P.S. A Column On Things

Getting Out The Vote Wasn't This Easy Back In The Day

Back in 1972, when I worked on George McGovern’s quixotic run against the criminal Nixon, we used landline phones to call registered voters, reminding them to vote and offering rides to the polls.

The technology of the 21^st century has changed that. If you’re registered, you can vote in the privacy of your own home. And you don’t have to guess if you’re registered.

Of course there’s still room for the human touch; I just addressed 25 postcards to female no-party-registered voters, asking them to vote. Not to vote for someone, just to vote.

I have mentioned before  my streak of bad luck; I helped Wayne Morse lose his Senate seat, Art Pearl to lose his run for Oregon governor, Bobby Kennedy to lose the Oregon Primary, and, of course McGovern.  I think I’m a jinx, so if TFG had a ground operation in California, I’d sign up.

One other quick note. The Bill Of Rights contains only one responsibility: jury duty. Clearly, voting is another responsibility. But the founding fathers didn’t bother to mention it because they couldn’t imagine anyone who had the right to vote not voting. After all, that was the whole point of the American Revolution. This simply demonstrates their lack of imagination.

Voting has never been easier

Until after the election, this item will be at the top of my column.

Here are the relevant focus-grouped mottoes: Democracy is stronger when we all vote! Your Neighbors Are Waiting For You To Vote!

These links apply to the entire country:

It is now trivial to Get Your Absentee Ballot

In case you live in a place where some people are trying to throw you off the voter rolls, check on your status and register if need be:

Am I registered to vote?

Feel free to share to share this item with others:

Short version (suitable for posters and written letters): tinyurl.com/1psacot1

Long version: Voting has never been easier

 

Worried About The Election?

I don’t know about you, but I’m worried about November. My quant friends say there are a couple of groups aimed at moving swing voters and low-information voters in the six swing states that matter. Bang for the buck. Check out Working America and Courier Newsrooms. Give to candidates or the party? OK. Give to get out the vote: great for everyone.

Fourth Of July continued…

To be fair, when the founding Fathers (no founding mothers, alas, except the ones whose husbands were sock puppets) wrote “All men are created equal,” the authors of the Declaration of Independence meant white men who owned property. I do not think their narrow view of humanity erases the revolution they wrought. And, in fact, if not for them, we probably wouldn’t have painfully, gradually expanded that promise to include women and people of color

For example, while clearly a military and political genius, Washington was also a brutal slave master whose wealth came from the labor of the people he enslaved.  It's complex and nuanced, and Americans do not, as a whole, do complexity and nuance well.

Of course, the Supreme Court has now relieved women of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but maybe that will change again some day.

Promises Broken: Copperpocalypse Redux

(length warning)

I have already warned you about the disastrous consequence of eliminating copper-based landline telephony (or POTS as aficionados refer to it―Plain Old Telephone Service). I won’t repeat those cogent and valid arguments here.

Let me blog-roll in a good discussion of the issue from Baker on Tech: Phones can’t go to POT(s) anymore!

This is another case of a broken promise. We, the people, gave the railroads 11 million acres in California alone, in exchange for the promise of passenger service in perpetuity. With the help of the supine federal Interstate Commerce Commission, we lost the passenger service and the railroads kept the land, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They didn’t keep their end of the promise. I want the land/money back.

AT&T has asked the California Public Utilities Commission to roll over and play dead, allowing AT&T to pull every inch of copper in the state, stop repairing existing lines, and refuse to install any new ones. The pretense phase of the hearing―excuse me―the comment phase―is a mere bump in the road on the way to allowing AT&T to abandon every Californian in a rural area, all those who live in areas with crap Internet service (usually the poor), and those who have no reliable cellphone reception (like me: hilly terrain).

The state will thus join such stalwarts of consumer protection as Arkansas, Florida and North Dakota in its craven capitulation to the corporation that co-owns it (along with the state’s other utilities).

Alas, those affected will either go uninformed about the “comment period” or uninformed about the consequences.

Why yes, this does infuriate me.

Find a professional examination of the issue here.

Here’s where the broken promise comes in. We gave AT&T and its successors a century of monopoly profits in exchange for providing universal service. We should ask for some of that money back. AT&T has cocked its snoot at the idea of universal service; who knows how many Californians will now be communication-free, and in danger for their lives in case of disasters and power outages. Landlines work in disasters. Cellphones don’t.

The Death of the Middle Class

LinkedIn led me to this fantastic Robert Reich blog post: How the oligarchy shrank America’s middle class: Why American capitalism is so rotten, Part 8. I know for a personal fact that every word of it is true. I would quibble with the headline however: it is not capitalism that is rotten, it is the people running it and controlling it.

As with Reich, my working class father supported a middle class family. In my case, my high-school-educated dad could do it because he was a member of the Teamsters Union. Of course, Reich details a number of other factors besides decreasing unionization which hollowed out the middle class. Check it out.

One aspect of the problem is the decline of unions. Again, it infuriates me that today’s history-ignorant working class asks, “What do we need a union for?” If they knew anything, they’d know the answer is wages, working conditions and pensions. Their excuse for opposing unions: they are corrupt, they just collect my dues and do nothing for me. As with many aspects of American life, they work so hard against their own self-interest it is dizzying. There are signs this dynamic is changing. I hope the trend continues, and that I am not mistaking the first robin for spring.

It didn't continue; news came this week that labor union membership has reached an historic  low. WOTWU! Now!

Not Really Labor

This is my repeating Labor Day item. One-third of the public (according to surveys) doesn’t know what day it is.

I am a life-long supporter of, believer in, student of and beneficiary of the American Labor Movement. I know writing is not really labor.

I am a beneficiary because my father, who became a Teamster after selling the family dairy and remained one for the rest of his life, was able, with just a high-school degree, to provide an upper-middle class life to our family of four which included regular vacations, a terrific pension and great medical and dental coverage. Take that, gig economy. For that matter, take that, non-union American journalism.

Alas, with the exception of three years in the Wire Service Guild at AP and UPI, and 11 years in the American Federation of Teachers as a teacher, I spent most of my working life without the protection and support of a union. The Oregon Journal, a Newhouse newspaper, was the stepchild of a bitter strike, so I worked with a staff full of scabs. Wonderful people, great journalists, but most with start dates during the strike that destroyed the paper’s independent existence.

CMP, where I spent 21 years, used to say it didn’t need a union because the company treated its employees fairly, and for the most part that was true as long as the founders were in charge—less so later.

I have been attributing the “never done any” quote to AFL-CIO leader George Meany for decades. I still contend he said it, even though the Internet disagrees. Turns out it is from G.B. Shaw’s Man and Superman.

Poet Octavius Robinson: “I believe in the dignity of labor.”

Chauffeur Enery Straker: “That's because you've never done any, Mr. Robinson.”

Some of my thoughts on labor and class.

Fourth Of July continued…

To be fair, when the founding Fathers (no founding mothers, alas, except the ones whose husbands were sock puppets) wrote “All men are created equal,” the authors of the Declaration of Independence meant white men who owned property. I do not think their narrow view of humanity erases the revolution they wrought. And, in fact, if not for them, we probably won’t have painfully, gradually expanded that promise to include women and people of color

For example, while clearly a military and political genius, Washington was also a brutal slave master whose wealth came from the labor of the people he enslaved.  It's complex and nuanced, and Americans do not, as a whole, do complexity and nuance well.

Of course, the Supreme Court has now relieved women of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but maybe that will change again some day.

Yes, I did create this myself (with some help)

I did have this idea; Robert Malchman refined it.

Tell The Difference is a common feature in the British humor magazine Private Eye, as is Separated at Birth, brilliantly used  by Malchman to comment on modern American Facism, in a meme that Battlestar Galactica fans will appreciate.

Impossible Things Happen

Without specific reference to anything in the news, I  note.  with interest Michael Moore’s list of things we thought would never happen:

“I told you there’d be no Republican Wave in last November’s elections. That red states like Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana are going to vote in favor of abortion rights (they did!). Years ago, you said “no way will this happen” when you learned of the movement to ban smoking in every bar, restaurant, airplane and workplace in America. You also told me the Berlin Wall would never come down, Mandela would never get out of prison, the Soviet Union would be with us forever and a Black man could never get elected president of the United States!”