Geraldine Ferraro, a woman who displayed grace and a sense of humor whilst breaking barriers for women, has died after a 12-year battle with myeloma. She was 75.
For the generation who’ve only seen Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin run for national office, Ferraro was so much more. She forged her public service career, leading to being the Democratic candidate for vice-president in 1984, sans political husband and sans hokey well-scripted schtick. You can’t imagine how smart and articulate she was, not only amongst all the male pols back then, but even among women wannabes since. She did not let anyone push her around, but she was never crass.
She weathered a lot of criticism from all the usual suspects you’d find in a political career. There were questions about tax returns and her business deals by her husband, John Zaccaro. But she ran rings around George H.W. Bush in their vice-presidential debate. I concede the issue of going into a battle of wits with someone only partially armed, but still…
There’s only one woman in politics I admired more than Ferraro: Shirley Chisholm. Chisholm was smarter and more articulate than anyone I ever saw running for office. But she suffered from the three Bs—she was a black brainy broad, basically insurmountable obstacles back in 1972 when she ran for President.
I wish we could get more people in public service, male or female, who met the standards these women set.
Well, a girl can dream.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
The fire began on Saturday
Today is the centenary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. On 25 March 1911, 146 workers at a typical New York schmatta factory died when a fire broke out on the 8th floor of the Asch Building.
The fire spread quickly, engulfing all three of Triangle’s floors (8-10). The workers, mostly new immigrants ranging in age from 13 to about 25, tried to escape. The doors to the stairwells and fire escapes on the 9th floor (which had neither alarms nor telephone communications with the other floors) had been locked by the factory’s owners; but even getting to the fire escapes was dangerous, as some of them collapsed under the weight.
One hundred twenty-nine women and 17 men were killed from fire, smoke inhalation and blunt-force trauma. Many of them leapt from the windows when they couldn’t get to the stairs or fire escapes.
The 25th was a Saturday, a “short” day for the workers, who put in nine-hour shifts on Monday through Friday and only seven on Saturday.
The catastrophe brought industrial conditions to the consciousness of the American people and boosted the labor movement. The unions of this era campaigned tirelessly to improve conditions, hours and safety measures for all working people. They did this by organizing and winning the right to bargain collectively on behalf of their members.
This is a right which, as we have seen, has recently come under attack.
Here’s what I think: there are basically only two reasons why you and I are not working in sweatshops with dangerous electrical wiring, hot and cold running vermin and no toilets—unions and litigation. (I would also have added “80-hour weeks” as one of the not-any-mores, but that’s pretty much so last century.)
Business management in companies both large and small do not provide more or less sanitary and safe conditions, ventilation and some standard of minimum wage out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because over the past 150 years unions have fought with blood and treasure for the concept that labor is part of the value-add of both products and services;and because they’re terrified that if they screw up and get sued, juries will strip their corporate assets in punitive damages like a plague of locusts ranging across Iowa.
I’m not saying that unions haven’t become part of the problem—many of them are every bit as bloated and arrogant and greedy as corporate boards, and in fact you’d have trouble distinguishing one stance from the other across the negotiating table. And I’m also not saying that America’s propensity toward litigiousness doesn’t suck up resources, like some cosmic Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, that couldn’t have been better spent on something like, oh, curing cancer.
But it takes the kind of jackhammer represented by Big Labor and Big Lawsuits to get the attention of the heirs of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. If you doubt this, I refer you to the history of the textile industry in America: the corporations first moved their factories from states with unions to the South (God bless right-to-work), and then—when even minimum wage became too much for them—to Mexico, India, China and other countries where there’s no concern about pesky things like sweatshop conditions or child labor.
And it’s not limited to schmattas, either. Twenty years ago during my sojourn in the great, cough, state of North Carolina (which is probably still electing Jesse Helms to the US Senate, corpse though he be), there was a fire in a chicken processing plant that killed 25 workers and injured 54 others. Exit doors from the factory floor had been locked, trapping the men and women in the inferno.
I’m not going to talk about the wages paid or the conditions in the factory, but the plant had never suffered a single safety inspection, so the managers weren’t troubled by having to fork out for any, you know, protections.
Then there’s the Upper Big Branch mine disaster of just last year. Massey Mining, the owner, has had flocks of safety violations, but that never interfered with business. That butcher's bill was only 29 dead...
The last time I posted about unions (the French ones) I was excoriated by someone who accused me of being “a true union talking head, who has no regard for anyone trying to scratch out a living today as a self sufficient, outside the box thinker…who obviously leads a life of disdain for all hard working stiffs like me who do not belong to unions, but who do have a business that someday maybe, perhaps will be successful enough to make millions.”
She was having a bad day and I won’t continue quoting her screed, which included something about Zimbabwean dollars and how much she resented having to pay her employees for sick leave. But her response—clearly from a small business perspective—pretty much proves my point.
For the record, I was once in a union, the Teamsters, as it happens. That was one summer when I typed prescription labels in the pharmacy of a membership-type store. (Got the job because I could read Latin.) You couldn’t work there and not be in the union, but all I got out of whatever dues were deducted from my paycheck was pretty much less net but the hourly rate was higher than minimum wage. I didn't get to picket or order any hits on anyone or smoke any cigars.
(I worked for a non-guild newspaper for a while. They gave all their employees whatever guild workers got, just to keep the unions out. And the guilds in the film/television industry get their own post; maybe their own blog.)
The laborer is worthy of his hire, at all levels; that includes fair remuneration, decent conditions and respect for her work.
And it shouldn’t take repeated workplace catastrophes to bring it about.
P.S. CNN is airing an HBO documentary on the Triangle Shirtwaist fire at 2300 on Saturday. You might want to watch.
The fire spread quickly, engulfing all three of Triangle’s floors (8-10). The workers, mostly new immigrants ranging in age from 13 to about 25, tried to escape. The doors to the stairwells and fire escapes on the 9th floor (which had neither alarms nor telephone communications with the other floors) had been locked by the factory’s owners; but even getting to the fire escapes was dangerous, as some of them collapsed under the weight.
One hundred twenty-nine women and 17 men were killed from fire, smoke inhalation and blunt-force trauma. Many of them leapt from the windows when they couldn’t get to the stairs or fire escapes.
The 25th was a Saturday, a “short” day for the workers, who put in nine-hour shifts on Monday through Friday and only seven on Saturday.
The catastrophe brought industrial conditions to the consciousness of the American people and boosted the labor movement. The unions of this era campaigned tirelessly to improve conditions, hours and safety measures for all working people. They did this by organizing and winning the right to bargain collectively on behalf of their members.
This is a right which, as we have seen, has recently come under attack.
Here’s what I think: there are basically only two reasons why you and I are not working in sweatshops with dangerous electrical wiring, hot and cold running vermin and no toilets—unions and litigation. (I would also have added “80-hour weeks” as one of the not-any-mores, but that’s pretty much so last century.)
Business management in companies both large and small do not provide more or less sanitary and safe conditions, ventilation and some standard of minimum wage out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because over the past 150 years unions have fought with blood and treasure for the concept that labor is part of the value-add of both products and services;and because they’re terrified that if they screw up and get sued, juries will strip their corporate assets in punitive damages like a plague of locusts ranging across Iowa.
I’m not saying that unions haven’t become part of the problem—many of them are every bit as bloated and arrogant and greedy as corporate boards, and in fact you’d have trouble distinguishing one stance from the other across the negotiating table. And I’m also not saying that America’s propensity toward litigiousness doesn’t suck up resources, like some cosmic Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, that couldn’t have been better spent on something like, oh, curing cancer.
But it takes the kind of jackhammer represented by Big Labor and Big Lawsuits to get the attention of the heirs of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. If you doubt this, I refer you to the history of the textile industry in America: the corporations first moved their factories from states with unions to the South (God bless right-to-work), and then—when even minimum wage became too much for them—to Mexico, India, China and other countries where there’s no concern about pesky things like sweatshop conditions or child labor.
And it’s not limited to schmattas, either. Twenty years ago during my sojourn in the great, cough, state of North Carolina (which is probably still electing Jesse Helms to the US Senate, corpse though he be), there was a fire in a chicken processing plant that killed 25 workers and injured 54 others. Exit doors from the factory floor had been locked, trapping the men and women in the inferno.
I’m not going to talk about the wages paid or the conditions in the factory, but the plant had never suffered a single safety inspection, so the managers weren’t troubled by having to fork out for any, you know, protections.
Then there’s the Upper Big Branch mine disaster of just last year. Massey Mining, the owner, has had flocks of safety violations, but that never interfered with business. That butcher's bill was only 29 dead...
The last time I posted about unions (the French ones) I was excoriated by someone who accused me of being “a true union talking head, who has no regard for anyone trying to scratch out a living today as a self sufficient, outside the box thinker…who obviously leads a life of disdain for all hard working stiffs like me who do not belong to unions, but who do have a business that someday maybe, perhaps will be successful enough to make millions.”
She was having a bad day and I won’t continue quoting her screed, which included something about Zimbabwean dollars and how much she resented having to pay her employees for sick leave. But her response—clearly from a small business perspective—pretty much proves my point.
For the record, I was once in a union, the Teamsters, as it happens. That was one summer when I typed prescription labels in the pharmacy of a membership-type store. (Got the job because I could read Latin.) You couldn’t work there and not be in the union, but all I got out of whatever dues were deducted from my paycheck was pretty much less net but the hourly rate was higher than minimum wage. I didn't get to picket or order any hits on anyone or smoke any cigars.
(I worked for a non-guild newspaper for a while. They gave all their employees whatever guild workers got, just to keep the unions out. And the guilds in the film/television industry get their own post; maybe their own blog.)
The laborer is worthy of his hire, at all levels; that includes fair remuneration, decent conditions and respect for her work.
And it shouldn’t take repeated workplace catastrophes to bring it about.
P.S. CNN is airing an HBO documentary on the Triangle Shirtwaist fire at 2300 on Saturday. You might want to watch.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Dim the lights
It can’t have escaped your attention that the actress and Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor has died of congestive heart failure. She was 79.
There are about a squillion obits, appreciations and retrospectives of her out on the Web. There’s a lot of verbiage since Taylor gave people a lot to talk about throughout her life.
I’m sharing the Telegraph’s obituary because, frankly, they do these things with class. & Taylor personified a unique classiness, even when she was boozing it up with Richard Burton or marrying a truck driver 20 years her junior at Neverland. There was something about her escapades that the current crops of mega-celebrities just can’t approach for style and attitude. Eight marriages (two of them to Burton), film roles ranging from the sublime to the cringeworthy, riding pillion on Malcolm Forbes’ motorcycles...she did what she wanted to do.
Not to mention the jewelry. Jeez, that woman had more bling than a convention of rappers. “Big women need big diamonds,” she shrugged. ’Nuff said.
Of course, she was more than a star; she was a friend. Taylor getting up in front of the world in the mid-80s to raise millions of dollars to fight the virus & stigma of AIDS was the first a lot of people learned about the disease. She did it because she had AIDS-stricken friends & she was completely fearless in her advocacy for awareness, research & treating victims with dignity.
(The LA Times’ obit gives more detail on this.)
I’m not ignoring the fact that she was stunningly beautiful from about age 14, but what I liked most about Taylor was her laugh. That dame had a throaty, grab-me-in-the-gut laugh, with an edge of witchiness, almost a screech. It so epitomized her persona for me: that sense of being so involved in whatever sparked the laughter that she didn’t care what it sounded like. She just belted out her pleasure & made you want to join her.
Maybe that was it—she had such an earthy, wise-woman view of her life. “Some of my best leading men have been dogs & horses,” she commented.
Ain’t that just the truth? & if it was so for a woman who set the standard for beauty & wealth I guess the rest of us shouldn't be surprised by what we get.
There are about a squillion obits, appreciations and retrospectives of her out on the Web. There’s a lot of verbiage since Taylor gave people a lot to talk about throughout her life.
I’m sharing the Telegraph’s obituary because, frankly, they do these things with class. & Taylor personified a unique classiness, even when she was boozing it up with Richard Burton or marrying a truck driver 20 years her junior at Neverland. There was something about her escapades that the current crops of mega-celebrities just can’t approach for style and attitude. Eight marriages (two of them to Burton), film roles ranging from the sublime to the cringeworthy, riding pillion on Malcolm Forbes’ motorcycles...she did what she wanted to do.
Not to mention the jewelry. Jeez, that woman had more bling than a convention of rappers. “Big women need big diamonds,” she shrugged. ’Nuff said.
Of course, she was more than a star; she was a friend. Taylor getting up in front of the world in the mid-80s to raise millions of dollars to fight the virus & stigma of AIDS was the first a lot of people learned about the disease. She did it because she had AIDS-stricken friends & she was completely fearless in her advocacy for awareness, research & treating victims with dignity.
(The LA Times’ obit gives more detail on this.)
I’m not ignoring the fact that she was stunningly beautiful from about age 14, but what I liked most about Taylor was her laugh. That dame had a throaty, grab-me-in-the-gut laugh, with an edge of witchiness, almost a screech. It so epitomized her persona for me: that sense of being so involved in whatever sparked the laughter that she didn’t care what it sounded like. She just belted out her pleasure & made you want to join her.
Maybe that was it—she had such an earthy, wise-woman view of her life. “Some of my best leading men have been dogs & horses,” she commented.
Ain’t that just the truth? & if it was so for a woman who set the standard for beauty & wealth I guess the rest of us shouldn't be surprised by what we get.
In the event of too much time on your hands...
Dunno how I missed it, but yesterday was apparently the third annual Talk Like William Shatner Day.
If you want to catch up today, go right ahead.
If you want to catch up today, go right ahead.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Resistance is futile
Consumers Reports isn’t hopeful about the proposed takeover of T-Mobile by AT&T, according to a report by NPR.
AT&T has consistently been the tail-end of the pack in CR’s customer satisfaction surveys of mobile phone users, & the expectation that the assimilation will bring down T-Mobi rather than raise AT&T.
Plus—prices will rise.
I know—this can’t be news to anyone who’s ever had AT&T. But I had to bring it up again.
AT&T has consistently been the tail-end of the pack in CR’s customer satisfaction surveys of mobile phone users, & the expectation that the assimilation will bring down T-Mobi rather than raise AT&T.
Plus—prices will rise.
I know—this can’t be news to anyone who’s ever had AT&T. But I had to bring it up again.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Network news
So AT&T is buying T-Mobile, bidding $39M in cash and stock to Deutsche Telekom. Thus would the number two mobile carrier would absorb number four in the US.
It makes technological sense, in that both AT&T and T-Mobi have GSM networks. And there’s a sort of business sense, in that now that AT&T no longer has the lock on the iPhone market their unbelievably lousy service is going to matter more, and they should be hemorrhaging customers at approximately the rate at which their network drops calls.
T-Mobi now gets to color in more of the country in terms of network coverage. Plus, it’s gotta be hard being the tail end of the parade all the time.
But I really feel sorry for the people who got used to having actual customer service with T-Mobi. I had AT&T for nearly ten years; not once did I get the service I'd contracted for (without a fight). The only time I became a "valued customer" was the day I cancelled my account.
This is all assuming the Department of Justice approves the transaction. But given the pro-business climate pervading the federal government, I’m guessing that’s going to happen.
Ano
It makes technological sense, in that both AT&T and T-Mobi have GSM networks. And there’s a sort of business sense, in that now that AT&T no longer has the lock on the iPhone market their unbelievably lousy service is going to matter more, and they should be hemorrhaging customers at approximately the rate at which their network drops calls.
T-Mobi now gets to color in more of the country in terms of network coverage. Plus, it’s gotta be hard being the tail end of the parade all the time.
But I really feel sorry for the people who got used to having actual customer service with T-Mobi. I had AT&T for nearly ten years; not once did I get the service I'd contracted for (without a fight). The only time I became a "valued customer" was the day I cancelled my account.
This is all assuming the Department of Justice approves the transaction. But given the pro-business climate pervading the federal government, I’m guessing that’s going to happen.
Ano