Art and Business Logs - 1687, Inc.

Unpublished letter to NY Times on Empowerment Act Op-Ed Date: Jul 30, 2010 5:55 PM July 28, 2010
To the Editor:

Peter D. Salins underestimates the danger of the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act for low-income students at New York’s state universities (Op-Ed, July 28). Tuition increases would not, as he says, “be kept below the Higher Education Price Index.” Instead, the universities could raise tuition up to 2 and ½ times the rolling 5-year average of the index. At the current average, tuition could rise 10 percent per year—and without legislative approval. The act also would permit campuses to charge higher tuition for specific programs, so, for example, a school of engineering could outprice low-income students. The act is appealing because it would allow the universities to keep all tuition revenues. But the state might, in turn, divest in the universities. The real need is for a state initiative to support the universities while reducing tuition, making higher education accessible to all.

William Crain
Professor of Psychology, The City College

OVERTHROW
America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
by Stephen Kinzer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Kinzer

Informative and an easy read - would make a good TV series

I have found good reads on his past lists

Summer time is reading time. Here are ten suggested new books:

1. Toxic Talk (Thomas Dunne Books) by Bill Press, the liberal talk show host, unloads in his words, on “how the radical right has poisoned America’s airwaves.” The five major syndicates are dominated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Bill O’Reilly. Using their own statements, Press applies indignation, satire and humor to demonstrate the bigotry, the falsehoods and the propaganda that sustain the concentrated power of corporate oligarchs who fan far right-wing flames with advertising revenues.

2. Stop Getting Ripped Off (Ballantine Books) by Bob Sullivan. MSNBC’s penetrating consumer reporter gets very specific about how you are being fleeced and how you can often get a fair deal. If you have credit cards, mortgages, life insurance, cell phones, cable tv, are shopping for a new car or worried about preserving your retirement, this is the personal budget protector and aggravation-reliever for you.

3. Unequal Protection (second edition, expanded, Berrett-Koehler Publishers) by Thom Hartman. The growing debate against corporations having the same constitutional rights as human beings flows in part from this brainy author and talk show host’s documentation of the portentous drive since the notorious 1886 Supreme Court decision to establish corporate supremacy over the sovereignty of the people. He writes with dramatic historical accuracy, using primary sources, to wake Americans up to this incremental judicially-decreed coup d’etat.

4. Saved by the Sea: A Love Story with Fish by David Helvarg (Thomas Dunne Books-St. Martin’s) is an enthralling bedtime or beachtime read. Helvarg combines knowing how to write with knowing the ocean, reefs and surfs. His touching, tragic story of the love of his life and of aquatic nature is beyond unique.

5. In the Shadow of Power by Kike Arnal. This is a book, with my introduction, of haunting photographs of the “other Washington” which is off the beaten track of the twenty million tourists who visit our nation’s capital every year. Regaled by critics such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Henry Allen, Kike walked the poor and affluent neighborhoods to capture the tale of the “two cities” for months looking for the telling, unposed picture that speaks volumes. A native Venezuelan, he cannot qualify for the Pulitzer Prize in photography, which is reserved for U.S. citizens—the primary obstacle to deserving such an honor.

6. The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health—and a Vision for Change by Annie Leonard (Free Press). Can anyone make the pile of production and consumption waste interesting? Try Annie Leonard, who has scoured the world for the stories that tell the cumulative story of where our throwaway economy and unawareness are leading us. Her twenty minute video (http://www.storyofstuff.com) that inspired this book has received over ten million visits. Annie knows how to connect with the reader.

7. “This Time We Went Too Far” by Norman G. Finkelstein (O/R Books) is the author’s report on what he calls “the Gaza massacre” of late to early 2008-2009 by the all-powerful, U.S.-supplied Israeli military. The title comes from an Israeli official, signifying the slaughter of utterly defenseless civilians, including nearly 300 children and the destruction of schools, clinics, homes, public works, mosques, even fields growing crops, UN property and an American school, was off the charts. Finkelstein places this bloodbath in the context of U.S. foreign policy, human rights law and shifts in American and European public opinion.

8. North Star: A Memoir by Peter Camejo (Haymarket Books) is a story of radical American and Pan American politics of the latter 20th century as practiced and experienced by this great and wise American. The late Peter Camejo, in the fulsome tradition of Eugene Debs, was a full-spectrum fighter for justice in the political, civic, electoral and international arenas. In this highly personal book, you might find a more perceptive understanding of our times.

9. Senseless Panic by William M. Isaac (Wiley) compares the preventable Wall Street collapse of 2008-2009 with how he, as head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and other federal banking regulators handled the smaller but still devastating financial crisis in the early 1980s. Isaac claims the current global financial crisis-managers have not learned the lessons from the earlier meltdown of the S&L industry and other banks, during which interest rates hit 21 percent and there was 11 percent unemployment. When a leading member of the former banking establishment takes on the banking establishment, now in charge in Washington and Wall Street, it makes for jarring, no holds barred reading that is a rare experience in these times of high-level self-censorship and hubris.

10. The Energy Reader by Laura Nader, editor (Wiley-Blackwell). From the Seventies to the present, my sister, Laura Nader, professor of Anthropology at U.C. Berkeley, has been observing and teaching about our country’s ossified energy policies and practices and why available technical, social and economic solutions have been kept on the shelf. From her cohesive introduction to the contributions of many thoughtful and experienced participants in, and scholars of, our nation’s energy power structure and the potential for an efficient and renewable energy future, this forthright, empirical book needs to be read by our members of Congress, executive branch policy-makers and all citizens who are fed up with the vested interests and ideologies that have so damaged our environment, economy and public health. May your savorings of the above offerings affect your routines!

Hammering the Poor and Vulnerable
By Ralph Nader July 1, 2010

There is a reason why, so many centuries ago, every major religion warned its adherents not to give too much power to the “merchant class.” That reason is still here – the commercial drive knows few self-imposed boundaries, especially when it resides in large corporations.

A cruel manifestation of this singular drive for maximizing profit is how companies treat those who are most powerless, most vulnerable or most preoccupied.

Here are some illustrations that highlight the serious failures of law enforcement:

1. Pre-teen children. The direct marketing to children knows no limits of decency. Undermining parental authority with penetrating marketing schemes and temptations, companies deceptively excite youngsters to buy massive amounts of products that are bad for their safety, health and minds. Think junk food – loaded with fat, salt and sugar, that increases obesity, diabetes and predisposition for high blood pressure. (See http://www.cspinet.org.)

Obesity produces sickness, death, disability and large medical bills.

Marketers are selling ever more violent entertainment, and soft porn with delivery systems that escape parental review or supervision. Television is no longer the only route to children. Our fourteen year-old, then-startling book—Children First: A Parent’s Guide to Corporate Predators—now reads as an understatement.

2. The poor. Whether white, African-American, Hispanic or Native American, merchants make the poor pay more. Loan sharks, shoddy merchandise, sub-standard food products and inadequate medical care have plagued the poor and been the subject of many studies and too few prosecutions.

3. People preoccupied by their bereavement are often preyed upon by the funeral industry. The Federal Trade Commission has an ample file on overcharges and deceptive practices from the unscrupulous merchants in that trade.

4. People with rare diseases often require so called “orphan drugs.” Under a 1983 law, drug companies receive a seven year monopoly with no price restraints on these drugs. Drug companies are also given huge tax credits for research and development costs associated with orphan drugs.

The Wall Street Journal (“How Drugs for Rare Diseases Became Lifeline for Companies”, Nov 15, 2005) called these drugs “lucrative niches.” With no competition, these monopoly drugs come with staggering prices for desperate patients.

Here is one story of how your tax dollars are being used for hyperprofit corporate profits. Henry Blair was working on an experimental enzyme under government contract as a researcher at Tufts University Medical School. Working with scientists at the National Institutes of Health, they and he made the enzyme work as a treatment for Gaucher disease, which swells organs and deteriorates bones.

In 1981, Mr. Blair started the Genzyme company, got the government contract to make the enzyme which he brought to market in 1991. The average price was—get this—$200,000 a year per patient!

In 1992, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) (banished by Newt Gingrich in 1995) reported that Genzyme spent $29.4 million on the drug, with much of the initial research funded and done by government scientists at the National Institutes of Health.

Two years later, Genzyme found a much cheaper way of making the drug. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal wrote that the Gaucher drug was still priced at $200,000 per patient each year. The company says it gives the drug at no cost to about 10% of the patients. For the rest, either rely on the insurance companies (good luck), or otherwise pay or die.

5. The Health Uninsured are charged by hospitals full price, which The Wall Street Journal reported “is far more than the prices typically paid by insurance companies.” This is the case, the Journal added, in spite of an annual taxpayer subsidy of $22 billion to hospitals “to care for the uninsured.”

6. Amputees who need prosthetic devices find that the devices in the United States are very highly priced (by comparison with other western countries.) Health insurance companies make these products leading candidates for rising co-payments. This can mean tens of thousands of dollars from the patients or they go without. These shocking co-payment requirements are often in the fine print.

Many of these devices also come about with taxpayer funded research and development. Profit margins are large because of the users’ dire necessity to have them for mobility, for work, for human dignity.

7. Low-credit-score credit card holders. The relentless credit card economy requiring plastic to buy more and more things and services. The credit score becomes the hammer. A story recounted by MSNBC’s Bob Sullivan in his engrossing new book Stop Getting Ripped Off describes: “the card promised an attractive 9.9% interest rate.

But there was a catch buried in the fine print: account setup fee: $29; program fee: $95; annual fee: $48; monthly servicing fee: $84 annually; additional card fee: $20 annually.” Then this clincher sentence: “If you are assigned the minimum credit limit of $250, your initial available credit will be $71 ($51 if you select the additional-card option).”

No wonder the vendors call them “fee-harvesting” cards. Who needs loan-sharks? These credit card vendors fleece the poor wearing a three-piece suit and sitting in air conditioned skyscrapers.

Such is the fate of the poor or the vulnerable under the boot of commercial avarice.

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Written in response to a question from The Center for an Urban Future

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the conversation about improving the quality of New York City Street fairs. They seem like a ray of sunshine but as I go through them they are depressing - just another store and not a good one.

All but one of the street fairs I’ve walked through have almost the same vendors selling similar and mostly poor quality products. Why such mediocrity in a city full of artists and craftspeople - at least there should be a range of quality.

How are vendors chosen? Who organizes, finances and benefits from these street fairs? What is the purpose of these fairs? How much does it cost for a fair booth? Shouldn’t some portion of the booths (or all of them) be subsidized to accommodate less commercial, more useful, and exciting displays?

One idea: A panel made up of individuals and representatives from small and medium size arts, education, medical, trade organizations, etc. - making vendor choices and publishing why those particular choices were made as well as who was turned down and why.

I’d be glad to help make these happier, smarter cultural events- they have so much potential.

From: Ralph Nader
Subject: June 15, 2010

The termination of Helen Thomas’ 62-year long career as a pioneering, no-nonsense newswoman was swift and intriguingly merciless.

The event leading to her termination began when she was sitting on a White House bench under oppressive summer heat. The 89-year old hero of honest journalism and women’s rights, the scourge of dissembling presidents and White House press secretaries, answered a passing visitor’s question about Israel with a snappish comment worded in a way she didn’t mean; she promptly apologized in writing (see http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/8/veteran_white_house_reporter_helen_thomas). Recorded without permission on a hand video, the brief exchange, that included a defense of dispossessed Palestinians, went internet viral on Friday, June 7.

By Monday, Helen Thomas was considered finished, even though she embodied a steadfast belief, in the praiseworthy words of Washington Post columnist, Dana Milbank, “that anybody standing on that podium [in the White House] should be regarded with skepticism.”

Over the weekend, her lecture agent dropped her. Her column syndicator, the Hearst company, pressed her to quit “effective immediately,” and, it was believed that the White House Correspondents Association, of which she was the first female president, was about to take away her coveted front row seat in the White House press room.

Then, Helen Thomas announced her retirement on Monday, June 10. No doubt she’s had her fill of ethnic, sexist and ageist epithets hurled her way over the years – the very decades she was broadly challenging racism, sexism and, more recently, ageism.

Although the behind the scenes story has yet to come out, the evisceration was launched by two pro-Israeli war hawks, Ari Fleischer and Lanny Davis. Fleischer was George W. Bush’s press secretary who bridled under Helen Thomas’ questioning regarding the horrors of the Bush-Cheney war crimes and illegal torture. His job was not to answer this uppity woman but to deflect, avoid and cover up for his bosses.

Davis was the designated defender whenever Clinton got into hot water. As journalist Paul Jay pointed out, he is now a Washington lobbyist whose clients include the cruel corporate junta that overthrew the elected president of Honduras. Both men rustled up the baying pack of Thomas-haters during the weekend and filled the unanswered narrative on Fox and other facilitating media.

Then, belatedly, something remarkable occurred. People reacted against this grossly disproportionate punishment. Ellen Ratner, a Fox News contributor, wrote – “I’m Jewish and a supporter of Israel. Let’s face it: we all have said things—or thought things—about ‘other’ groups of people, things that we wouldn’t want to see in print or on video. Anyone who denies it is a liar. Giver her [Helen] a break.”

Apparently, many people agree. In an internet poll by the Washington Post, 92% of respondents said she should not be removed from the White House press room. As an NPR listener, R. Carey, e-mailed: “D.C. would be void of journalists if they all were to quit, get fired or retire after making potentially offensive comments.”

Listen to Michael Freedman, former managing editor for United Press International: “After seven decades of setting standards for quality journalism and demolishing barriers for women in the workplace, Helen Thomas has now shown that most dreaded of vulnerabilities—she is human…. Who among us does not have strong feelings about the endless warfare in the Middle East? Who among us has said something we have come to regret?…. Let’s not destroy Ms. Thomas now.”

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, wrote: “Thomas was the only accredited White House correspondent with the guts to ask Bush the tough questions that define a free press…. Her remarks were offensive, but considering her journalistic moxie and courage over many decades—a sharp contrast to the despicable deeds committed by so many littering the Washington political scene – isn’t there room for someone who made a mistake, apologized for it and wants to continue speaking truth to power and asking tough questions?”

Last week, in front of the White House, people calling themselves “Jews for Helen Thomas” gathered in a small demonstration. Medea Benajmin—cofounder of Global Exchange, declared that “We are clear what Helen Thomas meant to say, which is that Israel should cease its occupation of Palestine and we agree with that.” While another demonstrator, Zool Zulkowitz, asserted that “by discrediting Helen Thomas, those who believe that Israel can do no wrong shift attention from the public relations debacle of the Gaza Flotilla killings, and intimidate journalists who would ask hard questions about the Israeli occupation of Palestine and American foreign policy.”

Helen Thomas, who grew up in Detroit, is an American of Arab descent. She is understandably alert to the one-sided U.S. military and foreign policy in that region. Her questions reflect concerns about U.S. policy in the Middle East by many Americans, including unmuzzled retired military, diplomatic and intelligence officials.

In 2006 when George W. Bush finally called on her, she started her questioning by saying “Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of Americans and Iraqis. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true.” Or when she challenged President Obama last month, asking “When are you going to get out of Afghanistan? Why are we continuing to kill and die there? What is the real excuse?”

Asking the “why” questions was a Thomas trademark. Many self-censoring journalists avoid controversial “why” questions, thereby allowing evasion, dissembling and just plain B.S. to dominate the White House press room. She rejected words that sugarcoated or camouflaged the grim deeds. She started with the grim deeds to expose the doubletalk and officialdom’s chronic illegalities.

What appalled Thomas most is the way the media rolls over and fails to hold officials accountable. (British reporters believe they are tougher on their Prime Ministers.) This is a subject about which she has written books and articles—not exactly the way to endear herself to those reporters who go AWOL and look the other way, so that they cancontinue to be called upon or to be promoted by their superiors.

The abysmal record of the New York Times and the Washington Post in the months preceding the Iraq invasion filled with Bush-Cheney lies, deception, and cover-ups is a case in point. As usual, she was proven right, not the celebrated reporters and columnists deprecating her work, including the Post’s press critic, Howard Kurtz.

Thomas practiced her profession with a deep regard for the peoples’ right to know. To her, as Aldous Huxley noted long ago, “facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

Lastly, there is the double standard. One off-hand “ill-conceived remark,” as NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard stated, in praising Ms. Thomas, ended a groundbreaking career. While enhanced careers and fat lecture fees are the reward for ultra-right wing radio and cable ranters, and others like columnist Ann Coulter, who regularly urge wars, mayhem and dragnets based on bigotry, stereotypes and falsehoods directed wholesale against Muslims, including a blatant anti-semitism against Arabs. (See http://www.adc.org/education/educational-resources/ and Jack Shaheen’s book and companion documentary about cultural portrayal of Arab stereotypes, Reel Bad Arabs.)

Ms. Thomas’ desk at the Hearst office remains unattended a week after her eviction. One day she will return to pack up her materials. She can take with her the satisfaction of joining all those in our history who were cashiered ostensibly for a gaffe, but really for being too right, too early, too often.

Her many admirers hope that she continues to write, speak and motivate a generation of young journalists in the spirit of Joseph Pulitzer’s advice to his reporters a century ago—that their job was to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

Intentions of Murder
A film by Shohei Imamura
Made in 1964 and released on DVD in the Criterion Collection