Ralph Nader, writes in Vanishing the People’s Wealth to Make the Bosses Richer:

Imagine you are a shareholder in a big company and the top executives are sitting on huge amounts of cash and are not interested in putting it to work through productive capital investments, research and development, reducing company debt or paying employees a higher wage. What would you want done about it? Since you and other shareholders are the owners of the company, you’d likely say “give us back our money in cash dividends.”

“No way,” say your hired hands, the company managers, who have spent a staggering $2.1 trillion of your money in the last five years on stock buybacks allegedly to increase the company’s earnings per share ratio, instead of increasing shareholder dividends. Overall this tactic has not been working over time except to make the corporate bosses richer, which is the real reason for many buybacks.

What is the incentive for this cash burning frenzy? According to University of Massachusetts scholar, William Lazonick, in 2012 the 500 highest-paid executives received 52% of their remuneration from stock options and another 26% from stock awards.

Call it self-interest, or conflict of interest with their shareholder-owners, they continue to get away with this massive heist, this clever transfer of wealth. They do not need to get the approval of their owners—the stockholders—under what is called the “business judgement rule.”. Developed by corporate attorneys and adopted with few boundaries by the Delaware courts—the state where corporate bosses go for pioneering leniency—the BJR strips the owners of corporations of meaningful control over the company executives and boards of directors other than to sell their stock, thereby leaving the rascals in charge.

Here is the definition of the BJR by the Delaware courts: “The business judgement rule…is a presumption that in making a business decision the directors of a corporation acted on an informed basis, in good faith and in the honest belief that the action taken was in the best interests of the corporation.”

How’s that for a legally entrenched entitlement during a growing decades-long corporate crime wave that largely goes unprosecuted by politically and budgetarily strapped enforcement agencies? A crime wave that in 2008 brought a criminally-speculative, self-enriching Wall Street down, draining trillions of Continue Reading »

The Art and Business of Creating Life-Like Baby Dolls…

We now know that the drone used to summarily execute Micah Xavier Johnson was manufactured by Northrup Grumman.

According to an official statement from the Dallas Police:

When all attempts to negotiate with the suspect, Micah Johnson, failed under the exchange of gunfire, the department utilized the mechanical tactical robot, as a last resort, to deliver an explosion device to save the lives of officers and citizens.

There has still not been any statement from the police or Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings as to what the urgency was in summarily executing Johnson.

I can’t see into the heads of either Chief Brown or Mayor Rawlings, but from reading Rawlings’ biography just now, an ugly possibility has raised its head. Rawlings is a Democrat, subject to, especially in Texas, accusations of being soft on crime. I do hope that Rawlings is a better man than to put the life of a safely contained suspect before his next election and extended political career. I confess, however, that that hope is slim.

Previously:

The first pictures from Mary Jo’s trip to Germany with her mother have arrived.

Thomas Wolfe became the Tupac Shakur of his generation. During his brief lifetime—he died on my birthday in 1938 at the age of 37—he saw only eight of his 18 completed works published. The most recent of his works, O Lost: A Story Of The Buried Life (the 736-page, unabridged version of Look Howard Angel, 512 pages) was published in 2000.

Wolfe died from miliary tuberculosis of the brain. When the doctors had attempted to operate on Wolfe’s brain they found that the disease had overrun the entire right hemisphere of his brain. How long Wolfe suffered from this condition I am unable to ascertain, but that he did suffer from a brain affliction fascinates me as a writer.

As I watched Jude Law’s portrayal of Wolfe in the movie Genius (a movie I could easily watch again), the first thought that came to my mind—in the very first scene in the trailer above—was: what has fucked up his brain?

The very title of the movie should have been a clue. For ancient peoples manifestations of conditions that we know to be caused by malfunctions and diseases of the brain were thought to be supernatural, connections with gods and demons. The ravings of such people were carefully interpreted as oracles. This was so true that very origins of the word genius was not that a person was a genius, but rather that they were possessed by a genius.

When I first began to think of myself as a writer, and to read about the lives of writers hoping for some guidance, I was taken again and again by the stories of alcoholism, drug addiction, melancholy/depression, mania and flat-out madness told of so many great writers. The very act of writing excessively has a psychological diagnosis: Hypergraphia, a condition that I suspect both Issac Asimov and Anne Rice (and maybe Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates) dealt with. I first became familiar with the condition when I read Kay Redfield Jamison’s most excellent Exuberance: The Passion for Life, a book I now consider a must read for any budding writer (or anyone who loves a writer).

So, if a writer’s genius is caused by a mental illness, what is the writer to do? Self-medicate with alcohol or drugs? Find a sane person to interpret—which I am inclined to think was the case with Wolfe—or seek a cure and risk losing the genius? This was the very dilemma in Lying Awake by Mark Salzman about a nun whose poetry is so wonderful, she has been asked to read for the Pope, but there is a problem:

In a Carmelite monastery outside present-day Los Angeles, life goes on in a manner virtually un-changed for centuries. Sister John of the Cross has spent years there in the service of God. And there, she alone experiences visions of such dazzling power and insight that she is looked upon as a spiritual master.

But Sister John’s visions are accompanied by powerful headaches, and when a doctor reveals that they may be dangerous, she faces a devastating choice. For if her spiritual gifts are symptoms of illness rather than grace, will a “cure” mean the end of her visions and a soul once again dry and searching?

Should, can! Sister John of the Cross let go of her poems?

I’ve attended more than a dozen writers’ retreats over the years and there I’ve learned that a surprising number of the attendees go off their meds for the duration and turn to unprescribed (and sometimes illegal alternatives) to allow them to write for one or two weeks. The medications, they’ve told me, destroy their creativity; make them feel less and less. If a writer can’t feel, they can’t write.

So, go see Genius. Tell me I’m crazy and that my analysis is bullshit.

I really want to know.

Derf’s interpretation of George Bellows’ Stag at Sharkey’s.

The date, 8 July 2016, as the day drone warfare came for a citizen of the United States, living on American soil, now takes a place alongside 4 July 1776, 12 April 1861, 16 July 1945 and 11 September 2001 as a day my country fundamentally changed. The summary execution of Micah Xavier Johnson in Dallas by a bomb carried by a drone controlled by an officer of the law is a bright line that we have now crossed.

In his own words, Dallas Police Chief David Brown declared Micah Xavier Johnson a suspect in the murders of police officers Brent Thompson, Patrick Zamarripa, Michael Krol, Michael Smith and Lorne Ahrens. Because Johnson was suspected of those crimes—no judge, no jury, no prosecutor and no defense attorney were called or consulted—Brown made the decision, either too dull to imagine or willfully choosing to ignore other options, to summarily execute Johnson by drone and the deed was done.

Brown brought drone warfare to our nation.

No citizen of the United States is now safe from such summary executions—because our justice system in not infallible—if they are (a) suspected of a crime, and (b) considered too dangerous to risk arresting by less violent means that would put police officers at risk.

This is what the militarization of our civil police has accomplished.

We must demand the immediate demilitarization, the removal of all military style equipment and weapons from the arsenals of all our police forces until such time, most likely never, when we can declare with absolute certainty that such weapons will not be misused.

In my book evil is like dark or cold, the absence of their opposites good, light and heat. So, for me, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both represent the absence of good and voting for either is a negative vote for my country; a country and a constitution I gave 11 years of my life to protect from all enemies foreign and domestic.

Four years ago I voted for Jill Stein because Barack Obama turned his back on the hope and change he campaigned on in 2008. Yes, he was dealing with a financial crisis engineered by Wall Street and the Godzilla banks, but if the 2009 nine Obama had shown half the fight that the 2016 Obama has demonstrated, we would live in a better country today. That’s not acceptable for me.

So, I won’t vote for Trump and I can’t, in good conscience vote for Clinton and a calcified Democratic National Committee has marginalized Sanders; that leaves Jill Stein, who I did vote for in 2012. That vote was not all that hard to cast. Mitt Romney was not going to win either Ohio or the national election. Donald Trump could do both. Voting for the lesser of two evils, however, is still voting for evil and I want to vote for good.

There already is a movement to write-in Bernie Sanders in November, but Jill Stein has now offered to step down and let Bernie have the lead on the Green ticket if he wants.

“I’ve invited Bernie to sit down explore collaboration—everything is on the table,” she said. “If he saw that you can’t have a revolutionary campaign in a counter-revolutionary party, he’d be welcomed to the Green party. He could lead the ticket and build a political movement,” she said.

Stein said she had made her offer directly to Sanders in an email at the end of the primary season, although she had not received a response. Her surprise intervention comes amid speculation that Sanders will finally draw a line under a bruising Democratic contest by endorsing Clinton’s presidential bid next week.

“If he continues to declare his full faith in the Democratic party, it will leave many of his supporters very disappointed,” she said. “That political movement is going to go on—it isn’t going to bury itself in the graveyard alongside Hillary Clinton.”

Stein said the Democratic establishment had conducted “psychological warfare” against Sanders and “sabotaged” his attempts to gain the party’s presidential nomination. Many of his young, progressive supporters are now moving over to the Green party rather than fall in behind Clinton, Stein added.

“I’m not holding my breath but I’m not ruling it out that we can bring out 43 million young people into this election,” she said. “It’s been a wild election; every rule in the playbook has been tossed out. Unfortunately, that has mainly been used to lift up hateful demagogues like Donald Trump, but it can also be done in a way that actually answers people’s needs.”

Accepting Stein’s offer would likely cost him dearly if he loses, which he will likely do. He will become a pariah to the Democratic Party and, as such, lose influence in the Senate. That loss could cost him re-election in Vermont. I don’t know what Bernie will do, but it is better to burn out than fade away.

Barring some extraordinary event (I can’t even begin to imagine what that might be) I will cast my vote in for Bernie, one way or another, in November.

For a candidate to run for Cleveland Mayor, he or she needs issues to propel a campaign. Sooner rather than later.

The candidate needs a head start to run against an incumbent as Mayor Frank Jackson. Jackson is expected to run for an unprecedented fourth 4-year term. As someone has said—because he has nothing better to do. Not at all a good reason.

I think Jackson has overstayed his voter welcome.

He has become a toady of the usual people who pull strings here.

And he is largely ignored by the almost daily newspaper, which seems in a Disney Land world of its own.

But the old saw applies—you can’t beat someone with no one.

When Dennis Kucinich ran for mayor against two-term Ralph Perk in 1977 he had set an issue for himself to pound home—Muny Light. Perk wanted to sell it likely because he knew he had spent bond money illegally and needed the revenue. Dennis was a staunch supporter.

Things didn’t actually work that way.

Kucinich didn’t count on Perk finishing third and that his opponent in the general election would be Ed Feighan, a supporter of Muny Light.

Dennis needed another issue to ride. It wasn’t hard for Kucinich to find one (as it shouldn’t be for anyone today) and he rode it into City Hall. The issue was the Continue Reading »

[Update: 9 July @ 0700—I have changed the word robot in this piece to drone because that was what was used in the summary execution of Micah Xavier Johnson. (I have also added Johnson’s name, as well as the five officers slain, in the text below.]

As my friend Mano Singham wisely wrote a few weeks ago: Never trust initial reports of major events. Setting that caveat aside, I want to raise a question regarding the six deaths—five police officers (Brent Thompson, Patrick Zamarripa, Michael Krol, Michael Smith and Lorne Ahrens) and one suspected shooter (Micah Xavier Johnson)—in Dallas today. I write suspected advisedly because we have only the word of Dallas Police Chief David Brown who told reporters this morning that:

We cornered one suspect and we tried to negotiate for several hours, negotiations broke down, we had an exchange of gun fire with the suspect, WE SAW NO OTHER OPTIONS but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was. OTHER OPTIONS WOULD HAVE EXPOSED OUR OFFICERS TO GRAVE DANGER. The suspect is deceased.

The emphasis above is mine. Clearly, either the Dallas Police Department lacks imagination or police feared a living suspect Micah Xavier Johnson. For now, I choose to believe the former over the latter.

By Chief Brown’s own words, the suspect Micah Xavier Johnson was cornered which means, in my understanding of the word, that the suspect Micah Xavier Johnson had no escape route. The Dallas police could have isolated the suspect Micah Xavier Johnson further, evacuated all potential targets within a one- or two-block radius, built bunkers from sandbags or other materials out of the immediate line of sight of the suspect Micah Xavier Johnson, placed sharpshooters in those bunkers and simply waited.

Instead, Police Chief David Brown, and this rests on his shoulders as the responsible official, decided to use the departments very high tech toy and summarily execute the suspect Micah Xavier Johnson.

This summary execution has at least two immediate effects: first, the situation ended; and second, only the police version of those events will ever be known.

The Dallas Police did little today to bring honor upon those five officers who lost their lives in the line of duty.

Must shop for hammock…

On Monday I lamented that the United States lacked the laws (and the will) to charge President George W. Bush (and his advisors) with crimes against humanity for engineering the invasion of Iraq and the tragedies that have flowed from that decision.

Trevor Timm, writing in The US needs its own Chilcot report for The Guardian, agrees:

s the UK parliament released its long-awaited Chilcot report on the country’s role in the Iraq war on Wednesday, there have been renewed calls all over Britain to try former prime minister Tony Blair for war crimes. This brings up another question: what about George W Bush?

The former US president most responsible for the foreign policy catastrophe has led a peaceful existence since he left office. Not only has he avoided any post-administration inquiries into his conduct, he has inexplicably seen his approval ratings rise (despite the carnage left in his wake only getting worse). He is an in-demand fundraiser for Republicans not named Donald Trump, and he gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak at corporate events. The chances of him ever saying in public, “I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you can ever believe,” as Blair did on Wednesday, are virtually non-existent.

The only thing close to the Chilcot report in the US was the Senate intelligence committee’s long-delayed investigation on intelligence failures in the lead-up to Iraq, released in 2008. The Democratic-led committee faulted the CIA for massive intelligence failures and the Bush administration for purposefully manipulating intelligence for public consumption. It led to a couple days of headlines, denunciations from the Bush White House (still in office at the time) and that was it.

After that, the Senate intelligence committee continued to lavish the CIA with praise, increase its budgets and provide only a modicum of oversight, despite the many scandals that preceded and succeeded the report.

This reminds me of the movie Spotlight which I finally found time to watch last evening. That the Catholic Diocese in Boston was covering up the crimes of pedophile priests was ultimately not a great secret, but was allowed to continue for decades because people looked the other way and simply didn’t want to believe that such a horror could take place in their community.

Well such a horror has occurred in our nation and, as described by Timm above, we allow the war crimes to continue.

Why is that?

One of the political questions of the moment is: how will Bernie voters be transformed post-convention when their candidate returns to being the only independent senator in Congress?

An email this week from Northeast Ohio For Bernie Sanders provides a view:

The United States Senate is voting on legislation as early as this week engineered by corporate agriculture to keep consumers in the dark about genetically modified foods. Bernie Sanders supports the rights of consumers to have access to information about the food they purchase.

We need you to act to ensure our Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown stands with Bernie to protect Ohio, Vermont and other states’ GMO food and seed labeling bills which the Senate is trying to overturn this week. Tell Senator Brown that you agree with Bernie that American consumers have a right to know! Tell him you expect him to stand with Bernie and the 90% of Americans who want GMO labeling. Tell Senator Brown that the bill in front of the Senate is not a labeling bill at all. It destroys labeling on behalf of Monsanto, Big Ag and bio-tech companies.

Call Senator Brown’s office today at 202-224-2315. Ohio’s Republican Senator is voting against Ohio, Bernie and all Americans on this one. Ask Sen. Brown. whose side is he on?

Events: July 20th—Screening of Pay 3 Play—6-9pm—Bevy at Birdtown, 12112 Madison Ave. Lakewood, Ohio.

With the Republicans in town, there is no better time to discuss how we can get out from under the system of pay-to-play politics, where politicians reward their donors with public money and special favors. In Pay 2 Play, filmmaker John Ennis examines how corporations have taken over our democracy as he follows outsiders using their voice to change the game in American politics He ventures through high drama on the Ohio campaign trail, uncovers the secret history of America’s favorite game, and explores the underworld of Los Angeles street art in a humorous odyssey that reveals how much of a difference one person can make.

Donation $10

Tristan Rader
Northeast Ohio For Bernie Sanders—11910 Detroit Ave, Lakewood, OH 44107

It’s been a 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’S ONLINE STRUGGLES CONTINUE… Two stories popped up this morning that relate to Walmart’s continuing battle to figure out how to transform dominance in bricks-and-mortar retail sales to the same kind of crush-the-competition success… Keep reading…

WALTON FAMILY THREE-PEATS… When Los Angeles Laker Coach Pat Riley trademarked the phrase—coined by Shooting Guard (and future Lakers coach) Byron Scott—Three-Peat, he associated the term with the team’s remarkable effort, but ultimately… Keep reading…

JUST WHAT STOCKS ARE THE WALTONS BUYING…? Years ago I worked as executive editor of a small, family owned publishing house. I learned a lot there from the owner who, while he did not match his financial success, did share what I think of as… Keep reading…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WALMART… Forty-four years ago, on 2 July 1962, the first Walmart store, in Rogers, Arkansas, opened the doors for customers. Rogers, population ~6,000 in 1962, is also the home of Daisy, maker of the iconic Red Ryder BB gun…. Keep reading…

WALMART WINS UNION TRESPASS APPEAL… On Thursday, 30 June, the Court of Appeal of the State of California, Second Appellate District, Division Eight found in favor of Walmart in the case of Walmart v. United Food And Commercial Workers International…. Keep reading…

APPLES AND ORANGES IN THE JOB MARKET… There are two tasks that all politicians like to be able to boast success about: making the lives of voters safer and making the lives of voters more prosperous. The latter often involves the promise of jobs. Lots… Keep reading…

COULD WALMART MAKE UGLY THE NEW CUTE…? While I was in college I volunteered at the local food co-op once a week in exchange for a discount on food I bought there. I stocked shelves, sliced and wrapped cheese and performed many other… Keep reading…

ANOTHER BELOVED WORKER BITES THE DUST… There are people at Walmart that customers actually love. In a worlds where underpaid and overworked employees don’t have time to be cordial or even helpful, those who make the effort to smile and… Keep reading…

Previously…

I stopped using the word terrorism a little more than four years ago because I finally came to grips with the reality that the word was without objective meaning and therefore worthless in intelligent conversation.

When I was an undergraduate at Ohio University during the first Reagan administration, I had taken a University Professor course—courses, often multi-discipline, taught by student-selected professors seen as particularly interesting who were given time and free rein to teach the unusual—on Terrorism. This was the first place where I encountered the phrase: one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. That stuck with me.

For sometime now I have been wrestling in the same way with the words racism. Race is an artificial construct created by white men seeking to provide a pseudo-scientific veneer for their perceived superiority over non-whites. In biology all life is categorized using a taxonomy of eight ranks: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. There is no rank for race. Since all humans are biologically capable of sharing DNA, biology makes no further distinction.

Neither should the rest of us.

The catalyst for this post was listening to Radiolabs broadcast this week on race and reading about the fallout from Brexit. This latter we now know was driven in no small part by xenophobia: the hatred or fear of foreigners or strangers or of their politics or culture. That says what I want to say much better than racism.

Henceforth the words I intend to use to describe the various forms of bigotry expressed in my country and around the world that are driven by hatred or fear of the other will derive from xenophobia.

So, last night we watched episode 19 of the first season of Glee: Dream On. Good episode, but I was disappointed to learn that Kevin McHale, the actor who plays Artie Abrams, is not, in fact, a paraplegic. That’s no secret to regular viewers, I’m sure, but in this day and age I assumed that, because of the diversity of the cast, McHale used his wheelchair in daily life. Others have also expressed their dissatisfaction with the choice of McHale to play the role.

The executive producer of Glee, Brad Falchuk, wants to represent America as a whole with getting the best performers possible.

“We brought in anyone: white, black, Asian, in a wheelchair,” he said. “It was very hard to find people who could really sing, really act, and have that charisma you need on TV.”

He understands the concern and frustration expressed by the disabled community, he said. But Kevin McHale, 21, who plays Artie, excels as an actor and singer and “it’s hard to say no to someone that talented,” Falchuk said.

That’s bullshit to me.

What next? The actresses who play Becky Potter and Jean Sylvester are wearing facial prosthetics?

Thankfully, not.

Writers get asked “Where do you get your ideas?” all the time. Most attempt to be gracious and imply that such a task is hard grueling work requiring years of mental exercise.

Henry James was blunt, and honest..

Asked once when he found time to form the design of a new book, James rolled his eyes, patted the questioner on the knee, and said, “It’s all about, it’s about—it’s in the air—it, so to speak, follows me and dogs me.” —Henry James (1843-1916) page 82.

From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Curry.

If I were to live to a biblical 120 I could not begin to put all the ideas in my head to paper. Coming up with the ideas is easy. Translating those ideas to paper, however, is the hardest, most tortuous mental work any person can do.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

[Update: 6 July @ 2000: Trevor Timm agrees…]

President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld are, in my book, all war criminals unlikely to ever be charged or punished for their wars of adventurism in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There is a co-conspirator, however, who may be brought task for his part in those wars.

Rajeev Syal, writing in Tony Blair faces calls for impeachment on release of Chilcot report for The Guardian, explains:

Senior figures from Labour and the Scottish National party are considering calls for legal action against Tony Blair if the former prime minister faces severe criticisms from the long-awaited inquiry into the war in Iraq.

A number of MPs led by Alex Salmond are expected to use an ancient law to try to impeach the former prime minister when the Chilcot report comes out on Wednesday.

The law, last used in 1806 when the Tory minister Lord Melville was charged for misappropriating official funds, is seen in Westminster as an alternative form of punishment that could ensure Blair never holds office again.

Triggering the process simply requires an MP to propose a motion and provide supporting evidence as part of a document called the article of impeachment which has no time limit placed upon it. If the impeachment attempt is approved by MPs, the defendant is delivered to Black Rod before a trial.

A simple majority is required to convict, at which point a sentence can be passed which could, in theory, involve Blair being sent to prison. However, MPs have said the attempt will be symbolic and is unlikely to result in imprisonment.

There is a direct link from the trashing of Iraq to ISIL. Bush and his minions should be punished.