So, this morning I ditched my work out. I even ditched my extreme heart healthy diet. I went to that new bakery on Lincoln Avenue in Pasadena I heard was so good. I got there at 6:30 a.m. There were people inside working, the lights were on and the door was unlocked. I couldn't find ANYWHERE the sign that listed their hours. So I looked around and I got a piece of toast with lemon curd and almonds on it and a coffee. Seven bucks. Kinda steep.
The toast was exquisite. The coffee not as good as the not very great coffee at Altadena's Coffee Gallery. The music was load, beatless, brittle and annoying. not exactly techno, not exactly New Age, sometimes vaguely Peruvian, but really awful. I was finished by 7:15. I decided to hang out and sketch, in spite of the annoying music that made me want to thrust my Staedtler stainless steel drafting pencil through my temple just to make it stop.
I wanted to see who hung out here, since local discussions about Gentrification were taking place and this joint for all it's up-scaleness was supporting a Black candidate for mayor. Perhaps a sign of integration of the local mostly Black community and the new to me undesirable gentrifiers. A Black postman came in on his way to work, quickly got a coffee and ran off to work. Soon a white woman and her daughter arrived. then a white guy and an Asian man. I kept count from 6:30- 8:30 a.m. as to race and gender.
White 15 people
Asian 4 People
Black 1 man
Latino 1 man
Twenty two customers twelve of whom were women, nine of those were White Women, three were Asian women.
There were ten male customers, one Latino, one Black, one Asian.
The staff was actually more diverse than the clientele, a unusual situation to say the least, for Pasadena. The staff consisted of one Latina, one Latino, one Asian woman, one white male and one Black male.
As the music droned on I thought, "For the investment and staffing levels there are very few customers" Then I began to notice that none of the people around me had that indefinable look, that Dena way of dressing and carrying themselves, and that all the cars that came into the lot were black and German except one gold Volvo station wagon and my 1938 Buick. Odd, I thought.
As I was observing this and thinking again how wretched the music was and also thinking, I wonder have they managed to find the only form of modern music completely devoid of any African roots, is that an accident?", The white guy and Asian guy sitting at the table next to me were talking about real estate investment. Specifically they were discussion buying a block and when to raise the rents and evict the existing long term tenants. The one asked if it wouldn't be better to keep the tenants in place and slowly raise the rents and the other responded "Those Black businesses are marginal at best. Better to evict them first thing and get them out of our building."
So there was I, sitting in the heart of Pasadena's traditional Black neighborhood, surrounded by White and Asian people who didn't seem to be from here, where people were listening to African roots-less brittle modern music (no easy task to find, or endure) and casually, calmly and with enough volume that those sitting around could hear clearly, the intentional destruction of an entire local business community. It was a shocking moment that had me much more awake than the coffee, but that turned my sweet bready breakfast to a lump of bitter smoldering lava churning inside my intestines.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Strangling the Goose
This last Labor Day Weekend Jeanette and I attended the fiftieth Cinecon cineophile film festival held the last several years in the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. The films were great. Hollywood, not so much.
Probably billions of dollars have been spent to "revitalize" Hollywood Boulevard and Hollywood since I stopped volunteering at Centrum of Hollywood in 1980. Much of the money came from redevelopment agencies. There is, of course, a move afoot to re establish redevelopment agencies, those funnels through which mass quantities of taxpayer funds are shoved at well connected developers who promise to rid areas of "blight". Blight of course means all the small manufacturing, service, locally owned, non chain businesses and anybody who can't rent a condo for at least $4 grand a month. You, dear taxpayer, are the "blight" to be gotten rid of in favor of multinational corporations and wealthy retirees from out of state, state and municipal employees who get special lower rent rates, well connected (read campaign donors) landlords. There is no place for YOU here in the new Feudal State of California.
As bad as that all is, a walk down Hollywood Boulevard on any Saturday evening will be very educational to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. As one walks east from the corner of Hollywood and Highland, one will be walking past allys, facades and buildings where Chaplin and Lloyd once shot film, where Joan Crawford once went to balls dancing the Charleston and drinking illegal hootch, and where as late as 1990, small local neighborhood based and tourist based businesses that offered quality goods, once held on biting their nails.
One will notice while attempting to dodge a aimlessly walking crowd of people who don't seem to be doing anything but promenading, that the sidewalk, Hollywood's internationally famous "Walk of Fame" feels like a foot roller coaster. It's lumpy from trees poorly planted during the Woo years (no root control systems), from ground settling due to a carelessly built subway line, and ill considered underground condominium parking garages.
It seems no one bothered with the underlaying geology while bulking up Hollywood. As DeMille pointed out in his retrospective book on Hollywood's early movie colony, at one time this area, Hollywood Boulevard, was a streambed, and that stream runs UNDERGROUND ALL YEAR LONG in a matrix of sand and gravel. Place new solid objects in that matrix and the water runs round it in a new direction and place, undermining the ground below the sidewalks. This has been CLEARLY happening for a decade, but all officialdom pretends to not notice as they approve ever more dense and high condos, and newer bigger commercial projects. The sewer lines, water supply lines, and natural gas lines all run in this now disturbed moving matrix. It should not take a genius to figure out that these 100 year old bits of infrastructure may be damaged by the inevitable results of all this development. This weekend while I was walking to and from my motel to the film festival there were two emergency underground repairs. Last year there was one, and there were two the year before. So in the last three years I've spent 15 days in Hollywood and seen five emergency underground repairs in one half mile area. This was entirely foreseeable. At least one letter by yours truly was published in truncated form about this infrastructure issue in the LAT and was read by me at public hearings while the subway was under consideration. While I don't have a degree in geology, it seems my amateur knowledge was superior to those who certified EIRs saying "No Problem".
I point this out, not to say "I told you so" or to point out my manifest brilliance. I point it out because every Tuesday throughout California for the last thirty years and going on today, elected officials are betraying the trust the public has granted them by approving projects that risk the public health and safety.
Sure they do this in PART because of the campaign donations the special interests have given them, but there is another reason: California's local and State officials have over promised wages, benefits, and retirements, to the public employee unions that quite simply are out of the realm of reality, especially when compared to what's left of California's non governmental economy. The only way to begin to pay these outsized paychecks and benefits is to increase dramatically the taxation per acre of California land, and the only way to do that is through new building everywhere and driving out of the State through policy everyone whom is not fantastically wealthy.
So as the subsidized private sector mega developments go up where small developments are prohibited, through a system of bribery called the Conditional Use Permit process, and as these projects are always certified by "experts" to have little or no environmental impact, the environment and infrastructure of California constantly degrades as the wealthy developers and government employees ride a gravy train that is dooming all that once was the Golden State. They are strangling the goose.
Probably billions of dollars have been spent to "revitalize" Hollywood Boulevard and Hollywood since I stopped volunteering at Centrum of Hollywood in 1980. Much of the money came from redevelopment agencies. There is, of course, a move afoot to re establish redevelopment agencies, those funnels through which mass quantities of taxpayer funds are shoved at well connected developers who promise to rid areas of "blight". Blight of course means all the small manufacturing, service, locally owned, non chain businesses and anybody who can't rent a condo for at least $4 grand a month. You, dear taxpayer, are the "blight" to be gotten rid of in favor of multinational corporations and wealthy retirees from out of state, state and municipal employees who get special lower rent rates, well connected (read campaign donors) landlords. There is no place for YOU here in the new Feudal State of California.
As bad as that all is, a walk down Hollywood Boulevard on any Saturday evening will be very educational to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. As one walks east from the corner of Hollywood and Highland, one will be walking past allys, facades and buildings where Chaplin and Lloyd once shot film, where Joan Crawford once went to balls dancing the Charleston and drinking illegal hootch, and where as late as 1990, small local neighborhood based and tourist based businesses that offered quality goods, once held on biting their nails.
One will notice while attempting to dodge a aimlessly walking crowd of people who don't seem to be doing anything but promenading, that the sidewalk, Hollywood's internationally famous "Walk of Fame" feels like a foot roller coaster. It's lumpy from trees poorly planted during the Woo years (no root control systems), from ground settling due to a carelessly built subway line, and ill considered underground condominium parking garages.
It seems no one bothered with the underlaying geology while bulking up Hollywood. As DeMille pointed out in his retrospective book on Hollywood's early movie colony, at one time this area, Hollywood Boulevard, was a streambed, and that stream runs UNDERGROUND ALL YEAR LONG in a matrix of sand and gravel. Place new solid objects in that matrix and the water runs round it in a new direction and place, undermining the ground below the sidewalks. This has been CLEARLY happening for a decade, but all officialdom pretends to not notice as they approve ever more dense and high condos, and newer bigger commercial projects. The sewer lines, water supply lines, and natural gas lines all run in this now disturbed moving matrix. It should not take a genius to figure out that these 100 year old bits of infrastructure may be damaged by the inevitable results of all this development. This weekend while I was walking to and from my motel to the film festival there were two emergency underground repairs. Last year there was one, and there were two the year before. So in the last three years I've spent 15 days in Hollywood and seen five emergency underground repairs in one half mile area. This was entirely foreseeable. At least one letter by yours truly was published in truncated form about this infrastructure issue in the LAT and was read by me at public hearings while the subway was under consideration. While I don't have a degree in geology, it seems my amateur knowledge was superior to those who certified EIRs saying "No Problem".
I point this out, not to say "I told you so" or to point out my manifest brilliance. I point it out because every Tuesday throughout California for the last thirty years and going on today, elected officials are betraying the trust the public has granted them by approving projects that risk the public health and safety.
Sure they do this in PART because of the campaign donations the special interests have given them, but there is another reason: California's local and State officials have over promised wages, benefits, and retirements, to the public employee unions that quite simply are out of the realm of reality, especially when compared to what's left of California's non governmental economy. The only way to begin to pay these outsized paychecks and benefits is to increase dramatically the taxation per acre of California land, and the only way to do that is through new building everywhere and driving out of the State through policy everyone whom is not fantastically wealthy.
So as the subsidized private sector mega developments go up where small developments are prohibited, through a system of bribery called the Conditional Use Permit process, and as these projects are always certified by "experts" to have little or no environmental impact, the environment and infrastructure of California constantly degrades as the wealthy developers and government employees ride a gravy train that is dooming all that once was the Golden State. They are strangling the goose.
Movie moguls seek yet another special privilege...
The movie business is going once again to the California State Legislature seeking another bribe, er ah tax break, to stay in California. Once again, they threaten without tax breaks they will leave California and take thousands of jobs with them. The hand wringing at every level of government local and State is indeed AMAZING to behold. Especially if you ever belonged to, or cared about, a industry that was worth more money to the State of California that the same legislature destroyed through regulation with complete callousness and contempt. You know, say radiator repair shops or fireplace manufacturers.......
Now I am not one who says the Movie/Television/Entertainment industries should not get a break, no it's just that the rest of us should have the tyrannical yoke of the California State legislature eased upon our necks. Does the California State Legislature care that it destroyed the California Furniture industry? Nope. Does the California State Legislature care that it's new cap and trade fuel regulations could move transportation trucking companies out of state and make the port of LA so expensive that Texas or a new port in Mexico would become viable economic options? Nope. Do they care that their tyrannical yoke is strangling California agriculture, the produce, nut and date basket of the world? Not at all. Those are not pretty people. They don't in the minds of the imbiciles elected to the legislature, improve the status and glamor of the legislators themselves. Hollywood matters, Almond producers, who are worth double Hollywood's value to the State economy, not so much.
At every level, at every moment of our lives there is a regulation passed by the legislature tat hobbles your life. It's killing the California economy, the California lifestyle and for you imbicile legislators, a word you can understand, the California BRAND. California is no longer seen by ANYONE as a golden state of opportunity where one can in any sense breathe free. it's a place for stifling taxation and regulation.
So, yes, give the Film industry YET ANOTHER tax break, but lets look at regulation and give everyone else a break too.
Now I am not one who says the Movie/Television/Entertainment industries should not get a break, no it's just that the rest of us should have the tyrannical yoke of the California State legislature eased upon our necks. Does the California State Legislature care that it destroyed the California Furniture industry? Nope. Does the California State Legislature care that it's new cap and trade fuel regulations could move transportation trucking companies out of state and make the port of LA so expensive that Texas or a new port in Mexico would become viable economic options? Nope. Do they care that their tyrannical yoke is strangling California agriculture, the produce, nut and date basket of the world? Not at all. Those are not pretty people. They don't in the minds of the imbiciles elected to the legislature, improve the status and glamor of the legislators themselves. Hollywood matters, Almond producers, who are worth double Hollywood's value to the State economy, not so much.
At every level, at every moment of our lives there is a regulation passed by the legislature tat hobbles your life. It's killing the California economy, the California lifestyle and for you imbicile legislators, a word you can understand, the California BRAND. California is no longer seen by ANYONE as a golden state of opportunity where one can in any sense breathe free. it's a place for stifling taxation and regulation.
So, yes, give the Film industry YET ANOTHER tax break, but lets look at regulation and give everyone else a break too.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Gentrifuckation at 24 Hour Fitness
So this morning at 6:25 a.m. as I am checking into 24 hour fitness, Dominique, the young bright University student who has the morning shift and who I kid unmercifully about her straightened hair, says to me "Hey can I talk to you about something?" I'm being me concerned that somehow I have pissed her off without realizing it, but I say 'Sure." After everyone else is done checking in she says "Let me tell you what just happened" "O.K."
"This lady came in Last week early in the morning. Rap music was playing on the speaker system"
"OK"
"She asked me to please stop playing that "Ghetto Music" The Black guy checking in looked like he wanted to kill her and I shot him a quick "be cool brother" look."
'Lol does she know where she is?"
"Yeah like RIGHT?
So she came in right before the group you came in with this morning and rap was playing again on the music system. She was like "Who do I have to talk to so you will stop playing this Ghetto Music?"
(Laughs) "No Really? "
I thought about it the whole time I worked out on the treadmill. My heart rate was about 25 beats per minute higher than normal and I was working hard to stay calm and not get pissed. It really is no laughing matter.
The fact that a middle aged white woman can walk into a gym staffed about 40% by Black people, in a neighborhood populated by about 40% Black people, in a redevelopment allegedly built to employ black people, In a gym used by 40% Black people and demand an end to the playing of the current music enjoyed by most Black people under fifty, can only mean one thing: GENTRIFUCKATION has hit its second wave.
In the first wave the gentrifuckers are kind of hiding, sort of keeping their heads down low attempting to buy up the neighborhood with their friend and not arouse any ire of the local population. In the second wave, the gentrifuckers begin to feel their oats. they know they have reached CRITICAL MASS and now they will begin the direct assault on everything in the community they believe is not all white, uptight and in their groove. Rap is not to them all white. They don't want it in their world view. It must go.
That's where we are in West Altadena today.
While I have no love for Rap music (Or any music, actually, while I am working out), I think I am going to call the manager and tell him how much I love the early morning rap music. Maybe they can play some more later into the morning......Yes there are things worse than a music form that objectifies women and stereotypes men as criminals- The people who would if they could, remove e very black person from our community and every trace of Black culture, achievement and invention with them.
Since a Black man invented cardiac bypass surgery and I owe that my existence, I'm not down with that perspective.
So at 24 hour fitness at least, M N M and Jay Zee are my main men......
"This lady came in Last week early in the morning. Rap music was playing on the speaker system"
"OK"
"She asked me to please stop playing that "Ghetto Music" The Black guy checking in looked like he wanted to kill her and I shot him a quick "be cool brother" look."
'Lol does she know where she is?"
"Yeah like RIGHT?
So she came in right before the group you came in with this morning and rap was playing again on the music system. She was like "Who do I have to talk to so you will stop playing this Ghetto Music?"
(Laughs) "No Really? "
I thought about it the whole time I worked out on the treadmill. My heart rate was about 25 beats per minute higher than normal and I was working hard to stay calm and not get pissed. It really is no laughing matter.
The fact that a middle aged white woman can walk into a gym staffed about 40% by Black people, in a neighborhood populated by about 40% Black people, in a redevelopment allegedly built to employ black people, In a gym used by 40% Black people and demand an end to the playing of the current music enjoyed by most Black people under fifty, can only mean one thing: GENTRIFUCKATION has hit its second wave.
In the first wave the gentrifuckers are kind of hiding, sort of keeping their heads down low attempting to buy up the neighborhood with their friend and not arouse any ire of the local population. In the second wave, the gentrifuckers begin to feel their oats. they know they have reached CRITICAL MASS and now they will begin the direct assault on everything in the community they believe is not all white, uptight and in their groove. Rap is not to them all white. They don't want it in their world view. It must go.
That's where we are in West Altadena today.
While I have no love for Rap music (Or any music, actually, while I am working out), I think I am going to call the manager and tell him how much I love the early morning rap music. Maybe they can play some more later into the morning......Yes there are things worse than a music form that objectifies women and stereotypes men as criminals- The people who would if they could, remove e very black person from our community and every trace of Black culture, achievement and invention with them.
Since a Black man invented cardiac bypass surgery and I owe that my existence, I'm not down with that perspective.
So at 24 hour fitness at least, M N M and Jay Zee are my main men......
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Frank Lloyd Wright wasn't nearly expressive enough about museums.....
Frank Lloyd Wright had a well known dislike for museums his entire life. As an ARTIST he knew museums and their staffs saw art as static, lifeless, to be embalmed and entombed and therefore to them, priceless. Museums their staffs and petrified directors didn't see art as alive, breathing nd a part of EVERYDAY LIFE.
Today, Jeanette and I saw three exhibits and had this viewpoint driven directly home. The first exhibit was at LACMA and was a exhibit of the works of Calder. Things started off badly. I had to walk through the grounds, seeing the layers of incoherent remuddling. To an Organic Architect these layers of thoughtless incoherence are extremely annoying. But I wanted to see Calder's work, so I tried to shove down my annoyance.
Next we enter the pavilion, hand our tickets to the guard and I walked right up to a half size mock up of a Stabile. I stood within one pair of its five wings and was pointing out to Jeanette with my finger no closer that a respectable four inches to the steel the weld locations and lengths. Well I was about to that is till an officious security nimbot panicked rushed over and had a hissy fit that I was too close to the art object. I really TRIED to not get pissed, but I may has well left right then. I almost said, but my old age prevented me, "Are you fucking nuts? The full size is in a public park where pigeons shit on the top, people rub it, lean on it, lick it and fornicate at its base at night. The full size is in the weather where it RUSTS. Gimmie a BREAK, over precious twit." I didn't. Jeanette has endured enough embarrassment by my noting reality to people locked in dream states. Besides I just drove an hour and paid for two very overpriced tickets.
So I Stopped looking at the stable and went inside to see some mobiles. LACMA, being a museum hell bent on proving the accuracy of Frank Lloyd Wright's negative opinion of such institutions had displayed the mobiles in niches where they had almost no airflow acting upon them, so they did not act as they were designed to act and did not move constantly. They were STATIC. The almost eighty year old man next to me was pushing a woman my age in a wheelchair and stopped to show her the first mobile. Because it was totally out of the air flow it was static. The old man blew on it so it would MOVE as it of course was designed by Calder to do. A nearby security guard rushed over, almost knocked me and the old man down and instructed him in a urgent voice that blowing was prohibited. Again, I almost demanded my money back and left...
I spent the whole exhibit looking for the security assholes and exhaling as deep breaths as possible in the general direction of the mobiles. Many of them moved and were DELIGHTFUL in their motions. Calder made art for REGULAR people. His art even in the depression was AFFORDABLE. Yes he made huge stuff and complex bigger stuff, but Alexander Calder was a AMERICAN and he wanted to make art for EVERYONE. He wanted it approachable, he made it to be interactive with the environment and the viewer, he made it to DELIGHT those who saw it with its playfulness. He made a lot of it to be TOUCHED. All of this intention of Calder's is LOST on the bone brains who collect art and run museums. To them the black thread on a mobile has no value if it isn't original. Oh my God !!! Heaven forbid the mobile MOVE and the thread need replaced! That would diminish the
V A L U E. Gag.
In the 1980's I had Greene and Greene clients who were art dealers. They paid me to restore two Calder mobiles, one pre war with color brushed on crudely, one post war with color sprayed on from a spray can. Both made with the urgency of creation, with what one would call "mistakes" like file marks and paint imperfections. I cleaned the rust off them, repainted areas as appropriate and re strung them as the strings had either broken or were on the verge. It seemed strange to see mobiles behind glass, in back of ropes, with anxious guards surrounding them. I held such things in my hands, I worked on them, I gave them life back. Now somehow, sadly they are too precious for anyone to blow on so their movement can be seen.
"To hell with LACMA. Sell off the collection. Build condos." I was pretty pissed.
SO I figured maybe walking into the photography exhibit would cheer me up. Of course photographs now are PRECIOUS. And since the photographs are PRECIOUS the light level must be adjusted so low that no one can make out any detail in the image unless one stands four inches from them and of course if one gets any closer than a foot from them, you guessed it, the security bone brains start to hover, worry and tell one to step back. It was totally frustrating. Further, not a single Stieglitz to be found. No Heine, No Teske, a teensie bit of Ed Weston, but none of his breathtaking photos of fruit, veggies and ordinary household objects that give a whole new sight, none of his son Brets breathtaking work with reflecting water. Odd crappy 1970's neo retro color photos. One Maplethorpe, and none of his breathtaking color wash work. I mean if we are going to show 1970'/80's color, why not show something really good? Not at all a good exhibit as far as objects chosen and horribly displayed. Second or uh that dirty word, REPRODUCTION prints at a readable light level would have been better, one could have at least SEEN something without violating the sensibilities of the ever present security.
Mercifully, across the street, the A&D museum was showing a collection of reproduced Richard Neutra furniture. These were all pieces Neutra had designed for (oh shutter the thought) PRODUCTION, and most of them were produced in small lots during Neutra's lifetime. A company is now reproducing them and these copies are as good and in most cases BETTER than the original production models. Amazingly, they can be sat upon. One can compare the fit of the chairs to ones body, can relate to them can discern the subtle differences between leather and cloth upholstery, can marvel at the visual sharpness of mitered corners and how they have been subtly eased so as to not be as sharp to the touch as they are to the eye. Richard Neutra would have had his perfectionist eye pleased with each of these. That exhibit was worth the drive and they even gave you for the ten dollar price of admission a book on the furniture that will become in time a valuable collectors item....More museums should be run like this and more should have reproduction works that are not so precious that they can not be interacted with as designed.
A & D as a comparison to LACMA is proof ARCHITECTS should run museums....
Today, Jeanette and I saw three exhibits and had this viewpoint driven directly home. The first exhibit was at LACMA and was a exhibit of the works of Calder. Things started off badly. I had to walk through the grounds, seeing the layers of incoherent remuddling. To an Organic Architect these layers of thoughtless incoherence are extremely annoying. But I wanted to see Calder's work, so I tried to shove down my annoyance.
Next we enter the pavilion, hand our tickets to the guard and I walked right up to a half size mock up of a Stabile. I stood within one pair of its five wings and was pointing out to Jeanette with my finger no closer that a respectable four inches to the steel the weld locations and lengths. Well I was about to that is till an officious security nimbot panicked rushed over and had a hissy fit that I was too close to the art object. I really TRIED to not get pissed, but I may has well left right then. I almost said, but my old age prevented me, "Are you fucking nuts? The full size is in a public park where pigeons shit on the top, people rub it, lean on it, lick it and fornicate at its base at night. The full size is in the weather where it RUSTS. Gimmie a BREAK, over precious twit." I didn't. Jeanette has endured enough embarrassment by my noting reality to people locked in dream states. Besides I just drove an hour and paid for two very overpriced tickets.
So I Stopped looking at the stable and went inside to see some mobiles. LACMA, being a museum hell bent on proving the accuracy of Frank Lloyd Wright's negative opinion of such institutions had displayed the mobiles in niches where they had almost no airflow acting upon them, so they did not act as they were designed to act and did not move constantly. They were STATIC. The almost eighty year old man next to me was pushing a woman my age in a wheelchair and stopped to show her the first mobile. Because it was totally out of the air flow it was static. The old man blew on it so it would MOVE as it of course was designed by Calder to do. A nearby security guard rushed over, almost knocked me and the old man down and instructed him in a urgent voice that blowing was prohibited. Again, I almost demanded my money back and left...
I spent the whole exhibit looking for the security assholes and exhaling as deep breaths as possible in the general direction of the mobiles. Many of them moved and were DELIGHTFUL in their motions. Calder made art for REGULAR people. His art even in the depression was AFFORDABLE. Yes he made huge stuff and complex bigger stuff, but Alexander Calder was a AMERICAN and he wanted to make art for EVERYONE. He wanted it approachable, he made it to be interactive with the environment and the viewer, he made it to DELIGHT those who saw it with its playfulness. He made a lot of it to be TOUCHED. All of this intention of Calder's is LOST on the bone brains who collect art and run museums. To them the black thread on a mobile has no value if it isn't original. Oh my God !!! Heaven forbid the mobile MOVE and the thread need replaced! That would diminish the
V A L U E. Gag.
In the 1980's I had Greene and Greene clients who were art dealers. They paid me to restore two Calder mobiles, one pre war with color brushed on crudely, one post war with color sprayed on from a spray can. Both made with the urgency of creation, with what one would call "mistakes" like file marks and paint imperfections. I cleaned the rust off them, repainted areas as appropriate and re strung them as the strings had either broken or were on the verge. It seemed strange to see mobiles behind glass, in back of ropes, with anxious guards surrounding them. I held such things in my hands, I worked on them, I gave them life back. Now somehow, sadly they are too precious for anyone to blow on so their movement can be seen.
"To hell with LACMA. Sell off the collection. Build condos." I was pretty pissed.
SO I figured maybe walking into the photography exhibit would cheer me up. Of course photographs now are PRECIOUS. And since the photographs are PRECIOUS the light level must be adjusted so low that no one can make out any detail in the image unless one stands four inches from them and of course if one gets any closer than a foot from them, you guessed it, the security bone brains start to hover, worry and tell one to step back. It was totally frustrating. Further, not a single Stieglitz to be found. No Heine, No Teske, a teensie bit of Ed Weston, but none of his breathtaking photos of fruit, veggies and ordinary household objects that give a whole new sight, none of his son Brets breathtaking work with reflecting water. Odd crappy 1970's neo retro color photos. One Maplethorpe, and none of his breathtaking color wash work. I mean if we are going to show 1970'/80's color, why not show something really good? Not at all a good exhibit as far as objects chosen and horribly displayed. Second or uh that dirty word, REPRODUCTION prints at a readable light level would have been better, one could have at least SEEN something without violating the sensibilities of the ever present security.
Mercifully, across the street, the A&D museum was showing a collection of reproduced Richard Neutra furniture. These were all pieces Neutra had designed for (oh shutter the thought) PRODUCTION, and most of them were produced in small lots during Neutra's lifetime. A company is now reproducing them and these copies are as good and in most cases BETTER than the original production models. Amazingly, they can be sat upon. One can compare the fit of the chairs to ones body, can relate to them can discern the subtle differences between leather and cloth upholstery, can marvel at the visual sharpness of mitered corners and how they have been subtly eased so as to not be as sharp to the touch as they are to the eye. Richard Neutra would have had his perfectionist eye pleased with each of these. That exhibit was worth the drive and they even gave you for the ten dollar price of admission a book on the furniture that will become in time a valuable collectors item....More museums should be run like this and more should have reproduction works that are not so precious that they can not be interacted with as designed.
A & D as a comparison to LACMA is proof ARCHITECTS should run museums....
Monday, February 3, 2014
On Making Altadena Walkable.....
There is a group in town that's wanting to get a study funded about how to make Altadena walkable. They are organizing to have this done so a grant can be written and funded. Myself I am kind of confused. I've lived in Altadena all my life. Its the most walked non gentrified non Uber developed place in Southern California. people are walking here all the time and walking everywhere,
It seems the good grant writer who is facilitating this group doesn't know that these studies have been done. We know the answers, the answers don't really change, and what's more, the answers are really the same town to town and place to place. That's because the people who do this have all been implementing the same strategies and methodologies since San Francisco redeveloped Ghirardelli Square in the early 1960s. In fact, way, way, way back in 1987, in the last Altadena Community Plan, every strategy for street improvement that leads to walkability was studied and discussed endlessly. A report was written with the strategies that would work on Mariposa where the land is flat and Lake Avenue where the land is steep. While the County of Los Angeles accepted the plan and even adopted it's findings regarding the Mariposa and Lake Avenue business areas, except for the installation of trash containers and regular servicing of them, in 2004, nothing has been done to implement that well thought out workable plan.
During the redevelopment of Lincoln Avenue, Eric Lloyd Wright and Taliesin Architects developed a plan that had cross axis on the commercial where the local shops would be down visible from the car pedestrian alleys, where there were European style plazas with seating and amenities at the intersections, where there were water elements and seating areas throughout the development and where there was to be adequate parking and pedestrian amenities on the street such as benches, trash containers, and art. Once the first developer, Harold James died, and he was replaced by Greg Galletley, Greg and Corde Corillo of the L.A. County Community Redevelopment Commission conspired together to downgrade the project. Galletley to increase his profits and Corillo because he didn't think a project that nice was needed for "those people, over there." They had willing help from the east side representatives of the Altadena Town Council and various not for profit groups in town that got donations from Galletley. They destroyed one of the best designed commercial developments that would have ever been built in California and one that was when designed twenty years ahead of its time, instead we got an underparked oversized strip mall. But all is not lost. many of those amenities could still be provided, no further study needed.
There are a lot of great ideas. They have to be built within the fabric of State and County Codes. This is why diagonal parking, a idea popular with dreamers, will not work on lake and will not work on Lincoln.. There is neither the required width, sightlines, low actual speed, or lack of grade on those streets to have diagonal parking within the constraints of the law. And just IMAGINE the hell to pay if this idea popular with the fifty people who showed up to that meeting were implemented- the THOUSANDS of angry commuting Altadenan's filled with road rage as their commute to and from work is lengthened.
What makes business districts walkable are large amounts of virtually free three to four hour parking spaces so people can explore and stroll; shade from trees and as important, shade from awnings or roof overhands that can also protect in bad weather, areas that are like plazas that can be used both to access places unseen from the perpendicular view of the street and to congregate in, seating, bright lighting at a level six foot and under, SIDEWALKS CLEAN OF TRASH, storefronts that are maintained, and full of interesting shops, and hate to say it to the Teatotallers in Altadena, but one thing that gets people walking in commercial districts is Restaurants and bars that serve Alcohol and music venues. We know this. Architects have been doing this since the Leidesplein was built in Amsterdam 550 years ago. The studies for how to do most of this on Lincoln have already been done. We can eliminate the things that the bad first phase of Lincoln Crossing and the lack of redevelopment agency funds make impossible now, and implement the rest. It will require changing the County Code regarding Awnings and other structures overhanging the public section of the sidewalk.
There is some talk of getting sidewalks in the residential sections of Altadena. Historically, most Altadenan's have been adamant that they just don't want this. Perhaps some streets do, and if that's so, they should be done on a block by block basis with the same kid of approval process that speed bumps have. If we are going to have sidewalks anywhere in Altadena, lets not do it as hardscape poured concrete that rolls water off the land as if it's undesirable. Lets have porous pavers over a bed of sand and deep gravel with filter mesh so that our sidewalks put water back into the land instead of run it off like its undesirable. This too is not a new idea. it was first proposed and blocked 12 years ago, by not for profits that had other plans...Altadena if it implements this can be the first place in Southern California to do so.
To review: Don't fund another income stream for a grant writer, use the plans that have already been done, and with residential sidewalks have a block by block approval process and don't run the water off, store it in the ground.
It seems the good grant writer who is facilitating this group doesn't know that these studies have been done. We know the answers, the answers don't really change, and what's more, the answers are really the same town to town and place to place. That's because the people who do this have all been implementing the same strategies and methodologies since San Francisco redeveloped Ghirardelli Square in the early 1960s. In fact, way, way, way back in 1987, in the last Altadena Community Plan, every strategy for street improvement that leads to walkability was studied and discussed endlessly. A report was written with the strategies that would work on Mariposa where the land is flat and Lake Avenue where the land is steep. While the County of Los Angeles accepted the plan and even adopted it's findings regarding the Mariposa and Lake Avenue business areas, except for the installation of trash containers and regular servicing of them, in 2004, nothing has been done to implement that well thought out workable plan.
During the redevelopment of Lincoln Avenue, Eric Lloyd Wright and Taliesin Architects developed a plan that had cross axis on the commercial where the local shops would be down visible from the car pedestrian alleys, where there were European style plazas with seating and amenities at the intersections, where there were water elements and seating areas throughout the development and where there was to be adequate parking and pedestrian amenities on the street such as benches, trash containers, and art. Once the first developer, Harold James died, and he was replaced by Greg Galletley, Greg and Corde Corillo of the L.A. County Community Redevelopment Commission conspired together to downgrade the project. Galletley to increase his profits and Corillo because he didn't think a project that nice was needed for "those people, over there." They had willing help from the east side representatives of the Altadena Town Council and various not for profit groups in town that got donations from Galletley. They destroyed one of the best designed commercial developments that would have ever been built in California and one that was when designed twenty years ahead of its time, instead we got an underparked oversized strip mall. But all is not lost. many of those amenities could still be provided, no further study needed.
There are a lot of great ideas. They have to be built within the fabric of State and County Codes. This is why diagonal parking, a idea popular with dreamers, will not work on lake and will not work on Lincoln.. There is neither the required width, sightlines, low actual speed, or lack of grade on those streets to have diagonal parking within the constraints of the law. And just IMAGINE the hell to pay if this idea popular with the fifty people who showed up to that meeting were implemented- the THOUSANDS of angry commuting Altadenan's filled with road rage as their commute to and from work is lengthened.
What makes business districts walkable are large amounts of virtually free three to four hour parking spaces so people can explore and stroll; shade from trees and as important, shade from awnings or roof overhands that can also protect in bad weather, areas that are like plazas that can be used both to access places unseen from the perpendicular view of the street and to congregate in, seating, bright lighting at a level six foot and under, SIDEWALKS CLEAN OF TRASH, storefronts that are maintained, and full of interesting shops, and hate to say it to the Teatotallers in Altadena, but one thing that gets people walking in commercial districts is Restaurants and bars that serve Alcohol and music venues. We know this. Architects have been doing this since the Leidesplein was built in Amsterdam 550 years ago. The studies for how to do most of this on Lincoln have already been done. We can eliminate the things that the bad first phase of Lincoln Crossing and the lack of redevelopment agency funds make impossible now, and implement the rest. It will require changing the County Code regarding Awnings and other structures overhanging the public section of the sidewalk.
There is some talk of getting sidewalks in the residential sections of Altadena. Historically, most Altadenan's have been adamant that they just don't want this. Perhaps some streets do, and if that's so, they should be done on a block by block basis with the same kid of approval process that speed bumps have. If we are going to have sidewalks anywhere in Altadena, lets not do it as hardscape poured concrete that rolls water off the land as if it's undesirable. Lets have porous pavers over a bed of sand and deep gravel with filter mesh so that our sidewalks put water back into the land instead of run it off like its undesirable. This too is not a new idea. it was first proposed and blocked 12 years ago, by not for profits that had other plans...Altadena if it implements this can be the first place in Southern California to do so.
To review: Don't fund another income stream for a grant writer, use the plans that have already been done, and with residential sidewalks have a block by block approval process and don't run the water off, store it in the ground.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
What's a News source
People keep asking me if I have heard the latest gossip or rumor or corporate/governmental propaganda pretending to be a news story on a website that pretends to be a news source. I always respond "No. I don't read that, it's not a news source." The questioner always looks confused. Afterall, these blogs and websites SAY they are news sources.... If I said I was Elvis would you believe me?
SO for those too young, or in their youths too unconcerned to know, there is a difference between a news source and a propaganda outlet. Here are a few pointers:
1. A blog or gossip rag has a point of view, and people that are on it's side and people who are enemies. The friends get unqualified support, the enemies get ignored or derided when doing something good, and flamed beyond all reason at every opportunity to be claimed to be doing something bad. News sources are different. They may have friends and a viewpoint BUT, they cover both sides of the story, and attempt to treat those two, or three, or five sides, with equal fairness or suspicion. The Iconoclast knows of A local blog touting itself as a news source that when reached with evidence of a really juicy wrongdoing by one of the writers friends said "Well there are two sides to a story" and then buried it. A REAL NEWS OUTLET won't do that. A real news source will go get both sides of that story and COVER IT, even if, or actually, especially if, it will kill a friends career.
2. A real news source will out the editors best friend, his wife, his kids, anyone for a story. Real news sources are devoted to this long lost idea called journalism, getting to the bottom of societies underbelly and shining a big 500,000 candle power light on it and taking a photograph.
3. If you happen to be a public figure, before a real news source publishes a negative story about you, they will at least show you the decency to know they are doing a story, and allow you to respond to what they see as the facts. A gossip rag fake news source, like A blog, will not.
4. If you are a public figure and a reporter calls you and asks for a quote and you tell them what you think, the reporter doesn't say "Well Gee we wrote the story and thought you would say something else" and when you explain why you didn't say something else and why you don't believe something else, they put your actual words together with dots.....and turn your thought around 180 degrees, what you have is NOT a News source. Especially if you complain to the publisher and they promote that reporter to City Editor. Ever.
5. Real news sources have multiple reporters, editors, and people who do research. Of course some gossip rags have the same, but generally a totally ersatz imitation news source is one guy with a computer.
6. Real new sources have people working at them who went to real journalism schools or have real degrees in disciplines subjects like science, history, art, music, architecture, not squishy degrees like communications, theology, general humanities and political science.
7. If its a real news source on the internet it also has a hard copy printed, a radio or television version. If its net only, sorry not a news source.
For those who are confused, the Altadena Iconoclast is NOT a news source its a personal opinion/observation/memories blog. Also for those still confused, there are only four local news outlets:
The Pasadena Weekly
KPCC
Crown City News
the Pasadena Journal
Each of those way back in my public life published both favorable and unfavorable stories about me or things I was doing. Sometimes they even got it right.
SO for those too young, or in their youths too unconcerned to know, there is a difference between a news source and a propaganda outlet. Here are a few pointers:
1. A blog or gossip rag has a point of view, and people that are on it's side and people who are enemies. The friends get unqualified support, the enemies get ignored or derided when doing something good, and flamed beyond all reason at every opportunity to be claimed to be doing something bad. News sources are different. They may have friends and a viewpoint BUT, they cover both sides of the story, and attempt to treat those two, or three, or five sides, with equal fairness or suspicion. The Iconoclast knows of A local blog touting itself as a news source that when reached with evidence of a really juicy wrongdoing by one of the writers friends said "Well there are two sides to a story" and then buried it. A REAL NEWS OUTLET won't do that. A real news source will go get both sides of that story and COVER IT, even if, or actually, especially if, it will kill a friends career.
2. A real news source will out the editors best friend, his wife, his kids, anyone for a story. Real news sources are devoted to this long lost idea called journalism, getting to the bottom of societies underbelly and shining a big 500,000 candle power light on it and taking a photograph.
3. If you happen to be a public figure, before a real news source publishes a negative story about you, they will at least show you the decency to know they are doing a story, and allow you to respond to what they see as the facts. A gossip rag fake news source, like A blog, will not.
4. If you are a public figure and a reporter calls you and asks for a quote and you tell them what you think, the reporter doesn't say "Well Gee we wrote the story and thought you would say something else" and when you explain why you didn't say something else and why you don't believe something else, they put your actual words together with dots.....and turn your thought around 180 degrees, what you have is NOT a News source. Especially if you complain to the publisher and they promote that reporter to City Editor. Ever.
5. Real news sources have multiple reporters, editors, and people who do research. Of course some gossip rags have the same, but generally a totally ersatz imitation news source is one guy with a computer.
6. Real new sources have people working at them who went to real journalism schools or have real degrees in disciplines subjects like science, history, art, music, architecture, not squishy degrees like communications, theology, general humanities and political science.
7. If its a real news source on the internet it also has a hard copy printed, a radio or television version. If its net only, sorry not a news source.
For those who are confused, the Altadena Iconoclast is NOT a news source its a personal opinion/observation/memories blog. Also for those still confused, there are only four local news outlets:
The Pasadena Weekly
KPCC
Crown City News
the Pasadena Journal
Each of those way back in my public life published both favorable and unfavorable stories about me or things I was doing. Sometimes they even got it right.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
"Those Liberals"
A friend (former) posted to Facebook a song from U Tube sung by Doris Day. I noted below in the comments "Doris Day always makes me want to run out of a room screaming." It was an innocent observation, not intended on my part to be anything else. Certainly not a declaration of war. The posting person is in her early forties, is a divorced working professional, very intelligent hard working woman. Not one would think the sort of person who would idolize the Doris Day public persona.Doris Day's public persona not only makes me want to scream, it makes me want to vomit.
It was foisted upon the American Public as the role model for American Womanhood. No wonder Bettie Freidan and Gloria Steinem rebelled. For those too young to remember, the Doris Day Public Persona (DDPP for the rest of this essay) was one of a well dressed woman who was in a professional world where in order to survive due to the fragile male egos she was surrounded by she pretended to be both dumb as a rock and submissive as a starving kitten. She desired marriage to wealthy powerful successful men, and fended off every advance from them until they were "bagged". She outwitted everyone through continual and deep deception. There was not an honest dimension to her, and if society was in the 1950's and 1960's as portrayed in her movies, there was not an honest moment in it, either. The movies, values and society they portray are revolting. I am very glad the world went through the sexual and women's liberation movements of the late 1960's every time I think of Doris Day, because I can not imagine the hell of being married to such a creature. I can't imagine the hell of a society where men and women are on every level absolutely dishonest with one another. The world we live in today is not perfect, but its a whole lot better than the Stepford Doris Day world
Anyhow, my well educated hard working now former friend took great umbrage to my dislike of the DDPP. She wrote me a nasty couple of notes about me attacking her. I was confused. I have never seen personal disagreement as an attack. I thought that was strange, since she is an unconventionally lovely woman who I had in the past ALWAYS complimented on both her beauty and her intelligence. Her response was way, way, way out of scale, cutting and totally unexpected. It told me I had completely misjudged her as a person. She was "one of those "Liberals."'
One of "those Liberals"? you ask. Sadly, yes, "Those Liberals". Those liberals who listen to liberal talk radio and or go to events sponsored by some "enlightened" Church and can not, will not, tolerate anyone who disagrees with them on any issue. 'Those Liberals". You know the remarkably always in sync group thinkers who seem to have some chip implanted in their sub cortex that gets the latest talking points uploaded every morning from Palosi Central. You know, the ones who while they would be inflamed enough to shoot you, if they owned a gun, if you mentioned the remarkable similarity between them and Rush's Ditto Heads? "Those Liberals".
You know, the ones who have never disagreed with the Party Line of the moment, even if the party Line is 180 degrees opposite of what it was last year or last week? The ones who behave as if all politics and all philosophy are team sports, and if you are not 100% on MY team YOU are the ENEMY? you know, "Those Liberals" The intolerant of difference, while celebrating "diversity" ones? They make me feel nostalgia for my years spent with rabid Pentecostals.
They also make me feel very alone and very old. I suddenly remember my good friends of old...Hari Sihng Khalsa, a friend of many years with a absolutely razor sharp mind, wit and tongue. Hari and I worked tirelessly on the LaVina and water pumping at Devils Gate projects. We disagreed on many issues and perspectives, quite sharply. From what I understand, outside observers had no idea of either our humor, or friendship, and were both confounded and afraid of an outbreak of violence. We got each other and were free to express ourselves fully. Hari died of leukemia Thanksgiving Day 1995, as Veronica, his wife, and I held him. It was a deep loss.
I think of my childhood friend Larry Walton. Very similar story, except, sadly, Larry died alone some thirty years ago. I think of my friend Tim Berends. Tim and I volunteered together in Christian ministry and had the deepest of doctrinal disagreements, but we always pulled together for each other and the cause. I think of Max and Guy, two Republican lawyers who came to my rescue when Supervisor Antonovich arranged to have Art Snyder sue me. And Robin Salzer, also a Republican, also a friend, who at that time held fund raisers to pay Guy and many of my legal costs.
I think of Oscar Werner, who was a hard right Republican and on the Altadena Town Council in my early years. Oscar had heard the rumors I was a liberal and stayed quietly away, until he realized lable or not, I was about protecting Altadena as a specific place and culture. Then Oscar took me under his wing and we became fast friends, with fifty years of time between us. I also think of Altadenas leading "liberal" light of that time, Edna Smith, who decided any friend of Oscars was the enemy. She didn't speak to me until Oscar was long dead and about a year before she died. For her public life was a matter of a team sport, and one had to always be on HER side or the ENEMY.
Life is not a team sport. Life requires listening. Sometimes you totally agree with the people on the other side. Oscar and Edna never realized it, but they agreed 95% of the time. They never spoke to each other long enough or calmly enough to know that. Sadly, I am not going to advocate discussion.
I have learned much to my deep regret that some people, "those liberals" have their minds made up, even more, I find, than the " DittoHeads". Even worse, as much as any Christian or moslem Fundamentalist, even if they are a professed Atheist, they believe God is ALWAYS on their side. They don't seem to have taken the point from Abraham Lincoln that we must be on god;s side, not he on ours. They can not, and will not, hear you as you attempt to explain your position and embrace your commonalities. They are very like a religious Fundamentalist: Submit 100% to my viewpoint or be banned for all eternity. It's kind of comical but no longer entertaining, to observe them.
My former friend demanded retractions, the cessation of any FB disagreements, or she would defriend me. I defriended her, realizing she had never been my friend, and never would be.
I so miss Hari.
It was foisted upon the American Public as the role model for American Womanhood. No wonder Bettie Freidan and Gloria Steinem rebelled. For those too young to remember, the Doris Day Public Persona (DDPP for the rest of this essay) was one of a well dressed woman who was in a professional world where in order to survive due to the fragile male egos she was surrounded by she pretended to be both dumb as a rock and submissive as a starving kitten. She desired marriage to wealthy powerful successful men, and fended off every advance from them until they were "bagged". She outwitted everyone through continual and deep deception. There was not an honest dimension to her, and if society was in the 1950's and 1960's as portrayed in her movies, there was not an honest moment in it, either. The movies, values and society they portray are revolting. I am very glad the world went through the sexual and women's liberation movements of the late 1960's every time I think of Doris Day, because I can not imagine the hell of being married to such a creature. I can't imagine the hell of a society where men and women are on every level absolutely dishonest with one another. The world we live in today is not perfect, but its a whole lot better than the Stepford Doris Day world
Anyhow, my well educated hard working now former friend took great umbrage to my dislike of the DDPP. She wrote me a nasty couple of notes about me attacking her. I was confused. I have never seen personal disagreement as an attack. I thought that was strange, since she is an unconventionally lovely woman who I had in the past ALWAYS complimented on both her beauty and her intelligence. Her response was way, way, way out of scale, cutting and totally unexpected. It told me I had completely misjudged her as a person. She was "one of those "Liberals."'
One of "those Liberals"? you ask. Sadly, yes, "Those Liberals". Those liberals who listen to liberal talk radio and or go to events sponsored by some "enlightened" Church and can not, will not, tolerate anyone who disagrees with them on any issue. 'Those Liberals". You know the remarkably always in sync group thinkers who seem to have some chip implanted in their sub cortex that gets the latest talking points uploaded every morning from Palosi Central. You know, the ones who while they would be inflamed enough to shoot you, if they owned a gun, if you mentioned the remarkable similarity between them and Rush's Ditto Heads? "Those Liberals".
You know, the ones who have never disagreed with the Party Line of the moment, even if the party Line is 180 degrees opposite of what it was last year or last week? The ones who behave as if all politics and all philosophy are team sports, and if you are not 100% on MY team YOU are the ENEMY? you know, "Those Liberals" The intolerant of difference, while celebrating "diversity" ones? They make me feel nostalgia for my years spent with rabid Pentecostals.
They also make me feel very alone and very old. I suddenly remember my good friends of old...Hari Sihng Khalsa, a friend of many years with a absolutely razor sharp mind, wit and tongue. Hari and I worked tirelessly on the LaVina and water pumping at Devils Gate projects. We disagreed on many issues and perspectives, quite sharply. From what I understand, outside observers had no idea of either our humor, or friendship, and were both confounded and afraid of an outbreak of violence. We got each other and were free to express ourselves fully. Hari died of leukemia Thanksgiving Day 1995, as Veronica, his wife, and I held him. It was a deep loss.
I think of my childhood friend Larry Walton. Very similar story, except, sadly, Larry died alone some thirty years ago. I think of my friend Tim Berends. Tim and I volunteered together in Christian ministry and had the deepest of doctrinal disagreements, but we always pulled together for each other and the cause. I think of Max and Guy, two Republican lawyers who came to my rescue when Supervisor Antonovich arranged to have Art Snyder sue me. And Robin Salzer, also a Republican, also a friend, who at that time held fund raisers to pay Guy and many of my legal costs.
I think of Oscar Werner, who was a hard right Republican and on the Altadena Town Council in my early years. Oscar had heard the rumors I was a liberal and stayed quietly away, until he realized lable or not, I was about protecting Altadena as a specific place and culture. Then Oscar took me under his wing and we became fast friends, with fifty years of time between us. I also think of Altadenas leading "liberal" light of that time, Edna Smith, who decided any friend of Oscars was the enemy. She didn't speak to me until Oscar was long dead and about a year before she died. For her public life was a matter of a team sport, and one had to always be on HER side or the ENEMY.
Life is not a team sport. Life requires listening. Sometimes you totally agree with the people on the other side. Oscar and Edna never realized it, but they agreed 95% of the time. They never spoke to each other long enough or calmly enough to know that. Sadly, I am not going to advocate discussion.
I have learned much to my deep regret that some people, "those liberals" have their minds made up, even more, I find, than the " DittoHeads". Even worse, as much as any Christian or moslem Fundamentalist, even if they are a professed Atheist, they believe God is ALWAYS on their side. They don't seem to have taken the point from Abraham Lincoln that we must be on god;s side, not he on ours. They can not, and will not, hear you as you attempt to explain your position and embrace your commonalities. They are very like a religious Fundamentalist: Submit 100% to my viewpoint or be banned for all eternity. It's kind of comical but no longer entertaining, to observe them.
My former friend demanded retractions, the cessation of any FB disagreements, or she would defriend me. I defriended her, realizing she had never been my friend, and never would be.
I so miss Hari.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
LACMA measurement issues,
The new director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Michael Govan has a huge desire to leave his mark, in terms of a major building, on the art, cultural and civic scene in Los Angeles. In the Not for profit and governmental circles, this is how one's genitalia are measured. The Gawd awful American wing that blocked William Pereira's early 1960's campus and defeated the museums openness to Wilshire was built almost three decades ago. It's been a long time since a LACMA Museum Director could claim huge genitalia, and while there was almost universal high regard for the hideous American Wing by the press and civic establishment when it was built, everyone almost instantly discovered that the emperor had no clothes and that the American Wing destroyed what grace of the Pereira campus was left.
Govan, rather than choose an local LA Architect of merit such as Thom Mayne, Eric Owen Moss, Fred Fisher, Mike Rotundi, Dean Nota, Wallace Cunningham, Chris Carr, Louis Wiehle, Michael Pinto, Julia Strickland, Duncan Nicholson, Helana Arahuete, or Vaughn Trammell, or a American Architect of Merit outside of LA such as Ken Kellog, Anthony Puttnam, Josh Safdie, David E. Dodge or say Bart Prince, went way way FAAR away and chose a man who views America and LA as strange exotic places, the Swiss Architect Peter Zumthor.
As a fifth generation Southern Californian, I admire in a way, the provincialism of the civic leaders two generations ago who chose William Pereira as our art museum Architect. That generation understood that one defined LA as a art capital not only by its collection of works of the past and present, but by having a local society capable of producing and making thrive, architectural talent at least as good as the collection that was being housed. All of the LA Architects I listed above have superior talent, at least the equal of anyone worldwide, no matter their awards or press reputation.
Pereira's original campus was open to Wilshire, was inviting, did have welcoming exterior spaces and the buildings could be sensitively adapted by even a mediocre Architect, to have movable partitions. Our technology is better today, we could make the multiple water elements work, even on the tar pits, and certainly the buildings can be retrofitted to be more energy efficient. All of this can be done for far lower a cost than the new building, even including building another nearby expanded display space. The reason not to do this, of course, goes right back to Mr. Govan and his measurement issues.
As to the Zumthor proposal itself, Mr. Zumthor is noted and has won design awards for his tight vertical rectilinear buildings. Mr. Zumthor seems to realize that much of Los Angeles Architecture from the 1950's on made use of long horizontal amoeba shaped buildings or portions of buildings. here in his LACMA proposal he attempts to fool us into believing he has been seduced by LA into a Architectural form that seems at first to have evolved from John Lautner. This is both an illusion and a insult to Mr. Lautner. In the case of Mr. Lautner, every form did actually arise, and could be easily seen to related, directly to a FUNCTION. Unless trickery is a function, the Zumthor building's amoeba shapes do not arise from function. They mainly serve to tie groups of rectilinear structures together. The Ameba shape just hides the fact that Zumthor is giving us several really dull vertical rectilinear rooms as a museum. There really is no difference between this and Pereira's original campus EXCEPT that Pereira's was conceived honestly and as a complete artistic expression with integrated water, hardscape, and landscape elements. Zumthor has not yet worked out what will be under his amoeba shapes, he plans seven stairwells to both support this thing thirty feet off ground level and be his access points, yet he has not worked these out in any detail. So we are being shown a series of incomplete sketches for a three quarter of a billion dollar building. Zumthor has no idea what the underside of his building will be or what the landscape interface will be. Frankly, this project as shown would get a "F" as incomplete in any Architectural design class.
I would like to respectfully submit that Mr. Zumthor's contract be ended at this point, and that the LACMA board hire a local preservation firm to design a preservation alternative that restores the Pereira campus, makes it energy efficient, allows gallery walls to move and finds an annex space nearby for more exhibit space, and also hire any one of the GREAT local LA or California Architects I have listed, many of whom worked either with Frank Lloyd Wright, John Lautner, Bruce Goff or a combination of those three, to come up with a completely new design. LA is a mature enough arts community to have the talent to do a world class art museum and in fact, all of our local talent I have mentioned would turn out a much better museum plan than the present mediocre Zumthor sketch, that frankly it is embarrassing to see the press praise so highly, as they once praised the "American Wing".
As to Govan's measurement issue, he could attempt for a change to mount the kinds of world class exhibits LACMA had in the 1980's and 1990's, like the Soviet Constructivism exhibit, the Arts and Crafts in California exhibit, the Charles Rennie MacIntosh exhibit, the Clay army of the Chinese Emperor exhibit. Much as I love Architecture, the way I measure a museum is not primarily in its buildings, but in its exhibits, public outreach and programs. New building programs as the primary objective of any institution reflect a lack of imagination or commitment to core objectives, on the part of its board and executive director. That is the present measurement of LACMA.
Govan, rather than choose an local LA Architect of merit such as Thom Mayne, Eric Owen Moss, Fred Fisher, Mike Rotundi, Dean Nota, Wallace Cunningham, Chris Carr, Louis Wiehle, Michael Pinto, Julia Strickland, Duncan Nicholson, Helana Arahuete, or Vaughn Trammell, or a American Architect of Merit outside of LA such as Ken Kellog, Anthony Puttnam, Josh Safdie, David E. Dodge or say Bart Prince, went way way FAAR away and chose a man who views America and LA as strange exotic places, the Swiss Architect Peter Zumthor.
As a fifth generation Southern Californian, I admire in a way, the provincialism of the civic leaders two generations ago who chose William Pereira as our art museum Architect. That generation understood that one defined LA as a art capital not only by its collection of works of the past and present, but by having a local society capable of producing and making thrive, architectural talent at least as good as the collection that was being housed. All of the LA Architects I listed above have superior talent, at least the equal of anyone worldwide, no matter their awards or press reputation.
Pereira's original campus was open to Wilshire, was inviting, did have welcoming exterior spaces and the buildings could be sensitively adapted by even a mediocre Architect, to have movable partitions. Our technology is better today, we could make the multiple water elements work, even on the tar pits, and certainly the buildings can be retrofitted to be more energy efficient. All of this can be done for far lower a cost than the new building, even including building another nearby expanded display space. The reason not to do this, of course, goes right back to Mr. Govan and his measurement issues.
As to the Zumthor proposal itself, Mr. Zumthor is noted and has won design awards for his tight vertical rectilinear buildings. Mr. Zumthor seems to realize that much of Los Angeles Architecture from the 1950's on made use of long horizontal amoeba shaped buildings or portions of buildings. here in his LACMA proposal he attempts to fool us into believing he has been seduced by LA into a Architectural form that seems at first to have evolved from John Lautner. This is both an illusion and a insult to Mr. Lautner. In the case of Mr. Lautner, every form did actually arise, and could be easily seen to related, directly to a FUNCTION. Unless trickery is a function, the Zumthor building's amoeba shapes do not arise from function. They mainly serve to tie groups of rectilinear structures together. The Ameba shape just hides the fact that Zumthor is giving us several really dull vertical rectilinear rooms as a museum. There really is no difference between this and Pereira's original campus EXCEPT that Pereira's was conceived honestly and as a complete artistic expression with integrated water, hardscape, and landscape elements. Zumthor has not yet worked out what will be under his amoeba shapes, he plans seven stairwells to both support this thing thirty feet off ground level and be his access points, yet he has not worked these out in any detail. So we are being shown a series of incomplete sketches for a three quarter of a billion dollar building. Zumthor has no idea what the underside of his building will be or what the landscape interface will be. Frankly, this project as shown would get a "F" as incomplete in any Architectural design class.
I would like to respectfully submit that Mr. Zumthor's contract be ended at this point, and that the LACMA board hire a local preservation firm to design a preservation alternative that restores the Pereira campus, makes it energy efficient, allows gallery walls to move and finds an annex space nearby for more exhibit space, and also hire any one of the GREAT local LA or California Architects I have listed, many of whom worked either with Frank Lloyd Wright, John Lautner, Bruce Goff or a combination of those three, to come up with a completely new design. LA is a mature enough arts community to have the talent to do a world class art museum and in fact, all of our local talent I have mentioned would turn out a much better museum plan than the present mediocre Zumthor sketch, that frankly it is embarrassing to see the press praise so highly, as they once praised the "American Wing".
As to Govan's measurement issue, he could attempt for a change to mount the kinds of world class exhibits LACMA had in the 1980's and 1990's, like the Soviet Constructivism exhibit, the Arts and Crafts in California exhibit, the Charles Rennie MacIntosh exhibit, the Clay army of the Chinese Emperor exhibit. Much as I love Architecture, the way I measure a museum is not primarily in its buildings, but in its exhibits, public outreach and programs. New building programs as the primary objective of any institution reflect a lack of imagination or commitment to core objectives, on the part of its board and executive director. That is the present measurement of LACMA.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Preach that on Faith Promise Sunday
So I am sitting with a lawyer friend (yes I do have those) who specializes in helping poor people. He has a client who is a single mom. She is behind on her mortgage and about to be foreclosed on. She owes a small amount of money back, is making enough to pay monthly, but was sick is self employed and cant get enough to make up the money she fell behind on.
SOOOOOoooooo I say to my lawyer friend," Hey I know Sister So and so, she's been a Church Member in good standing for twenty five years, lets go to her pastor and have the church raise the money." My lawyer friend looks at me as if I have dropped fifty tabs of acid, smoked some crack and consumed three fifths of Jack Daniels all in a second. Its a look of pity, revulsion and fear. He laughs and says "You're not serious?" 'Well yeah, that's one of the things churches are FOR, of Course I am serious." Now he looks at me with almost pure pity. Slowly he says, as if I were some stoned drug filled homeless person "S t e e e v e, Churches don't give money to poor people, they snatch it from them. They NEVER help anyone."
Now I know this is probably generally true. Its a heartbreak, really, that the general condition of the so called Church of Jesus Christ, the supposed representatives of the Kingdom of Jehovah here on Earth, is that they do not distribute, but take storehouses unto themselves. Seems they never have read where it is written:
"Will a man rob G_d"
You will say "How have we robbed you?"
"You have robbed me in that the storehouse for the poor is not distributed to them, but my house is made a gathering place for wealth for the priests, who oppress the poor. In this have you robbed me."
Preach that on Faith Promise Sunday!
Sadly, I reached out to my lawyers clients pastor. he was not interested in helping her. Another storehouse of iniquity and thievery. I( am not so sad for her though, but fort he pastor. For all the Pastors who can not condescend to help their own parishioners, who can not, who will not roll their sleeves up and lift one of the sheep up. These ravenous wolves will be lost at the end of time, standing at the Great White Throne Judgment, announcing their degrees, their so called good works, their preaching and some even miracles, and Jesus the Christ will look them straight in the eye and say "Depart from me you evil doers of iniquity, I know you not. When I was hungry you did not feed me. When naked you did not clothe me, when broken you did not bind me up, when in prison and alone you did not visit me."
They will say "When did we ever see YOU such?'
And he will say "As you saw the LEAST of these who are my brothers, so there was I."
Preach THAT on Faith Promise Sunday, you brood of vipers.
Can I hear an Amen?
SOOOOOoooooo I say to my lawyer friend," Hey I know Sister So and so, she's been a Church Member in good standing for twenty five years, lets go to her pastor and have the church raise the money." My lawyer friend looks at me as if I have dropped fifty tabs of acid, smoked some crack and consumed three fifths of Jack Daniels all in a second. Its a look of pity, revulsion and fear. He laughs and says "You're not serious?" 'Well yeah, that's one of the things churches are FOR, of Course I am serious." Now he looks at me with almost pure pity. Slowly he says, as if I were some stoned drug filled homeless person "S t e e e v e, Churches don't give money to poor people, they snatch it from them. They NEVER help anyone."
Now I know this is probably generally true. Its a heartbreak, really, that the general condition of the so called Church of Jesus Christ, the supposed representatives of the Kingdom of Jehovah here on Earth, is that they do not distribute, but take storehouses unto themselves. Seems they never have read where it is written:
"Will a man rob G_d"
You will say "How have we robbed you?"
"You have robbed me in that the storehouse for the poor is not distributed to them, but my house is made a gathering place for wealth for the priests, who oppress the poor. In this have you robbed me."
Preach that on Faith Promise Sunday!
Sadly, I reached out to my lawyers clients pastor. he was not interested in helping her. Another storehouse of iniquity and thievery. I( am not so sad for her though, but fort he pastor. For all the Pastors who can not condescend to help their own parishioners, who can not, who will not roll their sleeves up and lift one of the sheep up. These ravenous wolves will be lost at the end of time, standing at the Great White Throne Judgment, announcing their degrees, their so called good works, their preaching and some even miracles, and Jesus the Christ will look them straight in the eye and say "Depart from me you evil doers of iniquity, I know you not. When I was hungry you did not feed me. When naked you did not clothe me, when broken you did not bind me up, when in prison and alone you did not visit me."
They will say "When did we ever see YOU such?'
And he will say "As you saw the LEAST of these who are my brothers, so there was I."
Preach THAT on Faith Promise Sunday, you brood of vipers.
Can I hear an Amen?
Friday, May 24, 2013
Who would Jesus dispossess for a lousy buck?
Recently, I was having coffee with a young friend. My young friend was seeking both advice and connections. My friend was perplexed. He had spent some $8000 on lawyers, consultants and filing fees to start a Not for Profit and he didn't yet have enough donations for it to be "self sustaining".
So, I asked the young man "What's your Not for Profit about?" He said "Feeding homeless people." Soooo I asked, with a slight chuckle, "Well how many sandwiches can you make for eight grand?"
My young friend seemed confused. I explained to my young friend that decades ago I volunteered for a Not for Profit in Hollywood. We had a suicide prevention hot line, provided three meals a day and housing for at least sixty people every night, did free drug rehab, rescued hookers from pimps and got their lives turned around, and on Wednesday night we distributed several hundred sandwiches.
On Wednesday mornings Restaurants, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, local Churches and mostly private individuals dropped groceries off. On Wednesday afternoon the staff made as many sandwiches as we could with the groceries. On Wednesday night we distributed hundreds of those sandwiches on Hollywood and Santa Monica Boulevards to every hungry homeless and hooking person we could find. No paid Executive Director, no paid staff, no four color mailer, no paid fund raiser or grant writer. Just "What would Jesus do?" We used to talk about the fact that if every church, temple and synagogue in America made and distributed 100 sandwiches once a week, there would be no starving hungry people in America. Alas, I was not confused about my young friend. His interest was not in feeding homeless people, for him this was just a "hook".
In America there are millions of Churches and Not for Profit organizations that receive property tax, parsonage tax, income tax exemptions. Their donors receive income tax breaks. In 1937 the U.S. Supreme Court found that these tax exceptions are given for "good works" Churches and Not for Profits do in feeding hungry people, providing health care for the sick, sheltering homeless people, and ameliorating the effects of privation and poverty. Since the 1950's they have been technically not allowed to be directly involved in politics.
But Churches and Not for Profits are NOT doing these good works. They are busily building real estate and investment portfolios and building payrolls of people who mostly support the institution itself, rather than serve the needy.
My young friend was upset not because feeding hungry people was something he was being prevented from doing, but because he was not yet able to become a salaried Executive Director, consider lunching to be "work", have a staff , free car, and live a luxury lifestyle of ease and moral superiority, on the backs of poor people. Needless to say, he left our meeting with no new connections and the advice to go to Super King Market, buy a bag of groceries, and find some people to give them away to. He left very sad. The greedy motivation of my young friend, and the lavish life of many Not for Profit Executive Directors and staff, while achieving little, if any, of their mission, have become common in the Church and Not for Profit world.
One Pasadena Church is so dominant in political issues that last year when several Altadenan's called Unions asking for help in fighting the opening of a local Walmart, they were told that the Union organized ALL of there political efforts in the San Gabriel Valley though one Pasadena Church. Several Unions claimed they would not work with any activists who were not under the direction, influence, supervision and control of this particular Pasadena Church. This particular Pasadena Church recently purchased a Altadena not for profit facility that had for 100 years provided housing and healthcare for old indigent people form the Altadena area. That Altadena Not for Profit, run by godless humanist had adhered to the tenants of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, until the Pasadena Church took it over. The particular Pasadena Church tore down the buildings, left the land fallow for five years, and is about to build over 300 luxury retirement villas for wealthy people from all over America. Because ownership will be retained by the Church, no property tax will be paid. There will be no services provided for Pasadena's or Altadena's indigent poor people. I guess that Pasadena Church's Gospel goes something like "What old poor unhealthy people would Jesus dispossess to make a lousy buck?" This is not uncommon. Churches all over America are dishonoring the life and Gospel of Jesus Christ in this kind of greedy, despicable, Hypocritical, and may I say Satanic, salary serving careerist manner.
We need a change. tax breaks for Churches and Not for Profits must be DEEDS tested. The majority of funds raised must be expended directly on the mission of feeding, housing, clothing the poor, drug rehabilitation, real job training, re entering prisoners to society, tending the sick, ill and dying and relieving the conditions of poverty. Every Citizen and for profit corporation is being taxed more than they would be, more than their fair share, because religious institutions and Not for Profits are getting a free ride. That would be OK were they serving the functions they get the free ride for, but in the main, they are not, and we are all also being taxed to fulfill those functions through government. So we outside of the not for profit world are paying at least twice.
Oh that wonderful all volunteer Not for Profit I volunteered for in Hollywood? Our founder and Executive Director fell in love and got married. He needed a job and needed to hand off our not for profit to others. It was difficult for him, a very reserved person, to glad hand enough to raise our $50,000 a year budget, manage our staff, and actually do redemptive work himself. He was exhausted. We found a International Not for Profit that promised us the world in the funding they would bring to bear to accomplish the mission. They got our donor list, fired all the volunteer staff one afternoon, closed down all operations the next, and with four color glossy print materials raise millions of dollars a year on doing good works in Hollywood. They have no operations there, not a dime raised by them is feeding, clothing, housing a single homeless kid, rescuing a hooker, or preventing a suicide. they raised almost three million dollars through our old organizations name last year. Yes, that is painful to type. They are basically stealing 3 million dollars a year from poor people, and doing it with a name that used to serve them well.
The Not for Profit industry needs to become accountable and brought to heel. The gravy train of high salaries, and questionable, if any deeds, must come to an end.
So, I asked the young man "What's your Not for Profit about?" He said "Feeding homeless people." Soooo I asked, with a slight chuckle, "Well how many sandwiches can you make for eight grand?"
My young friend seemed confused. I explained to my young friend that decades ago I volunteered for a Not for Profit in Hollywood. We had a suicide prevention hot line, provided three meals a day and housing for at least sixty people every night, did free drug rehab, rescued hookers from pimps and got their lives turned around, and on Wednesday night we distributed several hundred sandwiches.
On Wednesday mornings Restaurants, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, local Churches and mostly private individuals dropped groceries off. On Wednesday afternoon the staff made as many sandwiches as we could with the groceries. On Wednesday night we distributed hundreds of those sandwiches on Hollywood and Santa Monica Boulevards to every hungry homeless and hooking person we could find. No paid Executive Director, no paid staff, no four color mailer, no paid fund raiser or grant writer. Just "What would Jesus do?" We used to talk about the fact that if every church, temple and synagogue in America made and distributed 100 sandwiches once a week, there would be no starving hungry people in America. Alas, I was not confused about my young friend. His interest was not in feeding homeless people, for him this was just a "hook".
In America there are millions of Churches and Not for Profit organizations that receive property tax, parsonage tax, income tax exemptions. Their donors receive income tax breaks. In 1937 the U.S. Supreme Court found that these tax exceptions are given for "good works" Churches and Not for Profits do in feeding hungry people, providing health care for the sick, sheltering homeless people, and ameliorating the effects of privation and poverty. Since the 1950's they have been technically not allowed to be directly involved in politics.
But Churches and Not for Profits are NOT doing these good works. They are busily building real estate and investment portfolios and building payrolls of people who mostly support the institution itself, rather than serve the needy.
My young friend was upset not because feeding hungry people was something he was being prevented from doing, but because he was not yet able to become a salaried Executive Director, consider lunching to be "work", have a staff , free car, and live a luxury lifestyle of ease and moral superiority, on the backs of poor people. Needless to say, he left our meeting with no new connections and the advice to go to Super King Market, buy a bag of groceries, and find some people to give them away to. He left very sad. The greedy motivation of my young friend, and the lavish life of many Not for Profit Executive Directors and staff, while achieving little, if any, of their mission, have become common in the Church and Not for Profit world.
One Pasadena Church is so dominant in political issues that last year when several Altadenan's called Unions asking for help in fighting the opening of a local Walmart, they were told that the Union organized ALL of there political efforts in the San Gabriel Valley though one Pasadena Church. Several Unions claimed they would not work with any activists who were not under the direction, influence, supervision and control of this particular Pasadena Church. This particular Pasadena Church recently purchased a Altadena not for profit facility that had for 100 years provided housing and healthcare for old indigent people form the Altadena area. That Altadena Not for Profit, run by godless humanist had adhered to the tenants of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, until the Pasadena Church took it over. The particular Pasadena Church tore down the buildings, left the land fallow for five years, and is about to build over 300 luxury retirement villas for wealthy people from all over America. Because ownership will be retained by the Church, no property tax will be paid. There will be no services provided for Pasadena's or Altadena's indigent poor people. I guess that Pasadena Church's Gospel goes something like "What old poor unhealthy people would Jesus dispossess to make a lousy buck?" This is not uncommon. Churches all over America are dishonoring the life and Gospel of Jesus Christ in this kind of greedy, despicable, Hypocritical, and may I say Satanic, salary serving careerist manner.
We need a change. tax breaks for Churches and Not for Profits must be DEEDS tested. The majority of funds raised must be expended directly on the mission of feeding, housing, clothing the poor, drug rehabilitation, real job training, re entering prisoners to society, tending the sick, ill and dying and relieving the conditions of poverty. Every Citizen and for profit corporation is being taxed more than they would be, more than their fair share, because religious institutions and Not for Profits are getting a free ride. That would be OK were they serving the functions they get the free ride for, but in the main, they are not, and we are all also being taxed to fulfill those functions through government. So we outside of the not for profit world are paying at least twice.
Oh that wonderful all volunteer Not for Profit I volunteered for in Hollywood? Our founder and Executive Director fell in love and got married. He needed a job and needed to hand off our not for profit to others. It was difficult for him, a very reserved person, to glad hand enough to raise our $50,000 a year budget, manage our staff, and actually do redemptive work himself. He was exhausted. We found a International Not for Profit that promised us the world in the funding they would bring to bear to accomplish the mission. They got our donor list, fired all the volunteer staff one afternoon, closed down all operations the next, and with four color glossy print materials raise millions of dollars a year on doing good works in Hollywood. They have no operations there, not a dime raised by them is feeding, clothing, housing a single homeless kid, rescuing a hooker, or preventing a suicide. they raised almost three million dollars through our old organizations name last year. Yes, that is painful to type. They are basically stealing 3 million dollars a year from poor people, and doing it with a name that used to serve them well.
The Not for Profit industry needs to become accountable and brought to heel. The gravy train of high salaries, and questionable, if any deeds, must come to an end.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Why the American People Are Not Excited this Election Year.
It's August in Altadena. A hot still humid sweltering August. It's a Presidential election year summer, volunteers should be calling and walking precincts, but here in the blazing foothills of Southern California it seems as if no election is happening. Those Southern Californians who are calling are calling into "battleground States" . California is assumed to be deeply in the Obama camp, so no one, not Governor Romney, nor President Obama, Not Even Congressman Ron Paul, is "wasting" money on the most populace state in the Union. So far this means that Californians can contemplate the election from afar.
I have been doing just that. I will not deny I have at times made calls for President Obama into a few "battleground States". The voters there are just as un enthused about this election as I am. Yes, they will vote for the President, but they will not do so enthusiastically. Why?
The first problem is President Obama's first year in office. He lost the troops there. Candidate Obama had said to the party faithful, the hard core of believers who march through precincts, make phone calls, and volunteer every waking hour for the candidate, that they would have to hold his feet to the fire (actually quoting FDR) and "make me do it". They did. The reaction from Rham Emannuel and his staff, who ran all the White House Communications was antagonistic, rude, spiteful and in a short time alienated the troops on the street that Obama administration would have had. It was a betrayal and a slap in the face. The ground troops have never stopped being disaffected. The Obama machine pretends to not notice this on the one hand and on the other snickers that the disaffected have no where else to go. Have they considered that the disaffected can just stay home?
The second problem was the Health Care Reform fight. A large portion of the members of the Democratic Party wanted Universal Coverage, Single Payer. Perhaps the President and his administration knew that Universal Coverage Single Payer was not possible with Congress, but they never started there. They started with Romneycare and slowly negotiated pieces of that away to the Republicans in Congress. Lobbying for Single Payer Universal Coverage would have made the President seem as if he had stood up high in the saddle, and eventhough he may not have won, He would have been a hero to his troops. He could have on his initial wave of popularity galvanized the nation. Instead by being a mealy compromiser, he threw that popularity away, almost instantly. Probably starting from that point could have negotiated more from the Republicans. Instead he passed the Heritage Foundations bill, was escoriated as if he had passed a socialist program by the Republicans, whose very legislation is what he must take "credit" for, and gave the Democrats a "Success" they can not be proud of.
So far not very good.
But the REAL problem with this election isn't that Governor Romney is as honest as a kid with his hands in a cookie jar and as dull as white paint in the Mojave desert on a stucco west facing wall, nor is it that President Obama has disaffected his troops, it's that this election is not about the crisis the American public have been living through and dealing with for thirty years now.
Somehow the election is about how much various benefits the baby boomers have paid into their whole lives, will be reduced, who is the biggest tax cheat, and whose Vice Presidential candidate has had the biggest gaffe this week. Most American voters are tired of the dog grooming show. They want some reality and some answers to what they face. No one is excited because so far this election is not about anything real.
You see real America, Street Level America, if you call that the 99% or the 49%, is in trouble. Deep trouble. our politicians are gleefully ignoring the trouble. The wealth of any nation is in three areas: labor, infrastructure and natural resources. We are in the water surrounded by sharks on all three.
First Trouble: Labor.
The work is in China, everything we buy seems imported from there and we are surviving on loans from China. For some reason, America's industrial and political classes have deemed this "inevitable", It wasn't. \Laws were changed, factories unbolted and shipped. The American People want the laws changed. they want work to come home. They want to create wealth here and loan the fruits from ourselves to ourselves. The political classes pretend they can't hear us. We need Tariffs based upon the working conditions and wages of the nations we are importing from and the environmental costs of producing those same goods here. It's not protectionism, it a level playing field.
Second Trouble: Labor.
Many of the jobs that do remain here are to a large part being taken by Illegal alien workers so that those jobs can be done for the investor class at low wages and in 19th Century working conditions. Both parties are complete total whores to this investor class and explain the exploitation of these workers in bizarre terms of kindness and compassion for mankind. I kid you not. the Bullshit can not be believed, but when this bullshit is challenged, one is accused of a lack of compassion and racism by the people benefiting form the largess of those exploiting these illegal aliens. Even worse, there has been bipartisan support for allowing the children of illegals imported here to be educated for free, stay, get professional licenses and have an easy route to citizenship. This is killing American wages. We need a immigration policy that is kind and compassionate, We already take 500,000 people a year legally, and almost half of those are from Mexico, we take more people every year than the rest of the world combined. Isn't that enough? Each year we import three and one half cities the size of Pasadena Ca. in population and we build no sewage plant, no electrical generation plant, no roads, no bridges, no schools for them...And we have to compete with these legal and illegal folks for our jobs. What American worker really thinks thats a good idea?
Third trouble: Infrastructure.
Anybody who has driven a crater filled road in California, stood below a bridge after the first thaw of winter and listened as the concrete chips fell to the ground as cars rolled across, seen the eroded condition of a levve sidewall on an American river, or experienced a summer brownout, knows that this countries infrastructure needs some serious and thoughtful reinvestment. Our great grandparents and grandparents built harbors, airports, highways, damns and bridges that this nation has used and benefitted from for seventy five years. Our work, companies, and personal lives all benefitted far beyond the cost of these improvements. They were indeed investments in the future. Now we are told we can not afford to build more and better roads and bridges and that what scant work will be done will be done with materials and crews imported from China. We need to rebuild our country, the great things our great grandparents built are all worn out. Our grandchildren and great grandchildren deserve smooth roads, functioning electrical plants, water purification plants, bridges the envy of the world, national parks, railroads, mass tansit, and a world of wonders.
We can afford these things, we just can not have them and endless war for no real reason. It's time we chose life for our people instead of the ability to potentially destroy any population disobediant to the will of our Oligarchs, at a moments notice. We need the oil you say? Buying it at three times its present price would be cheaper than the three wars we have fought this decade and for that we could have solar panalized every roof on every house in the county twice over...
Fourth trouble: Natural resources.
This ties in with infrastructure. Our water is impure and we are running out of it. We need a system nationwide that cleans our sewage (YES, I said that) makes the water pure and pumps it back into our rapidly depleting aquifirs. We need to stop running water off our roofs into gutters and out to sea. Again it needs to be cleaned and pumped back to the ground. Our residential developments need to be built so that water runs into french drains at the property edge and back to the ground.
Fifth trouble: Natural resources.
The soil. We depleted our top soil of natural minerals and nuetriants by 1937. The Nation has been living off petrochemically derived fertilizers ever since. The nuitrition of American grain, fruit and vegetables grown with these petrochemical fetilizers has steady declined over time. Presenlty America takes all of it's green waste, food waste and solid sewage waste and landfills it. We need a national drive to restore our soil.
The American People are aware of most of these issues. they dont know what to do about them and we can not understand why our "leaders" wont even discuss them. Thats why we just can't get excited about this election.
We should have two years of national service for every American, not to build up our war machine, but to build our roads, our bridges, our sewage reclamation plants, our national parks, to restore our streams, to rebuild and re-envigorate our topsoil, to make America once again the shining city on the hill. We can give all our Children the same benefits as we now give military veterans. Free health care, Assisted living when they are old, reduced or free University.
This time we can make it not an illusion, not Las Vegas lights made up of gas from the death cycle, but made up of regenerative policies that care fro the land as if we believe that Genisis is true, God placed mankind upon the earth to tend it as a garden fit for his children to live in. We the American People can repent of our love of the war machine, of endless profligate waste, or carelessness of everything and everyone, and we can heal our land.
Thats the kind of thing a voting public can get excited about.
I have been doing just that. I will not deny I have at times made calls for President Obama into a few "battleground States". The voters there are just as un enthused about this election as I am. Yes, they will vote for the President, but they will not do so enthusiastically. Why?
The first problem is President Obama's first year in office. He lost the troops there. Candidate Obama had said to the party faithful, the hard core of believers who march through precincts, make phone calls, and volunteer every waking hour for the candidate, that they would have to hold his feet to the fire (actually quoting FDR) and "make me do it". They did. The reaction from Rham Emannuel and his staff, who ran all the White House Communications was antagonistic, rude, spiteful and in a short time alienated the troops on the street that Obama administration would have had. It was a betrayal and a slap in the face. The ground troops have never stopped being disaffected. The Obama machine pretends to not notice this on the one hand and on the other snickers that the disaffected have no where else to go. Have they considered that the disaffected can just stay home?
The second problem was the Health Care Reform fight. A large portion of the members of the Democratic Party wanted Universal Coverage, Single Payer. Perhaps the President and his administration knew that Universal Coverage Single Payer was not possible with Congress, but they never started there. They started with Romneycare and slowly negotiated pieces of that away to the Republicans in Congress. Lobbying for Single Payer Universal Coverage would have made the President seem as if he had stood up high in the saddle, and eventhough he may not have won, He would have been a hero to his troops. He could have on his initial wave of popularity galvanized the nation. Instead by being a mealy compromiser, he threw that popularity away, almost instantly. Probably starting from that point could have negotiated more from the Republicans. Instead he passed the Heritage Foundations bill, was escoriated as if he had passed a socialist program by the Republicans, whose very legislation is what he must take "credit" for, and gave the Democrats a "Success" they can not be proud of.
So far not very good.
But the REAL problem with this election isn't that Governor Romney is as honest as a kid with his hands in a cookie jar and as dull as white paint in the Mojave desert on a stucco west facing wall, nor is it that President Obama has disaffected his troops, it's that this election is not about the crisis the American public have been living through and dealing with for thirty years now.
Somehow the election is about how much various benefits the baby boomers have paid into their whole lives, will be reduced, who is the biggest tax cheat, and whose Vice Presidential candidate has had the biggest gaffe this week. Most American voters are tired of the dog grooming show. They want some reality and some answers to what they face. No one is excited because so far this election is not about anything real.
You see real America, Street Level America, if you call that the 99% or the 49%, is in trouble. Deep trouble. our politicians are gleefully ignoring the trouble. The wealth of any nation is in three areas: labor, infrastructure and natural resources. We are in the water surrounded by sharks on all three.
First Trouble: Labor.
The work is in China, everything we buy seems imported from there and we are surviving on loans from China. For some reason, America's industrial and political classes have deemed this "inevitable", It wasn't. \Laws were changed, factories unbolted and shipped. The American People want the laws changed. they want work to come home. They want to create wealth here and loan the fruits from ourselves to ourselves. The political classes pretend they can't hear us. We need Tariffs based upon the working conditions and wages of the nations we are importing from and the environmental costs of producing those same goods here. It's not protectionism, it a level playing field.
Second Trouble: Labor.
Many of the jobs that do remain here are to a large part being taken by Illegal alien workers so that those jobs can be done for the investor class at low wages and in 19th Century working conditions. Both parties are complete total whores to this investor class and explain the exploitation of these workers in bizarre terms of kindness and compassion for mankind. I kid you not. the Bullshit can not be believed, but when this bullshit is challenged, one is accused of a lack of compassion and racism by the people benefiting form the largess of those exploiting these illegal aliens. Even worse, there has been bipartisan support for allowing the children of illegals imported here to be educated for free, stay, get professional licenses and have an easy route to citizenship. This is killing American wages. We need a immigration policy that is kind and compassionate, We already take 500,000 people a year legally, and almost half of those are from Mexico, we take more people every year than the rest of the world combined. Isn't that enough? Each year we import three and one half cities the size of Pasadena Ca. in population and we build no sewage plant, no electrical generation plant, no roads, no bridges, no schools for them...And we have to compete with these legal and illegal folks for our jobs. What American worker really thinks thats a good idea?
Third trouble: Infrastructure.
Anybody who has driven a crater filled road in California, stood below a bridge after the first thaw of winter and listened as the concrete chips fell to the ground as cars rolled across, seen the eroded condition of a levve sidewall on an American river, or experienced a summer brownout, knows that this countries infrastructure needs some serious and thoughtful reinvestment. Our great grandparents and grandparents built harbors, airports, highways, damns and bridges that this nation has used and benefitted from for seventy five years. Our work, companies, and personal lives all benefitted far beyond the cost of these improvements. They were indeed investments in the future. Now we are told we can not afford to build more and better roads and bridges and that what scant work will be done will be done with materials and crews imported from China. We need to rebuild our country, the great things our great grandparents built are all worn out. Our grandchildren and great grandchildren deserve smooth roads, functioning electrical plants, water purification plants, bridges the envy of the world, national parks, railroads, mass tansit, and a world of wonders.
We can afford these things, we just can not have them and endless war for no real reason. It's time we chose life for our people instead of the ability to potentially destroy any population disobediant to the will of our Oligarchs, at a moments notice. We need the oil you say? Buying it at three times its present price would be cheaper than the three wars we have fought this decade and for that we could have solar panalized every roof on every house in the county twice over...
Fourth trouble: Natural resources.
This ties in with infrastructure. Our water is impure and we are running out of it. We need a system nationwide that cleans our sewage (YES, I said that) makes the water pure and pumps it back into our rapidly depleting aquifirs. We need to stop running water off our roofs into gutters and out to sea. Again it needs to be cleaned and pumped back to the ground. Our residential developments need to be built so that water runs into french drains at the property edge and back to the ground.
Fifth trouble: Natural resources.
The soil. We depleted our top soil of natural minerals and nuetriants by 1937. The Nation has been living off petrochemically derived fertilizers ever since. The nuitrition of American grain, fruit and vegetables grown with these petrochemical fetilizers has steady declined over time. Presenlty America takes all of it's green waste, food waste and solid sewage waste and landfills it. We need a national drive to restore our soil.
The American People are aware of most of these issues. they dont know what to do about them and we can not understand why our "leaders" wont even discuss them. Thats why we just can't get excited about this election.
We should have two years of national service for every American, not to build up our war machine, but to build our roads, our bridges, our sewage reclamation plants, our national parks, to restore our streams, to rebuild and re-envigorate our topsoil, to make America once again the shining city on the hill. We can give all our Children the same benefits as we now give military veterans. Free health care, Assisted living when they are old, reduced or free University.
This time we can make it not an illusion, not Las Vegas lights made up of gas from the death cycle, but made up of regenerative policies that care fro the land as if we believe that Genisis is true, God placed mankind upon the earth to tend it as a garden fit for his children to live in. We the American People can repent of our love of the war machine, of endless profligate waste, or carelessness of everything and everyone, and we can heal our land.
Thats the kind of thing a voting public can get excited about.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Uh No the Middle Class Wasn't divided by Scott Walker.
O.K. I'm at LEAST as liberal as the next guy. More so, mostly. This week Scott Walker narrowly escaped recall as Governor of Wisconsin. The pundits left and right are declaring the working class of Wisconsin was split in half. Half voted for Tea party Walker, half voted for the Union Champion, Barrett.
A couple things that are important, especially for those of us on the left who may want , moving forward to take lessons from this loss...
1. You don't run the guy the People didn't like so much last time that they elected a Tea Party Whackadoodle , this time in the recall. Hey, the People said "No thanks" to this guy once already.Get a new face. Americans LOVE new, that's why the same old products always have a NEW AND IMPROVED label on them every six months.
2. Working class unionized and non unionized private sector workers don't see any public sector workers as their brothers and sisters. They see them as what they generally are: the enforcement arm of the Corporatist State. Private sector workers and voters see these public sector employees as the ENEMY. Until the left comes to terms with this, understands it, admits it to themselves, they won't be able to capture the working class like the Tea Party has. It's not that there is something wrong with Kansas, its that Kansas has experiences we on the left have refused to recognize.
"Steve, Steve , Steve", you say in a condescending, humoring mockingly gentle voice, "How can you say
T H A T ?" Well, in my many years as a Activist and Town Councilman no one ever came to my office or called my phone asking for solidarity with some Union.
Little old widow ladies called in panic because they had signed a petition against some development and two weeks later the County Zoning Department with Sheriffs carrying pistols and shot guns swept down on her property and demanded costly and extensive repairs and alterations be made. Those were Unionized Public Sector Employees devastating her meager retirement funds, attempting to drive her out of her home, and being used to retaliate against her free speech rights. That happened a few times and each incident took years of the little old ladies life and all of her energy to resolve.
A Little old woman whose family had lived in her house since it was built in 1919 owns three homes in a row on a small street next to a commercial district. A developer wanted her land. She spent six years with endless inspections, demands, shotguns pointed at her, her family members, her friends. Hundreds of thousands of dollars later, the Public Sector employees gave up, after they had gone through every single home on the block subjecting them to Zoning hell. Those folks were all working class, some unionized, some not, but none of them see Public Sector employees union or not, as friends.
A carpenter has a trailer on his commercial property at his shop. There is mixed zoning on his land and he rented the trailer to the local Parking Enforcement Officer. She filed a complaint against the department for discrimination. Zoning, Building and Safety, Edison Inspectors, and the Sheriff's Department, guns brandished forced their way warrent-less into the friends property. He had to remove the trailer,so the complaining unionized County employee became homeless at the hands of complying unionized County employees, Solidarity? There was no permit on the storage building that had been there for at least seventy years, that had to go. They made him install fire systems in his studio. Cal Osha showed up to inspect all of his vintage saws and equipment, and wanted thousands of dollars of safety equipment on them and tens of thousands of dollars in dust collection and spray booth equipment. All this in spite of the fact that my carpenter friend has no employees. You see he MAY have them someday. That went through rounds and rounds of administrative hearings. Cost my buddy a FORTUNE, all because he had committed the crime of renting to a County employee who thought she had rights.
A friend works at a Automotive repair shop. Its been in business here in town since 1916. It is the oldest continuing operating automotive repair shop in Los Angeles County. My friend buys the shop from his boss. I go with him to the County when he transfers the business licenses. We are told everything is in order. Six months later, my friend who has put his life savings into purchasing his shop, gets a letter from the County saying his licenses have been revoked. His business that has continuously operated in the same fashion since 1916 at the same location was rezoned at some point. He has to apply for a Conditional Use Permit and he has to stop operations until he does. This normally takes a year and a half, costs about $30,000 by the time all the permits, fees, drawings, and fixers are paid. In the meantime the mortgage on the shop must be paid. I make an appointment with my friend and the County Zoning guy. Eight County thugs show up who proceed to mock and humiliate my friend for starting his own business and not getting a good paying safe secure County job. I would not have believed it had I not heard it. We ran out of the meeting before we each killed some County Bastard. We organized. we got the County to lay off, yet every eight months some new person would take over the County Zoning desk, start again, and we would have to start everyone calling to save this guys shop. Some brilliant County employee figured out the way to ruin my friend was to call in the State. My friend got inspections and fees and fines and work orders on a monthly basis until the oldest continuous business in town and my friends bottom line and life savings were completely destroyed. Do we imagine my mechanic friend sees government employees as people he has some kind of solidarity with? Uh NO.
These are not unusual stories. I can go on for pages upon pages of people just going about their lives in a way we would all consider "normal" who upset someone in government and were then persecuted by government employees.
Working class people see government employees as the enemy, because they behave that way, and with complete total contempt for members of the public. Until we on the left UNDERSTAND this, we will continue to lose to the Tea Party, to the Koch brothers, and the Oligarchs. We have to understand, government employees are not the same as private sector workers and small employers. There is and as long as they function as arms of enforcement for the international corporations and government who are attempting to destroy the workers and the middle class, never will be any solidarity with the Working and middle classes and government employees.
We on the left need to figure out a message that is for the Working Class, By the Working Class and Of the Working Class, or we will continue to lose and be irrelevant noise.
A couple things that are important, especially for those of us on the left who may want , moving forward to take lessons from this loss...
1. You don't run the guy the People didn't like so much last time that they elected a Tea Party Whackadoodle , this time in the recall. Hey, the People said "No thanks" to this guy once already.Get a new face. Americans LOVE new, that's why the same old products always have a NEW AND IMPROVED label on them every six months.
2. Working class unionized and non unionized private sector workers don't see any public sector workers as their brothers and sisters. They see them as what they generally are: the enforcement arm of the Corporatist State. Private sector workers and voters see these public sector employees as the ENEMY. Until the left comes to terms with this, understands it, admits it to themselves, they won't be able to capture the working class like the Tea Party has. It's not that there is something wrong with Kansas, its that Kansas has experiences we on the left have refused to recognize.
"Steve, Steve , Steve", you say in a condescending, humoring mockingly gentle voice, "How can you say
T H A T ?" Well, in my many years as a Activist and Town Councilman no one ever came to my office or called my phone asking for solidarity with some Union.
Little old widow ladies called in panic because they had signed a petition against some development and two weeks later the County Zoning Department with Sheriffs carrying pistols and shot guns swept down on her property and demanded costly and extensive repairs and alterations be made. Those were Unionized Public Sector Employees devastating her meager retirement funds, attempting to drive her out of her home, and being used to retaliate against her free speech rights. That happened a few times and each incident took years of the little old ladies life and all of her energy to resolve.
A Little old woman whose family had lived in her house since it was built in 1919 owns three homes in a row on a small street next to a commercial district. A developer wanted her land. She spent six years with endless inspections, demands, shotguns pointed at her, her family members, her friends. Hundreds of thousands of dollars later, the Public Sector employees gave up, after they had gone through every single home on the block subjecting them to Zoning hell. Those folks were all working class, some unionized, some not, but none of them see Public Sector employees union or not, as friends.
A carpenter has a trailer on his commercial property at his shop. There is mixed zoning on his land and he rented the trailer to the local Parking Enforcement Officer. She filed a complaint against the department for discrimination. Zoning, Building and Safety, Edison Inspectors, and the Sheriff's Department, guns brandished forced their way warrent-less into the friends property. He had to remove the trailer,so the complaining unionized County employee became homeless at the hands of complying unionized County employees, Solidarity? There was no permit on the storage building that had been there for at least seventy years, that had to go. They made him install fire systems in his studio. Cal Osha showed up to inspect all of his vintage saws and equipment, and wanted thousands of dollars of safety equipment on them and tens of thousands of dollars in dust collection and spray booth equipment. All this in spite of the fact that my carpenter friend has no employees. You see he MAY have them someday. That went through rounds and rounds of administrative hearings. Cost my buddy a FORTUNE, all because he had committed the crime of renting to a County employee who thought she had rights.
A friend works at a Automotive repair shop. Its been in business here in town since 1916. It is the oldest continuing operating automotive repair shop in Los Angeles County. My friend buys the shop from his boss. I go with him to the County when he transfers the business licenses. We are told everything is in order. Six months later, my friend who has put his life savings into purchasing his shop, gets a letter from the County saying his licenses have been revoked. His business that has continuously operated in the same fashion since 1916 at the same location was rezoned at some point. He has to apply for a Conditional Use Permit and he has to stop operations until he does. This normally takes a year and a half, costs about $30,000 by the time all the permits, fees, drawings, and fixers are paid. In the meantime the mortgage on the shop must be paid. I make an appointment with my friend and the County Zoning guy. Eight County thugs show up who proceed to mock and humiliate my friend for starting his own business and not getting a good paying safe secure County job. I would not have believed it had I not heard it. We ran out of the meeting before we each killed some County Bastard. We organized. we got the County to lay off, yet every eight months some new person would take over the County Zoning desk, start again, and we would have to start everyone calling to save this guys shop. Some brilliant County employee figured out the way to ruin my friend was to call in the State. My friend got inspections and fees and fines and work orders on a monthly basis until the oldest continuous business in town and my friends bottom line and life savings were completely destroyed. Do we imagine my mechanic friend sees government employees as people he has some kind of solidarity with? Uh NO.
These are not unusual stories. I can go on for pages upon pages of people just going about their lives in a way we would all consider "normal" who upset someone in government and were then persecuted by government employees.
Working class people see government employees as the enemy, because they behave that way, and with complete total contempt for members of the public. Until we on the left UNDERSTAND this, we will continue to lose to the Tea Party, to the Koch brothers, and the Oligarchs. We have to understand, government employees are not the same as private sector workers and small employers. There is and as long as they function as arms of enforcement for the international corporations and government who are attempting to destroy the workers and the middle class, never will be any solidarity with the Working and middle classes and government employees.
We on the left need to figure out a message that is for the Working Class, By the Working Class and Of the Working Class, or we will continue to lose and be irrelevant noise.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
California Cap and Trade is the wrong answer
As any and every Environmentalist knows, the earth, water and atmosphere are all one completely inter related system. When developing or regulating anything in the environment, we do so at our complete peril when we fail to remember this fact.
This week the California Air Resources Board voted to implement a 3000 page cap and trade regulation on those industries that remain in California. Under this regulation, those industries remaining in California will have a number assigned to them of the maximum units of carbon they can consume, if they go over that maximum number they can buy credits through an exchange, much like the exchange that led to California's electricity debacle that we as a state have yet to recover from. The credits would allow the industry to use more carbon than the State of California allows. The credits would be created by those industries using less carbon than their allowance selling them at a fixed price to the exchange who would then be allowed to sell the credits at any price above the fixed price. Call it what you will its a gigantic tax , the state estimates worth $20Billion in 2020, on California manufacturers.
What this means is that in the middle of the deepest recession in seventy five years, where California's unemployment rate is 30% higher than the nation as a whole, the California Air Resources Board has passed a new tax that companies outside of California are not subject to. California already has the tightest most difficult regulations in the world for industry. One major reason we have such high unemployment is that our industry is fleeing because in a one world economy, even with the most efficient machines and workers on earth, they can't compete when the horrific costs of California's regulations are added to their backs.
Many small companies have relocated to Arizona, New Mexico and Idaho. Each of those states has more relaxed regulations than California now has. These regulations are more like California's regulations of the late 1980's and represent a burden that these companies can already meet or do better than. They don't have to spend all their capital meeting California's ever changing ever more demanding regulations, or trading with enviro thieves on an exchange just to keep their doors open. Many of the remaining California industries will relocate to other States, rather than attempt to stay in business with a new back breaking tax that no one else in America faces. This of course will increase un employment in California and the states economic crisis.
Many more larger companies have moved their manufacturing to Latin America and China. With this new California only carbon tax, they will continue to do so. In those countries where there are either no regulations or local government officials co-operation can be bought cheaply, these companies usually operate completely filthy dirty factories that look like something directly out of late 19th Century photographs of disgusting inhumane industrial conditions. There are no filters or masks for the workers, no scrubbers in the smokestacks, no detention and clean up facilities before the industrial waste hits the water. Communist China is where the most base industrialists with the least care for the workers and the Earth go to supply our lust for shiny glittery things. Workers paradise indeed.
When I complain about these and many other California regulations people say to me "Yes, but the air here is so much cleaner than it was thirty years ago." Indeed it is. This is not, however, because the products we use are being made in a more environmentally friendly and safe manner. There are in fact, in the main, being made in a less environmentally safe and friendly manner than they were made thirty years ago. We are just under two delusions:
First that it's SOMEONE ELSE'S air, water and soil being polluted and
Second that this is PERFECTLY FINE, since our air, soil and water are not being polluted.
Friends, this is an obscenity. It is also environmental classism, nationalism, xenoism and racism. The thinking goes that pollution to make my toys is fine as long as I don't have to deal with it and if the Mexicans, Bolivians, and Chinese are "willing" to choke themselves to death making my Nikies, Apples, Ipods and so on, well HooRah for the one world economy! Really? This is I again repeat, nothing more than colonialism, classism, racism and stupidity done in the name of the environment. It is morally, scientifically, and even politically bankrupt. There will be a overall world system increase in pollution, directly due to this California only cap and trade law, even if that pollution is reduced in California. That's not good for the planet, or for California.
What we need instead is a national carbon and pollution tax on all products sold in the United States. Not an exchange where some enviro pirates can get rich, but a direct tax on every product that taxes the pollution used in it's manufacture and shipping to our market, NO MATTER WHERE IT WAS MADE. This would, with America still the world's chief consumer, tend to make companies worldwide clean up their act to sell to us. It would also tend to bring jobs and manufacturing back to the United States and back to California, while filling the national budget deficit. Its a win for the united States, a win for California, and a win for the Earth, Water and Sky.
P.S. Hey- Who ELECTED the California Air Resources Board? Think about it.
This week the California Air Resources Board voted to implement a 3000 page cap and trade regulation on those industries that remain in California. Under this regulation, those industries remaining in California will have a number assigned to them of the maximum units of carbon they can consume, if they go over that maximum number they can buy credits through an exchange, much like the exchange that led to California's electricity debacle that we as a state have yet to recover from. The credits would allow the industry to use more carbon than the State of California allows. The credits would be created by those industries using less carbon than their allowance selling them at a fixed price to the exchange who would then be allowed to sell the credits at any price above the fixed price. Call it what you will its a gigantic tax , the state estimates worth $20Billion in 2020, on California manufacturers.
What this means is that in the middle of the deepest recession in seventy five years, where California's unemployment rate is 30% higher than the nation as a whole, the California Air Resources Board has passed a new tax that companies outside of California are not subject to. California already has the tightest most difficult regulations in the world for industry. One major reason we have such high unemployment is that our industry is fleeing because in a one world economy, even with the most efficient machines and workers on earth, they can't compete when the horrific costs of California's regulations are added to their backs.
Many small companies have relocated to Arizona, New Mexico and Idaho. Each of those states has more relaxed regulations than California now has. These regulations are more like California's regulations of the late 1980's and represent a burden that these companies can already meet or do better than. They don't have to spend all their capital meeting California's ever changing ever more demanding regulations, or trading with enviro thieves on an exchange just to keep their doors open. Many of the remaining California industries will relocate to other States, rather than attempt to stay in business with a new back breaking tax that no one else in America faces. This of course will increase un employment in California and the states economic crisis.
Many more larger companies have moved their manufacturing to Latin America and China. With this new California only carbon tax, they will continue to do so. In those countries where there are either no regulations or local government officials co-operation can be bought cheaply, these companies usually operate completely filthy dirty factories that look like something directly out of late 19th Century photographs of disgusting inhumane industrial conditions. There are no filters or masks for the workers, no scrubbers in the smokestacks, no detention and clean up facilities before the industrial waste hits the water. Communist China is where the most base industrialists with the least care for the workers and the Earth go to supply our lust for shiny glittery things. Workers paradise indeed.
When I complain about these and many other California regulations people say to me "Yes, but the air here is so much cleaner than it was thirty years ago." Indeed it is. This is not, however, because the products we use are being made in a more environmentally friendly and safe manner. There are in fact, in the main, being made in a less environmentally safe and friendly manner than they were made thirty years ago. We are just under two delusions:
First that it's SOMEONE ELSE'S air, water and soil being polluted and
Second that this is PERFECTLY FINE, since our air, soil and water are not being polluted.
Friends, this is an obscenity. It is also environmental classism, nationalism, xenoism and racism. The thinking goes that pollution to make my toys is fine as long as I don't have to deal with it and if the Mexicans, Bolivians, and Chinese are "willing" to choke themselves to death making my Nikies, Apples, Ipods and so on, well HooRah for the one world economy! Really? This is I again repeat, nothing more than colonialism, classism, racism and stupidity done in the name of the environment. It is morally, scientifically, and even politically bankrupt. There will be a overall world system increase in pollution, directly due to this California only cap and trade law, even if that pollution is reduced in California. That's not good for the planet, or for California.
What we need instead is a national carbon and pollution tax on all products sold in the United States. Not an exchange where some enviro pirates can get rich, but a direct tax on every product that taxes the pollution used in it's manufacture and shipping to our market, NO MATTER WHERE IT WAS MADE. This would, with America still the world's chief consumer, tend to make companies worldwide clean up their act to sell to us. It would also tend to bring jobs and manufacturing back to the United States and back to California, while filling the national budget deficit. Its a win for the united States, a win for California, and a win for the Earth, Water and Sky.
P.S. Hey- Who ELECTED the California Air Resources Board? Think about it.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Now we know who killed those Kennedy's
Forty seven years. For most of human history, that span has been an entire lifetime. I was a small child forty seven years ago, but I remember that day better than any day last week. It's the day of the American Coup D Etat. It's the day the national Military Intelligence Industrial Complex shot an American President down like a rabid dog on Elm Street in Dallas Texas.
It was always a hinkey kill. That business a couple days later killing Oswald in the police station alerted even my six year old mind that there was something rotten in the cotton. Conspiracy theories sprouted almost instantly. Some believed LBJ did it. Some thought the Russians did it. Some said it was the Cubans. Dan Smoot the Conservative Texas commentator was the first to claim in public that the Intelligence community may have done it, and Dan was a former FBI man. I used to read my fathers copies of the Dan Smoot Report as a kid.
As a young adult, I met and befriended the Investigative Reporter, Mike Canfield. Mike and his co-Author, A. J. Weberman fingered three guys from the CIA as being the lead team that was responsible for carrying out the assassination of President John Kennedy. Those guys were stopped shortly after the Assassination by rail road police, dressed as tramps, hanging out in the train yard in back of Dealy Plaza. One guy was the famous CIA assassin, Frank Sturgis who Fidel Castro said was the most dangerous CIA agent ever. Another was E. Howard Hunt, and the third is an unknown man believed to be a Lebanese contract assassin. Canfield and Weberman wrote a ground breaking book Coup D Etat in America. They detailed the CIA mafia interlinks in the Assasination of President John Kennedy. Oddly enough, E. Howard Hunt, famous for his role in Watergate (Along with Sturgis) sued Canfield and Weberman for Libel and Slander. The suit never went to trial and was primarily designed to destroy book sales and keep the authors bottled up in litigation for years.
So here forty seven years is some GREAT news:
E. Howard Hunt confessed on his deathbed,in an interview taped by his own son, Saint John Hunt, that he indeed had involvement in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Not only that, Hunt said it was instigated by his case officer, who was also the CIA agent in charge of the Bay of Pigs.
Case closed. The CIA Killed President John F. Kennedy. That's right, as a pair of young journalists, A. J. Weberman, YIPPIE extraordinaire and Mike Canfield, Jesus Freak got it right way way way back in the early 1970's. Good work boys!
But friends there is more to know:
Jack Ruby was Mob from the get go and ran all the strip clubs, porn and male and female prostitution ofr the mob in the American Southwest. The mob had him assassinate and silence Lee Harvey Oswald.
Lee Harvey Oswald, was indeed exactly what he claimed to be: He was a Patsy. But he was more than that- Lee harvey was a CIA double agent. He had been Francis Gary Powers radio man and interviewed Powers while he was in captivity, supposedly for the Soviets, but? Oswald defected to the Soviet Union, married the daughter of the Soviet equivalent to the FBI and then was repatriated to the USA and had his passage paid for by the American State Department. Strange huh?
There were lots of Ruby/Oswald tie in's to Texas Oil Men. Some of those dirty no good so and so's are still alive. Even after forty seven long years, some of them are left alive to be brought to justice. Even Hunt's CIA case officer is still alive and could be brought to justice, except of course, the John Kennedy Assassination was a Coup D Etat, and justice, once a occasional visitor in America is now a stranger.
Yet on this cold November day we must remember the courageous who knowing it had been a Coup D Etat, none the less pursued the Assassins and the enemies of the American Republic: Dan Smoot, Judge Garrison, Congressman Henry B. Gonzales, Mort Saul, A. J. Weberman, and my good friend Mike Canfield. You each deserve the Medal of Freedom and the eternal gratitude of the American People.
All Power to the People!
It was always a hinkey kill. That business a couple days later killing Oswald in the police station alerted even my six year old mind that there was something rotten in the cotton. Conspiracy theories sprouted almost instantly. Some believed LBJ did it. Some thought the Russians did it. Some said it was the Cubans. Dan Smoot the Conservative Texas commentator was the first to claim in public that the Intelligence community may have done it, and Dan was a former FBI man. I used to read my fathers copies of the Dan Smoot Report as a kid.
As a young adult, I met and befriended the Investigative Reporter, Mike Canfield. Mike and his co-Author, A. J. Weberman fingered three guys from the CIA as being the lead team that was responsible for carrying out the assassination of President John Kennedy. Those guys were stopped shortly after the Assassination by rail road police, dressed as tramps, hanging out in the train yard in back of Dealy Plaza. One guy was the famous CIA assassin, Frank Sturgis who Fidel Castro said was the most dangerous CIA agent ever. Another was E. Howard Hunt, and the third is an unknown man believed to be a Lebanese contract assassin. Canfield and Weberman wrote a ground breaking book Coup D Etat in America. They detailed the CIA mafia interlinks in the Assasination of President John Kennedy. Oddly enough, E. Howard Hunt, famous for his role in Watergate (Along with Sturgis) sued Canfield and Weberman for Libel and Slander. The suit never went to trial and was primarily designed to destroy book sales and keep the authors bottled up in litigation for years.
So here forty seven years is some GREAT news:
E. Howard Hunt confessed on his deathbed,in an interview taped by his own son, Saint John Hunt, that he indeed had involvement in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Not only that, Hunt said it was instigated by his case officer, who was also the CIA agent in charge of the Bay of Pigs.
Case closed. The CIA Killed President John F. Kennedy. That's right, as a pair of young journalists, A. J. Weberman, YIPPIE extraordinaire and Mike Canfield, Jesus Freak got it right way way way back in the early 1970's. Good work boys!
But friends there is more to know:
Jack Ruby was Mob from the get go and ran all the strip clubs, porn and male and female prostitution ofr the mob in the American Southwest. The mob had him assassinate and silence Lee Harvey Oswald.
Lee Harvey Oswald, was indeed exactly what he claimed to be: He was a Patsy. But he was more than that- Lee harvey was a CIA double agent. He had been Francis Gary Powers radio man and interviewed Powers while he was in captivity, supposedly for the Soviets, but? Oswald defected to the Soviet Union, married the daughter of the Soviet equivalent to the FBI and then was repatriated to the USA and had his passage paid for by the American State Department. Strange huh?
There were lots of Ruby/Oswald tie in's to Texas Oil Men. Some of those dirty no good so and so's are still alive. Even after forty seven long years, some of them are left alive to be brought to justice. Even Hunt's CIA case officer is still alive and could be brought to justice, except of course, the John Kennedy Assassination was a Coup D Etat, and justice, once a occasional visitor in America is now a stranger.
Yet on this cold November day we must remember the courageous who knowing it had been a Coup D Etat, none the less pursued the Assassins and the enemies of the American Republic: Dan Smoot, Judge Garrison, Congressman Henry B. Gonzales, Mort Saul, A. J. Weberman, and my good friend Mike Canfield. You each deserve the Medal of Freedom and the eternal gratitude of the American People.
All Power to the People!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Well Whose playing Chess now?
I TOLD you So! Is such a annoying phrase both to use and to hear. In spite of this fact, I can not help but say "I told you so." to my friends within the Democratic Party who have their panties in a bunch that the Tea Party is gaining on them and that the Republicans may overtake them in the November Congressional elections.
While I was predicting this gloom, my more insider more well connected would be beltway dwelling friends were telling me to SHUT UP! That I was stupid, that Rham and Obama played Chess and I only played Checkers, and that opposing Obama meant that i had unrespolved buried below the surface racism in my pea picking little heart. Uh huh... I kept telling them pass REAL EUROPEAN STYLE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE and SCREW the INSURANCE INDUSTRY and you will have a electoral majority for forty years. Fail to do that and you won't see yourselves hold onto Congress in two years.
I said "Hey dont sell Chrysler to Italy, bail her and GM out", oh Noooo I was playing checkers. I said don't bail out the banks without relief for the underwater unemployed homeowners. Oh Noo I was playing checkers with Bull Connor in my heart...I said no no no more breaks for corporations, rebuild the bridges, the roads, the electrical grids and the national parks. Build a nationwide railway/streetcar system. I was playing checkers on a cracker barrel.
Well whose playing chess NOW ? The Democratic Party, and hello to my friends on the State Committee has been so smart, so confident that the voters had nowhere else to go, so delusional about the depth of love the average voter had for Obama that they managed to lose a mid term election. They could have won. They could have taken both houses. They could have done a major generational shift that would last for thirty years by standing tall for the interests of the 95% of the country. They could have had such a deep loyalty from the American People that they wouldn't need corporate dollars for a decade.....BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Alas. They wont get the message the People are sending them by staying home. They will sit at the expensive lunches in the expensive restaurant where some corporate shill is paying the bill and fret about how much they wish they could really do some little thing for the People and be appropriately loved for it....
When I was young I would read Abbie Hoffman railing against liberal politicians and what total limp schmucks they were. I could not then, but clearly do now appreciate his viewpoint.
While I was predicting this gloom, my more insider more well connected would be beltway dwelling friends were telling me to SHUT UP! That I was stupid, that Rham and Obama played Chess and I only played Checkers, and that opposing Obama meant that i had unrespolved buried below the surface racism in my pea picking little heart. Uh huh... I kept telling them pass REAL EUROPEAN STYLE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE and SCREW the INSURANCE INDUSTRY and you will have a electoral majority for forty years. Fail to do that and you won't see yourselves hold onto Congress in two years.
I said "Hey dont sell Chrysler to Italy, bail her and GM out", oh Noooo I was playing checkers. I said don't bail out the banks without relief for the underwater unemployed homeowners. Oh Noo I was playing checkers with Bull Connor in my heart...I said no no no more breaks for corporations, rebuild the bridges, the roads, the electrical grids and the national parks. Build a nationwide railway/streetcar system. I was playing checkers on a cracker barrel.
Well whose playing chess NOW ? The Democratic Party, and hello to my friends on the State Committee has been so smart, so confident that the voters had nowhere else to go, so delusional about the depth of love the average voter had for Obama that they managed to lose a mid term election. They could have won. They could have taken both houses. They could have done a major generational shift that would last for thirty years by standing tall for the interests of the 95% of the country. They could have had such a deep loyalty from the American People that they wouldn't need corporate dollars for a decade.....BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Alas. They wont get the message the People are sending them by staying home. They will sit at the expensive lunches in the expensive restaurant where some corporate shill is paying the bill and fret about how much they wish they could really do some little thing for the People and be appropriately loved for it....
When I was young I would read Abbie Hoffman railing against liberal politicians and what total limp schmucks they were. I could not then, but clearly do now appreciate his viewpoint.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Thoughts on Illegal Immigration
Howling on my CD player is the Voice of Bob Dylan singing "When you gonna wake up? When you gonna wake up? When you gonna wake up, strengthen the things that remain?" Indeed, yes.
I think slowly about the eleven to twenty million Illegal aliens here in the USA. Yes. You read that correctly. No one is sure, but it's someplace between eleven and twenty million people here illegally.
I know, some of my leftie friends find the phrase "Illegal Alien" to be so harsh. They like "Undocumented person" so much better. First of all because it's a much longer phrase, secondly because it's so hard to say fast, and third because they think its a kinder moniker. The thing is I've met illegal Aliens, and many of them have full on documents, more documentation than you have. Birth certificate, drivers license, all kinds of nice I.D., sometimes with more than one identity. These documents are sold more or less in the open. Last time I visited McArthur Park in Los Angeles, false documents were on sale on the sidewalk in the open.
Generally, when one thinks of a person with false identity papers, one thinks either of spies or criminals. How can people be selling false identity papers on the sidewalk of a public street?
Friends this is a outward sign of government wide corruption. The police look the other way, because the City Councils, State Assemblies and Senates and the Governors have told them to look away from this obvious criminal activity. Why would these politicians do that? Why have the police look away as forged documents are sold to people? Why have the police ignore the fact that documents are forged when people are arrested? Why does the D.A. not prosecute? It's because of the Big Campaign Donor, the Corporate Campaign Donor, The Oligarch and would be Oligarch and of course their friend and employee, the money bundling, money laundering, glad handing fixer former office holder, always on hand with a bundle of ill gotten gains. To make it plain, the Oligarchs have paid the politicians to order the police to ignore the illegal aliens with the obviously forged documents and the people forging those documents. Why would the people running a country do that?
Because to them America is not a Country. Not the way you or I think of it as a beloved geography inhabited by people who have thrown their lot in together adhering together to a sacred set of ideas like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and perhaps the writing of Tom Jefferson, John Adams and Tom Paine. No, to these Oligarchs America is nothing more or less than a opportunity for personal profit. They look at the American People not as one nation made of the peoples of the whole earth, they look upon us as interest and identity groups to pit against each other.
These Oligarchs love Illegal Aliens. Afterall, an Illegal Alien has no recourse to the law or the courts. The law demands breaks every few hours? Overtime? Safe workplace conditions? Just try to get that enforced on your bus ride back to Mexico or your boat trip to China. These are folks who are exploitable because they can not sue. SO these workers themselves are subject to what amounts to if not De Jure Slavery, De Facto Slavery.
In a recent case, in the midwest, the Police pulled over a van for a traffic violation. The van was carrying 13 men, all from Mexico, who volunteered to the police that they were not legally in the Country. These men were working for a international company that did work on maintaining commercial and industrial heating and air conditioning equipment. The Company were paying these illegal aliens $7.00 an hour, no overtime, one dollar a hour less than minimum wage. The men were working typical work weeks of fifty hours a week for $350.00 a week. Thirty years ago, when I was a construction worker, the trade to get into was Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC)maintenance. Way back in those days the HVAC jobs with big companies were considered secure, had regular hours and paid a whopping $35.00 an hour, PLUS full benefits. So lets add up what the company was saving by hiring Illegal Aliens today, as opposed to Citizen Workers, thirty years ago:
Costs @ 50 man hours a week:
$35 an hour for the first forty hours = $1400.00
$52.50 an hour for ten hours of overtime $ 525.00
Overhead, benefits & taxes $ 650.00
Cost per person for 50 hour week $2575.00
SO for each man for each week the multinational corporation was saving $2225 ($2575 - $350 = $2225) Each and every week, this multinational was saving on those thirteen Illegal Aliens $28,925.00. Twenty nine thousand dollars a week in unjust profits made on the backs of virtual slaves and taken from the American people. In a year of fifty weeks (assuming laughably that the Illegal Aliens got two weeks off) the multinational company saved $1,446,250.00. That's one point four million dollars in wages lost in the American economy. Its hundreds of cars , homes , bass boats, vacations, levis, movie tickets, dinners out, engagement rings, dresses and so on never sold. Its taxes not paid. That money is not multiplying in the national economy. That money is a small teensie sliver of the money being illegally taken from the American People every day by our corporate masters. It's BILLIONS of dollars of just wages sliding into the pockets of the Oligarchs and out of the pockets of the workers, and the local, state and federal governments. This is a destruction of the commons of the nation.
In addition to the low wages paid the illegals themselves, Illegal Aliens act as a hammer against all other workers in the nation. The Oligarchs point to every worker who wants a raise, is seeking a safe job site, or wants such crazy things as overtime, and in effect, and often in actuality, say "Look you don't want to do this job for what I feel like paying today (and its always less than yesterday)I can replace you with a Mexican. They want your job, and they will take it for half your wages, shut up, don't complain, work faster." Those of you reading this who have never worked in a factory, on a construction site or in a diner, may not believe it, but those of us who once did work in such places, know the gut tearing sound of those words and the back breaking fiscally destroying impact and effect of them. Even those of you who work in white collar jobs are having your wages eroded.
As wages at the lower end of the scale drop, the Oligarch turns to you and tells you to be grateful for what you have and that you can not drop down in America's social and employment culture and still even survive. Your wages are dropping too. It's O.K though, corporate profits are up, in spite of a lack of national production stocks are up, the banks got bailed out, all on the street is well. All is well, unless you live on Main street and not Wall street.
There is one more oppression contained within the Illegal Immigration issue, particularly when thinking about people coming from Mexico. Mexico is a country run by Oligarchs. These Oligarchs went to Yale and Harvard with America's Oligarchs. They are friends and classmates. The Mexican oligarchs have kept their people in perpetual peonage for decades. They have used Catholicism and a rigid social structure combined with purposeful lack of opportunity to keep wages down. Naturally, the Mexican People look across the border and they see a nation with no more resources than Mexico possesses prospering. The Mexican People desire better for themselves and their children than what the Mexican Oligarchs desire to let them have, because every Peso the worker earns is one the Oligarch will not posess. The Oligarch, being Da Man, wants them all. So all of the people in Mexico who would push and pressurize Mexican Society towards either reform or revolution instead cross the border because our Oligarchs are ordering our police to look the other way.
Workers on both sides of the border are being cheated. national economies on both sides of the border are being harmed and Oligarchs on both sides of the border are being enriched and propped up by illegal immigration into the USA from Mexico.
What is the Answer? To begin, it is not to pass new laws. Illegal immigration is already illegal. It already demands forged documents, perjury when applying for employment , and knowingly hiring people who have no legitimate right to work here in this Country. Arizona recently passed a law demanding law enforcement pull over every person who they reasonably suspect are not legally in the country and demand they show their Birth Certificate, Social Security Card and Drivers License. Is "Your Papers Please" to become the new salutation upon entering any State? Is this not a reduction of the rights of all citizens? If it is to be evenhandedly and Constitutionally enforced, of course it is. The answer is not to demand papers while traveling, or resting at home.
The answer is to prosecute and jail those who knowingly hire illegals. Now I know they say its difficult, but do we think that the corporation hiring those thriteen guys at the start of this article didn' t know they were illegal? Really? They thought citizens would work at a highly technical and dangerous job for less than minimum wage and no overtime? Really? Maybe some D.A.'s need to grow some balls and try it a couple times with say a jury of American Citizens..
There are some from the Democratic Party who are chattering about some kind of "bipartisan Immigration Reform". This will be nothing at the end of the day but an effort to allow those twenty million illegals to stay and still by their presence lower wages, and force every American to carry a new national ID card full of biometrics and a tracking chip, just so we can be spied upon at every moment. One can not suspect that "BiPartisan Immigration Reform" will lead to the solving of the immigration problem. Why? Well who has been paying the politicians to ask the police to ignore the law in the first place? Oh yeah, the Multinational Corporations and the Oligarchs who presently benefit from the situation of Illegal Immigration. Why would they solve something that is a problem for the American People and a benefit to themselves? They won't.
I think slowly about the eleven to twenty million Illegal aliens here in the USA. Yes. You read that correctly. No one is sure, but it's someplace between eleven and twenty million people here illegally.
I know, some of my leftie friends find the phrase "Illegal Alien" to be so harsh. They like "Undocumented person" so much better. First of all because it's a much longer phrase, secondly because it's so hard to say fast, and third because they think its a kinder moniker. The thing is I've met illegal Aliens, and many of them have full on documents, more documentation than you have. Birth certificate, drivers license, all kinds of nice I.D., sometimes with more than one identity. These documents are sold more or less in the open. Last time I visited McArthur Park in Los Angeles, false documents were on sale on the sidewalk in the open.
Generally, when one thinks of a person with false identity papers, one thinks either of spies or criminals. How can people be selling false identity papers on the sidewalk of a public street?
Friends this is a outward sign of government wide corruption. The police look the other way, because the City Councils, State Assemblies and Senates and the Governors have told them to look away from this obvious criminal activity. Why would these politicians do that? Why have the police look away as forged documents are sold to people? Why have the police ignore the fact that documents are forged when people are arrested? Why does the D.A. not prosecute? It's because of the Big Campaign Donor, the Corporate Campaign Donor, The Oligarch and would be Oligarch and of course their friend and employee, the money bundling, money laundering, glad handing fixer former office holder, always on hand with a bundle of ill gotten gains. To make it plain, the Oligarchs have paid the politicians to order the police to ignore the illegal aliens with the obviously forged documents and the people forging those documents. Why would the people running a country do that?
Because to them America is not a Country. Not the way you or I think of it as a beloved geography inhabited by people who have thrown their lot in together adhering together to a sacred set of ideas like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and perhaps the writing of Tom Jefferson, John Adams and Tom Paine. No, to these Oligarchs America is nothing more or less than a opportunity for personal profit. They look at the American People not as one nation made of the peoples of the whole earth, they look upon us as interest and identity groups to pit against each other.
These Oligarchs love Illegal Aliens. Afterall, an Illegal Alien has no recourse to the law or the courts. The law demands breaks every few hours? Overtime? Safe workplace conditions? Just try to get that enforced on your bus ride back to Mexico or your boat trip to China. These are folks who are exploitable because they can not sue. SO these workers themselves are subject to what amounts to if not De Jure Slavery, De Facto Slavery.
In a recent case, in the midwest, the Police pulled over a van for a traffic violation. The van was carrying 13 men, all from Mexico, who volunteered to the police that they were not legally in the Country. These men were working for a international company that did work on maintaining commercial and industrial heating and air conditioning equipment. The Company were paying these illegal aliens $7.00 an hour, no overtime, one dollar a hour less than minimum wage. The men were working typical work weeks of fifty hours a week for $350.00 a week. Thirty years ago, when I was a construction worker, the trade to get into was Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC)maintenance. Way back in those days the HVAC jobs with big companies were considered secure, had regular hours and paid a whopping $35.00 an hour, PLUS full benefits. So lets add up what the company was saving by hiring Illegal Aliens today, as opposed to Citizen Workers, thirty years ago:
Costs @ 50 man hours a week:
$35 an hour for the first forty hours = $1400.00
$52.50 an hour for ten hours of overtime $ 525.00
Overhead, benefits & taxes $ 650.00
Cost per person for 50 hour week $2575.00
SO for each man for each week the multinational corporation was saving $2225 ($2575 - $350 = $2225) Each and every week, this multinational was saving on those thirteen Illegal Aliens $28,925.00. Twenty nine thousand dollars a week in unjust profits made on the backs of virtual slaves and taken from the American people. In a year of fifty weeks (assuming laughably that the Illegal Aliens got two weeks off) the multinational company saved $1,446,250.00. That's one point four million dollars in wages lost in the American economy. Its hundreds of cars , homes , bass boats, vacations, levis, movie tickets, dinners out, engagement rings, dresses and so on never sold. Its taxes not paid. That money is not multiplying in the national economy. That money is a small teensie sliver of the money being illegally taken from the American People every day by our corporate masters. It's BILLIONS of dollars of just wages sliding into the pockets of the Oligarchs and out of the pockets of the workers, and the local, state and federal governments. This is a destruction of the commons of the nation.
In addition to the low wages paid the illegals themselves, Illegal Aliens act as a hammer against all other workers in the nation. The Oligarchs point to every worker who wants a raise, is seeking a safe job site, or wants such crazy things as overtime, and in effect, and often in actuality, say "Look you don't want to do this job for what I feel like paying today (and its always less than yesterday)I can replace you with a Mexican. They want your job, and they will take it for half your wages, shut up, don't complain, work faster." Those of you reading this who have never worked in a factory, on a construction site or in a diner, may not believe it, but those of us who once did work in such places, know the gut tearing sound of those words and the back breaking fiscally destroying impact and effect of them. Even those of you who work in white collar jobs are having your wages eroded.
As wages at the lower end of the scale drop, the Oligarch turns to you and tells you to be grateful for what you have and that you can not drop down in America's social and employment culture and still even survive. Your wages are dropping too. It's O.K though, corporate profits are up, in spite of a lack of national production stocks are up, the banks got bailed out, all on the street is well. All is well, unless you live on Main street and not Wall street.
There is one more oppression contained within the Illegal Immigration issue, particularly when thinking about people coming from Mexico. Mexico is a country run by Oligarchs. These Oligarchs went to Yale and Harvard with America's Oligarchs. They are friends and classmates. The Mexican oligarchs have kept their people in perpetual peonage for decades. They have used Catholicism and a rigid social structure combined with purposeful lack of opportunity to keep wages down. Naturally, the Mexican People look across the border and they see a nation with no more resources than Mexico possesses prospering. The Mexican People desire better for themselves and their children than what the Mexican Oligarchs desire to let them have, because every Peso the worker earns is one the Oligarch will not posess. The Oligarch, being Da Man, wants them all. So all of the people in Mexico who would push and pressurize Mexican Society towards either reform or revolution instead cross the border because our Oligarchs are ordering our police to look the other way.
Workers on both sides of the border are being cheated. national economies on both sides of the border are being harmed and Oligarchs on both sides of the border are being enriched and propped up by illegal immigration into the USA from Mexico.
What is the Answer? To begin, it is not to pass new laws. Illegal immigration is already illegal. It already demands forged documents, perjury when applying for employment , and knowingly hiring people who have no legitimate right to work here in this Country. Arizona recently passed a law demanding law enforcement pull over every person who they reasonably suspect are not legally in the country and demand they show their Birth Certificate, Social Security Card and Drivers License. Is "Your Papers Please" to become the new salutation upon entering any State? Is this not a reduction of the rights of all citizens? If it is to be evenhandedly and Constitutionally enforced, of course it is. The answer is not to demand papers while traveling, or resting at home.
The answer is to prosecute and jail those who knowingly hire illegals. Now I know they say its difficult, but do we think that the corporation hiring those thriteen guys at the start of this article didn' t know they were illegal? Really? They thought citizens would work at a highly technical and dangerous job for less than minimum wage and no overtime? Really? Maybe some D.A.'s need to grow some balls and try it a couple times with say a jury of American Citizens..
There are some from the Democratic Party who are chattering about some kind of "bipartisan Immigration Reform". This will be nothing at the end of the day but an effort to allow those twenty million illegals to stay and still by their presence lower wages, and force every American to carry a new national ID card full of biometrics and a tracking chip, just so we can be spied upon at every moment. One can not suspect that "BiPartisan Immigration Reform" will lead to the solving of the immigration problem. Why? Well who has been paying the politicians to ask the police to ignore the law in the first place? Oh yeah, the Multinational Corporations and the Oligarchs who presently benefit from the situation of Illegal Immigration. Why would they solve something that is a problem for the American People and a benefit to themselves? They won't.
Friday, May 15, 2009
election May 19
Elections elections everywhere and not a thing worthy of a vote..... The California State Assembly, Senate and Governor have all created a economic house of cards over many years, and now they want to shift the responsibility for this mess square onto the Shoulders of the People of California.
Yeah vote to ratify a total nonsense budget deal that will only delay and make worse the day of judgement, but if all goes well may put it off until the present officials are termed out of the offices they clearly do not deserve. That way they can say all was well until they left. How nice for their egos.
This deal is a mess robbing Peter to pay Peter, not even Paul. Its a crazy quilt of "What the heck why?" Whenever you have to ask a question like that about something a group of politicians are doing its because YOU the People are getting SCREWED.
Vote no on each and every measure Tuesday. Make the politicians deal with their mess, its the only way we can ever hope to get to a sane budget process in California.
Yeah vote to ratify a total nonsense budget deal that will only delay and make worse the day of judgement, but if all goes well may put it off until the present officials are termed out of the offices they clearly do not deserve. That way they can say all was well until they left. How nice for their egos.
This deal is a mess robbing Peter to pay Peter, not even Paul. Its a crazy quilt of "What the heck why?" Whenever you have to ask a question like that about something a group of politicians are doing its because YOU the People are getting SCREWED.
Vote no on each and every measure Tuesday. Make the politicians deal with their mess, its the only way we can ever hope to get to a sane budget process in California.
Monday, March 2, 2009
School Board Election
Tuesday March 10, 2009 is the next PUSD School Board election. Nothing much worthy to report on. Again in violation of the policies they wrote to keep this reporter from endorsing people when he was a member, several Altadena Town Councilmembers have endorsed candidates and been identified, now with an "Asterick soley for identification purposes" as Town Council members, a clear (big shock) violation of the very rules they wrote. As always, in Altadena, the rules only apply to some, not to all. Like Dukes and Kings of old, the rules here never apply to those who wrote them. Big shock again.
Well who to vote for? Its not a good election in the main. In most of the races its Twiddle Lee Dumb , Twittle Lee Dumber and Twittle Lee Dumest are running unopposed, not a particularly inviting choice. There is one actual race where there is a clear choice.
The choice is between a candidate supported by all the people who have been supporting the candidates who have been winning and ruining the PUSD schools for thirty years, or another guy, not supported by any of those Nimrods. Guess who I support? If you instantly said "Charles Nelson", you, Dear Reader, are a super-informed voter. If you said "Miramontes," you are hopeless. If you shrugged, chances are you probably had no idea there is even an election going on.
I'd say "May the best man win", but the lesser man, as often happens in PUSD elections has all the endorsements and all the money. This is all your fault. You have let the schools rot to the state they are in by not getting involved, staying involved and voting for good candidates, no matter if the other side is endorsed by ACT, the Pasadena Democratic Club, the Minesterial Alliance, the PEF and all the other "nice " soft sell Dixiecrat racists who really in their pea pickin hearts don't think black men and latin women can really learn and must be forever dependent on the largess of the professional social worker class. Yes, I said that. It's sadly true. You owe it to the children and your community to not vote for the guy everyone keeps insisting is the only guy who can win and to vote for the better candidate, with the better ideas and fewer ties to lobbiests and special interests.
DO the right thing by your Community Tuesday, vote for Charles Nelson
Well who to vote for? Its not a good election in the main. In most of the races its Twiddle Lee Dumb , Twittle Lee Dumber and Twittle Lee Dumest are running unopposed, not a particularly inviting choice. There is one actual race where there is a clear choice.
The choice is between a candidate supported by all the people who have been supporting the candidates who have been winning and ruining the PUSD schools for thirty years, or another guy, not supported by any of those Nimrods. Guess who I support? If you instantly said "Charles Nelson", you, Dear Reader, are a super-informed voter. If you said "Miramontes," you are hopeless. If you shrugged, chances are you probably had no idea there is even an election going on.
I'd say "May the best man win", but the lesser man, as often happens in PUSD elections has all the endorsements and all the money. This is all your fault. You have let the schools rot to the state they are in by not getting involved, staying involved and voting for good candidates, no matter if the other side is endorsed by ACT, the Pasadena Democratic Club, the Minesterial Alliance, the PEF and all the other "nice " soft sell Dixiecrat racists who really in their pea pickin hearts don't think black men and latin women can really learn and must be forever dependent on the largess of the professional social worker class. Yes, I said that. It's sadly true. You owe it to the children and your community to not vote for the guy everyone keeps insisting is the only guy who can win and to vote for the better candidate, with the better ideas and fewer ties to lobbiests and special interests.
DO the right thing by your Community Tuesday, vote for Charles Nelson
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Why We Will Never Have a AUSD
Some people are out trying to get signatures to start the process of getting a Altadena School District. Being a "Home Rule" kind of guy I'm generally for it, in spite of the hilarious misrepresentations and shenanigans of many of the folks "running" the effort today. While I'm for it, I predict it will N E V E R happen.
The signatures really are no problem and with a group of real activists would have been gathered by now. The will of the People of Altadena to vote for and run a school district isn't a problem either. What makes a Altadena School District an impossibility is all the God Damned not for profits roosting in Altadena, generally run by do gooder Board of Directors from Pasadena, San Marino and LaCanada who are dumping, oh let me be politically correct and polite: "placing" severely mentally, emotionally and physically retarded children, and children with various disabilities that make them prone to violence, in group living situations here in west Altadena. Nice of them ain't it...
Anyhow, under some very unjust and bizarre constructs of the California State Education Code, these kids education and treatments must be paid for by the school district wherein they reside. Presently the cost of providing services for the kids at Five Acres and Sycamores are costing the PUSD between $15,000 and $200,000 a year EACH. Paying for these kids is a major impediment already to the PUSD's ability to provide a quality education for the vast majority of the children in the district and even for other handicapped children who don't reside at these "not for profit" group homes.
These "Not for Profit" group homes are in the borders of the map that the present proponents accepted from LAFCO. this means that were there a Altadena Unified School District, the AUSD would have to pay for the education of all these "not for profit" group home kids. These kids are already a major strain on the PUSD budget and would simply break the back of a AUSD and make it so that a AUSD could never ever pass the fiscal study demanded under law before the issue can be voted on by Altadenans.
If you look around, you see that California School Districts without large group home facilities for emotionally, mentally and physically handicapped students have very high test scores and even lower "per pupil" costs than Districts that do. The districts that do have these facilities happen to have relatively low local land values and higher concentrations of minority and working class students. The under laying disparities in land values between rich and not rich communities tend to make for more of these kind of uses in less wealthy and minority communities. The California State law making the district where the "not for Profit" service providers are located pay the costs of the services is a supposedly innocent and fair law that structurally disadvantages huge numbers of minority and working class students. The State of California should pay directly for these kids, and until they do, educating minority and working class kids will be a cruel joke and never ending issue in California.
It will also mean that Altadenans will never control the education of their kids.
The signatures really are no problem and with a group of real activists would have been gathered by now. The will of the People of Altadena to vote for and run a school district isn't a problem either. What makes a Altadena School District an impossibility is all the God Damned not for profits roosting in Altadena, generally run by do gooder Board of Directors from Pasadena, San Marino and LaCanada who are dumping, oh let me be politically correct and polite: "placing" severely mentally, emotionally and physically retarded children, and children with various disabilities that make them prone to violence, in group living situations here in west Altadena. Nice of them ain't it...
Anyhow, under some very unjust and bizarre constructs of the California State Education Code, these kids education and treatments must be paid for by the school district wherein they reside. Presently the cost of providing services for the kids at Five Acres and Sycamores are costing the PUSD between $15,000 and $200,000 a year EACH. Paying for these kids is a major impediment already to the PUSD's ability to provide a quality education for the vast majority of the children in the district and even for other handicapped children who don't reside at these "not for profit" group homes.
These "Not for Profit" group homes are in the borders of the map that the present proponents accepted from LAFCO. this means that were there a Altadena Unified School District, the AUSD would have to pay for the education of all these "not for profit" group home kids. These kids are already a major strain on the PUSD budget and would simply break the back of a AUSD and make it so that a AUSD could never ever pass the fiscal study demanded under law before the issue can be voted on by Altadenans.
If you look around, you see that California School Districts without large group home facilities for emotionally, mentally and physically handicapped students have very high test scores and even lower "per pupil" costs than Districts that do. The districts that do have these facilities happen to have relatively low local land values and higher concentrations of minority and working class students. The under laying disparities in land values between rich and not rich communities tend to make for more of these kind of uses in less wealthy and minority communities. The California State law making the district where the "not for Profit" service providers are located pay the costs of the services is a supposedly innocent and fair law that structurally disadvantages huge numbers of minority and working class students. The State of California should pay directly for these kids, and until they do, educating minority and working class kids will be a cruel joke and never ending issue in California.
It will also mean that Altadenans will never control the education of their kids.
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