Category Archives: powerful schmucks

One Hundred Year Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

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TriangleTradeParade One Hundred Year Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
When we think of desperate people holding hands on a flaming building and leaping to their death, Americans are not generally thinking of the history of labor unions. But on March 24th, 1911, one couple held hands and lept to their death, to be followed by some 140 others, in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. Bystanders watched helplessly:

Down below on the street, people started to notice the smoke billowing from the 8th floor. One of the bystanders observed a bolt of cloth come flying out the window and hit the pavement. Instinctively, he remarked that Harris was trying to save his best material. As the people on the street moved closer, out flew another bolt. It was then that the realization hit them that it wasn’t bolts of cloth at all but bodies plummeting to the pavement below.

The thousands who watched as the workers jumped flaming to their deaths were instrumental in changing support in favor of labor unions and building codes in New York City. Years before the fire, the women who worked their went on strike to fight for better working conditions, little things like a 52-hour work week and unlocked doors on the factory floor. At the time, the concern about locked doors was that the foreman did so to prevent women from using the bathroom. After a month of striking, the women at the Triangle factory were not able to agree with the bosses on the important sticking points of having a closed shop and collective bargaining. They returned to work, still locked in the building from 7am to 8pm every day.
A bit more about the fire, so that we can appreciate the tragedy that occurred a hundred years ago today:

Within three minutes, the Greene Street stairway became unusable in both directions.Terrified employees crowded onto the single exterior fire escape, a flimsy and poorly-anchored iron structure which may have been broken before the fire. It soon twisted and collapsed from the heat and overload, spilling victims nearly 100 feet (30 m) to their deaths on the concrete pavement below.

Some Thoughts On Why The People Down the Street Are Rioting

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I wasn’t surprised that officer Mehserle wasn’t convicted of murder despite all the video footage and witnesses of him shooting an unarmed teenager. I first had my suspicions when Forum reported there wasn’t a single black person on the jury. But then I took heart in thinking that the prosecution would want a whiter jury so it would be harder for the defense to appeal. Besides, the victim, Oscar Grant, was hand-cuffed face down with another police officer’s foot on his neck. So for weeks I held out some hope for a verdict of second-degree murder.
Mehserle claims that he accidentally grabbed his gun when he meant to grab his taser. I asked an ex-cop about this and he doesn’t think such a thing is possible. For one thing, a gun is much heaver than a taser and tasers are designed to have mechanisms that don’t work like firearms to prevent exactly this kind of situation. Moreover, officers’ training drills into their heads over and over the exact location of such things. The location of a cop’s firearm should be second nature.

Uncle Sam is Reading My Emails

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And Probably Yours Too

None of us are taking this seriously enough.

I was talking to a friend of mine online about a month ago.  She is very a very competent law student that does a good job keeping up with current affairs.  We were talking about the warrantless wiretapping.  I was explaining to her what is at issue here, that they didn’t just hand over “suspected terrorists” (whatever those are) but the random correspondence of American citizens.

Her response was, “it is a good thing we are having this conversation online.”

Uh, not quite.  It is a terrible thing we are having this conversation online.  Because AT&T, the very company that is accused of handing this information over to the government, provides the internet where I work, where I was having this conversation.  In fact where I am typing this right now. 

But she still didn’t seem to get what I was saying—that this is not a safe conversation.  And since she is one of the smartest, has-her-shit-together of my friends I think it is likely that many people aren’t getting this.  So I am going to lay it out as simply as possible.

First:  The EFF is suing AT&T, this much everyone has heard.  What exactly do they mean by “warrantless wiretapping”?  It is very simple.  It means that AT&T couldn’t be bothered to keep track of those people who the feds had warrants to search and those who they didn’t.

They took all the content that was traversing their fibre optic cables, every email and text message and phone call, THE WHOLE EFFING PIPE and they split it.  Thus all communication from AT&T is also going to a secret room accessible only to the NSA.

NSA spying diagram Uncle Sam is Reading My Emails

Please note the use of the present tense.  Because this is still happening.  There has been no freeze on what appears to be a very clear violation of the fourth amendment.  You don’t have to have AT&T for this to apply.  Can you say for sure that no one you are emailing or calling has AT&T?  Of course not.  It is more likely that they do.  Ask around.  Know anyone with an Iphone?  Maybe it is time to ask them politely not to call you anymore.  Certainly don’t email me, I have just confessed as an AT&T user.  But even this is ridiculous.  Just because AT&T got caught doesn’t mean the other companies aren’t doing the exact same thing.

Of course none of this has been proven in a court of law, it is only a court case at this point and everyone gets the benefit of being innocent until proven guilty.  But don’t take my word for it.  The engineer that hooked up the data stream put it this way:

“My job was to connect circuits into the splitter device which was hard-wired to the secret room, and effectively, the splitter copied the entire data stream of those internet cables into the secret room–and we’re talking about phone conversations, email web browsing, everything that goes across the internet.”  [This short video is worth watching.]

In my mind, this is bigger than Clinton’s lie under oath, possibly bigger than Water Gate.  You upset about an administration that is lying to the American public?  Try lying to the American public and spying on them too.  It is very important that this case be allowed to continue so that the people understand what is at stake and those responsible are brought to justice.

And there is no reason it shouldn’t continue.  It’s not like the House and Senate will get together and pass a bill giving them a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. The Congress wouldn’t do that, they don’t get involved in legislative affairs!  That’s unheard of!..Oh, wait, that’s exactly what they’re doing. The Senate is passing a bill today that will give retroactive immunity to AT&T.  It already passed in the House.  “Retroactive immunity” is a fancy phrase that took me a while to wrap my head around.  It means that even if they broke the law, it’s okay, we forgive them.  And it will kill the lawsuit.  Nothing to sue for.

Why on Earth would they do this?  Everyone is shaking hands, saying what a great compromise this is.  Really, I listened to all two hours of it on C-span.  Those opposed were of the tone “This bill scares me to death…”  Those in favor spent their debate time with congratulatory messages, “I’d like to thank Representatives Bob and Jane for making this possible…” I’m not joking, that was really the gist of it.  There was no real argument for why the bill is a great compromise. It is more capitulation than compromise, here’s a great fact sheet from Senator Russ Feingold for the scary details.  But in my mind, as long as retroactive immunity is on the table, this bill is totally unacceptable, unthinkable.

attnsa Uncle Sam is Reading My Emails

The argument in favor says that they were only following orders so AT&T shouldn’t be held responsible.  Give me a break.  No one pointed a gun at their heads.  They broke the law and now the Democratic Congress that we elected is giving them a free ride, and probably the administration too. You can be sure this is going to impact Kucinich’s Impeachment bill.  How convenient that the court case that will uncountably bring attention to the Bush Administration’s trampling of the Constitution will be swept under the rug, along with the Fourth Amendment.  Wait a second, if the Democrats are rushing to the aid of the Republicans than who is supposed to be representing the people that want the Republicans out of office?

On that note, the latest turn in this sickening display of blatant cronyism is the about-face from Senator Obama.  When he was trying to get the support of lefties he said he would fillibuster the FISA bill.  Today he announced he is backing it.  I thought I would have a few months of bliss before the luster wore off the man who gleams like a trophy on the podium.  I take little consolation in seeing those who support Mr. Obama to the point of worship change their position over night, simply because he has.

What we are looking right now is the death knell of privacy in the United States.  You may think that what you are writing is not interesting to the NSA but please don’t think for a second it is not being read by the NSA.  No digital love note, no treasonous utterance, no meeting agenda, no late-night web-surfing, is safe.  Sure, they still need a warrant to knock on your door and rifle through your file cabinet and your underwear drawer.  But these days most of us keep our tax forms and our lingerie digitally; when this bill passes it will be like passing the keys to every house in America over to the NSA.  Because Big Brother is not only watching, he is recording it all for later.  And thanks to Congress, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

My State Plans Lawsuit Against My Country

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My Republican friend says I should just calm down. People all over the world are working hard to stop global climate change. I wonder if he is looking at the same people I am. Scary thing is, he is.

For example, he is probably looking at the new energy bill as a big step forward. The Bush Administration has pledged to a 35-mph fleet-wide fuel economy average by 2020. So in twelve years we are setting a standard for fuel economy that is five miles per gallon higher than the Model A Ford introduced in 1927. Bravo! If you still think this is an accomplishment take a look at SAE International’s Supermileage studies. They run a contest every year to see who can engineer a vehicle with the highest gas mileage. The biggest loser in this competition produced a car that can get 198 miles per gallon. The car made by the 2007 winner could drive 1,541 miles on a single gallon of gas. Now even if we can argue that those cars are expiremental and don’t provide room for groceries or even a CD player, it is still enough to make us ponder the U.S.’s status as technological innovators of environmental stewardship.
To top it all off, the Bush administration is using these paltry standards as an excuse to deny California the right to cap its CO2 emissions. The California law requires new automakers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes by 30% by 2016.

In the past, the California standards have paved the way for other states to follow behind with stricter standards. But now the EPA is arguing that California was granted those waivers because their state had special circumstances and the U.S. needs to have a singular, federal standard (So much for the Republicans as the party promoting states’ rights). With global warming threatening to drop a world of hurt on the whole planet, the EPA says this hardly applies only to California. No matter that this was a bill passed in 2002, long before the national discussion of such standards. No matter that the EPA has historically granted fifty such waivers to California and never once denied them.

Stephen L. Johnson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, put it this way, “The Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution — not a confusing patchwork of state rules.” Or to put it totally the same way, David McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said, “Enhancing energy security and improving fuel economy are priorities to all automakers, but a patchwork quilt of inconsistent and competing fuel economy programs at the state level would only have created confusion, inefficiency, and uncertainty for automakers and consumers.” What a remarkable coincidence that couldn’t possibly be explained by the EPA taking their cues from an oil lobbyist’s press release!

In fact, both journalists and politicians are making the claim that the energy lobby allowed the government to proceed on their new emissions standards in exchange for a denial of California’s claim.

According to the L.A. Times:

Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the state Air Resources Board, said the California standards, which are scheduled to begin to take effect in 2009, could be met by auto companies with existing technology. So far, she said, 12 states have chosen to adopt California’s standards, pending a waiver approval. Others are in the process of doing so. If all 50 states adopted California’s law, it would reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions by 1.4 gigatons, about twice what the federal standards would achieve by then, Nichols said.

So now Barbera Boxer, (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has subpoenaed the EPA to provide a better reason and they have replied with a box full of censored paperwork. Apparently such top secret info cannot be entrusted to the U.S. Congress. Oh and Governor Schwarzenegger has made it very clear that California is suing the EPA. Who said politics is boring?

So, in summary, our government must get the permission of the auto/oil industry to pass even the most pitiful legislation. And to get such permission, they must stab another hole in the lifeboat on this sinking ship.

Progress indeed.

Hard to Keep Up With How Much the World Sucks

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Maybe my blog posts are so depressing and fatalistic because it seems like I live behind a veil of privelige that screens me from the things that are happening in the world. Nay, the things my country is doing in the world.
Activist lawyer Bill Quigley recently emailed us a long story about the thirty-three mistakes of Katrina, deliberate or otherwise. Briefing them is beyond the scope of this blog, but you may read them for yourself at Counterpunch: How to Destroy an African American City in 33 Steps.
But this is not the miscarriage of justice that makes me feel the veil is lifted momentarily. I Stumbled Upon an article about the things they don’t show in the pictures of Abu Ghraib. Charges of children being held at the camp, children being rapedand tortured so that their parents might confess to crimes. Women were passing out messages “saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling.”

The writers of these articles and blogs thought that many of these things that were supposedly caught on tape will soon see the light of day.

That was in 2004.

I remember when this whole travesty happened, the pictures they showed were anti-climactic. And I remember waiting for the American public to get a look at all those darker home movies that would rip open the veil and reveal the Iraqi quagmire up to the elbows in shame. I remember casual mention of children at the camps but no mention of torture of children. And if this did come up, is this the maximum outrage our culture can muster? Is it too late for me to be outraged by these things now? I feel like a Jewish child just being taught about the Holocaust for the first time.

Did I miss something? No, really, please tell me: has anyone reading ever heard anything about this? Or do I have to read newspapers written in German to get the whole story?