U.S. Olympic team uniforms made in China

Posted on July 12, 2012 by oddmanout215

How fitting — so to speak:

When the United States Olympic Team enters the Games’ opening ceremony at Olympic Stadium in London, it will be outfitted in official uniforms designed by Ralph Lauren. And though the 530 men and women who make up the team are the best athletes the country has to offer, the same cannot be said for the uniforms they’ll be wearing.

That’s because Ralph Lauren manufactured each piece of the uniform, from the unique hat to the designer jacket to the shoes, in China…

The U.S. Olympic Committee didn’t exactly have an explanation for why its uniforms were made in China. “The U.S. Olympic team is privately funded and we’re grateful for the support of our sponsors,” the committee told ABC News. “We’re proud of our partnership with Ralph Lauren, an iconic American company.”

Yes indeed-y, the committee has many reasons to be proud, starting with the fact that, as ThinkProgress put it:

Outsourcing practices like those used by companies like Ralph Lauren have resulted in the loss of 2.8 million jobs to China since 2001, and the apparel and accessories and textile industries were among the hardest hit. China is notorious for its lack of labor standards — its workers often toil for long hours for low pay in horrendous working conditions. But even with American workers struggling to regain a foothold after millions of jobs were lost in the Great Recession, Ralph Lauren and the U.S. Olympic Team think its more important to make more money than make their products in the United States.

Footnote: Check out the photo on the ThinkProgress link. Not only is Ralph Lauren a high-achieving hustler — and, arguably, a traitor — but his uniforms make American Olympic team members look more like bellhops than athletes.

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Moyers: ‘You can only push your subjects so far’

Posted on July 12, 2012 by oddmanout215

Earlier this week, Mitt Romney and his handlers flaunted the Republican Party’s contempt for the 99 percent by holding several fund-raisers in the Hamptons, one of them at the estate of billionaire right-wing activist David Koch. This classic “let them eat cake” event indicated the GOP is literally banking on the belief that the poor and near-poor will be awed into voting for the very people who continue to exploit them.

I couldn’t help but wonder, as usual, at what point Americans will realize these arrogant would-be aristocrats, with plenty of help from our elected officials and the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, have made a sick joke of democracy by and for the people.

Mild-mannered, compassionate Bill Moyers wondered the same thing. How much blatant celebration of the widening gap between rich and poor is too much for average Americans to stomach? He thinks we might be at the tipping point:

… Three things don’t go together: Money. Secrecy. Democracy. And that’s the nub of the matter. This is all a sham for invalidating democracy in the name of democracy. It’s the trick authoritarians always use to hide their real intention – in this case absolute power over our public life and institutions: the privatization of everything. The Supreme Court is pointing the way. Instead of mitigating the worst excesses of both the state and the private sector, the Court has taken sides. Saying to the massed wealth of the one percent: America is yours for the taking, for the buying.

That’s what George III thought, too. Which brings us back to our celebration of the 4th of July, to the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson, who seems to have thought that a little uprising now and then would be good for what ails us. This time the overweening power is not the monarchy but plutocracy, the convergence of the political, religious and corporate right that would keep us in the dark about where all that money is coming from, and who it’s buying, until one day we wake up and our country is no longer our own… So remember, moneyed lords and ladies, what King George learned the hard way – you can only push your subjects so far.

I’m not as optimistic as Moyers that Americans are capable of the sort of uprising Jefferson advocated, but I think the GOP’s campaign strategy regarding Romney — i.e., we’re pigs and proud of it — will backfire, if only because people don’t like to have their noses rubbed in their own stupidity.

Footnote: This is a few days early, but Happy Bastille Day, America.

Posted in campaign finance reform, Great Recession, history, Mitt Romney, Occupy Wall Street, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Happy trails, Lonesome Rhodes

Posted on July 7, 2012 by oddmanout215

Andy Samuel Griffith (June 1, 1926 – July 3, 2012)

Before Andy Griffith became the famously easy-going Sheriff Andy on TV, he shocked movie critics with his amusingly brutal portrayal of Lonesome Rhodes, the hick troubadour who ended up aspiring to be a right-wing power broker in Elia Kazan’s classic A Face In the Crowd (1957). This was a long time before Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other right-wing media con men became real-life power brokers.

Griffith’s over-the-top antics were neatly counterbalanced by the understated performance of Patricia Neal, as a radio talent scout bowled over (for a while) by the sexy beast she helped create.

Footnote: In Sept. 2010, the Odd Man argued that Keith Olbermann — the former MSNBC host and the only prime-timer on that network with an independent streak — was overestimating Beck’s significance by comparing him to the force of nature played by Griffith. At this point, it seems a safe bet that A Face In the Crowd will be analyzed and enjoyed long after the noxious but wimpy Beck has been forgotten.

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Barbecued mystery meat, compliments of WTO

Posted on July 5, 2012 by oddmanout215

I hope you had a delicious Fourth of July. As noted in Public Citizen, “your holiday meat could be much more mysterious” next year:

If you’re looking forward to grilling up some hamburgers and hot dogs, think about this: Where does the food you’re eating come from?

That simple question is going to be a lot harder to answer after a ruling from the World Trade Organization (WTO), which decreed last week that such basic consumer information as country-of-origin labels on meat are “unfair trade barriers” to multinational corporate profits…

… It’s the third consecutive WTO attack on a popular U.S. consumer protection or information policy to go down this year. (See the attacks on dolphin-safe labels and cancer prevention through cigarette controls.)

And there was this today from a Public Citizen online petition protesting U.S. trade policy and, in particular, the Obama administration’s handling of the super-secret Trans-Pacific Partnership, which some people are calling NAFTA East:

The recent WTO ruling is not merely advisory. Unlike other international institutions, the WTO packs a punch. The United States will have to abandon some hard-won labeling rules or pay to maintain them in the form of fines or sanctions.

Two decades ago, when the WTO and NAFTA were being forced on us, Public Citizen warned that this day would come.

We said — over and over — that these agreements had little to do with trade as conventionally understood, and everything to do with making giant corporations even more powerful. We said corporations would use the agreements to block important consumer, environmental and worker protections.

Now, we’re past the point of prediction. It’s reality.

You might think the U.S. government would be working to cure this problem and certainly not to make it worse. But if you thought that, you’d be wrong.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being negotiated in secret. We know some of what is being negotiated because of leaks. But while 600 corporate advisers are permitted to see the draft text and the U.S. negotiating proposals, the public is locked out.

Footnote: The Yes Men video is a few weeks old, but it’s still funny.

Posted in food, globalization | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Defacing is for fascists

Posted on July 4, 2012 by oddmanout215

From the July 2 Philly.com:

A vandal lobbed black paint at a mural of former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo in the Italian Market over the weekend and sprayed “fascista” in red beneath him.

Police said they received a report on Saturday that the mural at 9th and Montrose streets had been hit and are investigating the incident. A large black splotch of paint hit directly over Rizzo’s right eye, and paint splattered along the parking lot that the mural faces. On Sunday afternoon, the occasional passer-by stopped to take a picture of the defaced former mayor and police commissioner.

Rizzo was a fascist and I’m glad he’s long gone, but I can’t warm up to the barbarism of trashing public art. And would the rad guy who threw the paint, maybe after a few beers at The Dive, have the balls to face off against a live cop? Not likely.

I know the woman who painted the mural, a liberal academic and a good person. Apparently, the vandal(s) didn’t get the irony of the artist’s fascist-style depiction of Big Frank. He didn’t understand that the mural spoofs everything Rizzo stood for while, at the same time, pleasing the sort of people who admire fascists and other totalitarians. It is neatly subversive. The vandal is more of a totalitarian than Rizzo, another irony that he is too stupid to appreciate.

Posted in arts, life in the big city, Philadelphia, Politics | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Shopping at Urban Outfitters — how ironic

Posted on June 29, 2012 by oddmanout215

Never underestimate the apathy, ignorance or sheer stupidity of young American consumers, especially the “hip” ones:

…There are a few reasonable explanations for why the Urban Outfitters Romney tees exist, actually. For one thing, Urban Outfitters (which also owns Anthropologie and Free People) is owned by a far-right conservative, Richard Hayne. All that youthful, vaguely hippie-feeling merchandise in his stores? That’s just a way to make some dough – dough that Hayne, in turn, gives to right-wing politicians like Rick Santorum. For Hayne, the young people and lefties who shop in his stores are just chumps to whom he can sell $69 peace-sign tank tops while supporting conservative politics.


Now the company is selling shirts that represent Hayne’s political perspective while appealing to hipsters’ penchant for irony, with slogans like “Mitt Is the Shit” and “2 Legit 2 Mitt.” Ironic conservatism: hilarious(ly stupid)! As Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams put it:

What’s revolting about the latest Urban Outfitters gambit is its sneaky ploy of making conservatism seem so uncool it’s cool, all funny and retro and Kelly Kapowski. Which, in turn, is how some doofus winds up using his chest as free advertising for a candidate he’d otherwise never in a million years vote for…

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Can the other senators hear Sanders?

Posted on June 28, 2012 by oddmanout215

I often wonder how Bernie Sanders’ fellow senators are reacting when he’s on the floor, warning us for the umpteenth time that super-wealthy right-wingers, with much help from the Supreme Court, are snuffing out what’s left of our democracy. Maybe they’re too busy conferring with lobbyists to hear the guy. Or they take long bathroom breaks when he gets up to speak. Or simply turn down their hearing aids:

“… So we have people like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson. The Koch Brothers are worth $50 billion. That’s what they’re worth. And, they have said they’re prepared to put $400 million into this campaign to defeat Obama, to defeat candidates who are representing working families. Sheldon Adelson says he’s only worth $20 billion. He’s kind of a pauper. But he’s willing to spend what it takes to buy the government…”

Adelson’s hubris is breathtaking. As a recent New York Times editorial noted, the ugly little greedhound’s ideological fervor is a smokescreen:

Mr. Adelson… rails against the president’s “socialist-style economy” and redistribution of wealth, but what he really fears is Mr. Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on companies like his that make a huge amount of money overseas. Ninety percent of the earnings of his company, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, come from hotel and casino properties in Singapore and Macau. (The latter is located, by the way, in China, a socialist country the last time we checked.)

Because of the lower tax rate in those countries (currently zero in Macau), the company now has a United States corporate tax rate of 9.8 percent, compared with the statutory rate of 35 percent. President Obama has repeatedly proposed ending the deductions and credits that allow corporations like Las Vegas Sands to shelter billions in income overseas, but has been blocked by Republicans.

Posted in campaign finance reform, Congress, mainstream media, taxes | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Jong on Arianna’s ‘special place in hell’

Posted on June 27, 2012 by oddmanout215

Author and “zipless fuck” pioneer Erica Jong is seventy years old now, and her brand of feminism looks a bit naive in perspective, but it’s nice to read her priorities are still in good order. Here she is calling out the greedy, ideological shapeshifter Arianna Huffington for refusing to pay all those writers who helped make her online publication such a lucrative venture:

The idea that everybody’s writing for free is hurting writing as a profession. I wrote many articles for Arianna when she was establishing her aggregator blog and attracting all those eyeballs.

When she got $300m from the AOL acquisition, I said, ‘OK, Arianna, we all helped you get there so now you’re going to pay writers.’ She said, ‘No, I pay my editors.’ I’ve known Arianna for years…

I knew her when she was anti-feminist. I knew her when she was right wing. I knew her when she turned left wing. We promoted our first books together in the UK a million years ago… I admire her energy. She can be very interesting and she’s very clever.

But ‘there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women,’ as Madeleine Albright once said. Artists who turncoat and exploit other artists — I have no words.

Arianna ditched the writers soon enough. That hurts… Now authors are blogging everywhere for free, and it’s not a good development. They are starving.

I care about artists — the oxygen of society. Suppress them and you asphyxiate discussion and change. Arianna was a writer once… She forgot her origins… We need to be paid! We cannot barter poems for food…

Clarification: I never gave Huffington any freebies and I’m not posting this because of a personal grudge. I just think it’s important for writers to call out con artists whenever their names come up.

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Sorkin channels Howard Beale in ‘The Newsroom’

Posted on June 26, 2012 by oddmanout215

Jeff Daniels is, at least for one scene, the mad prophet of the digital age in the debut of “The Newsroom.”

Here’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, an Atlantic editor and blogger, quoting from Aaron Sorkin’s “deeply unpleasant, condescending and sexist” interview with the Globe and Mail:

“I think I would have done very well, as a writer, in the forties,” [Sorkin] says. “I think the last time America was a great country was then, or not long after. It was before Vietnam, before Watergate.”

Coates thought Sorkin, in the interview, was insensitive to victims of segregation and “gender repression” back in the ’40s. He scolded Sorkin for extolling a great era that never really existed, and for expressing “attendant notions that the internet [has] ruined everything.”

What a crock. In the interview, Sorkin betrayed an unfortunate nostalgic streak and apparent insecurities about the quality of his work. But I’m still trying to figure out what it is about him and his new HBO show, The Newsroom, that so deeply offended Coates and the many non-fans of Sorkin who posted comments on Coates’ site.

Coates ignored the brilliance of the show’s initial rant about America’s steep decline, delivered by Jeff Daniels, playing (at least in this scene) a latter-day Howard Beale:

…We’re seventh in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, No. 4 in labor force, and No. 4 in exports…. America leads the world in only three categories: Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending…

Does it really matter that Sorkin glosses over what was bad about previous eras, that he is old-fashioned in some respects, an asshole sometimes? That he is skeptical about some current uses of the internet?

Decades ago, who but Howard Beale would have imagined that the Supreme Court, with something called the Citizens United decision, would all but eliminate government by the people? That labor unions would be close to extinct by 2012 and the gap between rich and poor at an all-time high? That America would elect a Democratic president willing to compromise with those who would dismantle Social Security, and hang out with the CEOs who have off-shored millions of American jobs?

Yes, some overtly racist and sexist laws were overturned in mid-twentieth century America. However, at almost the same time this was happening, reactionaries were developing a blueprint for a country that would in some ways be even more inequitable than America under the old laws. That’s fact, not nostalgia.

And yet Coates, in putting down Sorkin, doesn’t even acknowledge that America took a turn for the worse in the late twentieth century, away from the ideals codified in New Deal legislation and toward the dog-eat-dog world of Birchers and Ayn Rand acolytes.

It’s a big mistake to forget that collective ignorance is a force than fluctuates throughout history, and that most Americans in our era seem to be profoundly ignorant of the rights and protections fought for and won by their grandparents and great-grandparents.

Question for Coates: Are we really talking social progress if more and more Americans, regardless of race and sex, are reduced to living like serfs, and the mainstream media all but ignores this fact?

Give Sorkin credit, if only for stating the obvious with energy and eloquence.

Footnote: After the initial scene, The Newsroom‘s first episode became more like Broadcast News than like Network, but that’s not a putdown. It should be fun to see whether the show turns out to be truly bold.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, mainstream media, Obama, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Rich Greeks feel fine

Posted on June 15, 2012 by oddmanout215

From Guardian UK:

…Since the outbreak of Greece’s runaway debt crisis, its moneyed class has been notable more by its absence than presence. Oligarchs, who made vast fortunes cornering the oil, gas, construction and banking industries, as well as the media, have been eerily silent – often going out of their way to be as low a profile as possible.

Greek shipowners, who have gained from their profits being tax-free and who control at least 15% of the world’s merchant freight, have also remained low-key. With their wealth offshore and highly secretive, the estimated 900 families who run the sector have the largest fleet in the world. As Athens’ biggest foreign currency earner after tourism, the industry remitted more than $175bn (£112bn) to the country in untaxed earnings over the past decade. Greece’s debt currently stands at €280bn.

As ordinary Greeks have been thrown into ever greater poverty by wage and pension cuts and a seemingly endless array of new and higher taxes, their wealthy compatriots have been busy either whisking their money out of Greece or snapping up prime real estate abroad…

Posted in apocalypse, economic collapse, pop music, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment