In the recent deification of Apple and its co-founder Steven Jobs, there has been unstinting praise for Apple and its high priced, sleek products as a great American success story.  The [...]]]> New Orleans   As improbable as it may sound; sweatshops seem to have a lot of high placed advocates who simply swear by them.  Yes, sweatshops!

In the recent deification of Apple and its co-founder Steven Jobs, there has been unstinting praise for Apple and its high priced, sleek products as a great American success story.  The credible allegations and proofs of how much of Apple’s manufacturing operation rested on the backs of sweatshop labor, particularly at huge manufacturers like FoxConn, were sometimes mentioned in passing, but largely swept under the rug.  Not surprisingly a front page article on the death and demise of American manufacturing featuring both Jobs and Apple prominently also tried to bury the sweatshop reality on which so much of this manufacturing “miracle” exists in a few paragraphs of the very long story.

The reporter and others marveled at how on a whim 8000 workers could be pulled out of bed in company owned and run dormitories and put to work on a last minute changeover.  Wow, the article and others seemed to say, that couldn’t happen here in America.

Well, that’s wrong.  It could happened here in America, but Apple would have to pay for it, and that’s still the real difference.

One fool asked where you could find some thousands of workers in the United States, who would be ready to roll to work.  Hey, just about anywhere, jerkwater!  Has word of the recession gotten to none of these folks?

Even in the pages of the New York Times, if they were interested they can read about the skilled workers by the thousands that have trucked themselves into North Dakota (of all places!) to live in, yes, bunks, trailers, and all manner of man-caves in order to work in the oil industry on the plains.  But, whoops, once again, I should add that they are doing so, because they get paid, and paid pretty damned well to do so!  We saw thousands of workers flood into New Orleans to help on the recovery, but once again they did so on their own dime, because they thought they could make a dollar.  In all of these cases these are workers with crazy, mad skills, too.

The article seemed to say Apple employed 700,000 workers in manufacturing around the world, oh, and 40,000 or so in the USA.  Their spokesperson wanted to make sure all of us knew that the American economy is not “their problem.”  Their problem is only “making a good product.”  Life and business is not that simple, and the responsibilities go much deeper.

This seems to be a problem throughout much of the Times.  Nicholas Kristof did a column that I had to read because it was about Olly Neal from Arkansas, who I had worked with in the 1970’s when he was running the Lee County Clinic.  Posting the article, more than one of my buddies reminded me how they too had to hold their noses to read anything Kristof wrote because he is such a relentless apologist for sweatshops.

Good news that we are really talking about manufacturing.  Bad news that the ideology underpinning the conversation is that there can only be manufacturing at the expense of workers’ rights and wages in sweatshop conditions.

Shame on Apple, the Times, and the rest of the tribe that makes these rationalizations!

Toronto What is it about the Wiki-worlds that seems to encourage no boundaries, let it rip, snarky-ness?  I don’t get it, but I’m pretty sure it needs to be fixed.

Two cases in point:  New York Times editor Bill Keller’s piece on Julian Assange and Wikileaks and the “calling all women” initiative at [...]]]>

Toronto What is it about the Wiki-worlds that seems to encourage no boundaries, let it rip, snarky-ness?  I don’t get it, but I’m pretty sure it needs to be fixed.

Two cases in point:  New York Times editor Bill Keller’s piece on Julian Assange and Wikileaks and the “calling all women” initiative at Wikipedia’s 10^th birthday bash.

I’m sure I’m the only one, but the Times when over board this weekend with “all the news the elites can eat!” as their new slogan, and they did so without the least hint of irony.  Here they are doing an “insta-book” on their redaction of the Wikileaks documents triangulated to them via Julian Assange, and they are selling the insta-book for money, but they then think that they should also distance themselves from their golden news goose by making fun of him, trivializing his real situation, and thereby acting like their inside baseball slams that he was a “source” rather than a fellow “journalist” has some meaning to the poor readers.  They think he is paranoid because he is moving all around London believing he may be followed or others are trying to get him, but he’s in jail now and in fact there’s every reason to believe he was being pursued.  They are offended in equal measure when their reporter first meets him in London because he was (a) tall and (b) smelled a bit ripe.  They need to get past their hangups with being short, ok?  And, is it now part of the Times style book under Keller and his snarky crew to comment on the scent of every “source.”  Might have to rewrite a lot of the reports from other climates without the air conditioning of the Times building in New York.  They make a big point that Assange didn’t trust them.  Hmmm….given how they so demonstrably were dealing with him, seems Assange was perfectly tuned into them.

So for the Times, how about learning a little, “just the facts, ma’am,” huh?

And, speaking of the facts, Wikipedia celebrated its 10^th birthday and enormous accomplishments, but could not escape recognition of the fact that of their huge army of contributors, only 15% are women, and that’s a problem.  They make some claims about what they are doing about that but part of the real problem, I’ll bet is once again the snaky-ness quotient.  If anyone has ever tried to correct an error in Wikipedia, good luck and I hope you are ready to quit your full-time job.  It’s an endless maze of contention as you try to correct something and endure the aims of others trying to distort the story.  I learned all about this in the ACORN-wars with the right.  Eventually you throw your hands up.

Small example.  I learned recently that Gary Delgado, the first great organizer I ever hired at ACORN, had even written Wikipedia to try and get them to correct the listings in various spots that he and I were co-founders of ACORN.  I had just sort of shrugged, though it is a little vexing when so many people try to go to Wikipedia as the source for real information.  Eventually in the push with the right and others with different interests, Wikipedia simply doesn’t allow changes to be made at all, so whatever is wrong, becomes wrong forever (or a while), who knows?

For a while my daughter and some of her friends took it as a project to try and fix the ACORN listings on Wikipedia.  Talk about the “wall of hate” they were scaling, wow!  They ended up stepping back because no one had time to keep up with the haters out there and their project to defame and distort.

So, I love the call for women to step up and make sure that “their facts” are welcome at Wikipedia, but unless Wikipedia can control the contention and the misogyny of too many folks who contribute but have a horse in the wrong race, this is going to still be an unregulated and unfriendly environment for folks more comfortable with snarky than the facts in Wiki-world.

Grizzly Mom voted!

New Orleans Yesterday was the first day of our future and from all reports it was much, much scarier than Halloween might have ever hoped to be.  Look at the cases in point.

In the federal hearing on immigration madness in Arizona, Governor Brewer took time out of her campaign schedule (ok, that’s [...]]]>

Grizzly Mom voted!

New Orleans Yesterday was the first day of our future and from all reports it was much, much scarier than Halloween might have ever hoped to be.  Look at the cases in point.

In the federal hearing on immigration madness in Arizona, Governor Brewer took time out of her campaign schedule (ok, that’s a lie; the hearing WAS her campaign schedule after all!) to rubberneck at the federal judges parsing the hate from the law in SB 1070.  From NDLON tweets at the trial and the story, it seemed many of the questions went to the issue of exactly why the state should be doing the federal government’s job.  With the Republican Tea Party explosion, how many pieces of anti-immigrant can we now expect?  Certainly, the hope for reform needs a total retooling to mount a push back from our base in progressive cities and states to offset the madness.

Our friend, Joe McCartin, labor history professor at Georgetown, was quoted liberally in the New York Times, on the coming attacks against labor unions with Republican Tea Party ascendancy, but all that did was put a little sugar in the coffee, because it was a bitter drink to swallow.  Card check has been dead, but

they intend to bury it to no one’s surprise.  Prevailing wages for construction workers is on the chopping block, but the Republicans may not have gotten the word on how much that has been eviscerated in many communities already.  They must be just positioning to take early credit for some of what they have already done.  The only good news is that there may be a stalemate, but given the decline in labor strength, a stalemate is another nail in our coffin, unless we finally shift directions and change strategy.

There is a great scene and line in the new movie, Social Network, where then Harvard President and always arrogant Larry Summers, turns to an aide, while meeting with the whining crew roaring elitists, and says, “punch me in the face, now!”  This is how I felt this morning reading the Times story on the bailout bankers positioning themselves after their economy collapsing performances of recent years and their disaster tour on foreclosures.  These guys are coming back to power.  They are exulting at the prospects of defunding regulation under the Frank bill, SEC, and other regulatory agencies.   They are buying each other t-shirts to wear under their silk ties that say:  “F**k you – We Have Learned NOTHING!”

It’s one thing to go to the polls holding your nose.  It’s another when you have to make sure you have a bag packed by the time you come back from voting, so you are ready to roll and run at any moment!

Arizona Advocates and Action

New Orleans My god, pinch me!  Unbelievably the august New York Times in its editorial today has bellied up to the right side of the bar in pointing out the obvious and long noted (including by me!) conflicts of interests enjoyed by banks in the foreclosure game where they [...]]]>

Arizona Advocates and Action

New Orleans My god, pinch me!  Unbelievably the august New York Times in its editorial today has bellied up to the right side of the bar in pointing out the obvious and long noted (including by me!) conflicts of interests enjoyed by banks in the foreclosure game where they often pretend to be chicken, but are usually fox.  The Times being the Times can’t quite get it all right.  They put the horns on the Federal Reserve as a sleep-at-the-switch regulator of this mischief and mess, when the Treasury Department and the Administration both deserve at least equal billing of this horror movie showing at homes all around the country.

But let’s not quibble and count our small blessings when they come:

That is a big reason that the Obama administration’s antiforeclosure effort, with its voluntary participation by banks, has fallen so short.

Here is the background. The big banks — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo — service most of the nation’s home mortgages for investors who own the loans. They are paid a fee by the investors and also make money from fees on delinquent loans.

Servicers are obligated to manage the loans in the best interest of the investors. That means modifying a troubled loan, if reduced payments would bring in more money over time than a foreclosure. Or foreclosing if a borrower cannot make the payments on a modified loan.

If only it worked that way in practice.

Take, for example, underwater borrowers — the millions of Americans who owe more on their loans than their homes are worth. For them, the best modification is often to reduce the loan’s principal balance, lowering the monthly payment and restoring some equity. That could be best for investors too, because even reduced payments are often better than a foreclosure sale. A bank’s servicing fee is based on the principal balances of the loan — a strong incentive not to reduce a troubled borrower’s balance.

Another conflict occurs when the bank that services a primary mortgage is also the owner of a second lien on the same property. Resolving a troubled first mortgage generally requires a write-down of the second lien, a step that banks have been loath to take.

Banks also profit from late fees and other default-related charges assessed on borrowers. And there is an additional incentive to pile on charges, since the bigger the loan balance, the higher the fee to manage the loan. A group of prominent investors — including Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund — recently accused Bank of America of fee-padding. The bank denies wrongdoing.

High default charges harm homeowners because they make it increasingly difficult to catch up on late payments and avoid foreclosure. They also disadvantage investors, because the servicer collects the charges from the foreclosure sale before the investors see any money. Everyone loses, except the bank.

I tried to make it easy…follow the “underlines” for the story here.

The punch line though is right in the face of homeowners across the country who are desperate for relief, but instead continued to be fleeced.

I wonder when the White House will realize that part of the bad marks for TARP come from the total, unmitigated failure of all of the platitudes from Pennsylvania Avenue to impact on any of the millions of homes facing foreclosure on Main Street?

Seems like this is another lesson that we will all be paying for again tomorrow on Election Day.

In a recent issue of the New Yorker, surely a [...]]]> New Orleans I won’t say it’s a sea change, but there are starting to be some encouraging signs of change among the elites and critical chattering classes on the issue of more equitable taxation, particularly the need for the rich to pay their fair share.

In a recent issue of the New Yorker, surely a barometer of such things if anything might be, their regular “columnist” of sorts, James Surowiecki, who does the “Financial Page” in the magazine, came out squarely for the need for more brackets to tax the rich and super rich.  Hear, hear!

Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize winning op-ed columnist for the New York Times also seemed to be weighing in favor of the rich paying a more equitable burden.

There have been encouraging stories debunking the notion that jobs are created by unfair taxation favoring the rich as well.  Other reports are correctly documenting their tightfistedness compared to the poor and working families when it comes to philanthropy despite the headlines from the Gates-Buffet Company.

Several years ago there was real debate and almost victory in creating a “millionaire’s tax” in New York City to deal with budget woes there.  Seems to me it’s time to make this national policy.

Why is the Obama Administration not part of this debate?