In the end, food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your President, but as a parent. When I heard peanut products were being contaminated earlier this year, I immediately thought of my 7-year old daughter, Sasha, who has peanut butter sandwiches for lunch probably three times a week. No parent should have to worry that their child is going to get sick from their lunch. Just as no family should have to worry that the medicines they buy will cause them harm. Protecting the safety of our food and drugs is one of the most fundamental responsibilities government has, and, with the outstanding team I am announcing today, it is a responsibility that I intend to uphold in the months and years to come...
Iowa Republican senator Charles Grassley's predictable response is here. Guess what? Taxes are bad...
Is Anybody Listening? The students of Village Academy High School in Pomona, CA, talk about how the recession has affected them and their families. More here...
A yearning to soothe this national shame and heal the gaping racial wound that was reopened by Katrina is partly responsible for America's enthusiastic embrace of Barack Obama. American willingness to confront racial injustice dissipated as quickly as Bush's promises to rebuild the city, but Katrina had awakened a deep desire to prove that America is not a nation marred by racism. Barack Obama's personal narrative of interracial understanding and ascension from the working class to the White House was a balm for America's aching racial scar. Though he was a relative newcomer to national politics, his biography and political commitments to racial healing were appealing to a country still reeling in the aftermath of Katrina. Obama did not need to directly propose race-based policies; he could embody American hopes for racial healing in his very person.
Overheard at the gym this morning: "Should I just grab my...ah--" We were headed in opposite directions, so I'll never know what she should have grabbed. Feel free to fill in the blank...
Wayback Machine: To the extent that there was a New York sound, its genesis lay in the Italian neighborhoods of the Bronx and Newark that produced the likes of Frankie Valli, Dion, and Felix Cavaliere, Eddie Brigati and Dino Vanelli of the Young Rascals. These performers absorbed the doo-wop and soul sounds emanating from Philadelphia, adding their own pop twists to form a unique brand of white soul. Dion still makes compelling music today, and the Young Rascals became one of the top bands of the Sixties.
Cavaliere, Brigati, and Vanelli teamed with Canadian Gene Cornish to form the Young Rascals (later simply The Rascals). From 1965 to 1968, the Young Rascals released an impressive discography of singles, including "A Beautiful Morning," "Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore," "Good Lovin'," "Groovin," "How Can I Be Sure," and "Mustang Sally." These were classic singles boasting an excellent grasp of rock and soul stylings driven primarily by Cavaliere's stirring baritone and trademark organ. Collectively, they formed both the perfect soundtrack for the Summer of Love in 1967 and equally effective antidotes to the upheavals of 1968 and 1969.
Peaceful World, the Rascals' swan song, was a creative blend of gospel, soul, and jazz that never found an audience. It's a shame, because Peaceful World is a fine, sophisticated album populated with excellent musicians. The languid title track instrumental, which offers nearly 22 minutes of dreamy psychedelic jazz fusion, holds up surprisingly well. "Bit of Heaven" and "Love Me" hearken back to the Rascals soulful past while "Little Dove" (with one of the only harp solos in rock) and "Icy Water" exhibit the lovely, exploratory potential of blue-eyed soul. All in all, Peaceful World is one of the great unknown albums of the 1970's.
But the place to discover the Rascals remains their 1968 anthology Time Peace: The Rascals Greatest Hits. Allmusic.com calls it "arguably the greatest greatest hits album of the Sixties" and it's hard to disagree. Every song that defined them one of the great white soul bands ever is there, and Time Space remains compulsively listenable more than forty years after its release. To delve deeper, check out the 1992 release Anthology (1965-1972), which offers everything on Time Peace as well as a serious excavation of top album tracks that were never released as singles. Finally, anyone wanting to go all in can hunt down the exhaustive The Rascals All I Really Need: The Atlantic Recordings (1965-1971). At five CDs, All I Really Need may at first blush seem like an awful lot of the Rascals, but it turns out that this collection is not only as listenable as Time Peace, it reveals the Rascals as an endlessly probing band that released some of the finest and most far-reaching music of the Sixties.
Caveat: Since Peaceful World was recorded for Columbia, it does not appear on All I Need.
Friday's Choice: In honor of St. Joseph's Day, here are the Young Rascals performing their great single, "Good Lovin'." And dig those go-go dancers!
Last Tuesday, I posted Part 1 of my interview with Reggie Scanlan, bassist for New Orleans' beloved rock band The Radiators (www.theradiators.org). Among other things, we discussed the roots of New Orleans music; Wild & Free, the CD celebrating the band's 30th anniversary, and the impact and importance of Hurricane Katrina to the New Orleans music scene. We went on to discuss the longevity of the Radiators, why New Orleans musicians are such terrific guest performers, and life on the road.
You guys have been together for a long time – we’re talking Z. Z. Top territory here.
Los Lobos might be the only band that’s working continuously longer than us. They’re great guys.
Tell me, what do you know now that you wish you had known then?
I wish I could have played then like I play now!
Have the Radiators ever come close to breaking up?
I would say yes.
What happened?
We’ve never had artistic differences. Katrina was a real fly in the ointment, but it almost made us feel like the band was the one place we could put it behind for a couple of hours. We had issues with a manager once. There were different opinions of how it should be dealt with. Other than that, there’s never been an issue.
We’ve always had gigs, and it’s hard to find a guy who writes songs as well as Ed. He expects other to bring something to song. Ed cut the band in for a slice of the songwriting business and that helped the band stay together as a band.
We have never had a plan. Originally, we wanted to stay together a year. When we were with CBS the specter of being in business loomed: We suddenly needed attorneys and booking agents. When that ended, we reactivated own record company and kept moving. We expected a certain amount of fan attrition from people who liked one song, but we found a niche.
Often the presence of "special guests” on an album is the kiss of death. It almost invariably suggests a cover for a lack of anything interesting musically. But I’ve discovered that it’s the opposite with New Orleans artists, that a guest performer typically enhances the sound. Warren Haynes and Theresa Andersson provide perfect examples of this on your Live at 2006 Jazz Fest recording…
We played Warren’s wedding.
Why do you think that this the case?
New Orleans is incestuous: Everybody plays with everybody else. When they play with you, it’s “what song are you going to do?” People bring their ears. I played with the Mardi Gras Indian Orchestra and it sounded like we had rehearsed for weeks when we had barely rehearsed at all. There’s a whole book of New Orleans tunes. Everybody knows The Meters, James Booker, Earl King…someone calls out “Hey Pocky Way” and everyone can play it. There are fifty or so songs like this.
The Radiatiors have used the Bonerama horn section with no rehearsal. We told them to just come up with a horn part. They’ve played with us so much over the years they have something in their head.
Who over the years have you especially like working with?
I love playing with Michael Skinkus, a percussionist. We work together in Ed’s side band. George Porter and the two bass thing…he’s one of the guys I grew up listening to and learning from. I like playing The Meters part while George is off playing something else.
In the dedication you wrote for Wild & Free, you thank WWOZ for “letting me bore listeners with road stories when they could have been listening to more tunes.” Go ahead: In closing, bore me with a road story!
I was in St Petersburg [Florida] a few days ago. We did a gig there and were staying on the beach. We pulled over to a Church’s Fried Chicken at 1 a. m. and the driver got off. All of a sudden a six-and-a-half-foot black woman in short shorts gets on saying “I know Michael Jackson is on this bus.” She’s already walking down to the back of the bus and starts taking clothes off, then talks about how she wants to get in a bunk with all the men. Our driver, who is little guy but tough, got back and had to wrestle the woman down the bus and get her dressed when he was one-third her size. He finally got her off bus. We learned to keep door shut!
Here, The Radiators perform "Walkin' The Dog" and "Chicks Too Young To Fry" at a private party in 2007:
The Boston Globe has a useful slide show here depicting the Obama Administration's aggressive movement away from Bush policies. Each photo in the slide show includes a caption briefly describing the policy change along with links to relevant articles in the Globe and the New York Times. If nothing else, the account is illustrative of how badly Bush mangled the democratic process. Now,
Executive officials must consult with Attorney General Eric Holder before relying on Bush signing statements to overturn laws passed by Congress
Restrictions on the federal funding of stem cell research using human embryos have been removed
The practice of awarding no-bid and open-ended contracts has been ended
Federal agencies must once again consult with outside experts before initiating projects that could affect endangered species
The Interior Department has halted Bush Administration plans for offshore oil drilling and drilling in Utah
Obama reauthorized the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), a bill Bush vetoed twice
States may set more restrictive auto emissions rules than the federal government
International groups the perform abortions or provide information about them may now receive federal funds
Presidents may no longer seal records in perpetuity
The Guantanamo Bay Detention Center will be closed by the end of the year
New Freedom of Information Act guidelines provide more and easier public access to government documents...
Of course, none of these relate to the economy, which is the question on just about everyone's mind. Paul Krugman writes in Rolling Stonethat under normal circumstances, Obama's initial steps would grade out well. The problem is that we are by no means experiencing normal times. Krugman believes that Obama's moves to alleviate the mortgage crisis are both correct and -- in the scheme of things -- unlikely to have significant impact on the economy. As for the stimulus legislation, it may well alleviate the pain of an economy that will remain crisis, but it is too small and too weighted toward tax cuts to completely forestall the current decline, a decline that Krugman foresees lasting a decade if more isn't done.
Finally, in terms of the banking crisis, Krugman sees Obama caught in an unnecessary and self-made dilemma. A direct bailout wherein the government buys up bad assets and sends the banks on their merry way is a political impossibility (as it should be), and yet Obama remains hesitant to move to a temporary nationalization of failing banks despite signs. Even so, Krugman sees promise in the stress tests that the Treasury Department plans to apply, and points out that temporary nationalization is the standard operating procedure when it comes to small banks failing.
Despite his misgivings, Krugman remains optimistic about the new president. He points out that Obama and the team he has assembled are nothing if not intellectually flexible, a trait not only absent but frowned up by the Bush Administration. Krugman believes that said flexibility will drive the Administration to take the policy initiatives needed to reverse the economy's decline. It's also the case that Obama has given Republicans a chance to come on board and they gave him the back of their hand. With the almost certain seating of Al Franken to the Senate, Obama will need one less Republican to support his legislative proposals.
Uncharacteristically, Krugman neglects to address the impact of the end of the Iraq war and Obama's plans to reduce the cost of health care. While the cost savings of end of the occupation in Iraq will be partially offset by an increased American presence in Afghanistan (the subject of another post), I haven't read anywhere that this will burden the economy to the extent of the Iraq War. Similarly, Obama is quite right when he asserts that we can't revive the economy without addressing the drag of health care costs. Overall, though, Krugman's essay is well worth reading, and I recommend it highly...
Just imagine where America would be today if the 14 to 20 million voters -- "the rube base" who slavishly follow the likes of Limbaugh -- had not voted as a block year after year thus empowering the Republican fiasco. We would have a regulated banking industry and would have avoided our current financial crisis; some 4000 of our killed military men and women would be alive; over to 35,000 wounded Americans would be whole; we would have been leaders in the environmental movement; we would be in the middle of a green technology boom fueling a huge expansion of our economy and stopping our dependence on foreign oil, and our health-care system would be reformed.
Benjamin Button speaks out for New Orleans. Whatever you might think of celebrity charity efforts, Brad Pitt has put skin in the New Orleans game...
U2 announces their 360-degree tour. Don't miss the virtual tour of the stage...
John Bolton for President?!? John Bolton?!? Someone may have said this before me, but bring him on. (Him being the grumpy, myopic public face of a completely discredited foreign policy.) While I appreciate the civil tone of this post, it misses a critical point: For all of Bolton's so-called expertise, virtually any liberal debating him can disarm that so-called strength by pointing out that Bolton supported the invasion of Iraq. For a very small minority of voters, that may well be a good thing. But overall, it's radioactive. Just ask Hillary Clinton...
The first three selections of ESPN's NFL Mock Draft:
The Seahawks are up tomorrow. The fan sentiment locally leans toward Texas Tech wide receiver Michael Crabtree. There's also some belief that the 'Hawks like Virginia OT Eugene Monroe as an eventual replacement for Walter Jones (not that anyone can truly replace Big Walt). Personally, if Boston College DT B. J. Raji is as good as I read that he is, I hope they go that way. Right now, the interior defensive line is Brandon Mebane and some capable backups. Put a potential difference maker like Raji next to Mebane, add an injury-free Patrick Kearney at DE, and the suddenly have a formidable defensive line. Assuming Raji is actually available at #4, I don't see how they pass on what he brings with him and I hope that they don't.
The New Orleans band The Radiators (www.theradiators.org) epitomize the backbone of rock-and-roll: The working regional band that makes continuously high quality music and that remains true to itself artistically. 2008 marks their 30th year together: Thirty years of rehearsal, of road trips, of gigs before large audiences and small.
The Radiators celebrated the anniversary with the release of Wild & Free, two CDs of mostly live material that they call “Fishhead Music.” Wild & Free dates back as far as their formative year of 1978 and also includes new songs written for the release. Bassist Reggie Scanlan spoke with me about the group, the new release, Fishhead Music, Hurricane Katrina, and the inimitable world of New Orleans music. Here’s part 1 of the interview:
I went to Jazz Festival last year and came back wanting to immerse myself in the music of southern Louisiana. The diversity and depth are such that it’s impossible to say that there is a such thing as one Louisiana Sound or a NOLA Sound.
It’s all delineated. People want to put in a bucket and it’s not like that.
Yet, the first piano notes of Wild & Free pretty much announce that The Radiators are a New Orleans band. What have the Radiators absorbed musically that make them a distinctly New Orleans band?
The stuff we grew up listening to – Earl King, Professor Longhair, The Meters – I heard it in college when white kids first getting turned on to this stuff. You could go see these guys any time you wanted to. For me as a bass player I could watch these guys all night & see what they were doing.
There’s a lot of old influence. The city founded by French and Spanish, and the music has what Jelly Roll Morton called a “Spanish tinge." It’s just a looser feel. Then of course slaves could gather and play music in Congo Square. For them, that was a way of passing down their music. Congo Square might be first place a stringed instrument and drum played together. Growing up here, hearing those rhythms…that stuff was going to effect your music.
We were Earl King’s band for several years. We got to look at the clockwork from the inside. It was a real schooling in how to prepare for a gig: You had to be ready. Those older guys didn’t cut a lot of slack.
So, what is Fishhead Music?
We started out in 1978 doing original songs, which was at the bottom of the list of what people wanted to hear. It wasn’t quite R&B, It wasn’t quite rock...one day [vocalist and songwriter] Ed [Volker] said “it’s fishhead music!” Fans started calling themselves Fishheads.
In some ways the name underscored the problem of what we were doing. Any night, we had no preconceived notion of what we wanted to do. The rule of band is, you can play whatever you want as long as you don’t step on anyone’s toes.
Tell me about Wild & Free. It’s not a typical anniversary celebration CD. The sequencing of the cuts is not chronological. What was thinking behind that?
We taped everything from the beginning, We tried to arrange Wild & Free more like a set and mix it up with different time frames. We wanted to include stuff that had never been played live and include different versions of previously released songs. We weren’t interested in greatest hits; it’s an overview audio scrapbook of thirty years of songs and gigs.
An amazing guy named Bruce Barielle did the mastering. He retrieved stuff lost in floodwater and still made whole project have an overall compatible sound.
Hurricane Katrina appears to have had a profound affect on the New Orleans music community, but maybe not in the way one would expect. During my visit, I came away astounded by the quality of the music. The funk scene, for example, is amazing. It’s as if musicians have collectively made the statement, “This is our city and we’re not giving it up.”
That’s exactly what happened. I was home by last week in September [Note: One month after the flooding.] The owner of the Maple Leaf Bar was determined that nothing was going to close his club. He put out a call to musicians to play and whoever showed up could play.
We all has the attitude of “the government has abandoned us, but this is our city and we’re taking it back.” People turned gas themselves, made street signs that are still up, cleaned up. You didn’t go anywhere without a weapon. The National Guard would shut down club right at 1 [a.m.] and somehow you had to get home after curfew.
How has Katrina affected your music?
Well, the first gig at Tipitina’s after the storm was extremely emotional. Our Katrina project was Dreaming Out Loud. We had to do something to get it out of our system.
You are also a photographer…
As photographer, I set out to document what happened and what didn’t happen. It was almost surreal…block upon block of houses sitting on cars, houses in the middle of streets…Except for Uptown and the Sliver By The River [Note: Most of the French Quarter], everywhere you went looked like Dresden.
What we’ve accomplished is amazing because it happened in spite of federal, state, and city government. Katrina really gave people a bad taste for anything to do with bureaucracy. People are still fighting for insurance monry and medical bills. Despite it all, the population that came back is super determined to maintain the culture and not lose any of it.
(End of Part 1. Part 2 of Citizen K.'s interview with Reggie Scanlan appears Thursday.)
What is the Employee Free Choice Act? Conservatives would have us believe that is the end of democracy as we know it -- the first peals of the death knell of the secret ballot. Along with the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, they set themselves up as the champions of working people under the thumb of so-called "union bosses." According to the entry in Wikipedia (which happens to be accurate):
Under current U.S. labor law, the National Labor Relations Board will certify a union as the exclusive representative of bargaining unit employees by card check process or secret ballot election, which is held if more than 30% of employees in a bargaining unit sign statements asking for representation by a union. If enacted, EFCA would require the NLRB to certify a bargaining representative without directing an election if a majority of the bargaining unit employees signed cards, the card check process.
Note: Under current labor law, a secret ballot election is held only when employers request. If passed, EFCA will also allow employees to request a secret ballot election.
But the rub, or at least the rub as the right wing would have it, comes with the card check process, which is not held in secret:
Card check, commonly known as majority sign-up, is a method for employees to organize into a labor union when a majority of employees in a bargaining unit sign authorization forms, or "cards," stating they wish to be represented by the union. Since the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) became law in 1935, majority sign-up has been an alternative for workers to the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) election process and has been approved and endorsed by the NLRB, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Today, most workers organize their union through a majority sign-up. It has gained increasing support as evidence has mounted of anti-union employers controlling and manipulating NLRB elections.
In other words, card checking is a long-established process upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court. However, as things stand, employers do not have to recognize the results of a card check and can instead request a secret ballot election. Their claim is that only with a secret ballot can workers indicate their true position, which presumably is against forming a union.
As you might think, there's more to this than meets the eye. I am routinely skeptical any time the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and big business claim to have workers' best interests at heart, simply because I can't think of a single instance in which this was true. And it turns out that the intimidation of union organizers is so routine that the Human Rights watch has concluded that
A culture of near-impunity has taken shape in much of U.S. labor law and practice. Any employer intent on resisting workers' self-organization can drag out legal proceedings for years, fearing little more than a requirement to post a written notice in the workplace promising not to repeat unlawful conduct. Many employers have come to view remedies like back pay for workers fired because of union activity as a routine cost of doing business—well worth it to get rid of organizing leaders and derail workers' organizing efforts."
Moreover, businesses routinely force employees to attend anti-union meetings; the firing of employees who dare attempt to organize a union has also become routine. So while big business raises the spectre of union organizers intimidating workers into signing cards, it's really they who are the intimidators. What's more, it's working: Union membership is at its lowest level in history. Not uncoincidentally, the size of the middle class has shrunk relentlessly at the same time.
One way of looking at this is to compare card checking to voter registration. We register to vote publicly, and in some states voters are even required to declare a party affiliation. But this doesn't affect the secret ballot at all, where you can vote for anyone you want to regardless of party. The card check is no different: A worker signs a card indicating that he or she wants union representation. Who the representatives are remains subject to a secret ballot.
President Obama, an original sponsor of the bill in the Senate, puts it this way:
I support this bill because in order to restore a sense of shared prosperity and security, we need to help working Americans exercise their right to organize under a fair and free process and bargain for their fair share of the wealth our country creates. The current process for organizing a workplace denies too many workers the ability to do so. The Employee Free Choice Act offers to make binding an alternative process under which a majority of employees can sign up to join a union. Currently, employers can choose to accept—but are not bound by law to accept—the signed decision of a majority of workers. That choice should be left up to workers and workers alone.
Aero Mechanic, the excellent monthly newsletter of the International Association of Machinists Lodge 751 here in the Puget Sound Area, has published a guide to the Employee Free Choice Act. I'm reproducing it here:
Big business is determined to kill the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which is labor’s top priority at the federal level. “This will be Armageddon,” Randel Johnson, the Chamber’s vice president for labor policy told the New York Times in November. The Chamber’s hugely funded anti-union ad campaign has left millions of Americans confused about what EFCA is and why it’s so badly needed. We want to provide facts to help you set the record straight the next time a friend asks, “What’s this about unions trying to take away the secret ballot?”
CLAIM: EFCA will take away workers’ right to a secret ballot election.
TRUTH: EFCA protects the right to a secret ballot union recognition election. Any group of workers can still opt for a secret ballot election under EFCA using the same process currently in place. EFCA provides workers the option of forming a union by majority sign up (50% plus one) – currently allowed under federal law, but almost never honored by employers who demand an election in order to gain months to use fear tactics, threats & even firings to persuade workers to vote against unions.
CLAIM: EFCA isn’t needed; federal and state laws already protect workers’ rights.
TRUTH: In the early decades of the 1935 National Labor Relations Board Act, the law worked the way it was intended. Workers organized unions and the result created America’s middle class. Employers routinely recognized majority sign up until the 1960’s. Since then, employers regularly demand an election to intimidate and persuade workers through fear tactics to vote against a Union.
CK Note: The "it's not needed" argument is a favorite right-wing strategem and one that always amuses me. If it's really not needed, then why get so worked up about it?
CLAIM: Unions will pressure work-ers to sign cards for union representation.
TRUTH: It’s employers, not unions, that have the coercive power to intimidate, fire and demote workers or threaten to close up shop.
CLAIM: Arbitration, in the event that first contract talks are stalled for 120 days, gives unions no incentive to bargain.
TRUTH: Arbitration cuts both ways. However, the possibility of arbitration is important because so many employers refuse to bargain in good faith to reach a first contract agreement. In effect, employers can negate a successful union representation election simply by refusing to bargaining in good faith. EFCA would ensure that newly organized workers get a contract.
Set the record straight when others are confused by the misleading ads that big business will spend millions on to try to defeat this important bill...
Make no mistake about: Passing EFCA is not only an important step for unions and employees who want to unionize, it's an important step for anyone with a job. Even if you are not in a union, the benefits you have -- annual raises, sick leave, workplace safety requirements, paid vacation, health insurance, pensions, 401-K's -- are all the result of the growth of unions after World War II. As these became common features of union contracts, they moved by osmosis into white collar and non-union workplaces looking to forestall unionization. And it's no accident that as union membership has declined, non-union employees find themselves paying more and more for health insurance...
As always, click to enlarge. For more Boondocks, Tony Auth, Mother Goose and Grimm, Tom the Dancing Bug, Tom Toles, Zippy the Pinhead, and Ben Sargent, click here, here, here, here, here, here, and here...
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