WRAP THAT RASCAL…
0813 by Jeff Hess
17 February 2012
16 February 2012
OHIO’S BIGOTS GOING WILD AGAIN…
0822 by Jeff HessSantorum Pulls Ahead of Romney in Ohio Poll
Nuff said…
15 February 2012
BERT WRITES GUD…!
1017 by Jeff HessOr so Ralphy tells me, and I agree: Bert does write gud.
Plus, Ralphy’s illustrations don’t hurt.
14 February 2012
ROLDO RIGHTS ON MAYORAL CONTROL’S FAILURE…
1159 by Jeff HessWhen the Democratic mayor of Cleveland pushes a school reform program by talking with the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the foundations and the kill-all-unions Republican Governor but ices out the Cleveland Teachers Union something is woefully wrong.
Dreadfully wrong.
Mayor Frank Jackson seems to be taking lessons from former Mayor Michael White who treated Cleveland school teachers as trash. Indeed, I can’t believe he hasn’t been talking to the former mayor.
You may remember that White, as attack dog, wanted to destroy the Cleveland Teachers Union. His over-the-top approach labeled Cleveland teachers as “the inmates running the asylum.” Newspaper ads were run claiming falsely that teachers only worked 4.5 hours a day. It was a full-press, take-no-prisoner assault. As only Mike the Knife could do. He was BK (before Kasich) on destroying unions.
All area unions should come to the defense of the teachers if they have learned any lesson from the experience of Senate Bill 5. Jackson’s plan would Continue Reading »
13 February 2012
ALCOA ON METAFILTER, PD STILL…
1117 by Jeff HessI noted the news of Cleveland’s ALOCA stamping mill on Friday. Metafilter picked the story up today and the Plain Dealer has responded with…
13 February 2012
HOW THE 1 PERCENT ROUGHED IT IN COLLEGE…
1044 by Jeff Hess13 February 2012
THE SUICIDAL PANIC OF THE 1 PERCENT…
0809 by Jeff HessAmerica’s corporate rulers and their pet politicians know that people are furious. They understand that their actions and policies are accelerating the pace of income inequality and creating a growing, permanently alienated underclass.
They know history. Sooner or later, the downtrodden rise up, overthrow and kill their oppressors.
It’s not a nice way to rule. Nor is it smart. So—if all it would take for America’s masters to save themselves from the raging mobs of the not-so-distant future are a few empty words, why not try?
There’s no doubt about the nature or scale of the problem. Economists from left to right agree that the United States suffers from high structural inequality. “At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations,” reported The New York Times on January 5th. According to a Swedish study 42 percent of American boys raised by parents whose incomes fall in the bottom 40 percent of wage earners remain in the bottom 40 percent as adults—a much higher rate than such nations as Denmark (25 percent) and England (30 percent), “a country famous for its class constraints.”
To be poor in the United States is not unusual. Half of Americans live under two times the poverty line. But the depth and persistence of poverty in America is unique among developed industrialized nations. The gap between the poor and the rich is bigger. Mobility—access to the American Dream—is less.
[snip…]
Why isn’t anyone promising to address income inequality? They could lie and break their promises later.
First, the rich are feeling squeezed. The global capitalist system no longer has much room to expand. Emerging markets have emerged. Globalization is not only nearly out of steam, it’s allowing the weakest trading partners to drag down their healthier partners. Feeling squeezed, our rulers aren’t in the mood to be generous. They’d rather loot the scraps of the pending collapse than expand the social safety net.
Second, the ruling classes have fooled themselves into believing that they no longer need to exploit workers in order extract surplus value. They make their profits without us in massive arbitrage transactions that collect spreads from borrowed money. To be sure, it’s a bubble. It’ll burst. But it feels good now.
Third, the rich think they can insulate themselves from the roiling masses of the dispossessed, safe behind high-tech alarm systems inside their gated communities. Arrogance rules.
Louis XVI had good security too.
11 February 2012
AN ACADEMY AWARD WORTH VOTING FOR…
1847 by Jeff Hess11 February 2012
11 February 2012
11 February 2012
CLEVELAND GOES REALLY BIG AND THE PD SAYS…
0706 by Jeff HessSo, Crain’s Cleveland Business had the story on Thursday and a national magazine has the story from its March issue on line yesterday possibly earlier, but Boing Boing linked to the story at 5:32 p.m., and the Plain Dealer last mentioned a connection to the news with this headline:
Crack in huge Alcoa press may move jobs from Cleveland to California
three feckin’ years ago.
Approaching Alcoa’s 50,000-ton forging press feels a bit like approaching an alp: it starts out incomprehensibly huge and keeps getting incomprehensibly huger. From a distance, the thing dominates the horizon of the hangar-like Cleveland Works facility; as you get nearer, catching glimpses through forests of girders and around cliffs of firebrick, it begins to dominate the air above. But even as you stand at its foot, being told that the eight steel bolts anchoring it are 40 inches thick, calculating in your head that that makes them 10 feet around—even then it’s still a bit out of reach. Only when you climb it, peer down from its sixth-floor summit, and realize that the puny machine next to it is, in fact, its 35,000-ton brother—well, then you finally appreciate the size of the thing. It’s big.
Yes it is, really big. A story about Clevelanders actually making real products?
My hometown newspaper is doing a better job.
Hey, how about that casino and Med Mart, and, oh yeah, aren’t you excited about spring training?
7 February 2012
7 February 2012
ROLDO RIGHTS ON SAUL ALINSKY AND CLEVELAND…
1006 by Jeff HessIt’s odd that as you get older the past keeps popping up to surprise you.
Recently, the Plain Dealer ran on its web site a copy of a page one from back in 1967 that I had written when the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Cleveland. It brought back memories.
Now in the 2012 Republican primary the name Saul Alinsky has risen to prominence again. And memories return for me.
I suspect not too many people remember that Alinsky almost came to Cleveland to ply his talents. Actually, he did appear here but he didn’t stay.
In this year’s Republican primary Newt Gingrich has tried to associate President Barack Obama with Alinsky. Some believe that Gingrich is trying to tar Obama as a socialist radical by linking his name with Alinsky, dead for some 40 years. Alinsky was a community organizer as was Obama. Both in Chicago.
The first notice of Alinsky’s possible arrival in Cleveland was an article I wrote on December 23 1966 for the Plain Dealer. The headline read: “Come to Cleveland, ‘Agitator’ is Urged.”
The first paragraph said:
“Saul D. Alinsky, a radical community organizer, has been approached to serve as a consultant for a mass citizens organization effort in Negro neighborhoods by the Council of Churches in Greater Cleveland.”
The article noted that members of the church council met with Alinsky for six hours in New York. The Council of Churches in the 1960s was seriously Continue Reading »
6 February 2012
THE ROOT SOUNDTRACK FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA…
1052 by Jeff HessVia The Root:
No. 2 Second Time Around by Shalamar.
No. 3 Changes by 2Pac
No. 4 One Nation Under a Groove by Funkadelic.
No. 5 Higher Ground by Stevie Wonder.
While I will not be voting for President Obama a second time and I do wish him well, I think the idea of a Soul Soundtrack is indicative of the substance vs. sizzle challenge for voters like myself.
5 February 2012
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN COMMERCE COOPS A CAUSE…
0607 by Jeff Hess
More via she who writes like she talks…
And Lila Hanft leads us to 6 Things You Need To Know About the Komen Foundation/Planned Parenthood Controversy…
5 February 2012
4 February 2012
4 February 2012
DEAR PHONE BOOK PUBLISHERS…
0542 by Jeff Hess3 February 2012
2 February 2012
ALL HAIL PIP AND MASTER COPPERFIELD…
1344 by Jeff HessThe amazing Kentucky poet Sherry Chandler and I shared Bourbon on the porch at Wild Acres this past summer and so when I read this line in her post on the poetry of Amy King —
I felt a little like a Dickens character thrown into the middle of a Gertrude Stein piece
— a smile came to my face because the opening line of the novel I’m currently working on (and workshopped at Wild Acres but I don’t think Sherry read) is:
I felt a character in one of Mr. Dickens’ novels.
No sign of Ms. Stein may be found in Absent Son (yet).
