get yours from: northern sun-products for progressives since 1979

Back in 1987 I helped to kill the Coventry Street Fair by rigging a crucial vote of Coventry Neighbors, the not-for-profit neighborhood group that ran the annual event. The street fair had become unpopular with a lot of people on the street, but there was also a strong core of people who benefited from the event.

The leadership of Coventry neighbors had decided that it was time to kill the fair, but it knew that if it did so by executive fiat there would be an outcry. What was needed was for the Voice of the People to speak. The trick was to put the right words into their mouths.

This is what we did. First, we announced at one of our typical sparsely attended meetings – we often wondered if we would get 10 members for a quorum – that the following month we would hold a vote on the question: Should Coventry Neighbors sponsor another street fair?

Next, five or six of us divided up the member ship list and started making phone calls. The phone script went like this: we told the people we called that we were conducting a membership survey on the question Should Coventry Neighbors sponsor another street fair? If they answered Yes, then we thanked them for their input and moved onto the next name on the list.

If, however, the person answered No, we moved to page two of the script. We told the member about the meeting where the membership would vote on this question and how vitally important it was for them to be there so that their voice could be heard. After thanking them for their time we added their name to a follow-up list to help make sure that they would be there to cast the vote we wanted.

Not surprisingly, when the next meeting rolled around, we not only had a huge crowd for a Coventry Neighbors meeting, the outcome of the vote was a forgone conclusion. We had so out maneuvered the opposition, that the street fair died in a landslide. And, as an added benefit, the organization held elections that night and a new slate of officers (I was elected treasurer) rode the orchestrated swell of approval.

My ex and I bought a house in 1988 and moved out of the Coventry neighborhood. I resigned my office and left Coventry Neighbors to its own devices. But my willing participation in this slimy – albeit perfectly legal – example of election manipulation has tainted my thinking ever since.

What made me think of that education in vote rigging is the top story on Salon this morning: My Right-Wing Degree by Jeff Horwitz. In his lede, Horwitz tells of his experience at Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute:

One recent Sunday, at Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute, a dozen students meet for the second and final day of training in grass-roots youth politics. All are earnest, idealistic and as right wing as you can get. They take careful notes as instructor Paul Gourley teaches them how to rig a campus mock election.

It’s nothing illegal – no ballot stuffing necessary, even at the most liberal colleges. First you find a nonpartisan campus group to sponsor the election, so you can’t be accused of cheating. Next, volunteer to organize the thing. College students are lazy, and they’ll probably let you. Always keep in mind that a rigged mock election is all about location, location, location.

“Can anyone tell me,” asks Gourley, a veteran mock electioneer, “why you don’t want the polling place in the cafeteria?”

Stephen, a shy antiabortion activist sitting toward the rear of the class, raises his hand: “Because you want to suppress the vote?”

“Stephen has the right answer!” Gourley exclaims, tossing Stephen his prize, a copy of Robert Bork’s “Slouching Toward Gomorrah.”

Anytime public business is conducted in private, the community – neighborhood, city, state, nation or the world – loses. But antics like what I took part in, and what the Leadership Institute advocates, can only happen when we let it happen. Cockroaches of all types scurry for cover when you shine a light on them.

My Soundtrack: We Sold Our Soul For Rock ‘N’ Roll by Black Sabbath.

In a comment to Why She Doesn’t Want A Wal Mart… Kevin asks, “Can we name names here? Absolutely. How about what happened to a local company, Rubbermaid? According to Mary Ethridge’s Blame Wal-Mart For This Catastrophe in the Akron Beacon Journal:

In 1993 and 1994, Rubbermaid Inc. was named America’s most admired company by Fortune magazine. Its descent into mediocrity is a sad, sad story that is used routinely in college classrooms to illustrate the immense power and vicious corporate culture of Wal-Mart.

Rubbermaid’s been dying since late 1994, when it found itself in a war of wills with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest company.

At that time, Rubbermaid wanted to raise the prices of some of its products because the cost of raw materials had risen suddenly by 80 percent. (Rubbermaid lost $250 million on resin costs alone in 1995, according to the company’s annual report.)

Rubbermaid executives traveled numerous times to Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., to plead their case. Wal-Mart kept saying no.

Or here’s a longer list from Executive Intelligence Review (warning, read this one with a grain of salt since it’s published by the Lyndon La Rouche organization.):

General Electric is one of the five biggest companies in America and the biggest producer of appliances, such as dishwashers, refrigerators, stoves, and TVs. The biggest outlet for GE goods is Wal-Mart. During the last few years, GE has conducted a large amount of outsourcing. The IUE union, which represents GE workers, has estimated that during the last five to seven years, GE has fired more than 100,000 workers, one of the nation’s biggest outsourcing massacres. Most of this work was outsourced to Mexico, China, and Asia in general.

At Masterlock, 250 union workers lost their jobs in 2000 when Wal-Mart suddenly dropped the company’s products and switched to an offshore, low-wage competitor.

Levi Strauss is one of the biggest manufacturers of jeans and denim products, including the line of Docker slacks. Wal-Mart is the biggest retailer of Levi Strauss products. During the past 18 months, after meetings with Wal-Mart, Levi Strauss announced it will shut down its four remaining production plants in North America and shift the work to Ibero-America and Asia. Several hundred jobs will be lost.

Dial Soap sells 28.3% of its production to Wal-Mart. Under Wal-Mart pressure, Dial is shutting down its Compton, California plant and shifting work to Argentina.

I hope that’s a sufficient number of names for Kevin to consider.

In My Backpack… The Amateur Naturalist by Nick Baker; In My Car… Seizure by Robin Cook; On My Nightstand… The Messiah Of Stockholm by Cynthia Ozick; On My Computer… The Man Next Door Is Teaching His Dog to Drive by Cathryn Essinger; On My Screen… Homocide : All Is Bright (***) directed by Matt Reeves, written by James Yoshimura and Julie Martin.

My Soundtrack: 24 Historic Organs by E. Power Biggs.

From The Washington Post: Wal-Mart has abandoned plans for a controversial pair of side-by-side stores in Calvert County designed to skirt a local zoning ordinance limiting the size of big-box retail outlets.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based company said it was scrapping the unconventional proposal, which it had called one of the first arrangements of its kind in the country, in the face of widespread opposition from residents and elected officials. [Emphasis mine, JH]

The project, planned for the tiny hamlet of Dunkirk, attracted attention from communities across the nation that feared Wal-Mart would use the model to subvert their own size caps for stores. The two Wal-Mart operations proposed in Dunkirk – each with its own entrance, utilities, bathrooms and cash registers – would have had a combined area 30 percent larger than the 75,000-square-foot limit for a single retail store.

It can be, and is, done.

get yours from: northern sun-products for progressives since 1979

This is a more than four-year-old story that no one is talking about. Global conflict peaked in 1991 and has been in steady decline ever since. So says Peace And Conflict 2005 by Monty G. Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr. Gregg Easterbrook’s story on the report is on the cover of the 30 May issue of The New Republic. While TNR’s on-line edition is subscription-only, Marshall’s and Gurr’s report is available free at the link above.

In the report’s introduction Gurr and Marshall write:

The War on Terror and Iraq’s violent transition to multiethnic democracy dominate contemporary headlines. A large-scale genocide began in Darfur shortly after the publication of the 2003 edition of Peace and Conflict and international responses have thus far been ineffective. Civil wars are devastating once-stable countries such as Nepal and Ivory Coast.

Little surprise, then, that most observers are convinced our world has become less secure since publication of the first edition of Peace and Conflict in 2001, a report that documented a post-Cold War ebb in armed conflicts and traced the ascendancy of democratic regimes.

Despite the prevailing sense of global insecurity, the positive trends traced in previous editions of this report have continued into early 2005. [Emphasis mine. JH]

Produced for the Center For International Development and Conflict Management, the report tracks world conflict in the 20th and 21st centuries. The money quote from Easterbrook focuses on a chart on page 11 of the 99-page report:

…the Peace and Conflict studies name 1991 as the peak post-World War II year for totality of global fighting, giving that year a ranking of 179 on a scale that rates the extent and destructiveness of combat. By 2000, in spite of war in the Balkans and genocide in Rwanda, the number had fallen to 97; by 2002 to 81; and, at the end of 2004, it stood at 65. This suggests the extent and intensity of global combat is now less than half what it was 15 years ago.

One of the most hopeful messages in the report – and one sure to infuriate John Birchers everywhere (are there still John Birchers?) – writes Easterbrook, is this:

Another reason for less war is the rise of peacekeeping. The world spends more every year on peacekeeping, and peacekeeping is turning out to be an excellent investment. Many thousands of UN, NATO, American, and other soldiers and peacekeeping units now walk the streets in troubled parts of the world, at a cost of at least $3 billion annually.

Peacekeeping has not been without its problems; peacekeepers have been accused of paying very young girls for sex in Bosnia and Africa, and NATO bears collective shame for refusing support to the Dutch peacekeeping unit that might have prevented the Srebrenica massacre of 1995.

But, overall, peacekeeping is working. Dollar for dollar, it is far more effective at preventing fighting than purchasing complex weapons systems. A recent study from the notoriously gloomy rand Corporation found that most UN peacekeeping efforts have been successful.

Peacekeeping is just one way in which the United Nations has made a significant contribution to the decline of war. American commentators love to disparage the organization in that big cereal-box building on the East River, and, of course, the United Nations has manifold faults.

Yet we should not lose track of the fact that the global security system envisioned by the UN charter appears to be taking effect. Great-power military tensions are at the lowest level in centuries; wealthy nations are increasingly pressured by international diplomacy not to encourage war by client states; and much of the world respects UN guidance. Related to this, the rise in “international engagement,” or the involvement of the world community in local disputes, increasingly mitigates against war.

All of this speaks to one of the central messages of Michael Moore’s Bowling For Columbine: we have a misperception of the level of violence in the United States and in the world because images of tanks and laser-guided bombs get better ratings than water treatment plants.

Are there horrible pockets of violence in the world like Iraq and Darfur? Yes. Would it be my preference that not one soldier die in combat? Of course. But things are getting better. Living on planet Earth has gotten steadily safer since 1991.

We ought to celebrate that.

My Soundtrack: Overseas Alert by Shesus on WOXY.

In My Backpack… Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir In Books by Azar Nafisi (Hey, Bonnie, I made it to page 280 today.); In My Car… Seizure by Robin Cook; On My Nightstand… Over There by Nell Freudenberger; On My Computer… Boarding House by Ted Kooser; On My Screen… Homocide : All Is Bright (***) directed by Matt Reeves, written by James Yoshimura and Julie Martin.

My Soundtrack: Golden Hits by Chuck Berry.

get yours from: northern sun-products for progressives since 1979

From Today’s New York Times: The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed what the pollsters called an “angry electorate.” By huge margins, voters think that politicians are paying too little attention to their concerns, especially health care, jobs and gas prices.

At the state level, many, though by no means all, politicians are responding to those concerns. The push to raise the minimum wage is a useful political barometer: seven states have raised the minimum in just the last two years.

True, there are limits on what state governments can do: they fear that if they do too much for workers, they’ll drive business and jobs away. I’d argue that the fear is often exaggerated. For example, Wal-Mart may avoid states that force it to provide health insurance, but given the hidden subsidies the company receives – one way or another, taxpayers end up paying a lot for uninsured workers – this may not be such a bad thing. Still, any major strengthening of the safety net will have to come at the federal level.

For all things Wal Mart in Cleveland surf over to: No Cleveland Wal Mart.

Last Wednesday in Buycotting… I discussed how buying your gasoline from Citgo could make economic sense since it was the only foreign oil company headquartered in a democratic nation: Venezuela. I had some reservations about the concept, but a cursory Internet search didn’t start the Lemming Meter ticking. I wrote the post and tagged it at the end with Anybody know of any holes in this?

Well, my every sharp dad was quickly on the case and reminded me of a meme/spam email that was slinking around last year with the subject line: Where To Buy Your Gas… This Is Very Important To Know. Dad included a copy of the email with the following note:

The problem in Marietta is that ALL gas comes from Ashland. They put the appropriate additives in at the bulk plant.

This is, of course, the Achilles heel of any economic social action. The lines are so blurred as to what a company buys and sells that consumers often accomplish nothing, or worse, injure the wrong people, when they make a purchasing decision.

The Citgo email must be picking up steam because the ever-on-the-hunt Barbara and David P. Mikkelson at Snopes have a detailed analysis of where gasoline comes from, where it goes, and whose collecting the cash.

One of the salient points is:

Citgo is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the national oil company of Venezuela, so naturally most of its crude oil comes from there. However, in February 2002 Citgo also imported from Middle Eastern countries in the following quantities:

Iraq: 1,342,000 barrels
Kuwait: 437,000 barrels.

Snopes conclusion is also a good one:

Complex problems rarely lend themselves to simple, painless answers. Simply shifting where we buy gasoline isn’t nearly as good a solution as the much tougher choice of sharply curtailing the amount of gasoline we buy.

My Soundtrack: Word Of Mouth by Tony Basil.

In My Backpack… Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir In Books by Azar Nafisi (Hey, Bonnie, I made it to page 240 today.); In My Car… Seizure by Robin Cook; On My Nightstand… Over There by Nell Freudenberger; On My Computer… Family Group, Late 1930s by Christopher Wiseman; On My Screen… Homocide : All Is Bright (***) directed by Matt Reeves, written by James Yoshimura and Julie Martin.

My Soundtrack: All Over The Place by The Bangles.

get yours from: northern sun-products for progressives since 1979

George Nemeth has graciously invited me to join the conversation at a new NEO Blog dedicated to the Steelyard Commons debate. I’ll keep up the drumbeat here with the Wal Mart factoids and my Mal Not blogroll, but anything major I want to say, I’ll now post at No Cleveland Wal Mart.

I posted my first offering there this afternoon and ask the question, is Cleveland getting it’s goat?

One of the things about any scripture is that if you’re willing to cherry pick the text, you can pretty much justify anything from suicide bombings to onerous taxes. The folks at wiseass.org have put together a case in point: how might Karl Rove and Company spin Jesus if he had run against President George Bush in 2004?

My Soundtrack: The Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach.

A citywide organization whose ultimate goal is to stop retail giant Wal-Mart from gaining a foothold in New York City found sympathetic ears on Staten Island last night. The Staten Island Democratic Association (SIDA) pledged its support to help Wal-Mart Free NYC Coalition’s mission of preventing the country’s biggest retailer from building on Staten Island., laid out for SIDA members why Wal-Mart should not come to Staten Island.

“They go into a town, they sell everything at dead cost or below to put local merchants out of business,” said Gary T. Lane, chairman of Local 3, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Watch Tim Russo, Bill Calahan and George Nemeth for further updates.

And oh, for a Wal-Mart chuckle… Thanks to Tony at The Blast Furnace, the only sport’s blog I could ever read.

The idea of progressive candidates running for office in any reactionary-wrong district that runs along the Ohio River could seem the height of madness to Democrats in the liberal hidey- hole of Cuyahoga County. Dr. Victoria Wulsin is willing to give it a go, however, and yesterday launched Wulsin For Congress. Wulsin is running for the open seat in the 14 June special primary, and, I’m sure she hopes, the 2 August special election.

Wulsin, along with other Democratic Primary candidates, is also featured on Ohio 2nd: A Progressive Blog which is an independent effort by the Ohio Progressive Alliance.

The blog has already garnered some national attention with mentions in Daily KOS and Swing State Project.

[Updated on 23 May at 5 p.m to reflect comments from Paul and Chris below. Sorry guys.]

My Soundtrack: Greatest Hits by The Association.

In My Backpack… Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir In Books by Azar Nafisi (Hey, Bonnie, I made it to page 220 today.); In My Car… Seizure by Robin Cook; On My Nightstand… Knowing French by Julian Barnes; On My Computer… Knives, or the Way To a Man’s Heart by Jay C. Davis; On My Screen… Homocide : All Is Bright (***) directed by Matt Reeves, written by James Yoshimura and Julie Martin.

My Soundtrack: Animal House by various, movie soundtrack.

Big-box retailing does not boost economic growth. A key justification for using taxpayer dollars for corporate subsidies is the idea that a large project will expand overall business activity in an area. Many analysts argue, however, that new retail stores do little more than take revenues away from existing merchants and may put them out of business and leave their workers unemployed. It”s quite possible that a new Wal-Mart store will destroy as many (or more) jobs than it creates – and the Wal-Mart jobs may pay less, meaning that they do less to stimulate the local economy.

George Nemeth offers an excellent round-up of NEO Blogger response to the Wal-Mart announcement. Watch Tim Russo and Bill Calahan for more updates.

get yours from: northern sun-products for progressives since 1979