the workers it does have meaning. A major organization is offering support and the chances of the Sierra Club staying involved in the situation and lending support to drivers improving the environment of the workplace is high. There is no down side to the Sierra Club getting involved here. I am very glad to see it.

Eisenhower Memorial

[ 89 ] February 9, 2012 | Erik Loomis

So it seems that Frank Gehry is designing a memorial for Dwight Eisenhower on the National Mall. Eisenhower’s family is angry because, gasp, one of the scenes shows Dewey as a poor, barefoot kid. My God! Rather than portray him as “cornpone-in-chief” as one critic wrote, the Eisenhower family wants him in full heroic form.

Two points:

1. Portraying our leaders in full quasi-fascist heroic poses creates really bad monuments. The pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps story is central to American mythology. Even though I deeply critique that, it is less offensive than an Eisenhower lording his greatness over us. I haven’t been to DC in a few years so I haven’t seen the MLK memorial. But I am almost certain to dislike it because it, I understand, is kind of towering. A better memorial to King would be sized to real-life, i.e., he was a short man. It is in his normality than King was a great man. He wasn’t that different than the rest of us. Neither was Eisenhower.

2. Does Eisenhower really need a memorial on the National Mall? The monument-building on the Mall has gotten a little over the top in the last decade or so. I’m really unconvinced that Eisenhower deserves to take some of the rapidly decreasing open space. While Eisenhower was the lead general of U.S. forces in Europe during World War II, I don’t see that as sufficient given his presidency, which was mediocre. And before anyone commends Dewey for nationalizing the National Guard in Little Rock, note that Eisenhower was an open racist but couldn’t allow Faubus to flaunt federal authority. But hey, I’m sure the Guatemalans, Vietnamese, and Iranians would be real happy to know Eisenhower is being honored.

Who’s next for the Mall? Nixon? Rutherford Hayes? We also don’t have enough monuments to James Blaine in this country.

….This brings up a related thought. Is there any more egregious naming of a major structure for a political figure than John Foster Dulles Airport? Dulles? Arguably the worst Secretary of State in history. The man who promoted Diem for the sole reason that they were both Catholic? The man who did the bidding of his good friends at United Fruit and overthrew Arbenz? Couldn’t we rename the airport for someone slightly more competent. Like, I don’t know, Millard Fillmore?

Staples CEO: Breastfeeding Ruins the Economy

[ 59 ] February 9, 2012 | Erik Loomis

The lesson: Conservatives will always find a way to pin the blame for any issue on women.

Ten First Times

[ 92 ] February 8, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Kim Morgan has a list up of the top 10 old movies she saw for the first time in 2011. It’s an interesting list. The only one I’ve seen is “Other Men’s Women,” which has its limitations, but is enjoyable enough. Here’s my, probably less exotic, top 10 older movies I saw in 2011. For the sake of argument, we’ll say an older movie is at least 30 years old. I tend to mark 1967 as the dividing line between old and new movies, but I might as well play by the more expansive rules.

1. Victim, 1961
Basil Dearden’s brave film about anti-gay prejuidice in postwar Britain is incredible. Easily the best film old or new I saw in 2011.

2. La Jetée, 1962
The best science fiction film I’ve ever seen. Although to be fair, it’s not a genre I overly care for.

3. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920
As a silent film person, I don’t know how I had never gotten around to this before.

4. Rebecca, 1940
If anything, could Hitchcock be underrated?

5. Knife in the Water, 1962
I don’t know if this is Polanski’s best film, but it is pretty fantastic.

6. The Friends of Eddie Coyle, 1973
Fantastic and entertaining. Great role for Robert Mitchum.

7. The Mark of Zorro, 1920
True silent entertainment. The cheap amusements in their finest form.

8. Christmas in July, 1940
Preston Sturges–the best comedic director in film history?

9. In the Year of the Pig, 1968
Best old documentary I saw all year, powerful anti-war film.

10. Street of Shame, 1956
One of Kenji Mizoguchi’s great films about “fallen women.”

Endgame

[ 77 ] February 8, 2012 | Erik Loomis

There was a lot of interesting discussion around my angry post about the FAA reauthorization bill screwing over unions, especially the Communication Workers of America. If you didn’t watch CWA President Larry Cohen’s rant yesterday, here it is.

Mike Elk has a more in-depth discussion of how precisely the FAA bill is bad for labor:

Under the “compromise bill” passed by Senate Democrats, CWA would need not only 50 percent of the 9,000 passenger service workers currently working for American in order to file for an election, but 50 percent of those workers and the 2,000 laid off employees combined; many of these laid-off employees will not return to American Airlines and are difficult for union organizers to track down to sign union petitions since they no longer worker there.

In addition, the “compromise bill” would strip the rights of unionized airline or railway employees when their company merges with a nonunion company. Currently, under the Railway Labor Act, when a unionized company merges with a nonunionized company , a union election is automatically triggered to see if the workers in the new merged company want a union (as long as the previously unionized workforce represents 35 percent of the workforce).

Under the new rules, workers in a unionized company would be immediately stripped of their union rights as soon as their company merges with a nonunion company if those workers represent a minority of workers in a workplace.

Hopefully, that helps answer some questions.

I want to address a larger point though. Our valued commenter Brien Jackson brought up something well worth thinking about in the comments:

Maybe I’m missing something here, but isn’t this just another case of the Democrats getting screwed over by their need to be the adults in the room? I mean, I’m certainly supportive of the unions position, but if Republicans are really willing to kill re-authorization of the FAA over the provision, your hands are tied just a little bit if you actually care about good government, no?

This is at the core of the paradox Democrats face. They are by and large grownups. A functioning FAA is a very important thing. So it makes sense to compromise to keep the government functioning. But Democrats do this on every issue. Republicans know this will happen. So they take extreme positions, win major concessions, consolidate their gains, and do the same thing the next day.

Where does this stop? For those who fundamentally believe in being the grown-ups here, what is the endgame? Where do we see labor (or any number of other progressive issues) 15 years from now? Does this strategy pay off? Are we buying time until sanity returns to the Republican Party?

I’m not advocating for the shutdown of the FAA necessarily. But I am asking for people to articulate where they see labor in 2020 or 2025. Is it better to compromise constantly and be destroyed over a 20 year period or to go down fighting? Maybe the latter, after all another two decades of worker protections, limited as they might be, is better than nothing. But the end result is about the same.

What should CWA do here? I’m a bit reticent to suggest a lot of particular policy proposals, or at least to push for any one. But should a union support a politician who votes for a bill inimical to its interest? I would argue no. Should CWA put its considerable resources into promoting the individual politicians who supports its position? I know CWA effort could make a major difference in Ohio, where Sherrod Brown is a top Republican target. Same in Missouri for Claire McCaskill. And in many House races. Should the CWA contribute to the reelection campaigns of those who don’t support their agenda? I would argue probably not. Moreover, I would guess that the very real threat of this would scare some of those Democrats who voted for this bill to change their minds pretty quick.

Labor is not totally powerless here, but it does have to decide whether its strategy of supporting the Democratic Party in elections regardless of the policies of the individual politician is particularly effective. President Obama naming people to the NLRB that will uphold the laws is important. But as Cohen says in the linked video, the next Republican president will change any rules Obama makes and name horrible people to the NLRB. And whether in 2012, 2016, or 2020, a Republican president will take office. What matters more than rules and NLRB appointments to Cohen is legislation that puts protections on the books. And on this key issue, unions have been very disappointed in the administration. The votes certainly weren’t there for EFCA, but holding the line at what things were like during the Bush Administration does not seem an unreasonable expectation.

Dirty Energy’s Threat to the American Landscape

[ 7 ] February 8, 2012 | Erik Loomis

I have a piece out today at Alternet detailing the struggle to protect some of the United States’ most beautiful and unique landscapes from the scourge of dirty energy production. Ranging from the Sand Hills of Nebraska to West Virginia, upstate New York, the Louisiana marshlands, and the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, dirty energy production threatens to devastate (and is devastating) some of the this nation’s unique places.

I also focus heavily on the impact of energy production on the human body, particularly exploring east Texas and southern Louisiana:

A polluted ecosystem leads to sick people. This is the case on the Gulf Coast from east Texas into Louisiana, where the oil industry processes its raw material. The people who live near these plants, ranging from roughly Corpus Christi to the Mississippi River, are mostly poor and African American. Petroleum companies have intentionally sited their plants here, assuming that underprivileged people cannot resist a multinational corporation. Local residents have seen high cancer rates, birth defects and congenital health problems. Working conditions in these plants are notoriously poor. A 2005 explosion at a BP refinery in Texas City, Texas killed 17 workers and injured more than 170.

However, locals have fought back. Although environmental organizations have been reluctant to take on their cases, environmental justice movements have demanded protection from exposure to toxic chemicals. Steve Lerner’s book Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor chronicles how the community of Diamond, Louisiana took on the town’s Royal Dutch Shell complex to stop the headaches, respiratory illnesses and cancers that afflicted residents. After years of organizing, Shell finally agreed to relocate their homes away from the plant.

That’s one limited success story, but thousands of poor people live their lives subjected to the environmental racism of the petroleum industry. Our energy future needs to include processing energy in a way that protects people’s health and spreads the burden of energy production more evenly.

How the Right-Wing Climate Change Deniers Work Their Evil Magic

[ 11 ] February 7, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Leo Hickman has a nice little piece of investigative journalism in the Guardian about how a right-wing climate myth gets born and spread. In short, a scientist working on whether wind farms might affect localized weather (within 300 meters), gets published. He suggests it might. A right-wing newspaper, in this case the British paper The Daily Mail, picks up on it, effectively rewrites the paper to fit its agenda, and publishes it. Climate change denier websites spread it around the internet. Right-wingers gloat.

Hickman interviewed the scientist involved, who is completely befuddled by what has happened.

I don’t know if there’s anything to be done about this, but scientists rarely have much of an understanding of how the right wingers will misrepresent their research. I mean, what are they supposed to do, stop their research? No. But it would be worthwhile for the leading scientific associations to create PR departments that fight for the proper dissemination and understanding of research and to provide some pushback when the anti-climate change forces make things up.

Bureaucratic Discretion and Environmental Protection

[ 3 ] February 7, 2012 | Erik Loomis

The Obama Administration is producing a comprehensive planning document for national forest management. By and large, environmentalists are OK with it. Except for one major exception. One of the key environmental victories in protecting the northern spotted owl and thus the Northwest’ old-growth forests was a 1982 United States Forest Service regulation that forced the agency to focus on the distribution of species throughout the forests, meaning that you had an emphasis on species movement, genetic diversity, and protecting swaths of habitat throughout a national forest. The timber companies and Republicans hated this because it empowered the courts to order the end to most old-growth logging to protect the owl.

This regulation is severely watered-down in the new regulations. Specifically, it allows the manager of a national forest to make these decisions, allowing a bureaucrat massive discretion in deciding the future of a species. Under a Democratic president, it’s possible that these decisions will be made with the health of the species and forest as a whole in mind. Under a Republican, appointees will almost certainly eviscerate any attempt to protect wildlife.

The larger question is whether science or politics will govern our national forest land. Is it more important to ensure the proper distribution of a species or play politics? Unfortunately, and again despite an overall forest policy that is reasonably good, the Obama Administration has decided to open the door for future presidents to undermine wildlife protection.

Another way of putting it is that the timber industry and their Congressional flacks like Doc Hastings are very pleased. And that’s never a good sign.

….Here’s a good example from New Mexico about why allowing political appointees to create environmental management policy is a bad idea.

Scotch and Social Status

[ 155 ] February 7, 2012 | Erik Loomis

This piece on the growing popularity of scotch in Latin America reminds me again of the connections between scotch and social status in the developing world. When I lived in Asia, wherever I was, anyone who was anyone had at least one bottle of Johnny Walker around. It was the go-to drink for any high-class social occasion the upwardly mobile attended. Now that the upper-middle class in Latin America is growing fairly rapidly, it’s hardly surprising that scotch sales are on the rise there too.

Another point. Admittedly, I am fiercely nationalistic when it comes to alcohol. The Belgians make amazing beer, but beer in the United States is of a greater variety and can be of equal or even greater quality. No other nation comes close. I will give the Europeans the gin category, both the British and the Dutch, but the Americans are closing the gap with such gems as Bluecoat and Death’s Door. Vodka, well, I’m glad Americans aren’t famous for that. And while good scotch is good, drinking overseas is consistently frustrating for me because the glories of bourbon seem almost totally unknown through most of the world. The only bourbons most bars have are brands that I have never heard of and am scared to try. If I’m lucky, some Jim Beam. Which isn’t very lucky.

Given the connection between social status and American consumer products through much of the developing world, it’s interesting that this doesn’t extend to alcohol. That includes beer as Heineken, Beck’s, and other overpriced bad European beers dominate the foreign beer market, even in Latin America.

Welfare and Guilt

[ 47 ] February 7, 2012 | Erik Loomis

As a labor historian and writer, I think a lot about why Americans lean so much more to the right than most of the rest of the European diaspora. Why did socialism have such an impact throughout Europe, Canada, etc., and has always struggled to gain a foothold in the United States? Why has the United States always been so hostile to labor unions compared to other nations? Why do we look down on the welfare state instead of embracing it as a small price to pay for a healthy society?

I think it comes down to the strong individualistic ethic in American society that extends deep into our mythology. Today, in my Gilded Age/Progressive Era class, I am having my students read Ray Stannard Baker’s 1903 article, “The Right to Work.” Baker chronicled the coal miners who scabbed during the 1902 Pennsylvania strike that convinced Theodore Roosevelt to intervene in a relatively neutral way to give miners better lives and get coal to eastern homes in the winter. Baker clearly sympathizes with the scabs because, like many Progressives, he believed in the right of the individual to rise and fall according to his ability. Progressives wanted to level the playing field a bit, but they were deeply uncomfortable with a labor union composed of militant Poles and Hungarians. The people Baker interviewed were either native-born Americans or long-time residents who had migrated from England or Scotland. They bought into the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality and, like many native-born Americans and “Old Immigrants,” found their world view really challenged by the new industrial capitalist system.

The same is true of the Northwestern loggers I study. The I.W.W. certainly had native-born Americans as members, but its ranks in the woods were dominated by the foreign-born and especially the Scandinavians. The native-born loggers and especially those who were born in the Northwest really tended to oppose the union. They believed in the system, even as they were getting screwed.

I was thinking of this today when I read the piece about going on food stamps. Food stamps is something most Americans feel ashamed of accepting. We demonize welfare recipients instead of accepting the fact that people are poor and the government should help them. We tie our self-worth to our ability to financially sustain ourselves independent of public assistance or charity. It’s as central to American mythology in 2012 as it was 1892. Even I am afflicted by this. I was shocked when I found out my Australian friends could go on the dole after their travels until they found a job. I would be mortified to go on food stamps. I shouldn’t be. And we should all recognize that a generous welfare program can coexist with an energetic, entrepreuneristic society.

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