Month: April 2012

Obama Awards Billions in Government Contracts to Labor Law Violators

Josh Eidelson, one of the best up and coming labor reporters around, writes at Salon: A 2010 report from the Government Accountability Office found that the federal government had awarded over $6 billion in contracts in fiscal 2009 to contractors that had been cited for violating federal labor laws, from wage and hour rules to organizing rights. Earlier in 2010, the New York Times reported that the White House was planning to implement a “high road” contracting policy that would direct more government contracts to companies with better labor and environmental records. But by 2011, Obama OMB nominee Heather Higginbottom told senators in a confirmation hearing that there were no such plans afoot. Imagine the outcry if the government was […]

The American Creed: You give us a color, we’ll wipe it out.

George Carlin: This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of slave owners who wanted to be free! So they killed a lot of white English people in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian people, and move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving ’em a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. You know what the motto for this country ought to be? “You give us a color, we’ll wipe it out.”   h/t Greg Grandin

Ex-Cons Make the Best Workers!

A reader of the blog sends me to this article from SmartMoney: Halloran says the former convicts are among his best employees. “They never miss a day, get drug tested and will work any shift,” he says. Hiring ex-felons is an experiment that hundreds of business owners have tried — and one that state and federal governments have supported with tax breaks. Uncle Sam offers businesses a credit of up to 40 percent of income taxes on the first $6,000 of wages paid to each former inmate they hire, a deal similar to those offered for hiring from other targeted categories, like welfare recipients and the disabled…. For the most part, the ex-cons are humbled by circumstances and grateful for […]

Boss to Worker: Thanks for Your Kidney. And, Oh, You’re Fired!

From today’s New York Post: A “kind and generous” Long Island mom donated a kidney to save the life of her boss — who then turned around after she got what she wanted and helped fire the poor woman, according to an explosive new legal complaint. … Then, two months later, in January 2011, Stevens told The Post, Brucia “called me into her office and said, ‘My donor was denied. Were you serious when you said that?’ I said, ‘Sure, yeah.’ She was my boss, I respected her. It’s just who I am. I didn’t want her to die.’’ … “I felt I was giving her life back,’’ Stevens told The Post. “My kidney ended up going to St. Louis, […]

Fighting Them There Rather than Here: From Hitler to Bush

George W. Bush: “It’s better to fight them there than here.” (May 24, 2007; also see September 22, 2003) Adolph Hitler: “We are fighting on such distant fronts to protect our own homeland, to keep the war as far away as possible, and to forestall what would otherwise be the fate of the nation as a whole.” (November 8, 1942)

Protocols of Machismo, Part 2: On the Hidden Connection Between Henry Kissinger and Liza Minnelli

Yesterday, I posted Part 1 of this excerpt from Chapter 9 of The Reactionary Mind. Today, I post Part 2. • • • • •   What is it about being a great power that renders the imagining of its own demise so potent? Why, despite all the strictures about the prudent and rational use of force, are those powers so quick to resort to it? Perhaps it is because there is something deeply appealing about the idea of disaster, about manfully confronting and mastering catastrophe. For disaster and catastrophe can summon a nation, at least in theory, to plumb its deepest moral and political reserves, to have its mettle tested, on and off the battlefield. However much leaders and […]

Protocols of Machismo: On the Fetish of National Security, Part I

As part of my ongoing series of short takes from The Reactionary Mind, I excerpt here chapter 9, “Protocols of Machismo.” This chapter originally appeared as a review essay in the London Review of Books in 2005. Because that piece remains behind the firewall, I’ve decided to reproduce the chapter here in its entirety: Part 1 today, Part 2, I hope, tomorrow. In the last several months, I’ve spent much time defending the state against both libertarians and anarchists. In this chapter, however, I go after the state and one of its most powerful and primary fetishes: the doctrine of national security. I also expand beyond my analysis of conservative intellectuals, taking on prominent liberal theorists like Michael Walzer and, […]

In Which I Pour More Fuel on the Cory Booker Fire

About six weeks before Cory Booker ran into a neighbor’s home to save her from a fire, a building he owned—but didn’t live in—caught fire.  Booker had bought the building, and the one next door, in 2009 as a residence for him and his parents. But after the renovations got too costly, he abandoned both buildings and bought another place elsewhere. He’s been looking for buyers ever since. Squatters moved into the absentee-owned building, and may have in fact started the fire. (h/t Matt Sledge) Forgive the video below—it and the music are truly atrocious—but before everyone starts jumping on me, remember: I didn’t start this fire.   Update (11:45 am) Turns out the neighbors of Booker’s abandoned buildings have […]

What Katha Said

Katha Pollitt writing in the Nation about the Hilary Rosen/Ann Romney fracas: But the brouhaha over Hilary Rosen’s injudicious remarks is not really about whether what stay-home mothers do is work. Because we know the answer to that: it depends. When performed by married women in their own homes, domestic labor is work—difficult, sacred, noble work. Ann says Mitt called it more important work than his own, which does make you wonder why he didn’t stay home with the boys himself. When performed for pay, however, this supremely important, difficult job becomes low-wage labor that almost anyone can do—teenagers, elderly women, even despised illegal immigrants. But here’s the real magic: when performed by low-income single mothers in their own homes, […]

The Thunder of World History

As you grit your teeth and bear down in these the last hours before Tax Day, remember this: Taxes, according to Joseph Schumpeter, are “the thunder of world history.” The spirit of a people, its social structure, the deeds its policy may prepare, all this and more is written in its fiscal history, stripped of all phrases. He who knows how to listen to its message here discerns the thunder of world history.

The Freedom, the Freedom!

When I was on Up With Chris Hayes in January, I talked about how the business lobby, led by the Chamber of Commerce, was mounting a ferocious campaign against a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board requiring employers to post a notice informing workers of their statutory rights. Today, a federal judge, appointed by Bush the Elder, overturned that ruling. Remember: this is just a requirement that employees be informed of their rights. It doesn’t impose costs on employers, restrict their profits, regulate their operations: it just requires that working men and women be informed of their rights. Struck down by a Republican judge. Ah, the freedom, the freedom.

In Which I Rain on Everyone’s Cory Booker Parade

Everyone’s giddy about Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s rescue of a neighbor last night from her burning house. The Twitterati are calling him a superhero and comparing him to the Seal team that killed Osama bin Laden. If Cory Booker hadn’t come along, Aaron Sorkin would have to invent him. This isn’t the first time that Booker has rushed to a scene of hazard and saved the day: during a blizzard two winters ago, he was out there shoveling snow, getting praise for doing the things we expect city workers, and not mayors, to do. Booker, in fact, admits he has no training in firefighting or rescue, and the director of the Newark Fire Department made a special point of noting […]

Ending Dependency As We Know It: How Bill Clinton Decreased Freedom

When Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996, many hailed it as a necessary step toward ending the dependency of the poor.  Dependence on the state, that is.  Barack Obama praised the bill during his presidential campaign, and in fact made a point of noting that he had helped cut the welfare rolls when he was in the Illinois state legislature.  Rick Santorum has said it gives the poor “something dependency doesn’t give: hope.” But as Jason DeParle points out in this must-read piece, thanks to welfare reform and the terrible state of the economy, poor people are doing worse today than they have in years.  Even in this recession, states like Arizona continue to cut the welfare […]

The Wide World of Sports

From Poynter: Richard Prince reports that ESPN has reversed its initial stand against staffers posting pictures of themselves in hoodies to show solidarity with Trayvon Martin. After Fox News commentator Geraldo Rivera suggested that the 17-year-old’s choice to wear a hooded sweatshirt was partly to blame for him being killed, many pro athletes began to post photos of themselves wearing hooded sweatshirts. ESPN staff were at first warned not to join them. Now the network has decided “to allow this particular expression of human sympathy.” Workplace Tyranny Averted. For Now. Meanwhile, in the not-so-wide world of the media, Gannett has told staffers who signed a petition calling for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s recall that they would be disciplined. More here.

Fancy Dress at Fancy Law Firms? You’re Fired!

Workplace tyranny: not just at the low end of the service sector but also in a fancy law firm. On March 16, at least 14 employees of the Elizabeth R. Wellborn law firm, located in Deerfield Beach, Florida, wore orange shirts to work. For this style choice, they were marched into a conference room and summarily fired. Wellborn’s husband declared that the shirts were a protest against working conditions at the 275-worker law firm, and that management would not stand for such behavior. (Early reporting claimed the workers’ dress merely signified a way to easily organize a happy hour outing, although it later came out that while that was true for some, others were dressed in the color of prison uniforms to protest draconian […]

Twin Peaks: The Tea Party’s Economic and Social Agenda

Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert have a new article and paper out that confirm a long-held position of mine: the economic and social agendas of the right are one and the same. As Mike and Bryce show, 12 states are responsible for over 70 percent of the state and local public-sector layoffs since 2011.  Eleven of those states were taken over by Republicans in the 2010 election, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Tea Party. Those 11 states were also far more likely to restrict the reproductive rights of women than were other states. Mike and Bryce don’t talk about how those 11 states compare with other states when it comes to rolling back worker and labor […]