As a nation, we’ve already given countless billions of dollars in gifts to the one percent in the form of tax cuts, loopholes and corporate subsidies. If you think that’s not enough, here’s a list of more personal gifts you can buy for your favorite One Percenter.
In the 21st century, even the lowliest One Percenter can surround himself or herself with personal assistants, stylists and specialty chefs. For a truly unique experience, add a personal tanning butler to his or her entourage on a $3000/night booking at the Ritz Carlton. Even the dullest One Percenter will take a shining to this gift. The tanning butler will help apply sunbathing lotion and spritz you with Evian water while you sunbathe.
If your one percent friend is an expecting celeb,
» Read more about: Regifting for the Few Who Have Everything »
Source: Zina Saunders on YouTube
The careful Frying Pan News reader will note we make no claims that the following mots justes were 2012’s stupidest quotes. How could we, in a year exploding with extreme gaffery? How, in fact, could anyone even keep a reasonable tally? Enjoy – and Happy New Year!
1. “I would say to them, ‘Set me free.’ ” (Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, claiming Brooklyn’s African Americans were Dutch slaves in 1898.)
2. “The evidence is inarguable that Australia is becoming too expensive and too uncompetitive to do export-oriented business. Africans want to work, and its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day. Such statistics make me worry for this country’s future.” (Gina Rinehart, the world’s richest woman, addressing the Sydney Mining Club.)
3. “We need a president accustomed to signing the front, not the back, of checks.” (National Review staff’s “689 Reasons to Defeat Barack Obama.”)
4.
» Read more about: It's the Stupidity, Stupid: The Year in Quotes »
This election year yielded a bumper crop of books about economics and politics. Here, in alphabetical order, is a sampling.
1. The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame, Peter Dreier (Nation Books). Meticulously researched profiles of our country’s progressive movers and shakers.
2. Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone Wrong With Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix It, Robert B. Reich (Vintage). Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary explains why our economy is broken – but not beyond repair.
3. Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, Rachel Maddow (Crown). Everyone’s favorite MSNBC commentator looks at how America has become an army in search of a war.
4. The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It,
Please refer the Union Hotel Guide to search for recommended union hotels. Make sure to steer clear of boycotted hotels and you may wish to consider the desirability of staying at hotels that are at risk of dispute (where there are current or looming labor disputes). Be aware that this list only reflects the present status of union hotels across North America. To avoid the prospect of labor conflict during your stay at a hotel, insist on protective contractual language when you make a reservation or organize an event.
Boycott These Properties In the Los Angeles/Orange County Area
Hyatt Hotels
For more information about the Global Boycott of Hyatt, please visit hyatthurts.org
Embassy Suites Irvine
2120 Main Street Irvine, CA 92614
LAX Hilton and Towers
5711 W. Century Blvd Los Angeles, CA
Holiday Inn LAX
9901 South La Cienega Boulevard Los Angeles,
» Read more about: Don't Ring in the New Year at Boycotted Hotels »
(This post first appeared on Union Plus.)
No holiday tradition competes with the family meal. Between desserts decorated full of cheer and marvelous meats that melt in your mouth, ‘tis the season for a full stomach. Luckily for union members, members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) and the United Farm Workers (UFW) have an amazing variety of ingredients such as Hershey’s chocolate and Montpelier Almonds to create the most delicious and view-licious recipes. Here are five fun holiday dessert recipes to help you be union, buy union and bake union.
Rolo Pretzel Delights (Thank the UFCW members for Rolo)
Ingredients: Small pretzels, ROLO Chewy Caramels in Milk Chocolate, Pecan halves
Directions:
Labor 411’s Test Kitchen is just in time for the holidays! We’re sharing a recipe for Homemade Eggnog, which is THE traditional holiday beverage. We’ve got a recipe to make it using all union-made ingredients – and you’ll find the union brands listed next to each item. This quintessential holiday beverage is perfect to share with your friends and family.
Be forewarned: This recipe contains a little bit of alcohol. Do not consume alcohol if you are underage.
Eggnog Ingredients
6 eggs (separated) – Alta Dena, Horizon
3/4 cup sugar – Domino Sugar, Sugar in the Raw
1 pint heavy cream – Alta Dena, Horizon
1-1/2 (1.5) quarts milk – Alta Dena, Horizon
(or 1 quart milk + 2 cups whiskey) – we suggest Knob Creek
½ cup rum – Bacardi
Directions
Beat egg whites until fluffy,
A few years ago, I was pulled over by the police. I’d reported my car stolen some months earlier and they’d never taken that report out of the system after I’d gotten it back. It was a minor error on their part, but it resulted in a fairly scary moment.
I pulled into a parking lot and noticed a police car behind me, lights on. The officer told me to put my hands out of the car, and open the car from the outside, like on television. When I got out, his gun was pointed at me, and I was handcuffed and placed in the backseat of his car. A few minutes later, he brought me my three-year-old son.
My son, understandably, was terrified, and though the officers cleared up the mistake in a few minutes and bought him a toy (a miniature police car) at the toy store we were going to,
» Read more about: L.A. Schools: Under the Gunman's Shadow »
Mother Jones has unearthed another video in what might be called the One Percent Behaving Badly genre. While not as awesome as the magazine’s previous discovery of footage of Mitt Romney bad-mouthing the half of America who are shiftless parasites, this one will nevertheless fill you with holiday cheer. It shows AIG honcho and white rapper Robert Gifford at a company party in New York, flowing freestyle about his street cred — Wall Street cred, that is. AIG, of course, was the recipient of more than $182 billion of government bailout money in 2008.
Sample lyric, sung to Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind:”
Concrete jungle where attitude reigns supreme
There’s nothin’ you can’t do
Now you’re in GRE (GRE!)
Big write offs will inspire you
Preparing business cases will make you feel brand new
» Read more about: Yo Yo Yo! AIG's Definitely in the House! »
Over the past year we’ve written quite a bit about the business of sports, and unfortunately, lockouts in the National Football League (NFL) and National Basketball Association (NBA) have given us quite a bit to discuss. We haven’t said much about things going on in the National Hockey League (NHL), perhaps because the script has come to seem so familiar, and there seemed little doubt that after some fireworks, things would finally result in a an unsatisfying deal that got everyone back on the ice a bit late, but in time for a meaningful season. Now it’s December, and they still ain’t playing.
Hockey’s labor history is a sorry one, as the league’s union was run for decades by a shill for the owners who stole money and helped the bosses keep the players in poverty well past the point you’d think that’d be true. In the ’90s, however, players started to make real money,
» Read more about: Hockey League Turmoil: Gary Bettman’s Ruler »
Here’s an arresting little statistic: Americans could create 200,000 jobs if we spent $64 out of the $700 that we will average for gifts this holiday season on American-made products. This fact comes from our friends at Labor 411, the group that puts together lists of union-made goods and services – everything from apparel to pet food to board games. And, just so you don’t think you’d have to stock up on $64 worth of Crayola Crayons to help create those 200,000 jobs, Labor 411 has put together a holiday shopping list that highlights a range of items, produced with union labor, including:
Check the list above for a complete inventory!
» Read more about: Buy Union-Made Gifts This Holiday Season »
The magic of El Sistema, Venezuela’s program of taking impoverished kids and teaching them classical music, can be summed up in one sentence uttered by its founder, Dr. Jose Abreu: “If you put a musical instrument in the hand of a kid, he or she will not pick up a gun.” It is somewhat of a miracle, although it is an old idea. The creative impulse (which resides in everyone) can act as a curandero, or healer, to re-imagine dead-end paths down which poor children are headed, and find new roads that are limitless. America is slow to realize this. With weak economic times, we always cut funding for the arts, when that is a time to increase fields that foster new imagination, new ways of thinking. Holding on to our narrow vision that South America stole our name, we know something is happening south of the border,
» Read more about: John Densmore on the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra »
In the next decade, America will be transformed by a new wave of progressive activism, led primarily by organizers, thinkers, and politicians born after 1960. It is already bubbling below the surface, in workplaces, neighborhoods, churches, college campuses, think tanks, and foundation offices. Many of these young progressives have already waged successful campaigns to win public office, change public policy, and inject new ideas into our political culture.
There is no simple formula for successful social movements, but they all share a few characteristics. First, they embrace an “inside/outside” strategy, mobilizing people to protest, boycott, lobby, and vote, while simultaneously working closely with allies in government. Second, they don’t expect to bring about change overnight. They are long-distance runners, not sprinters. They try to win stepping-stone victories that lay the groundwork for further reforms. Third, while they work on separate issues, they recognize that they are part of a broader movement that requires building coalitions and developing trust.
» Read more about: Young & Restless: 50 Activists Who Are Changing America »
With the rejection of Mitt Romney’s economic vision, wherein the invisible hand of the free market guides us to prosperity (at least those not in the lazy 47 percent), progressives are now on the spot to offer up a compelling alternative.
Using animation and the vocal talents of Ed Asner, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) jumps into the ring with the short video “It’s in Our Hands.” This is no ten-point plan, but instead a conceptual piece whose primary assertion is that we start to take the idea of democracy much more seriously when it comes to the economic order of things.
What if we could shape the U.S. economy to reflect the values and interests of most Americans? LAANE, which has had some success in doing just that, maintains that we can — and must.
» Read more about: Building a New Economy Video With Ed Asner »
While he was alive, the baseball establishment five times rejected Marvin Miller, who freed players from indentured servitude, from its Hall of Fame. The Major League Baseball Players Association, which Miller headed from 1966 to 1983, sat on its hands, failing to raise a stink about this outrageous miscarriage of justice.
Miller, who died on Tuesday at 95, was never bitter about his exclusion from the Cooperstown shrine. As a staunch unionist, he knew which side he was on and understood that the baseball owners and executives who control the Hall of Fame would rig the rules to keep him out. The baseball moguls have always viewed their teams as personal fiefdoms and are among the most ferociously anti-union crowd around.
But what’s appalling is the timidity of the Players Association to mount a campaign on Miller’s behalf. Over the years, many Hall of Fame players—including Tom Seaver,
» Read more about: Marvin Miller: Locked Out of Baseball's Hall of Fame »
» Read more about: Riot Acts: Lalo Alcaraz on LA's "Progress" »
There’s an almost childlike thrill one feels watching the early moments of Gatz, the six-hour re-enactment of The Great Gatsby that opened last night at Redcat and which runs through December 9. It comes from listening to an ensemble of committed actors perform every word of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel as though we were being read a fairy tale by our parents. In a way, Fitzgerald’s story about a mysterious man (or is he an ogre?) who lives in a Long Island castle and who pines for a young woman in marital distress is a modern fairy tale. It’s also a Jazz Age fable about soul-destroying materialism, class snobbery and feelings of racial entitlement – which means it also has something for everyone in 21st-century America.
This visiting production, staged by New York’s Elevator Repair Service theater company, has been around in its present form for six years.
» Read more about: “Gatz”: A Modern Fairy Tale From Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age Classic »
Few figures in the music industry have had as colorful or as influential a career as Danny Goldberg. The one-time manager of superstars Nirvana, Sonic Youth and Bonnie Raitt, Goldberg parlayed his knowledge of rock and roll into positions of power, serving as CEO of Warner Bros. Records and president of Atlantic Records.
Goldberg’s accomplishments in the entertainment industry are only a part of the story. He has been a forceful voice within progressive politics for more than three decades, beginning with No Nukes, the 1980 documentary featuring Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and other legends that he co-produced and co-directed. As chair of the ACLU in Southern California, Goldberg was a very visible national defender of civil liberties, clashing with Tipper Gore over attempts to censor rock lyrics. He is a prolific writer, with hundreds of articles and several books to his credit (including his acclaimed industry memoir,
» Read more about: Danny Goldberg on Labor’s Message Gap and the Art of Politics »
For a list of today’s Walmart protest actions, see our Guide to Black Friday Strikes.