Goodwill Misses the Meaning of Good Will

When 19-year-old Andrew Anderson started working at the Goodwill store in East Naples, Florida, he thought his job was pretty cool. He was working in a place where poor and low-income people came to buy the things they couldn't afford anywhere else.  

"It makes you feel amazing," he said, "makes you feel you can actually be the person to help them."  

Andrew worked at Goodwill for three weeks and from his place behind the counter he saw people come on bicycles with, as he said, "wearing all the clothes they had, with two, three dollars, max."  It was his job to collect the money for the goods they purchased.  When he saw the poorest of the poor coming through his line he began discounting whatever the item cost. He loved the smiles he got from the folks who saw their bills cut in half.  He thought nothing of it and didn't really want thanks.  He saw it as paying it forward.

His bosses saw it another way.  They fired him for stealing from the company, even though he never took a thing for himself and later offered to make up the difference himself.  They weren't amused.  They had him arrested.

"I wasn't actually stealing. Goodwill is a giving and helping company, so I took it upon to myself to be giving and helping because I feel people deserve it," Anderson said.

But the teenager quickly went from paying it forward to the Collier County jail.

"My heart just dropped into my stomach," Anderson said.

Store officials fired Anderson and reported the incident to deputies. They arrested him Tuesday and charged him with grand theft.

The statute for grand theft reads, "Theft -- Appropriate the property to his or her own use or to the use of any person not entitled to the use of the property." - Per Collier County Sheriff's Office

Anderson says he never knew giving discounts was wrong or even illegal.

"The intent I had was to help people, just like Goodwill says, we help people," Anderson said.

 Well, up to a point, Andrew, and only on their terms:

"Our stores are not around to give a hand out, they're around to give people a hand up by providing funding, said Kirstin O'Donnell, a spokesperson for Goodwill Retail and Donation Center in East Naples.

"In incidents like this, we always prosecute and the reason why is when people steal from Goodwill, they're not stealing from the company, they're stealing from the mission of our organization."

Well, sure, Andrew shouldn't have taken it upon himself to give discounts at the thrift store, but couldn't his bosses have just taken him aside and told him that?  Did they really have to fire him?  Who wouldn't want such a good kid working for them?

And really? They had him arrested??  

I'm trying to picture the scene at the station house, when poor Andrew is hauled in there and made to admit he did what he did.  I'm seeing a "Barney Miller" segment, where Wojo is doing the grilling.  Andrew tells his story and even before he's finished Wojo is wiping away the tears.  Uh oh..  Wojo barricades himself and Andrew in Barney's office, and we know there is no way this kid is going to jail.  

I'm waiting for Goodwill to do a mea culpa.  We were wrong, people!  While we don't condone what Andrew did, we did a poor job of explaining how this thing works.  It was an honest mistake!  Come back!  We're good people!  We're Goodwill!

Andrew says now, "My heart was in the right place, my head was in the wrong place."

Your head and your heart are just fine, Andrew.  And I predict once Wojo springs you and this is over, there will be employers waiting in line, begging you to come to work for them.   Everyone should be so lucky.

***Update, as of 30 minutes ago:

A Goodwill store in Naples, Fla., reversed course today and decided to drop grand theft charges against a teen employee who had given discounts to poor customers.
The decision came four days after the store had fired Andrew Anderson, 19, and had him arrested for granting discounts that totaled $4,000. As recently as today, the store defended its actions saying the money could have been better used on Goodwill’s other charitable projects.

Really, Goodwill?  That $4,000 could have been better used on Goodwill's other charitable projects?  Do you know how much the big guys upstairs make?

No?  Well, let's just look:

[Goodwill International CEO Jim] Gibbons' salary and deferred compensation amounted to $729,000 in 2011, the CEO of Goodwill Industries of Southern California got $1.1 million and the Portland, Oregon top executive received more than $500,000, NBC reported.

And don't think I didn't notice in that same article that Goodwill had to 'fess up to paying a disabled worker 3 cents an hour in 2008--all legal, of course.

But Hooray for Andrew Anderson.  That's what good will looks like.

Republicans Vote to Keep Folks Hungry and Sick and Their Base Loves It. The Rest of Civilization is Appalled.

Yesterday the Republicans in the House voted to slash 40 billion dollars in annual food stamp (SNAP) coverage over 10 years, putting some 3.8 million poor people in jeopardy of losing their pitiful but essential pennies-a-day government food support.  (There are some 47 million people at the poverty level here in the United States.  A shameful fact that should point out the absolute need to keep the SNAP program alive rather than killing it.  But apparently in the People's House in Washington facts are sticky things to be ignored or stretched or blasted to smithereens.)

Today, in case the country didn't get how serious they were about enriching their pals by screwing the little people, the majority of the House Republicans made a game of pretending to care about balancing the budget by voting to defund Obamacare, a booby trap they set up to stop the budget bill in its tracks, threatening to shut down much of our central government if their crazy demands weren't met. (Clever fellows.  They chose to defund it this time, saving themselves the embarrassment of having to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act for. . .ready for this?. . . the 42nd time.)

(Oh, wait.  Hold the phone. . .Here's a guy who says the 42nd time will be the charm.  I am not kidding.)

Obamacare will not be perfect.  For every person it helps, there will be those who will find it lacking--or even awful.  But it's a start.  It's the first opportunity we've had to hobble runaway insurance dictates, to slow down medical care costs, to get on the bandwagon leading to health care sanity.  We're doing it large-scale through the government--the only way it can be done effectively and efficiently.  The only way.  And if this is the best we can do because of the obstacles put in place by the high-flyers who will most definitely see a drop in their beyond-the-bright-blue-sky profits, then shame on them.  We'll keep moving forward, they'll keep throwing up obstacles, but eventually we'll catch up with those civilized countries that see so much value in their citizens they've figured out a way to keep the majority of them fed, safe, educated and healthy.

We thought we were heading in that direction.  All these years we thought we were moving toward the kind of democracy Lincoln envisioned when he spoke of a government of the people, by the people and for the people, and now, when the chance is ours to do the right thing, when the need is so acute, we're hounded by a bunch of Republican congressmen so mean even junkyard dogs won't mess with them.

It's panic time now, with only ten more days left to demonize the ACA before the real stuff goes into effect, an action that will show up those Republican Servants of the People for the lying mercenaries they are.  In their panic they've had to align themselves with some pretty nasty bedfellows.  Some of them are hoping, come 2014, we won't notice, but until then they're feeling pretty free to keep on toying with us.   And why not?  Their benevolent benefactors, ALEC and the Koch Brothers, show no signs of either going away or running out of money.  And some of us have very short memories.

But here's what's going to do them in:  We don't like bullies.  We don't like watching bullies hold weaker people down and use them for punching bags.  Sooner or later we'll get up off our asses and do something about it.  And if we're lucky the "watchdog" press will shake themselves loose and do the same.

And how's this for bad timing?  The Republicans voted to eviscerate the food stamp bill in September, the month designated as "Hunger Action Month".

Click here and scroll down for link to invite your congressfolks to take part.  Especially if they're Republicans.

(Obamacare myths debunked at FactCheck.org.) 

Julian Assange Lost Big Time. Look Out, Australia!

WHEN asked to explain why he was running for a seat in the Australian Senate while holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, Julian Assange quoted Plato: “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” 

Plato was “a bit of a fascist,” he said, but had a point.

Imagine the chagrin Mr. Assange must feel now, given that not only did he fail to win a place in the Senate in the recent election, but he was less successful than Ricky Muir from the Motoring Enthusiasts Party. Mr. Muir, who won just 0.5 percent of the vote, is most famous for having posted a video on YouTube of himself having a kangaroo feces fight with friends. 

Julia Baird, NYT Sunday Review, 9/14/13

It's no secret that I'm not a Julian Assange fan, and if I were an Australian I surely would have worked insanely hard to keep him from winning, but given my track record for not voting for people I think are such huge jokes there's no chance of them EVER getting elected, only to see them WIN (See Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Rick Snyder, town council member Buzz (Buzzy) Lightfoot), I wouldn't have been surprised if that big-headed Wikileaks blowhard had actually won.

I don't know Australian politics, of course, but if they're anything like us they have their own Bachmanns and Pauls and the aforementioned Reagans and Bushes.  Nobody is immune from political nutiness.  

But I bring this up here because I really, seriously want to go on record as being able to write the following:

Julian Assange lost a senate race in Victoria, Australia, coming in so embarrassingly low even his most loyal backers at The Guardian will have a hard time coming up with some lame-assed excuse having to do with secret government dealings, or world-wide intervention, or even Swedish prisses--whatever excuse there might be for causing the little mighty-might to fall.

And also. . .I really need to add this "spoof video", courtesy of Assange's lead defender, The Guardian (or, as they like to be known, the guardian), where the serious candidate for senate in Victoria, Australia, dons a mullet wig and lip synchs about why he has to go after those bastards in Australia.

It might be a good time to note here, too,  that Assange, running for office in Australia, is in London (that's in England) where he's being protected by the Ecuadorian government (that's in Central America) from the Swedish government (that's in Sweden), where he's wanted for questioning about some kind of trumped-up sex scandal designed just to embarrass the poor guy and take away his dignity and his livelihood.

Photo here because the guardian will no doubt take down the video, now that their guy Assange LOST.

 But to add insult to injury (is that possible with Julian Assange?) the Ecuadorians didn't quite get how fun this was.  They told Assange to stop making fun of Australian politicians while he's enjoying their hospitality.

Tensions between Assange and his Ecuadorean hosts were heightened during the Snowden affair, with diplomats saying that they felt that the WikiLeaks founder was trying to steal the limelight.
According to Agence France-Presse, Correa said: "The rules of asylum in principle forbid meddling in the politics of the country that grants asylum. But as a matter of courtesy, we are not going to bar Julian Assange from exercising his right to be a candidate. Just so long as he doesn't make fun of Australian politicians or people."

And to make matters even worse, Julian's Wikileaks running mate, Ethicist Leslie Cannold, originally so in touch with Assange she felt she had to write about why she, a feminist, would be running alongside him, resigned, along with six other Wikileaks members.  If Julian, for some reason (Sweden) couldn't fulfill his duties when (not if) he was elected, Leslie would have taken his place.  But it seems there was some secret hanky panky going on at Wikileak party headquarters (yes, I said secret), that went something like this:

In the resignation statement on Wednesday, Ms Cannold hit out at the failure to lodge Senate preference forms in WA and NSW in line with the National Council's instructions.
She said despite resistance, party members who wanted the problem reviewed prevailed.
But those who fought for the review ‘‘felt tired and disillusioned’’ and were then hit with a ‘‘bombshell’’.
‘‘A member of the party rang two key volunteers in succession and requested that they join with him in going outside the party's formal structures,’’ Ms Cannold said.
‘‘In these phone calls, the Council was denigrated and a proposal made to each volunteer in succession that they join with select candidates and Council members in taking direction from other than the National Council.
‘‘The consequence of the proposal was that the National Council and two of the campaign coordinators - also National Council members who have been actively involved in pushing for the preference review - would be bypassed.’’
She said a campaign staffer also received a phone call that contradicted the public statement issued by the WikiLeaks Party on Wednesday that the review of preferences would be immediate and independent.
Instead, the review would be delayed until after the election and would not be independent, Ms Cannold said.
‘‘This is the final straw,’’ she said.
‘‘As long as I believed there was a chance that democracy, transparency and accountability could prevail in the party I was willing to stay on and fight for it. But where a party member makes a bid to subvert the party's own processes, asking others to join in a secret, alternative power centre that subverts the properly constituted one, nothing makes sense anymore.
‘‘This is an unacceptable mode of operation for any organisation but even more so for an organisation explicitly committed to democracy, transparency and accountability.’’

So now Julian Assange has LOST his bid for a senate seat in Victoria.  I predict Australia won't be hearing the last of him.  In fact, if I were Australia I would be locking up the goodies and throwing away the keys.  If you know what I mean.


NOTE:  Selected for MBRU on Crooks and Liars. Thanks!

(Cross-posted at dagblog, as always.)

9/11/2001. It Will Be With Us Forever.

Today marks the 12th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. (Note: This is adapted from a post I wrote on this anniversary two years ago.)  Twelve years have passed -- more than a decade -- but for those closest to the terror, for those whose loved ones were caught in that unimaginable rage storm, for those who trained for this, who mobilized and fought so hard to try and save the lives already lost to them, we pay tribute by refusing to forget.

The pictures are all that is left.  They stay with us and resonate as terrible, beautiful works of art.

The agony of the men and women who could do nothing but stand by and watch the towers fall reflected and drove home our own agony -- even those of us in the hinterlands who watched the horrific events unfold on our TV screens, helpless to do anything but gasp and moan and rock with a kind of psychic pain most of us had never felt in our entire lifetimes.

 

As painful as the dredging up of the images of that terrible day is to us, there is no sense of dread as the annual anniversaries approach.  Every year, on September 11, we want to remember.  9/11 has become a watchword.  Nobody in America has to be told what those numbers represent.  

As I write this, they're reciting the names of the men and women lost to us on September 11, 2001 in a ceremony to honor the dead.  The names are being read alphabetically.  For one brief moment the people live again.  We do this for their families and for us.  They're not just numbers or actors in an unimaginable event that became the catalyst for an entire decade that changed all of our lives forever.  We need to keep their memories alive in order to recognize their humanity, and possibly our own.

We remember.  We remember.  We'll always remember.

Three Years ago Julian Assange Lost his Luggage. He Just Now Noticed?

It was a long weekend and I was devilishly busy and exhausted to the point of just plain weary, so you'll have to forgive me if I don't have this right:

I read today that on September 27, 2010--almost three years ago--Julian Assange of Wikileaks fame checked a bag at an airport in Sweden containing three laptops filled with Wikileaks stuff, including some top secret "war crimes" information that, if it hadn't been stolen by some shady government dudes, would have knocked our socks off with revelations of dirty deeds so devastating, if they had ever, ever been revealed, the world as we know it might just stop spinning.  Or heads would roll.  Or Assange would be hailed as the hero he fancied he already was.  Whatever.  Something BIG would happen if ever those revelations saw the light of day.  So, of course, they were stolen by one or more shadowy government dudes who were not about to let that happen.

Well, okay, that's it, then.  But is it just me or does it seem odd that, first of all, Julian Assange would just hand that suitcase over to a Swedish ticket agent who would then send it into the airport bowels to have to fend for itself until it arrived safely at the baggage claim in Germany, where Assange would surely be jostling with his fellow passengers to see who could grab their luggage first and get the hell out of there?

And secondly, isn't it odd that Assange wouldn't notice, right there in the baggage claim line, that this most essential bit of baggage wasn't there?  If he had noticed, wouldn't he put up such a stink right then and there, maybe calling the Russians or The Guardian or Glenn Greenwald, or somebody, to help him find the damned thing?

And third--does it seem as odd to you as it does to me that Assange is only just now, three years later, filing a claim?   Did he wake up the other day and  remember that he once had a suitcase that held three laptops containing whopping war crime secrets and other really important things?  Was he so ashamed of the fact that he actually forgot one of his suitcases and only now remembered, he had to think fast and--yes!--blame it on those shadowy government dudes who were almost surely stalking him at the airport anyway?

I don't know.  I'm confused.  Did you know about this before?  Because I didn't.  Not until today, when I read all over the place that the Swedish police have opened an investigation into Assange's claims.  Three years later they've finally been asked to investigate.

This is how the Washington Post's Europe page reported it today:

In the affidavit, Assange suggested his bag may have been illegally seized “as part of an intelligence operation with the purpose of gathering information about me.” He offered no proof but said all attempts to locate the bag had failed.

The move comes a day before President Barack Obama visits Sweden.

“The suspected seizure or theft occurred at a time of intense attempts by the U.S. to stop WikiLeaks’ publications of 2010,” Assange said and suggested that Swedish authorities “seek explanations” from members of Obama’s delegation during their visit.

The police border control division at Arlanda Airport opened an investigation as a matter of course after receiving the complaint Tuesday, spokeswoman Jessica Fremnell said.  She declined to comment on Assange’s suggestion to interrogate people in Obama’s entourage, saying “we make our own decisions about what we think we need to do.”

No indication if the Post's reporting was done with a straight face, but one can only hope there were a few snorts and guffaws in that newsroom.

If not, there were enough in my room to make up for their lack.


[Note:  Featured on Mike's Blog Round Up at Crooks and Liars.  WooHoo!]

(Cross-posted, as always, at dagblog)

Labor in America: Those were the Days - (A Repeat)

Note:  Labor Day weekend is here once again, and let's enjoy it while we can.  I have a feeling, if things keep going this way, anything that smacks of celebrating labor in this country will disappear. 

I guess you've heard that Michigan, my Michigan has become a Right-to-Work state?  Who would have dreamed it would ever happen to Michigan?  Are businesses flocking to our border now, wanting to take advantage of cheap, unprotected labor?  Do I even have to answer that?  (I'm throwing this in because I'm still so mad about the whole damned thing.  I may throw it in many more times in future posts. Because I'll never stop being mad about the whole damned thing.)

So, since I'm going to be busy all weekend helping our daughter move into her new digs, and since I feel the need every Labor Day to acknowledge, appreciate and celebrate our labor force, I hope you don't mind if I do a repeat here of a blog post I wrote in 2010.  Are things any better for labor three years down the road?  Not much.  Can we fix that?  I don't know, but there is a new awakening.  People are trying.  That's all we can ask. 

(By the way, just ignore that first sentence if you can.  It's a bit of hyperbole just to get your attention.  Of course I feel like celebrating Labor Day.  As long as there's a Labor Day I'll feel like celebrating it.)
_____________________________

Every year for the past two dozen or so, I've felt less and less like celebrating Labor Day and more and more like forgetting the whole damned thing.  It used to be that we actually set aside that day to acknowledge and pay tribute to our vast labor force.  We had parades and speeches and presentations all across the country, with union leaders sticking verbal pins in the Big Guys, and the Big Guys pretending not to notice as they got ready to hold their noses and gush over the workers who made their products and sold their products and fixed their products (and--it should be noted--bought their products).

Labor and management have always had a love-hate relationship but there was a window--a brief window in time--when nearly everybody was making money and spending money and for most Americans life was good.  Cheap goods were coming in from the slave-labor countries but we still  made enough to be self-sustaining and proud.

A chicken in every pot. 

"Made in America".

"Look for the Union Label".

Then came government-approved off-shoring and outsourcing, along with cheap labor and non-regulation, and suddenly the Big Guys saw gold in them thar hills and weren't even our pretend friends anymore. We stopped making things and became the poor step-satellite of industrialized nations like China, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Korea, Macau (I'm reading labels here in my house).

And now here we are, looking at another Labor Day and wondering how the hell we got ourselves into this fix, considering the rich history of the labor movement and what those people put themselves through in order to make life fair for all of us.  I'm glad they're not here to see this.  On the other hand, we could use their fierce commitment to us right about now:

Cesar Chavez - Si Se Puede

There has never been a law at the state or national levels that has ever been enforced for farm workers and against growers: child labor, minimum wage and hour, occupational health and safety, agricultural labor relations.
Now will agribusiness protect farm workers from pesticides?
The agrichemical industry won't do it.
It's out to maximize profits. Using smaller amounts of safer chemicals more wisely is not in the interest of chemical companies and agribusiness groups like the Farm Bureau that have heavy financial stakes in maintaining pesticide use.
There is nothing is wrong with pesticides, they claim; the blame rests with abuse and misuse of pesticides.
It's like the N.R.A. saying, 'guns don't kill people, people kill people.'
Universities won't do it.
America's colleges and universities are the best research facilities in the world. But farm workers are of the wrong color; they don't speak the right language; and they're poor.
The University of California, and other land grant colleges spend millions of dollars developing agricultural mechanization and farm chemicals. Although we're all affected in the end, researchers won't deal with the inherent toxicity or chronic effects of their creations.
Protecting farm workers and consumers is not their concern.
Doctors won't do it.
Most physicians farm workers see won't even admit their patients' problems are caused by pesticides. They usually blame symptoms on skin rashes and heat stroke.
Doctors don't know much about pesticides; the signs and symptoms of acute pesticide poisoning are similar to other illnesses.
Doctors who work for growers or physicians with close ties to rural communities won't take a stand.
Two years ago in Tulare County, California 120 orange grove workers at LaBue ranch suffered the largest skin poisoning every reported. The grower had changed the formulation of a pesticide, Omite CR, to make it stick to the leaves better. It did.
It also stuck better to the workers. Later they discovered the reentry delay had to be extended from seven to 42 days.
After the poisoning, the company doctor said workers should just change clothes and return to work. When we demanded the workers be removed from exposure, the doctor replied, "Do you know how much that would cost?"
Workers endure skin irritations and rashes that none of us would tolerate. They continue to work because they desperately need the money. They don't complain out of fear of losing their jobs.
Farm workers aren't told when pesticides are used. They have no health insurance. They are cheated out of workers compensation benefits by disappearing labor contractors or foremen who intimidate people into not filing claims.
In the old days, miners would carry birds with them to warn against poison gas. Hopefully, the birds would die before the miners.
Farm workers are society's canaries.
 
ADDRESS BY CESAR CHAVEZ, PRESIDENT
UNITED FARM WORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO
Pacific Lutheran University
March 1989-Tacoma, Washington

 _________________________________ 

As a nation, we need to work out a list of national priorities.  We need to sharpen our vision and we need to rededicate ourselves to the basic human and democratic values that we believe in, and we need to put first things first.  We need to overcome the serious deficit in education, which is denying millions of our children their rightful opportunity to maximum growth.  The American labor movement can be proud that it was among those who pioneered for free public education.  American labor shares the belief that every child made in the image of God is entitled to an educational opportunity that will facilitate the maximum intellectual, cultural and spiritual growth.  We need to wipe out our slums and build decent, wholesome neighborhoods.  We need to provide more adequate medical care available to all groups.  We need to improve social security so that our aged citizens can live out their lives with a fuller measure of security and dignity.  We need to provide all of our citizens, without regard to race, creed, or color, equal opportunity in every phase of our national life.  We need to develop more fully our natural resources so that continued neglect will not put in jeopardy the welfare of future generations.

Walter Reuther, Labor Day speech, September 1, 1958

______________________________

No tin-hat brigade of goose-stepping vigilantes or bibble-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of labor, or divert its purpose to play its natural and rational part in the development of the economic, political and social life of our nation.

Unionization, as opposed to communism, presupposes the relation of employment; it is based upon the wage system and it recognizes fully and unreservedly the institution of private property and the right to investment profit. It is upon the fuller development of collective bargaining, the wider expansion of the labor movement, the increased influence of labor in our national councils, that the perpetuity of our democratic institutions must largely depend.

The organized workers of America, free in their industrial life, conscious partners in production, secure in their homes and enjoying a decent standard of living, will prove the finest bulwark against the intrusion of alien doctrines of government

John L. Lewis
, United Mine Workers of America, Labor Day speech, 1937

____________________________________

Now, my boys, you are mine; we have fought together, we have hungered together, we have marched together, but I can see victory in the Heavens for you. I can see the hand above you guiding and inspiring you to move onward and upward. No white flag — we can not raise it; we must not raise it. We must redeem the world!
Go into our factories, see how the conditions are there, see how women are ground up for the merciless money pirates, see how many of the poor wretches go to work with crippled bodies.
I talked with a mother who had her small children working. She said to me, "Mother, they are not of age, but I had to say they were; I had to tell them they were of age so they could get a chance to help me to get something to eat." She said after they were there for a little while, "I have saved $40, the first I ever saw. I put that into a cow and we had some milk for the little ones." In all the years her husband had put in the earth digging out wealth, he never got a glimpse of $40 until he had to take his infant boys, that ought to go to school, and sacrifice them.
If there was no other reason that should stimulate every man and woman to fight this damnable system of commercial pirates. That alone should do it, my friends.

Mother Jones to striking W. Virginia coal miners, 8/15/1912

______________________

We want eight hours and nothing less. We have been accused of being selfish, and it has been said that we will want more; that last year we got an advance of ten cents and now we want more. We do want more. You will find that a man generally wants more. Go and ask a tramp what he wants, and if he doesn’t want a drink he will want a good, square meal. You ask a workingman, who is getting two dollars a day, and he will say that he wants ten cents more. Ask a man who gets five dollars a day and he will want fifty cents more. The man who receives five thousand dollars a year wants six thousand a year, and the man who owns eight or nine hundred thousand dollars will want a hundred thousand dollars more to make it a million, while the man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day. We live in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In the age of electricity and steam that has produced wealth a hundred fold, we insist that it has been brought about by the intelligence and energy of the workingmen, and while we find that it is now easier to produce it is harder to live. We do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more. And we shall never cease to demand more until we have received the results of our labor.

Samuel Gompers, Address to workers, Louisville, KY 1890

President Obama talked about the needs of workers and the declining middle class in his Weekly Address.  If he lets us down this time, I'm going to go out and find me my own bibble-babbling mob and take action.

And maybe I missed it, but whatever happened to the Employee Free Choice Act?

(Oh, and did you catch "Sunday Morning" on CBS yesterday?  Did you see their tribute to Labor?  It was about German workers in a BMW factory.  Management came up with the idea to put older, more experienced workers in one section on one shift and let them come up with ways to improve productivity.  At their suggestion the company put in wooden floors, gave them more comfortable shoes, gave them hairdressers chairs to sit in, increased the size of the computer fonts, and fixed up places for them to stretch.  Over time productivity went up 7%, absenteeism went down, and the assembly line defect rate was non-existent.  Damned Socialists. . .)

Enjoy our day. Keep the light shining.  Solidarity.

Ramona

RIP Elmore Leonard

Sadly, Elmore Leonard, has died.  He was Detroit's foremost novelist and cheerleader.  I wrote about him at Constant Commoner today in a piece called "I called Elmore Leonard 'Dutch' Once".

You can find it here.

George Will ruminating on Detroit: About like Howdy Doody ruminating on the Moon

So George Will, highly renowned municipal analyst and wicked good judge of character, has once again set his sights on Detroit. Somehow--don't ask me how--I knew this would happen.  I knew it would happen because the decline of Detroit, our allegedly foremost black and poor city, is in the spotlight, and it's beyond George Will's ability to say no to such delicious news .

Behold!  An entire city has fallen to such lows there is nothing left but to declare them bankrupt--financially, morally, culturally, and--sigh--intellectually.  The city is beyond hope, reduced now to gasping its last breath.

As the pack of jackals awaiting nearby begins to close in; begins to circle, no surprise that one George F. Will, tightass extraordinaire, is right up front.  Will is not one to not have an opinion, even when he knows next to nothing about the subject--especially if the subject is one he believes is beneath him.

Will has a snooty gene that tends to surface whenever les miserables are shown to be more miserable than usual.  It is his duty to explain to the miserables just how culpable they are in their own undoing.  Because if he didn't explain it to them, they might not know to feel both miserable and guilty.  Guilt is the twist of the knife.  There is no redemption without the twist of the knife.   

You've been bad, Detroit.  And worse, you've been ordinary. You must repent.  You must take your licks.

In December, 2012, he wrote:

If you seek a monument to Michigan's unions, look, if you can without wincing, at Detroit, where the amount of vacant land is approaching the size of Paris. And where the United Auto Workers, which once had more than 1 million members and now has about 380,000, won contracts that crippled the local industry — and prompted the growth of the non-unionized auto industry that is thriving elsewhere. Detroit's rapacious and oblivious government employees unions are parasitic off a near-corpse of a city that has lost 25 percent of its population just since 2000. The Wall Street Journal reports that because some government workers with defined-benefit pensions can retire in their 40s, "many retirees living into their 80s are drawing benefits for nearly twice as long as they work." 

Union contracts didn't cripple Detroit's auto industry, corporate greed did.  They were bad at sharing, even though without the workers in Detroit that industry would never have grown as it did.  Once they figured out that they could outsource or robotize much of the manufacturing, they were off to the races.  Why give living wages when you can get by on giving slave wages somewhere else?

Will's notion that the city's union employees were "rapacious and oblivious" to the dying Detroit and it was the out-of-control pension funds that dealt the final deathblow is just farcical.

This, according to the Free Press last week:

The battle over the health of the City of Detroit pension funds flared again Friday when the Bond Buyer, a Wall Street publication, reported on a new analysis showing that the pension funds’ optimistic assessments “fall mostly within accepted industry standards.”
Kevyn Orr, the city’s emergency manager, has estimated the underfunding of the city’s two pension funds at $3.5 billion. The pension fund managers disagree, saying the funds are more than 90% funded, meaning that there are adequate resources to pay almost all future liabilities.

H/T for the above to Chris Savage over at Eclectablog, who gives further voice to what a lot of us have been thinking:

Look, I get it that Detroit is in a major crisis. I do. I get that. But there isn’t any reason for Kevyn Orr to jump on the ruin porn train to make things look worse than they are unless he’s afraid that Detroit will be found not to actually be insolvent, which puts his plan to take the city through bankruptcy in peril. There’s also the fact that wealthy, opportunistic vultures waiting in the wings to swoop in and exploit Detroit’s situation for their own financial gain. That means snapping up city assets at bargain basement prices and getting lucrative contracts when anything not nailed down gets privatized to for-profits corporations.

Nobody questions the fact that Detroit has been in a steady decline for decades.  Corruption was rampant there for longer than any of us want to remember.  Dependence on one significant but fleeting industry for almost a century was pure folly.  There are ghettos and drug wars and crime statistics that place Detroit too often at the top of the list.  But the workers in Detroit are tired of taking the blame.  The city may never rise to its former glory, but it can and will survive only if it can feel worthy again.  The George Wills don't help:

"Detroit...has suffered not just economic setbacks but also a cultural collapse that precludes a rapid recovery. Despite some people’s facile talk about “rebooting” Detroit, as though it is a balky gadget, this is a place where dangerous packs of feral dogs roam. No city can succeed without a large middle class, and in spite of cheery talk about a downtown sprinkling of “hipsters and artisans,” a significant minority of Detroit’s residents are functionally illiterate and only 12 percent have college degrees (in Seattle, 56 percent do). Families are the primary transmitters of social capital, and 79 percent of children here are born to unmarried women. What middle-class family would send children into a school system where 3 percent of fourth-graders meet national math standards?"

Will precedes his indictment of an entire city with this cheery shout-out to Rick Snyder, Michigan's Koch-fueled dictator-in-residence (Emphasis mine):

Snyder is neither surprised nor dismayed by the Obama administration’s prompt refusal to consider bailing out the city: “I had made it clear I wasn’t going to ask them” for a bailout. One example of Washington’s previous costly caring is Detroit’s People Mover, the ghost train that circulates mostly empty. Snyder dismisses this slab of someone else’s pork as “part of the 60 years of failure.” He has largely forsworn attracting businesses to the city by offering tax credits, which he calls “the heroin drip of government.” He speaks not of “fixing” but of “reinventing” Detroit, by which he means a new “culture of how to behave and act.”

 Well, isn't that the all-time limit?  Snyder, the nerdy number-cruncher-cum-plantation-boss, now sets his sights on culture and manners.  (Anything else, massa?)  And George Will apparently thinks that's cool. 

So the next time George wants to talk about Detroit I've got a soapbox I'll set up for him. Right here in Grand Circus Park, where the hipsters and artisans and other clueless undesirables can come and hear what he has to say about their city.  (Fear not, George, it's nowhere near where feral dogs might lurk.)

Grand Circus Park, Detroit

Be sure and wear your bow tie, George, and bring your wife.  She might want to talk about her activities in both Rick Perry's and Michele Bachmann's campaigns.  That'll be a real ice-breaker.  A few laughs can't hurt.

But remember where you are and nix the happy talk about Snyder.  I mean, really.  Listen to me.  I know what I'm talking about.

(Featured today on Mike's Blog Roundup at Crooks and Liars.  Welcome, new visitors!   Cross-posted, as always, at dagblog)

Huma Abedin is not Anthony Weiner

There is a part of the American feminist movement that drives me nuts.  It's the part where all women who call themselves feminists have to be smart and sassy and so damned tough any public sign of vulnerability or weakness, particularly where men are involved, is reason enough to drum them out of the corps.

The unwritten compact says women warriors do not stand by any man who shows himself to be a shit.  I would submit that that description applies to every man.  It also applies to every woman.  We've all been total crapheads many times over the course of our lives.  We're all imperfect in ways the rest of the animal world can't even imagine.  The rest of the animal world goes on the attack mainly because the victim looks tasty and they're hungry.  We, on the other hand, have devised a million different ways to make our victims feel bad about themselves before we chew them up and spit them out.

So, about Huma Abedin. For reasons many of us may not be able to fathom, she has chosen, at least for now, to stay with and profess love for Anthony Weiner.   She has a child with Weiner.  They have a marriage.  Weiner is running for mayor of New York City.  In a press conference that most of us will agree went terribly, terribly wrong, Abedin took to the podium and tried to ease the city's fears about Weiner's abilities to do the job. She said she forgives him, she loves him and she believes in him.

She might as well have built her own bonfire, doused herself with gasoline, stood in the middle of the pile and struck the match.  She is toast.

Because, Huma Abedin, you see, is no ordinary wifey.  She is smart and sassy and strong.  She knows Hillary Clinton so well there are hints that Huma went to Hillary, a victim of her own husband's maddeningly public sexual exploits, for counsel when the story broke about Anthony's underwear undoing.  And because she knows and has worked closely with Hillary, she is. . .what's the word?

Ambitious.

So there has to be more to her devotion to her husband than she's telling.  She wants to live in Gracie Mansion. She loves living in the public eye and has her sights on her own political career. She, beautiful, gracious Huma Abedin, couldn't possibly love a man like Anthony Weiner.

Sound familiar?  Yes, they're the same arguments we heard so many years ago about her friend and mentor, Hillary Rodham Clinton. The same Hillary Clinton who shares a successful and seemingly happy life with the man who, by all accounts, including hers, put her through hell.  Somehow, Hillary and Bill have learned to live with the constant reminders of that trumped-up impeachment trial over Bill's embarrassing sexual hijinks in the Oval Office, reported down to the last icky detail. 

Hillary Clinton stood by her man but still became her own woman, going on to become a U.S senator. a formidable presidential candidate, and, by all accounts, an effective Secretary of State.  Still, she speaks highly of her husband.  She stands with him when she stands beside him.  I have no doubt that Hillary loves Bill and that Bill loves her back.

I don't know what will happen with Huma and Anthony, but I do know this:  Whatever happens has to happen between them.  Huma didn't open the floodgates into a deep and thorough analysis of their personal lives by announcing that she believes him, she loves him and she believes in him.  The press did.

This from Sally Quinn in the Washington Post:

Up until Weiner’s cringeworthy news conference Tuesday, I had felt sorry for his wife, Huma Abedin, even though I couldn’t understand how she was able to condone his online antics in the first place. I have nothing against Abedin. I like her: She is a lovely, gracious, intelligent woman. I ache for her need to come to the rescue of this man who has betrayed her so often and will likely do it again. I ache for all women who find themselves in this position. And yet, there she stood in front of the cameras, this modern American career woman, by her man, saying she had forgiven him, loved him and believed in him. Just what exactly does she believe in? The only thing she can believe in for sure is that he will continue his infidelity.
Though her friends say she is strong and resolute and defiant, sadly she makes all women look like weak and helpless victims. She was not standing there in a position of strength. It was such a setback for women everywhere

From Lisa Bloom over at CNN:

Isn't it time to call the spectacle of the suffering political wife, standing by her man in the media glare as he admits to his latest sexual offense against her, what it really is: spousal abuse?
Huma Abedin has the right to make any decisions she wants about her life, just as a victim of domestic abuse has the right to return for more -- but we don't have to stand silently by and condone it.

And this incredible bit of reasoning from Maureen Dowd:

WHEN you puzzle over why the elegant Huma Abedin is propping up the eel-like Anthony Weiner, you must remember one thing: Huma was raised in Saudi Arabia, where women are treated worse by men than anywhere else on the planet.

Hogwash, hooey, and bullshit. Those few words she spoke publicly didn't give any of us permission to judge her or to give her advice about her personal life.  I don't live in New York City and have no stake in this race.  Turns out there are about 305 million of us who don't live in New York City.  So why is the marriage of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin so important to so many people?  For days now that's all we've heard--and it's more about Huma than it is about Anthony. At some point we have to ask ourselves why we care so much.

Why do this to Huma?  What buttons is she pushing that causes this much anger at her?  She is not her husband.  She is her husband's helpmate, but beyond that she is a smart, sassy woman tough enough to withstand the expected onslaught she knew would come when she stood by him.  I have nothing but admiration for her.  That took guts.

Hey, Detroit. It's Only Art

Safe to say that ever since the news broke that the entire city of Detroit was filing for bankruptcy hundreds of thousands of us Detroiters and ex-Detroiters and Michiganders everywhere have been biting our nails, gnashing our teeth, pounding the walls, spending partially-sleepless nights worrying about the fate of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA).

Detroit Institute of Arts

The DIA, our beautiful jewel of an art museum, is wholly-owned by the city.  The city of Detroit.  Yes, they own it.  They used to say the people owned it, but apparently, as with "By, For, and Of the People", it's all in the interpretation. 

So what's the first thing we hear after that awful news about going bankrupt?  The VERY first thing?  (Even before we heard that the state was going to put up $285 million to build a new stadium for the Red Wings.) We hear that if things don't go right all or part of the DIA's extensive, expensive, exquisite art collection could be up for grabs.

This is how Bill Nowling, spokesman for Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr so delicately put it:

"We went to the DIA two months ago and told them that we thought, should the city be forced by its creditors into Chapter 9 bankruptcy, that the assets of the city could be vulnerable."

The folks who manage the DIA as a public, non-profit institution successfully parsed that particular end-phrase and have already contacted lawyers. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette says the works can't be sold because they're held in a public trust.  Others aren't so sure.  The creditors could put up a real stink if they find out Detroit is swimming in assets over at the Purty Pitcher place.  It's a mess.

Then we find out that appraisers from Christie's Auction House invited themselves in and have already been there measuring the nudes and stirring up the dust.  I mean, could you be any more insensitive?

Well, yes, it turns out you can.  Ever heard of Peter Schjeldahl? He's the art critic for the New Yorker.  He lives in New York City.  He's never been to the DIA.  Still, he felt compelled to blog all over the place that it's no skin off his nose if the DIA has to sell off some of our art.

See if you can read the following and give a rodent's patooty about this guy's opinion of what's best for the DIA.  (Lots of hoity-toity words like "ineluctable" and "deaccessions" and "demur" and "abjure".  Just warning you.  And "solicitude".  Right at the end. "Solicitude".)

Art works have migrated throughout history. Unless destroyed, they are always somewhere. It’s best when they are on public display, but if they have special value their sojourns in private hands are likely temporary. At any rate, they are hardly altered by inhabiting one building rather than another. The relationship of art to the institutions that house and display it is a marriage of convenience, with self-interest on both sides, and not an ineluctable romance. I demur from the hysterical piety, among many of my fellow art folk, that regularly greets news of museum deaccessions—though I do wish museums would have the guts to abjure that weasel word for selling things off. (Paging George Orwell.) A museum may thereby maim itself; but the art takes no notice. Protest as we should a local institution’s short-sighted or venal behavior, we must admit at least a sliver of light between such issues and art’s immemorial claims on our solicitude.

In Schjeldahl's stuffy, sniffy piece he pokes a little fun at New Republic writer Nora Caplan-Bricker, who wrote a counterpoint called, "In Defense of Crumbling Museums: Why Detroit Should Keep Its Art".  (Happily, Caplan-Bricker manages to do it without using a single one of those words in quotes above.  And with paragraphs.)

So I'm over there at the New Republic hoping to wallow a while in some commiserating comfort when Nora whaps me silly in the second paragraph with a quote from a writer over at Bloomberg who, if it's possible, is an even bigger smarty-pants than that guy Schjeldahl.

Virginia Postrel's piece is called, "Detroit's Van Gogh Would Be Better Off in L.A".  Yes.  I am serious.  I read it three times.  The title, if you can believe it, is the least cutting of all.  (You might want to sit down for this one. Unless you're already thinking by the title you'll be agreeing with Ginny.  In that case, just stand there, you idiot.)

So Virginia, (yes, a Los Angeles resident) says:

If I lived in Detroit, I’d want to keep these artworks, too. And if I were a museum employee, I’d be particularly demoralized. The DIA has in recent years shown itself a responsible financial steward, and last August won voter approval in three surrounding counties for its first dedicated property-tax funding.

Well, isn't that special?  But wait. . .

Parochial interests aside, however, great artworks shouldn’t be held hostage by a relatively unpopular museum in a declining region. The cause of art would be better served if they were sold to institutions in growing cities where museum attendance is more substantial and the visual arts are more appreciated than they’ve ever been in Detroit. Art lovers should stop equating the public good with the status quo.

And then she says:

In fiscal 2012, which ended June 30, the Detroit museum attracted just fewer than 489,000 visits -- barely 1,000 more than it drew in 1928. With admission now free to residents of the tri-county area, the numbers are up this year, to about 526,000 through April. (These numbers count visits, not individuals; if you come five times, it counts as five visits.) By contrast, last year the Getty Center attracted 1.2 million visitors to a collection whose most impressive asset is the building in which it is housed. (The attendance figure doesn’t include visitors to the separate Getty Villa, which houses Greek and Roman art.)

The museum’s director, Timothy Potts, is charged with adding major works. Last month, the Getty announced the purchase of “Rembrandt Laughing,” a self-portrait of the young painter discovered in 2007, and a Canaletto view of the Grand Canal in Venice. But a young museum can only buy what’s for sale. 

And in conclusion Virginia earnestly suggests that:

Letting the Getty add the Canaletto view of the Piazza San Marco now in Detroit wouldn’t constitute a rape or a bonfire of the vanities. Hanging Van Gogh’s self-portrait [also in Detroit] alongside his “Irises” at the Getty or Bellini’s Madonna [also in Detroit] near his “Christ Blessing” at the Kimbell would not betray the public trust. It would enhance it.

Because they're L.A (or New York)?  Because they have the Getty (or the MOMA)?  Because at our art museum every person, rich or poor, big or little, can wander up and down and through our grand halls, our wondrous rooms, studying, sighing, swooning, breathing it all in, feeling like a million bucks, like there isn't anybody luckier at this very moment,  for free?

Deliver us, please, from unctuous snobs and make them stay where they are.  We're Detroit and they're not.  And we like it that way.

Rivera Court, DIA (Not the murals destroyed at Rockefeller Center, NYC, after Diego Rivera dared to include a figure of Lenin.  We kept ours, it should be noted.)

Addendum:  Mr. Schjeldahl at the New Yorker has had a change of heart.  Click here.


(Cross-posted, as always, at dagblog)