Our particular myths—Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, Johnny Appleseed, Davey Crockett Uncle Remus—have a warm, Disneyesque quality that informed our childhoods, but there are adult myths that we cling to that allow us to not feel guilt for the world we ignore. Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in The Case For Reparations:

From the White House on down, the myth holds that fatherhood is the great antidote to all that ails black people. But Billy Brooks Jr. had a father. Trayvon Martin had a father. Jordan Davis had a father. Adhering to middle-class norms has never shielded black people from plunder. Adhering to middle-class norms is what made Ethel Weatherspoon a lucrative target for rapacious speculators. Contract sellers did not target the very poor. They targeted black people who had worked hard enough to save a down payment and dreamed of the emblem of American citizenship—homeownership. It was not a tangle of pathology that put a target on Clyde Ross’s back. It was not a culture of poverty that singled out Mattie Lewis for “the thrill of the chase and the kill.” Some black people always will be twice as good. But they generally find white predation to be thrice as fast.

How then do we banish the myths? By looking with our eyes wide open.

[S]o we must imagine a new country. Reparations—by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences—is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely. The recovering alcoholic may well have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. But at least he is not living a drunken lie. Reparations beckons us to reject the intoxication of hubris and see America as it is—the work of fallible humans.

Won’t reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided. The wealth gap merely puts a number on something we feel but cannot say—that American prosperity was ill-gotten and selective in its distribution. What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.

What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.

Reparations mean replacing the myth with the reality.

In cross-reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Case For Reparations in the June issue of The Atlantic with the online version, I found this sidebar/precursor dating from 22 January 2012:Crowd-Sourcing American History in which Coates writes, in part:

I’ve been thinking about that some in my posts on Ron Paul, Howard Zinn and the issue of compensated emancipation. To be blunt, I am unsatisfied with my rebuttal. I have a case which demonstrates, on a surface, why compensated emancipation as an alternative to the Civil War, is ridiculous. But it isn’t complete. It doesn’t attack at all angles.

The problem debating this sort of thing is the side of dishonesty and intellectual laziness is at an advantage. It will likely take more effort for me to compose this post, then it took for Ron Paul to stand before the Confederate Flag and offer his thin gruel of history. Those attempting to practice history need not only gather facts, but seek out facts that might contradict the facts they like, and then gather more facts of context to see what it all means.

But Comfortable History is asymmetrical warfare it needs only a smattering of facts, and need not guard against a lack of context, presentism, or other facts that might undermine its arguments. Instead it breezily proceeds through hypotheticals and abstract thought experiments which somehow satisfy our desire to be in possession of a dissident intellect. Comfortable History is like the computer virus that poses as the shield—it positions the espouser as a brave truth-teller, even as it infects us with lies.

When history depended upon books, the line that History is written by the victors had weight. I don’t think that that, in the age of free publishing via the Internet, holds true anymore. The challenge is not that the victors continue to write history, but rather that the noise and chatters conceals the alternates.

When asked to suggest one approach for broadening the conversation on reparations and how individuals might push the conversation, Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed to Rep. John Conyers’ (D-Mich.) HR 40.

Broach the topic of reparations today and a barrage of questions inevitably follows: Who will be paid? How much will they be paid? Who will pay? But if the practicalities, not the justice, of reparations are the true sticking point, there has for some time been the beginnings of a solution. For the past 25 years, Congressman John Conyers Jr., who represents the Detroit area, has marked every session of Congress by introducing a bill calling for a congressional study of slavery and its lingering effects as well as recommendations for “appropriate remedies.”

A country curious about how reparations might actually work has an easy solution in Conyers’s bill, now called HR 40, the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. We would support this bill, submit the question to study, and then assess the possible solutions. But we are not interested.

“It’s because it’s black folks making the claim,” Nkechi Taifa, who helped found N’COBRA, says. “People who talk about reparations are considered left lunatics. But all we are talking about is studying [reparations]. As John Conyers has said, we study everything. We study the water, the air. We can’t even study the issue? This bill does not authorize one red cent to anyone.”

That HR 40 has never—under either Democrats or Republicans—made it to the House floor suggests our concerns are rooted not in the impracticality of reparations but in something more existential. If we conclude that the conditions in North Lawndale and black America are not inexplicable but are instead precisely what you’d expect of a community that for centuries has lived in America’s crosshairs, then what are we to make of the world’s oldest democracy?

If we are troubled by what we learn from Coates writing then he suggests that we begin to demonstrate our unease by writing to our individual representatives and demand that Conyers’ resolution come to the floor for a vote. HR 40 is the starting point:

A commission authorized by the Oklahoma legislature produced a report affirming that the riot, the knowledge of which had been suppressed for years, had happened. But the lawsuit ultimately failed, in 2004. Similar suits pushed against corporations such as Aetna (which insured slaves) and Lehman Brothers (whose co-founding partner owned them) also have thus far failed. These results are dispiriting, but the crime with which reparations activists charge the country implicates more than just a few towns or corporations. The crime indicts the American people themselves, at every level, and in nearly every configuration. A crime that implicates the entire American people deserves its hearing in the legislative body that represents them.

John Conyers’s HR 40 is the vehicle for that hearing. No one can know what would come out of such a debate. Perhaps no number can fully capture the multi-century plunder of black people in America. Perhaps the number is so large that it can’t be imagined, let alone calculated and dispensed. But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as—if not more than—the specific answers that might be produced. An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America’s maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders.

We are all responsible, every adult who holds the franchise, for the crimes committed in our name. Ignorance cannot be an excuse.

Clockwise from upper left: Gilligan, Buster and Yaba…

As I noted earlier, I come to this story late. I am also finding the brilliant writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates daunting, dense and deceptively easy to read. Any young, or old journalist, might aspire to this level of mastery and be gratified in the attempt.

Coates follows the punch line of his stories head—The Case For Reparations—with this lede:

Clyde Ross was born in 1923, the seventh of 13 children, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, the home of the blues. Ross’s parents owned and farmed a 40-acre tract of land, flush with cows, hogs, and mules. Ross’s mother would drive to Clarksdale to do her shopping in a horse and buggy, in which she invested all the pride one might place in a Cadillac. The family owned another horse, with a red coat, which they gave to Clyde. The Ross family wanted for little, save that which all black families in the Deep South then desperately desired—the protection of the law.

As Coates describes in the video from Chicago, Ross and his family lived in a place with no black policemen, no black lawyers, no black prosecutors, no black judges. He and those he loved existed in a predatory state where pirates freely acted on their every whim. If they wanted your horse, they took your horse. If they wanted your farm, they took your farm. If they wanted your life, they took your life. There was no recourse. Ross fled north, to Chicago, hoping to find the protection of the law.

That was not what he found.

With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage. An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin. The resulting conflagration has been devastating.

One thread of thinking in the African American community holds that these depressing numbers partially stem from cultural pathologies that can be altered through individual grit and exceptionally good behavior. (In 2011, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, responding to violence among young black males, put the blame on the family: “Too many men making too many babies they don’t want to take care of, and then we end up dealing with your children.” Nutter turned to those presumably fatherless babies: “Pull your pants up and buy a belt, because no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt.”) The thread is as old as black politics itself. It is also wrong. The kind of trenchant racism to which black people have persistently been subjected can never be defeated by making its victims more respectable. The essence of American racism is disrespect. And in the wake of the grim numbers, we see the grim inheritance.

The Contract Buyers League’s suit brought by Clyde Ross and his allies took direct aim at this inheritance. The suit was rooted in Chicago’s long history of segregation, which had created two housing markets—one legitimate and backed by the government, the other lawless and patrolled by predators. The suit dragged on until 1976, when the league lost a jury trial. Securing the equal protection of the law proved hard; securing reparations proved impossible. If there were any doubts about the mood of the jury, the foreman removed them by saying, when asked about the verdict, that he hoped it would help end “the mess Earl Warren made with Brown v. Board of Education and all that nonsense.”

All that nonsense. In the year of our nation’s bi-centennial.

The Supreme Court seems to share that sentiment. The past two decades have witnessed a rollback of the progressive legislation of the 1960s. Liberals have found themselves on the defensive. In 2008, when Barack Obama was a candidate for president, he was asked whether his daughters—Malia and Sasha—should benefit from affirmative action. He answered in the negative.

The exchange rested upon an erroneous comparison of the average American white family and the exceptional first family. In the contest of upward mobility, Barack and Michelle Obama have won. But they’ve won by being twice as good—and enduring twice as much. Malia and Sasha Obama enjoy privileges beyond the average white child’s dreams. But that comparison is incomplete. The more telling question is how they compare with Jenna and Barbara Bush–the products of many generations of privilege, not just one. Whatever the Obama children achieve, it will be evidence of their family’s singular perseverance, not of broad equality.

More to come.

I only learned of Ta-Nehisi Coates August 2014 presentation before the Cleveland City Club last week when I opened the March issue of The Real Deal Press and read R.T. Andrews’ front-page story Looking back to go forward. Ta-Nehisi has long been one of my favorite writers and I was looking forward to watching the City Club video of the event, but sadly that was not to be.

Thankfully, we can still view similar presentations in Chicago and St. Louis.

I checked out the June issue of The Atlantic from my library which has Coates’ feature on the cover. I’ll be posting more as I read the piece over the weekend.

Bill Gates share one, irrefutable commonality: each and every revolution of the Earth provides us with 23 hours, 59 minutes and 4.1 seconds of time. That is a fact and what is true for Bill and myself is true for you and every other being, regardless of class, status or wealth on the planet. That fact will enrage some. What could be more frustrating for someone richer than any ruler that ever lived than knowing that all that wealth can’t buy you a single second more of time? What happens when you have the money to do absolutely anything, and I do mean anything that doesn’t necessarily violate the laws of physics, but just don’t have the time?

Oliver Burkeman writing in make time for yourself by giving time to others for The Guardian explores that question?

[T]he wealthier you get, the more time-pressed you feel. And not just because better-paid jobs often mean longer hours. Even if you don’t end up working longer, the economists Daniel Hamermesh and Jungmin Lee concluded, you’ll feel busier, because of all the extra things richer people could be doing, if only they had the time. Obnoxious as it sounds, there’s a sense in which it’s more stressful to have the cash but not the time to jet off to Bali – or even just to buy and read new novels, take piano lessons, or go out to dinner with friends – than it is to have neither cash nor time. That doesn’t mean wealth is as stressful as poverty overall. But it’s depressing, whatever your income, because it suggests that the time/money trade-off may be unwinnable. With every additional pound you earn, you increase the universe of things you could do, but can’t, because there are still only 24 hours in a day.

So, is there an out? Can reality be gamed? Perhaps.

[W]hen I found time in my busy schedule recently to talk to Cassie Mogilner, of the Wharton business school in Philadelphia, I was cheered to discover she had a solution. She explained that the best way to cultivate “time affluence”—the feeling of having lots of time for the things you want to do—is actually to give time away by helping others. This may seem, I realise, like the most platitudinous of Thought for the Day platitudes. But if you can spare a few moments (or especially, come to think of it, if you can’t) you really should abandon that assumption and read on.

In studies conducted with colleagues from Harvard and Yale, Mogilner found that doing brief “pro-social” tasks—such as helping edit an underprivileged child’s university application essay—consistently made people likelier to see their future time as plentiful. Spending time on themselves didn’t have the same effect; nor did being given a “time windfall”, by being allowed to leave the experiment unexpectedly early. Curiously, participants didn’t enjoy the volunteering the most; they preferred spending time on themselves. But only volunteering delivered a major boost in time affluence. The givers also worked for longer on a follow-up task: they became objectively more productive.

Can this possibly translate for people who do work that is volunteerish for which they get paid?

A recall effort to knock Mayor Frank Jackson out of office could have some significant benefits for Cleveland. Even if it fails.

I question whether the forces leading this effort have the heft to obtain enough signatures to place a recall vote on the ballot. Some 12,000 plus.

They are not high profile politicians.

Leading the charge are Norm Edwards, who sends out messages on minority hiring via the Black Contractors Group, and a former mayoral opponent of Jackson, Atty. Michael Nelson.

They’ll need to collect some 12,000 signatures. No easy matter.

However, there is sour discontent about. With Mayor Jackson and more. We will wait to see if others join in.

Just the effort itself could prove beneficial.

While there have been a number of economic successes to make Clevelanders happy with their city, there are some serious drawbacks to our exhilaration. And little attention to the problems.

Study upon study reminds Cleveland of its needs. Poverty.

A new academic study “Segregated City” measuring inequalities of metro areas placed Cleveland 4th behind Milwaukee, Hartford and Philadelphia. One ahead of Detroit.

The problem doesn’t seem to measure high on our “to do” list. Continue Reading »

It’s been a really, really busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap from China. On The Writing On The Wal—the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar—I continue my singular work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.

WALMART KARANĒ KĒ LI'Ē ĀPAKĀ SVĀGATA HAI... Nearly four years have passed since I last wrote about Walmart’s attempts to crack the retail market in India. The campaign continues, but resistance on the Asian subcontinent continues and… Keep reading…

SHOPPERS REALLY, REALLY HATE WALMART… Causing your customer satisfaction rating to drop from No. 1, 80 percent, to dead last, 68 percent, in your category over 20 years is not an achievement any corporate welfare recipient is likely to highlight on a… Keep reading…

SO, HOW MUCH DID WALMART RAKE IN…? I’ve been reading speculations and other reports all week on what Walmart might say about the company’s 4th quarter earnings this morning that ranged from apocalyptic to disappointing. One of the… Keep reading…

COULD THE END OF WALMART BE IN SIGHT…? Yesterday I wrote about Walmart’s falling customer satisfaction numbers. Are Walmart shoppers a. too poor to keep shopping at Walmart; b. too disaffected to keep shopping at Walmart; or possibly c. … Keep reading…

WALMART REFUSES HOBBY LOBBY SOLUTION… In the battle for the rights of all workers from the GLBTQ* community, one of the central demands is equality of healthcare for spouses. With same-sex marriage now legal in 37 states, denying a… Keep reading…

FREE OF ANY PROMPTING… REALLY, WILLY…? The Arkansas-based Conservative Tribune—I swear, I thought the site had to be a Stephen Colbert fan site—wants to put a positive spin on events this week: Wilmot Proviso [I’m not making this up… Keep reading…

THERE ARE SIMPLY TOO MANY STORIES… Forty-eight hours later, the stories about Walmart’s announcement Thursday morning that the company has plans to bump up wages for some 500,000 employees are coming faster than I can read… Keep reading…

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE… Megan McArdle. writing in Why is Wal-Mart hiking pay? It knows how wages work for the Bloomberg View offers the best analyst of why Walmart is raising the wages of some employees. She rolls past Union and political pressures… Keep reading…

LIKE THESE BINS…? I really do wish that the Fresno Bee had included a photo of the donation bins placed at Walmart to collect food for the homeless, the visual irony would have been poignantly infuriating. The, what I hope will become iconic, photo… Keep reading…

DEPENDS UPON WHAT YOU MEAN BY SOME… Might happier workers be beneficial to producing happier shoppers? Hmmmm… could be. Clearly, Walmart is in a panic. Why else might the Bentonvile Behemoth even consider treating workers like… Keep reading…

OF NEVER, NEVERMORE… Quoth the Raven Goldman Sachs analyst Matthew Fassler: Wal-Mart’s cost of doing business is clearly rising. Wal-Mart found success in retail by being the consumers’ low-cost provider. But in order to keep prices low, it had to… Keep reading…

WHEN DID SOROS KNOW WHAT HE KNEW…? Thursday was not a good day for Walmart. By the closing bell on Friday, Walmart stocks were down 00 percent to $0.00 a share. Just before the opening bell on Wednesday, more than 24 hours in advance of… Keep reading…

WALL STREET DEMANDS POUND OF FLESH… Is a roll-back coming? A day after Walmart’s announcement of plans to increases the wages of some half-a-million employees is howling. How dare Walmart, under pressures that threaten the Bentonvile… Keep reading…

WALMART HAS ONLY 3,317 COMPLAINTS…? Pissed Consumer is dedicated to let people share consumer experience about products and services. According to the the website, Walmart has garnered 3,317 complaints worth some $1 million dollars… Keep reading…

WHY YOU CAN’T TRUST FINANCIAL ADVICE… When anyone has a direct and vested interest in you buying something they want to sell you, the smart money is to never, ever trust what they tell you because accentuating the positives while… Keep reading…

RALPH NADER ON THE WALMART RAISES… After meetings with Walmart representatives, public letters to the company’s CEO, and picketing Walmart stores over the past several years, we see that Walmart now decides to be one step ahead of several… Keep reading…

HOW THE RAISES MIGHT HAVE BEEN FINANCED… I referenced this 2013 study from Demos by Catherine Ruetschlin and Amy Traub last week, but now, as the fallout from the Bentonvile Behemoth’s 19 February announcement has spread a bit, I… Keep reading…

WHEN WALMART HANDS YOU LEMONS… There is plenty of speculation on how other users of minimum wage workers must react now that Walmart has upped the game in a panic to save the Bentonvile Behemoth’s cookies, but I have to applaud the way… Keep reading…

Previously on Walmart Wednesday…

This is what we get when the Bush Obama Security Scheme (BOSS) goes domestic.

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.

Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:

Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.

Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.

Shackling for prolonged periods.

Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.

Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.

Welcome to Ameristan.

I have continued to go analog in many aspects of my life, but I still find the digital component important for sharing information through Have Coffee Will Write, The Writing On The Wal and emails. When writing fiction I still have my IBM Selectric II for first drafts, but I find my brain moves too quickly to write more than thoughts and images longhand. I retype my first draft into the computer because of the ease of editing. I do question this, however, because being forced to retype a whole page to produce clean copy has the benefit of forcing a second look at all the words and not just those being edited.

Tom Chatfield, in Why reading and writing on paper can be better for your brain for The Guardian, keyboards:

For her new book, Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World, linguistics professor Naomi Baron conducted a survey of reading preferences among over 300 university students across the US, Japan, Slovakia and Germany. When given a choice between media ranging from printouts to smartphones, laptops, e-readers and desktops, 92% of respondents replied that it was hard copy that best allowed them to concentrate.

This isn’t a result likely to surprise many editors, or anyone else who works closely with text. While writing this article, I gathered my thoughts through a version of the same principle: having collated my notes onscreen, I printed said notes, scribbled all over the resulting printout, argued with myself in the margins, placed exclamation marks next to key points, spread out the scrawled result – and from this landscape hewed a (hopefully) coherent argument.

What exactly was going on here? Age and habit played their part. But there is also a growing scientific recognition that many of a screen’s unrivalled assets – search, boundless and bottomless capacity, links and leaps and seamless navigation – are either unhelpful or downright destructive when it comes to certain kinds of reading and writing.

I printed this story out for my own reading and made three copies to share with colleagues. I suppose a routing envelope would have made more ecological sense, but I did resize the story to fit on a single sheet of double-sided paper.

Entering the final days of Black History Month we remember the assassination of Malcolm X 50 years ago. I was a clueless and very white 4th grader on 21 February 1965 and while I knew, in a 4th grader sort of way, who Martin Luther King was, I would not learn of Malcolm X for another three years and decades would pass until the Internet gave me access to Malcolm’s words as he spoke them.

If Dr. King is remembered for his I Have A Dream speech, Malcolm X ought to be remembered for The Ballot or The Bullet.

Both men are just as relevant today as they were in their prime. We cannot hope to move forward unless we study and learn from each equally.

Rev. Al Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network, reflected on both men during a commerative service earlier today at the Malcolm X and Dr Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center in Washington Heights neighborhood of Harlam:

Of civil rights movements past and present, Sharpton said Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X were not conflicting forces, as is often supposed, but rather that “sitting here arguing about Martin and Malcolm is like arguing about your momma and daddy”.

“You’re the child of both of them,” he said, describing the leaders as “a strategic one-two punch” of the civil rights movement.

I rediscovered these principles in my archives yesterday while searching for an unrelated post. I believe I wrote the original in 2003. After more than 10 years I have forgotten a great deal.

The Five Principles Of The Way of the Writer

No. 1 Write. Source: You don’t have to go to school to be a writer! You have to write to be a writer! Jeff Hess, advice from a mentor in Addrianna Reitenbach’s Pumpkin.

What does this mean?

First, it doesn’t matter if anyone ever reads what you write or that you are paid for your work. It only matters that you write, and

Second, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. The more you write, the better writer you become. You cannot help but constantly improve.

No. 2 Suck marrow. Source: I wanted to live deep and to suck out all the marrow of life. Henry David Thoreau, “Where I lived and what I lived for,” Walden. p. 81.

What does this mean?

First, every writer needs raw material to fuel their muse. To write about life you need to live life, and

Second, how you live is the key. Elizabeth Barrett Browning passed her life in a sickbed yet lived more deeply than most world travelers.

No. 3 Trample barley. Source: The fields are green too, and the new barley has been well trampled to strengthen the roots and make it grow well. Miyamoto Musashi in Eiji Yoshikawa’s Musashi. p. 183.

What does this mean?

First, be able to murder your darlings, those beautiful words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters that you are so proud of, as you edit, and

Second, be willing to take risks in life and to accept that by trampling your heart you make it stronger.

No. 4 Practice Courageous Impatience. Source: Good ideas are never accepted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, Doing A Job.

What does this mean?

First, all bureaucracies hate change. They want more of the same so that they don’t have work harder or differently.

Second, If you want to change that, you need to be courageous, like Dorothy confronting the wizard, to get what you want.

No. 5 Publish. Source: Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; … First amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted 1791.

What does this mean?

First, you have a constitutional right to publish what you write in any form that you can afford, and

Second, given the current state of the Internet you publish, disseminate to the public, everything you write and want to share for very little cost.

Big (cough) Tobacco (cough, cough, hack) responds to John and Jeff:

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is a parody show, known for getting a laugh through exaggeration and presenting partial views in the name of humor. The segment includes many mischaracterizations of our company, including our approach to marketing and regulation, which have been embellished in the spirit of comedic license.”

While we recognize the tobacco industry is an easy target for comedians, we take seriously the responsibility that comes with selling a product that is an adult choice and is harmful to health,” the statement further read.

We support and comply with thousands of regulations worldwide—including advertising restrictions, penalties for selling tobacco products to minors, and substantial health warnings on packaging. We’re investing billions into developing and scientifically assessing a portfolio of products that have the potential to be less harmful [emphasis mine, JH.] and that are satisfying so smokers will switch to them. And, like any other company with a responsibility to its business partners, shareholders and employees, we ask only that laws protecting investments, including trademarks, be equally applied to us.

I spewed coffee at the phrase less harmful. That is like Smith & Wesson suggesting ongoing research into the relative safety of smaller caliber firearms. Lethal is lethal. Full stop.

I smoked three packs a day of Marboros while I was in the service. I quite more than 30 years ago. A few weeks ago, during a routine annual exam, my doctor told me that as a matter of preventive medicine, she was scheduling me for an abdominal MRI to check for a abdominal aneurism found in people who have smoked more than 100 cigarettes. One hundred feckin’ cigarettes, less than two day’s worth for me in the ’70s.

Forget #SNL40. Sunday Night’s Only Worthwhile Hashtag Is #JeffWeCan.

You can read much more at The Writing On The Wal about Walart’s announcement Thursday morning to give half-a-million workers more take-home pay, but Ed Pilkington, writing in How a powerful rightwing lobby is plotting to stop minimum wage hikes for The Guardian, offers important backstory on the American Legislative Exchange Council’s campaign to spend millions maintaining maintain lower wages.

Walmart and ALEC parted company back in 2012 and the Bentonvile Behemoth’s actions this week must have caused much gnawing on skulls among former fellow travelers. Especially considering this villainous piece of self-serving legislative sewage.

Living Wage Mandate Preemption Act

Summary

The Living Wage Mandate Preemption Act repeals any local “living wage” mandates, ordinances or laws enacted by political subdivisions of the state. It also prohibits political subdivisions from enacting laws establishing “living wage” mandates on private businesses, including those businesses that have service contracts with and/or receive financial assistance from such political subdivisions of state government.

Model Policy

Section 1. {Short Title.} This Act shall be known as the Living Wage Mandate Preemption Act.

Section 2. {Legislative Declarations.} This legislature finds and declares that:

(A) Economic stability and growth are among the most important factors affecting the general welfare of the people of this state, and that economic stability and growth are therefore among the most important matters for which the Legislature is responsible;

(B) Mandated wage rates comprise a major cost component for private enterprises, and are among the chief factors affecting the economic stability and growth of this state;

(C) Local variations in mandated wage rates threaten many businesses with a loss of employees to areas which require higher mandated wage rates, threaten many other businesses with the loss of patrons to areas which allow lower mandated wage rates, and are therefore detrimental to the business environment of the state and to the citizens, businesses, and governments of the various political subdivisions as well as local labor markets;

(D) In order for businesses to remain competitive and yet attract and retain the highest possible caliber of employees, private enterprises in this state must be allowed to function in a uniform environment with respect to mandated wage rates; and

(E) Legislated wage disparity between political subdivisions of this state creates an anticompetitive marketplace that fosters job and business relocation.

Section 3. {Definitions.}

(A) For purposes of this title, “political subdivision” includes, but is not limited to, a municipality, city, county, township, village, school district, special purpose district, public service district, or any local government of this state.

(B) For purposes of this title, “living wage mandate” means any requirement enacted by a political subdivision of this state that requires an employer to pay any or all of its employees a wage rate not otherwise required under this state’s law or federal law.

(C) For purposes of this title, “employer” includes, but is not limited to, any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer in relation to an employee and includes a public agency (other than the government of the United States), as well as employers that have contracts or subcontracts with the political subdivision or that have received tax abatements, loan guarantees, or other financial assistance from the political subdivision.

(D) For purposes of this title, “employee” means any individual employed by an employer.

(E) For purposes of this title, “employ” includes to suffer or permit to work.

(F) For purposes of this title, “person” means an individual, partnership, association, corporation, business trust, legal representative, or any organized group of persons.

Section 4. {Repeal and Preemption of Local Law.}

(A) Except as provided in Section 4 (B) and Section 5, any and all living wage mandates enacted by any political subdivision of this state are repealed.

(B) Except as provided in Section 5, no political subdivision of this state may enact, maintain, or enforce by charter, ordinance, purchase agreement, contract, regulation, rule, or resolution, either directly or indirectly, a living wage mandate in an amount greater than this state’s applicable state minimum wage [or, if applicable: “in the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended {29 U.S.C. Sec. 201 et seq.}”].

Section 5. {Severability Clause.}

(A) The prohibitions in Section 4 of this title shall not [choose any/all of the following]:

(1) Prohibit a political subdivision of this state from enacting, maintaining, or enforcing through a collective bargaining agreement or other means a minimum wage requirement governing compensation paid by that political subdivision to employees of that political subdivision;

(2) Apply to a collective bargaining agreement negotiated between a political subdivision and the bargaining representative of the employees of the political subdivision;

(3) Limit, restrict, or expand a prevailing wage required under existing state law [cite code/statute];

(4) Apply when applicable federal law requires the payment of a prevailing or minimum wage to persons working on projects funded in whole or in part by federal funds.

Section 6. {Repealer Clause.}

Section 7. {Effective Date.}

Approved by ALEC Board of Directors on January 2002.

Reapproved by ALEC Board of Directors on January 28, 2013.

#jeffwecan

Can you recall the last time you remember enthusiastically telling you about the wonderful night’s sleep they had?

Me neither.

Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine researcher Lydia DonCarlos, PhD, is a member of an expert panel that’s making new recommendations on how much sleep people need.

The panel, convened by the National Sleep Foundation, is making its recommendations based on age, ranging from newborns (who need 14 to 17 hours of sleep per day) to adults aged 65 and up (7 to 8 hours per day).

In the new guidelines, there’s a wider range of what constitutes a good night’s sleep. For example, the expert panel recommends that teens (ages 14 to 17) get 8 to 10 hours of sleep per night. The previous guideline had a narrower recommended range of 8.5 to 9.5 hours per night.

I can’t recall the last time I got eight hours of sleep in one 24-hour period. Can you?

[I]t’s crucial for you to find a way to practice peace. Even if you can only do it in a very restricted manner, it will help you survive. It will help you nourish hope. So I think it’s very important not to allow ourselves to be carried away by the feeling of despair. We should learn how to bring peace into our bodies and our minds, so we’re able to give right to thoughts of compassion, words of compassion and acts of compassion in our daily lives. That will inspire many people, and it will help them not be drowned in the ocean of despair. p. 110

From Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society by Thich Nhat Hanh

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.