hotel workers should fire me

So here’s the deal. I have some trouble concentrating at work. Especially now, when the exact parameters of my job have become gauzy and vague. So I’ve decided, rather than learning to discipline myself, to try to focus my goofing-off time into something marginally more productive than watching Ronaldinho clips on Youtube. The key word here, as you’ll soon see, is “marginally.”

Having quoted Chuck Klosterman in the last post, I started thinking about one of his finer (and more stupidly titled) columns, “Give Me Centrism or Give Me Death.” It presents, for no real reason, the Ten Most Accurately-Rated Bands of All Time. Folks who know me would probably guess that my favorite part of that article was his assessment of the Beatles:

4. The Beatles – The Beatles are generally seen as the single most important rock band of all time, because they wrote all the best songs. Since both of these facts are true, the Beatles are rated properly.

It’s funnier (and a little touching) in context, but it's wishful thinking. The Beatles are overrated – a fact which John Lennon took great pains to point out as time went on. Of course they're overrated. They’re also underrated, or at least some of their catalogue is. Which brings me to the diversion at hand: I’m going to try to channel my laziness into the inconsequential exercise of discussing the most under- and overrated songs on each album. Just to be clear, this is a useless pursuit. So if Blogger has a mechanism to clear out its dead weight, its driftwood blogs dragging down passengers on the information superhighway, NewPlasticWeblog will probably be gone before I get to Revolver.

Anyway, without further ado:

Please Please Me (1963)

Most Overrated: Such an easy choice. “Love Me Do” is not a good song. It’s drivel. I wasn’t alive, but I think it was universally recognized as drivel then. The harmonica saves it from being unlistenable, but it remains wildly overrated (and, I would think, a little embarrassing for the surviving members, or at least Paul, since Ringo only plays tambourine on the album version). If you ever see footage of a live performance, or a “live” studio performance where their guitars aren’t even plugged in, they do sort of sell the song on cuteness, but it’s still boring and basically bad.

Most Underrated: “There’s a Place.” I think this was one of those tunes that made musicologists of the time think The Beatles were up to something fishy. Verse chords so bright and sunny, then they keep veering into startling harmonic territory. It has that slightly asymmetrical harmonica riff, and the stuttering start. It’s also too short for a real chorus, but it doesn’t need one because all the energy (and background harmonies) goes into the verse. I remember right around the time when Nas’s Stillmatic came out, I got tired of hearing it and Nelly on constant rotation in the dorm, so I used to open our windows and blast this song when the college tour groups came through the J.E. courtyard.

Comments welcome as always.

I'm nothing if not uninformed

(c) Chuck Klosterman.

It seems that the Stills album, Without Feathers, is indeed a reference to the Woody Allen book. And moreover, that shouldn't have been too hard to catch, since they also have a song on their first record called "Love and Death" -- named presumably after the Allen movie.

By the way, Love and Death is definitely underrated. It's a little annoying, but the more you know about Russian literature, the less annoying it gets (I'm told -- I know some, found it funny, my dad knows more, finds it hilarious). The last scene, where the main character blissfully dances away with the Grim Reaper to the "Troika" from Lieutenant Kije, is an uncharacteristically liberating moment. If you've been assigned to read Anna Karenina for college, I recommend getting that movie to lighten things up a little. Also good, the planetarium scene in Manhattan. Wait, all the scenes in Manhattan.


[Chuck Klosterman's quote in the title refers to a Dixie Chicks concert review in which he described Natalie Maines as "chunky" with an "odd sense of fashion," only to discover after the fact that she was pregnant]

Stills @ The Independent 10/5/06

We went back to our old neighborhood last night to see The Stills at The Independent, which is tied with Café du Nord for best live music venue in San Francisco (no fries, but better sound & stage). Camille and I have loved the Stills since 2003, about six seconds into “Lola Stars and Stripes.” Wait, that’s not accurate. She’s loved them since then, but at the time they released Logic Will Break Your Heart (their debut) I was engaged in an aggressive boycott of New York haircut bands. So I dismissed them like so much unnecessary conditioner.

You remember that era. Strokes, Hives, Vines, Doves, etc. I had this suspicion that, despite the improbable catchiness of Is This It?, these bands had no shelf life and secretly sucked. And I didn’t want to get too invested. It also really bothered me that Rolling Stone would “predict” some band like The Vines to be "the next big thing," then two months later would put them on the cover – like, See, we were right! It's always been that way -- just in the past, I'd had the time and inclination to investigate the music and figure out what I felt was actually good, separating it from the garbage. Now, even though I still have no time, I've got better sources. But then, I had to give up on pop music altogether. Anyway, I was right about the shelf life of all those bands, but wrong to lump the Stills in with them. For one thing, they’re from Montreal. They only look and sound like a New York haircut band. And, really, they don't sound too much like that -- their record was produced that way (in Brooklyn, no less), and they were certainly marketed in that way, but it doesn't fit well. They don't fit well with the slightly more recent Canadian invasion either, but no one fits these labels in the first place, and there's no such thing as a metropolitan music "scene" anyway, so forget I said anything and let's move on.

The band killed. Like every other mainstream popular rock band right now, The Stills are five white guys, aged 25-28 in suits/ties/formalwear of some sort, with camping hair. Left to right:

A guy who was too French for the Strokes, a guy who was way too French for the Strokes, fat Steve Caton, and my 13-year old cousin Benjie. [aka Tim Fletcher (Vocals/guitar), Olivier Corbeil (bass), Liam O'Neil (keyboards), and Dave Hamelin (Vocals/guitar)] Drummer Julien Blais isn’t pictured – but that’s fine. During the show Camille summed him up fine: “He’s kind of cute…wait, I can’t see him.”

You have to hand it to this band, though. They understand the difference between a song formula (boring) and a song recipe (tasty!), they know that it’s easier to rock out to simple melody & complex harmony, and they play tight new-wave arrangements in a loose, bombastic manner. Best of all, when their lead guitarist left, their drummer switched to rhythm guitar and took over half the vocals while their lead singer/rhythm guitarist switched to lead and made space for a new voice. It’s rare to have multiple lead singers of the same gender, and especially rare for the singing lineup to change three years in. What’s even more rare is when the less-attractive, less charismatic singer with a dorkier voice gets to sing a larger percentage of the songs on the sophomore album. But we loved him. He wasn’t totally comfortable on the guitar, so at first, due to his awkwardness and concentration, Camille starting referring to him as the “boy genius” of the band. It made sense later when we found out he’s not the regular guitarist or singer. It gave the band a more democratic feel, which is always nice.

They started with “It Takes Time,” from their new album Without Feathers (no idea whether they named it after the Woody Allen book or not – probably not). Great, but just a warm-up for “Lola Stars and Stripes.” Three years ago I would have thought the Kinks had mined that name for all its catchy singability, but obviously the Stills found unexplored potential. It’s impossible not to like that song. The follower, “Gender Bombs,” tried a lot harder to be dark and unlikeable, but since everyone in that club plays Smiths and Galore when they’re doing dishes, no luck there. Other highlights from the old album included “Yesterday Never Tomorrows” with sparkling keyboards, “Love and Death,” and a propulsive, snarly “Changes are No Good,” which Dave Hamelin (aka “Boy Genius” or “Teeny Weeny Rock Star”) prefaced by saying: “I wrote this one about a party that I wasn’t at, and wasn’t happy about it.” Camille leaned over to say “Yeah, cause you were at Hebrew school.” Buuuuuuuuuurn!.

About halfway through the show they announced that they were about to blow our minds, then revved up “Retour a Vega” and Tim Fletcher (who's hot enough as it is) started singing in French. Macy's panties department instantaneously made $900.

The songs from the new album got enthusiastic treatments too, which I always like to see. Nothing’s worse than a band that doesn’t commit as hard to its new material because of the crowd’s unfamiliarity. “The Beginning” had that bright, sunshiney epic feel, and their intense delivery of “Helicopters” helped bring out the lyrics’ lurking paranoia. I love lurking paranoia:

So keep this song
Till you catch diseases
And wait them out
Till the tundra freezes

Helicopters are chasing
Animals through the fields
Helicopters are chasing
Our spirits into the sea.

Can't front on a song about helicopters chasing animals through the fields, especially when it's set to soaring harmonies in a coda that makes you scared and elated at the same time. Good stuff. Also good: the rollicking guitar/drums/tambourine version of “Oh Shoplifter,” which offers a completely different take from the Smiths on that five-fingered art.

All in all, excellent show by a band with just a little more talent and depth than their hype would suggest. Don’t miss them if they’re coming to your town.

photoshop monday...

Some music-related fucking around on Photoshop:

Inspired by what I thought was a hilarious comment on a Youtube clip.

I love Yo La Tengo, and I really love Ira Kaplan, aka the Jewish Jimi Hendrix.

And, following a discussion last week with my coworker Matthew, some commentary on how much Audioslave has let us down:

it ain't in my plan to make moves without the fam

Here's a few links to friends and family who make music. It's all good or I wouldn't recommend it.

Tom Frampton -- You can find music from my Yale classmate (and current UNITE HERE organizer) Tom Frampton on his Riotfolk page. More old songs on the old Riotfolk page.

Steve Espinola -- My cousin Steve is a completely unique songwriter. I'm going to say this later about Jeff Louie too, but if there were any justice in the world, Steve would be on everyone's iPod, and known all over instead of just among his Antifolk fanbase and the people for whom I've made mixtapes. (If you've got the Moldy Peaches album, he plays on "Jorge Regula" and might be on your iPod already).

Jesse Kriss -- This guy has the distinction of dating Camille before me, about a hundred thousand years ago. Also a friend of ours from middle and high school. I don't know whether you can still find mp3s of his composition on the site, but the multimedia projects are terrific.

Matt Fitzgerald (aka Fitzgeezus) -- A Yalie, and veteran of the residential college hiphop beef wars. You'll have to take my word that it was a lot less ridiculous than it sounds...though still funny. He's part of the Sky Beneath crew. You can find their stuff on iTunes, and check out the killer soccer tribute video.

Jeff Louie -- One of my Greenwood camp counselors. Like I said, if there was any justice, Jeff's songs would be right next to Steve's on your iPod. If you like Stevie Wonder's harmony, or you like mid-period Beatles, or you wish Elliott Smith wasn't so depressing, buy Jeff's albums and check out the acoustic demo downloads.

Studio Sportsnight on the West Wing of the Sunset Strip with Tommy Schlamme

Why was the Studio 60 pilot vaguely boring to most Sorkin fans?

The short answer is, we've seen almost everything in it before, written by the same guy. Still effective, just recycled. I didn't mind at all, since it was good and it'll certainly get better. But for the record, here's a fairly comprehensive list of things that should ring a bell.

Meta stuff (poorly disguised references to the real-life writer/director team of Sorkin & Schlamme)

Writer-director team return to save failing network 4 years after being "shown the door."

Harriet Hayes=Kristin Chenoweth, the multi-talented blond entertainer dating the writer of the show, who makes an album of spiritual music and goes on The 700 Club, leading (maybe) to the breakup

Sorkin/"Tripp" drug problems & getting bonded to work in Hollywood

Matthew Perry/"Matt Albie" on Vicodin (kind of below the belt, right?)

"Tripp"/Sorkin dating a Maureen Dowd-type reporter

Jordan McDeere=Jamie Tarses (formerly McDermott), past NBC president

Censorship/network vs. talent meta-discussions -- Sorkin uses characters to complain about the network trying to dumb him down

"Tripp" in rehab 11 years ago – Sorkin addicted to crack in 1995 (11 years ago) till he went to rehab.

"Ricky & Ron" = John Wells, the hack they brought in after the real talent left

Situations (same old dramatic devices)

Offending Christians (see Sportsnight w/Jerry Falwell, WW pilot w/Mary Marsh)

Offending Christians with an unscripted outburst on live TV (see, again, the WW pilot)

Offending Christians with an unscripted outburst on live TV and being in danger of losing your job (see, again, the WW pilot, as well as the Sportsnight pilot for someone about to lose their job over problems with the network)

Network guy argues with producer over who's in charge of what aspects of the show

Back medicine making someone totally high and incoherent

Main character suddenly thrown back together with ex-girlfriend

Recycled dialogue (definitely heard this before)

"Playing with pain" (SN)

"Eat em up"/"Good show" (SN)

"Anything you can say to make me feel better about..." (SN)

"Breathing guts" (SN/WW)

"We’re blowing off _____" and everyone in the control room's disappointed (SN)

"One of us is gonna screw up/be angry at a time, it's gonna be me" (SN/WW)

"We don’t have that kind of time" (SN, maybe WW)

The falling out of a chair gag (SN pilot and WW)

“Our boy” (SN/WW/probably everything else he's done)

High as a paper kite (SN)

Going to hell in a handcart/speedboat/hula hoop (SN/WW)

You’re up on router #, have a good show. (SN)

Who am I offending? (SN/WW)


So, what's missing? We need a character whose parents split up after a long time, preferably because the father had a prolonged secret affair. We need something to be, sarcastically, a "barn burner," and we need someone to ask if you've fallen on your head. We need a season one finale that will actually answer the question "What Kind of Day Has it Been?" We need a character whose younger sibling died, and who blames him/herself for it in a repressed way. We need legs that go all the way to the floor, and Shakespeare the way it was meant to be played. We need to make someone happy by coming home at the end of the day. We need someone writing a letter because something that was supposed to have ended (tennis match, filibuster), is going on way too long. We need someone "raising the level of debate." We need smart people who disagree with you. We need a fight over the supposed significance of an anniversary. We need, when the fall is all that's left, for it to matter a great deal, and we need to know that the fact that we want to please you, pleases you. We need underwear in an inappropriate place. We need you not to talk to us like we're "other people." We need someone complaining about the lack of admonishment from the clergy over religious violence. We need people accidentally saying the wrong word to someone important, then obsessing over it.


We need Josh Malina.

in 25 words or less...

So, San Francisco MUNI has been advertising its new after-hours schedule, with the tagline:

"Get around after midnight."

They had one with a close-up of Cinderella's slipper getting onto the bus, and one with Frankenstein.

At the 16th & Mission stop for the 49 Mission-Van Ness, there's one with a picture of dracula.




It looks more or less like this, except it's in color, he's holding on to the bus handrails, and there's an ad for City College visible above his head.

Someone scribbled the following onto the poster in magic marker:

I'M DRACULA
I drink blood
I get women
I smoke weed

what kind of power?

After two years, a strike, a lockout, $100 million lost due to the boycott (ahem), lobby takeovers, sit-ins, rallies, VERY early wake-up calls which I won't miss at all, and about a hundred bargaining sessions...

...San Francisco hotel workers have a contract.

It's a great contract.

No, really, you would not believe how good this contract is.

There are literally no takeaways, which is worth repeating. No healthcare cuts, copay increases, elegibility restrictions, or two-tier systems. No subcontracting, no outsourcing. No increased split shifts, no mandatory overtime, no vacation/sick pay restriction schemes. No takeaways. People should understand how rare that is for labor unions right now, especially in the private sector, especially in a volatile industry.

But it's better than that. We also won a higher cap for prescription drugs, and vision care for dependents (now Camille can get glasses for $10).

Pension guarantees ($30/yr service/month) and a window benefit ($35) for folks retiring during the contract term.

$3/hr increase non-tipped, $1.50 tipped over the next three years, plus ~$1/hrs worked since 2004 retro.

Workload reductions for room cleaners and ergonomic improvements for cooks

Ironclad (or as good as it can be) successorship and subcontracting protections

Plus more union leave time, solidarity language for the building trades, and a contract term that expires with Chicago in 2009. So we're already lining up for the next coordinated national fight.

And the most important thing we won, the best contribution we made to the future of hotel workers: Card check neutrality with Hyatt, Hilton, Starwood, Intercontinental, Omni, and Four Seasons on new and acquired properties for all of San Francisco and San Mateo county.

So 4,000 workers fought it out and reminded the rest of the labor movement (and the San Francisco progressive community) that when you're disciplined, aggressive, and you never give up, you can actually win.

But there's still 5,000 others without a contract, so I have to go back to work.

More frequent blogging to come, I hope.

(also, folks who don't know the response to the question posed in the title need to spend more time on a picket line)

in case there was any doubt

this is why I married Camille:

Me: So I read this article about how the Tenderloin is San Francisco's next hip neighborhood. It's supposed to be the "new Mission."

Camille: Right.

Me: The "New Mission." What does that even mean?

Camille: It means there's pee on the ground but white people will still live there.

which implies...

Chicago's new retail living wage law is another kick in the pants for Walmart & other big-box stores. It's especially effective because it challenges those stores to live up to their assertions -- i.e. big-box development supports local economies and creates quality job opportunities. The fact that Walmart, Target et al see this legislation as a significant barrier to store development demonstrates clearly that poverty wages & benefits are part of their business plan. Their low prices (and enormous profits) depend on extremely low labor standards both here and overseas, and these companies remain completely unwilling to compromise on either side.

When John Simley, Walmart's spokesperson, argues that this legislation "means that Chicago is closed to business,” that's what he's saying. A more honest statement would be: "Chicago's closed to our exploitative, damaging business model."

The Brennan Center has detailed information on the ordinance, including the actual language.

back in a few.

When SF hotel workers have a contract, I'll get back to the blog.

Until then, sporadic updates if any.

You'll be able to see what's happening with me here.

pride

San Francisco's Pride weekend took place a few weeks ago. Here's a picture of me, more or less in my element, during the hour or so that we stood around before marching. Later on, I got a beer from Ed Dietrich at the Public Defenders office (I guess they were drumming up business?) and drank it before we turned onto Market St.

Not pictured: Camellia George, Danny Glover (who just chilled and marched with us), tons of Google employees who were squinting in the unfamiliar, outdoors natural light.

In the back of the picture you can see a "Sleep with the Right People" poster. Check that site out, it's pretty great.

I have no plans to make this a lame photo blog. However, I'll just contrast the photo above with this one, which 2004 election campaign staff in Oregon captioned "Alek at his Best."



Not sure how to take that.

minor design flaw

Vaguely inspired by our renovation projects, I've been reading William McDonough and Michael Braungart's Cradle to Cradle. For people (like me) without experience in cutting edge industrial design philosophy, this book legitimately deserves to be described as "mindblowing." It did actually blow my mind.

I won't get into it in any depth, but the passage on how to design housing for Bedouin communities led to the following discussion last week:

Me: "...and I thought that was fascinating, how the Bedouin tents are perfectly designed for their users. 'Cause they're nomads, so the tents can be easily transported and repaired on the fly, and the shape means they draw heat up and out the top. Plus, when it rains, the fibers are all woven together and they swell up to become watertight? That kicks ass. The only real downside is --

Camille: [interrupting] -- they smell like yak butt.

I was wondering...

...why no comments on the last post, given all the Jews who read this.

Comments were broken. Now fixed.

("fire baaaaaaad")

i don't even believe in jeebus

[DISCLAIMER: The discussion below refers specifically to my personal experience as a Jew in Northern CA. Much of it could apply equally to other religious contexts, and none of it is intended to propose Judaism as singular in possessing the problems discussed -- it's just where I'm at]

So, there's been a lot of hubbub around the Jews For Jesus summer 2006 campaign. It's the culmination of a five-year evangelical effort. (Maybe they got the idea for the timing from UNITE HERE?)

Anyway, to describe my feelings on this issue as conflicted would be really understating the case.

However, as usual I don't have the time to put something coherent together, so I'll just make a few observations and number them, like the order matters.

1) I hate to admit it, but in practice, Jews for Jesus bothers me the exact same amount as the Orthodox hassidim who evangelized on my college campus regularly. At first, when I started contemplating it, I thought -- "No, that can't possibly be true. After all, Jews for Jesus purposely twists Jewish theology and tradition to persuade more people to accept Christ as their savior." But in reflecting on it, the judgements they make about my personal faith were no more presumptious or insulting than those of the Orthodox evangelists. And at least Jews for Jesus did not (in my experience, can't speak for others) approach me because I "look Jewish" and try to sell me a menorah. Whatever. At the heart of this lies the judgement that my faith, whatever it might be, will leave me incomplete if I don't change the nature of my spiritual commitments.

2. Which leads to my next point. Antimissionary groups like the JCRC's Spiritual Deception Prevention Project fret constantly about the irreparable damage done by "Hebrew-Christians" when they distort Jewish theology and appropriate Jewish symbols, tradition, etc. to convert people. I would ask, is it any worse than the damage done by anyone who stands in judgement of another because of their difference in beliefs? Personally, I'm a lot more worried about the behavior of Orthodox (and, for that matter, Conservative) jews towards homosexuality than I am about whether someone thinks Jesus is the Hebrew Messiah and wants me to have a bumper sticker. If you want to talk about damage to the Jewish community, let's take a look at the CJLS Consensus Statement, which expressly welcomes homosexual jews into congregations but refuses to ordain or marry them. It definitely ruins our reputation as an ethical people, if nothing else.

[By the way, I've heard all the rationales behind this, including those about rabbis being models of Jewish law, and about there being 612 other mitzvot to do, so homosexuality is only as bad as driving on Shabbas. Well, it's one thing to have high standards, and another for religious doctrine to welcome someone but expressly forbid them from exalting God through mitvahs & covenants. Go find me a conservative rabbi who won't marry someone because they drive to the synagogue on Saturday]

3. Which brings me to my last point. Nothing about this makes me feel good. My own community will accept and embrace me, even though I don't practice much Judaism, don't believe that many events in the Torah actually took place, and don't subscribe to the Jewish conception of God. However, someone who believes in the Old Testament and views Christ as their personal savior? -- they can't go to day camp at the JCC.

I don't know whether Jews for Jesus represents a legitimate danger or not. I can't speak for the damage they do. They threaten me, and my beliefs, exactly not at all in the slightest. When they appropriate Rosh Hashauna holiday, it just makes me glad that someone's celebrating it. If they think we break Matzah to symbolize how Jesus was broken, well, I grew up in California: on the scale of Pesach re-interpretations, that's pretty tame.

They're engaging Jewish youth with "contemporary music"? They're visiting senior centers and luring in recruits by offering them "meals, companionship, and a sense of being part of a caring community?" They're targeting the most vulnerable by adopting and caring for children with special needs? Those bastards!

That's facetious, obviously, but still. Because Jews are being targeted, some perceive a serious threat of "corruption" -- of the individual, of congregations, and of Judaism as a whole. Provided no assumptions are made about the legitimacy of these folks as people of faith (and that's a big proviso, so watch out already), I can respect that. So, in response, the JCRC does counter-leaflets, and takes out ads, and generally does their thing. But, in the process, they also find it necessary to define the "Jewish Community." Here's where I start to feel that familiar chill of confusion and alienation wash over me.

I've got no doubts about myself. To the extent that I'm a Jew and identify as one (which is, not to trivialize it, about the same extent to which I identify as a Democrat), no amount of consensus statements or rabbinical pronouncements will change that. If I was the only Jew on earth, that'd still be who I am. And if my mother's mother hadn't been Jewish, but I'd been raised the same, I wouldn't give a fuck. What sickens me with (unnecessary) anxiety is the impact of these pronouncements on my family. I'm left with the knowledge that those evangelizing Hassids who came to Yale would never sell my Catholic wife and I a mezuzah for our new home [She, by the way, really wants us to have one, whereas it barely even occured to me because I was worried about us having a working faucet]. I want her to continue her willingness to embrace my faith and expose our child(ren) to those ideals and traditions. I want to raise my kids to be both Jews and critical thinkers -- which means I'll have to hope that they choose either a conservative congregation or a same-sex spouse, but not both. Sucks for them.

To their credit, the JCRC and other critics of Jews for Jesus have, in addition to publicly debunking the "Hebrew-Christians," have also made it a priority to encourage participation in and commitment to Jewish life as an antidote, and to try to remain inclusive while incorporating antimissionary education into various programs. The crappy rhetoric remains, but it seems like a decent compromise given their choices. What bothers me is this: Jews for Jesus prompts people to defend and sanctify these particulars of Jewish life that supposedly determine inclusion in our community. But in the end, if I feel included at all, it's not such a great feeling.

what you're missing...

The reason there hasn't been content up here for a week or so isn't that there's nothing going on in the world, or in my life -- it's just that what I'm doing is staggeringly boring and self-involved (painting doors, building shelves, back and forth to the hardware store...etc), plus it warps my sense of everything else going on.

Finally, since 2002-03 I've been anticipating the summer of 2006 and the hotel workers campaign, which I'm now lucky enough to be involved in. Until we settle a contract in San Francisco, I won't be able to spend very much time at all on stuff that isn't my job, new house, or new marriage. I can't really offer many intimate details of the campaign, and I've already written plenty about the broad issues at stake.

So, like Tip said: hold tight.

why Prop 82 went down.

The failure of Prop 82 to pass in California this past Tuesday was the result of a set of suckily converging factors. Had it passed, Prop 82 would have funded universal pre-school for every four-year-old in California through an income tax increase on the state’s wealthiest one percent.

It got creamed, though. Here are a few of the reasons why:

1. Following years of questionable ballot initiatives, and a completely unnecessary and costly special election last November, Californians have developed a deep, lovingly nurtured grudge against the propositions in general. More and more voters simply vote no on every proposition in an effort to discourage people from bringing them to the ballot. I don't agree entirely with that philosophy, but there's no doubt that it's an inherently flawed system that's getting worse as more people with money and agendas enter the fray. Prop 82 was one of the genuinely good laws that, unfortunately, became a casualty of that legitimate resentment.
2. Rob Reiner has a reputation as a politically unsophisticated Hollywood liberal meddler. I’m not convinced that reputation is really deserved. He’s got a niche, just like Harry Belafonte and Charlton Heston. But the opposition used every opportunity it could to refer to Prop 82 as " the Reiner Act," until it started to seem like he was hijacking the legislature.
3. Prop 82 was billed not as an increased funding initiative for preschool programs, but as a “universal” preschool program. That opened it up to the same familiar barrage of attacks that greets all proposals dealing with universal coverage of any kind: handouts to the middle class, failing to focus resources on the most needy, threatening private providers, etc.
4. This proposition involved taxing rich people, for no reason save their income. Good night.

This all sucks, because like I said it was a good law. It would have affected less than 1% of California taxpayers. It addressed the critical issues in the preschool crisis (teacher training, school construction, underserved areas). And it is a crisis, which our electeds, unlike in other states around the country, were completely dragging their feet on -- so it's actually a fairly legitimate use of the ballot initiative. I'm sure it'll be pursued in Sacramento now.

One last (obvious) thing: Voters seem to feel that pre-school, unlike kindergarten, is not worthy of public funding to make it universal – despite the fairly indisputable evidence that pre-school leads to better reading skills, lower dropout rates, higher incidence of matriculation, decreased crime, etc. It matters, and like kindergarten, pre-school represents a critical social investment that affects every member of any community. That’s why most industrialized countries have universal public preschools as well as universal public K-12 (or equivalent).

But not the U.S. Instead, preschool, like health insurance, college education, and affordable housing, has become a luxury item reserved for folks with money.

I have confidence that eventually, California will follow Illinois, Florida, Oklahoma, and Georgia in providing universal preschool. And I hope it'll be through legislation, so the Gap CEO Don Fisher and his crony all-star team can spend more energy finding tax loopholes and less hiring actors to play gentle, pragmatic, authoritative school principles (ethnic minorities preferred).

Search (Silly-) Strings

To hold y'all over until we've bought our new place and I can get back to goofing off at work.

Here are the choice strings from May '06.

not the same ben folds
I assume they're talking about the song, but it might also be this.

laurie anderson superman
Everything I love about this song, Camille hates with her whole heart.
But here's a nice ode from someone who shares my regard.

tumba palo cucuye is a song
Yes.

super timberlands that make you look taller
That's not what they do.

boo la migra
No astute comment, this just cracks me up. What search results would satisfy the originator of this string? Not to minimize the sentiment, but this is kind of the equivalent of getting up and typing "I'm hungry" into the Google search bar.

its not what you look like when you're doin what you're doin
Indeed.

evaluate article corporate social responsibility clive crook
Yeah, somebody should.

globalization affects old traditions.
No kidding, how about that?

By the way, I'm aware how self-referential (and self-congratulatory) these things are sometimes, so, a little humility:

janel moloney in her underwear
At first I kept wondering why this string appears over and over, month after month -- till I realized that they were all my searches.

riding to work two days ago...

Alek: "So, do you think we need to do that today?"
Camille: "No, it's not necessary."

[pause]

Camille: "It's unecessary."

[pause]

Camille: [quoting] "It's so necessary."
Alek: "..."
Camille: "Did you know I'm Jay-Z?"

[then, in the most surreal moment of my marriage to date...]

Camille: "But you can call me Hova."

AFL-C ya later

That pun in the title belongs to my sister, who's one of the flying purple people eaters.

Anyway, the Laborers (LIUNA) have broken from the AFL-CIO, which means 700,000 fewer members. They had been straddling, retaining membership in both the AFL and the Change to Win coalition, but no longer.

Now, this is good for a number of reasons. It diminishes the degree to which service sector unions dominate Change to Win, by adding construction workers to the farmworkers (UFW), truckdrivers (Teamsters), and carpenters that had already joined.

By freeing the LIUNA from AFL-CIO per capita dues, it allows the Laborers to fully make good on their commitment to prioritize organizing. They've been moving in that direction for a while, and growing fast, so now they will have a chance to put more ambitious programs into place.

Finally, it shows that the AFL-CIO's scare tactics don't work. Earlier this year, after the United Farm Workers disassociated, AFL president John Sweeney formally barred UFW locals from participation in labor councils. Apart from being bizarre, unfair, and possibly racist, a lot of folks speculated that the AFL was trying to send a message to other unions (particularly the Laborers and others in the building trades) about the consequences of disassociating. So much for that.

Quick Note: As part of the AFL/CtW agreement on political cooperation, the UFW was allowed back into the labor councils...so maybe that had something to do with this, but I doubt it. The LIUNA has been making noise about leaving for a while, and even set up their own building trades council separate from the AFL. Maybe they were waiting to see if the two federations would sort out their differences on the 06 election cycle, or maybe they just finally got it together.