Weekend Reading

As I prepare to hunker down in the path of both my first hurricane and my first Nor’easter, you can enjoy some reading:

• U.S. Intends to Keep Adding Names to Kill Lists.
• Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America’s Prisons.
• 2008 Called. It Wants to Know What Happened to Barack Obama.
• As Local Governments Shrink, Private Consultants Reap Rewards.
• What It’s Like Being a Teen Girl.
• The Shooting in Brookfield and Domestic Violence.
• Cutting the British Empire Down to Size.
• Apocalypse Now for California’s Public Higher Ed?
• From Master Plan to No Plan: The Slow Death of Public Higher Education:
• Ronald Reagan may not have seen this coming when he first set out to destroy what he saw as the creeping communism of master-planned and state-funded public education. His vision at the time was essentially negative, reactionary. But the conservative project he put in place in California in the 1960s remains with us today. Reagan was the trendsetter in making higher education into a problem to be solved with fee hikes and police. Other governors approached this problem in different ways, but the decision Reagan made to begin the destruction of the Master Plan hangs over all of them. Today, we can clearly see the results. Limiting the ability of the government to plan for the education of its citizens has left us with the worst of both worlds: students and families with too much debt and too few options.
• The Corporatization of Higher Education.
• What It Was Like to Be a Telephone Operator on the Night ‘War of the Worlds’ Was Broadcast.
• Nineteen Species of Fern Now Named After Lady Gaga.
• Getting the Lowest Score Possible on the SAT (read sections 13 and 14).
• Emily Nussbaum on “Parks and Recreation”:

Leslie finds that, now that she’s been elected, her job requires literally dealing with the shit of fellow-politicians. When she tries to increase the hours at a public pool, a councilman blackmails her for access to her private bathroom; she has to eat “racist salad” with a Dixiecrat to find an ally. This is a network sitcom: no matter how corrupt things get, Leslie is unlikely to lose her soul (we wouldn’t want her to). But, for all its warmth, “Parks” suggests the brutality of politics better than many dramas. “Hey, kids, would you like to learn how Leslie got your bill passed?” her enemy sneers, threatening to disillusion the kids she hopes to inspire. “Councilman Knope traded my vote for her—” Before he can finish, he gets pushed into that swimming pool, with a tremendous splash. Lobby all you want for change in Washington; maybe what we really need is a dunk tank.

• Curls and the Patriarchy.
• The Republican Party Rape Advisory Chart.
• Infinite Jestice.
• Mourdock, Rape as a Gift from God, and Islamic Shariah.
• On Mourdock’s God’s Gift.
• The Bourgeoisie Had Bushy Beards:

What you don’t see — and only hear speak of briefly, as if in passing — are the millions of workers who had something or other to do with these Great Men and their construction of industrial America. These workers are milling about in History’s 19th century somewhere, but it’s not too clear where, why, or how. As far as The Men Who Built America is concerned, the men and women who did the actual building don’t matter. I guess mangled limbs and Pinkerton clubs don’t make for good TV? (They so do!)

The show’s complete disregard for the actual men who built America makes sense, though, when you think about life in the Second Gilded Age. We don’t have Robber Barons of the First anymore, but we’ve got Job Creators (and even some Wealth Creators). We’ve got about as much inequality. Lord knows our unions are similarly reviled by capital. Last but not least, who could ignore the parallels between that era’s environmental catastrophes and the looming armageddon of our own?

• Speaking in Memes.
• A Finnish Film About A Finnish President – in Swahili with Kenyan Actors.
• The Marketing of Mo Yan.
• Ethnic Cleansing: Colorblind Casting in Cloud Atlas.
• George McGovern and American History.
• Things Obama Says When Famous People Die.
• “This Chamber Reeks of Blood.”
• Paying Taxes to Your Boss: Another Step Toward 21st Century Feudalism:

That could soon be the law of the land in Pennsylvania, where the state legislature has passed a bill that would, asPhiladelphia City Paper blogger Daniel Denvir describes it, “allow companies that hire at least 250 new workers in the state to keep 95-percent of the workers’ withheld income tax.” These workers will essentially be paying their employers for the privilege of having a job. Some have called this “corporate socialism,” but it also calls to mind an even older economic model that was once popular in Europe – except back then, the bosses were called lords. It’s a more modern innovation in the U.S., but combined with increased political pressure from employers and a crackdown on workers’ rights, it all adds up to feudalism, American-style.

The Pennsylvania bill is just the most recent example of state income taxes being turned into employer subsidies. It’s already the law of the land in one form or another in 19 states, and according to Good Jobs First, it’s taking $684 million a year out of the public coffers. The theory is that this will boost job creation. But the authors of the Good Jobs First report note, “payments often go to firms that simply move existing jobs from one state to another, or to ones that threaten to move unless they get paid to stay put.” In other words, it’s more like extortion than stimulus.

• Obama Sign Riddled With Bullet Holes: As Election Nears, Voter Intimidation Increases.
• Stalin’s Favorite Roosevelt.
• The Army as a Concentration Camp.
• A Beluga Whale Mimics Human Speech.
• Skinny Privilege.
• Leisure and Liberal Arts.
• Piracy Trends Off the Coast of Somalia and Nigeria.