Month: May 2012

Things I Did and Didn’t Know About Marilyn Monroe and Leon Trotsky

I’ve long known Marilyn Monroe converted to Judaism when she married Arthur Miller. What nice Jewish boy doesn’t?  What I didn’t know: She was married in New Haven, at Congregation Mishkan Israel. She was “a serious convert.” She “continued to identify as Jewish after her divorce from Arthur Miller.” I’ve also long known that Trotsky was extraordinarily prescient. What I didn’t know was that in 1938 Trotsky wrote: It is possible to imagine without difficulty what awaits the Jews at the mere outbreak of the future world war. But even without war the next development of world reaction signifies with certainty the physical extermination of the Jews.

Law and Order Among the 1%

As New York City and other municipalities continue to crack down on Occupy Wall Street protests in the name of the rule of law, it’s important to remember how Michael Bloomberg, scion of the law and order crowd, deals with rules and laws he doesn’t like. This, in his own words, is how Bloomberg made his millions: Among old McDonald’s hamburger wrappings and mouse droppings, we dragged wires from our computers to the keyboards and screens we were putting in place, stuffed the cables through holes we drilled in other people’s furniture—all without permission, violating every fire law, building code, and union regulation on the books. It’s amazing we didn’t burn some office or electrocute ourselves.

In the 4th Year of the Obama Administration, the Health and Safety of American Workers Remains “Open”

In October 2009, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report about the parlous state of government monitoring and investigations of occupational health and safety practices in the workplace. Among the report’s findings: Stakeholders most often cited workers’ fear of job loss and other disciplinary actions as disincentives that can affect workers’ decisions to report injuries and illnesses. Occupational health practitioners concurred: 67 percent reported observing worker fear of disciplinary action for reporting an injury or illness, and 46 percent said that this fear of disciplinary action has at least a minor impact on the accuracy of employers’ injury and illness records. (p. 22) Got that? 2/3 of the people involved in making sure that workplaces are safe claim […]