North Coast Cafe

Busted! Bush's Phony Baloney

Ya gotta wonder just how stupid this bunch of misfits and outlaws in the White House think we are.

At this morning's White House briefing  Scott McClellan was asked whether the teleconference the president had with troops in Iraq was "scripted".

QUESTION: How were they selected, and are their comments to the president pre-screened, any questions or anything...

MCCLELLAN:  No.

QUESTION:   Not at all?

MCCLELLAN:  This is a back-and-forth.

But, it turns out the audio left open for half-an-hour before the beginning of the teleconference, during the set up and rehearsal told a different story as NPR reported.  Scroll down to "hear the rehearsal. It's a hoot.

And, here's the report from the news  pool reporter:   

The soldiers, nine U.S. men and one U.S. woman, plus an Iraqi, had been tipped off in advance about the questions in the highly scripted event. Allison Barber, deputy assistant to the Secretary of Defense for internal communication, could be heard asking one soldier before the start of the event, "Who are we going to give that [question] to?"

 

New Bush Approval Rating

According to a new (Oct. 10) NBC poll, two percent of African Americans approve of the job George Dubya is doing as president.

That 2, II, dos % approval !   An all time record according to NBC.

Matthew Shepard

It was seven years ago today, October 12 that Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten, tied to a wooden fence and left to die.  Because he was gay. 
His mother has left this poignant message on the Matthew Shepard Foundation website.

I am reminded of the hate crime that led to Matthew's violent death whenever I read about the hangings of gay youth in Iran.

Hate crime, including anti-gay violence knows no boundaries.

Capote

I'm eager to see the new film Capote starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, not so much because I'm interested in that puffy self-satisfied egoist Truman Capote who seemed to regularly embarrass himself on  TV talk shows in the drug-rattled later years of his life, (he died of an overdose in 1984, age 59), but because Hoffman is said to so exactly capture Capote's mannerisms, affectations and speech patterns that he is likely to be nominated and perhaps win Oscar this time out after having given so many bravera performances in previous films.

I'm likely to actually go to a movie theater to see this film rather than wait for the DVD which is my usual habit, because I've recently re-read In Cold Blood Capote's magnum opus said to have innovated the literary non-fiction genre. Capote was widely and rightfully celebrated for this ground-breaking book, but of the many literary non-fiction writers practicing today I'd place Capote low on the list, preferring instead, John McPhee, Tracy Kidder, Richard Rhodes, et al. whose work as literary journalists I believe is more distinguished in the George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London tradition. Still, In Cold Blood, masterly bit of writing, in a style that was cutting edge when it was published in 1965.  Like other literary non-fiction since, it first appeared in four installments in the New Yorker.

In her review of the movie in Slate Daphne Merkin acknowledges the movie's success in capturing the process of writing with which I am familiar, and interested.

Capote enables us to grasp, more than any movie on the subject I have seen, what it is exactly that a writer does when he or she writes, how observation leads to perception leads to the crafting of sentences. In so doing, it gets far closer to the complicated, elusive heart of this strange calling—the way it is both an explicitly private but implicitly public act, a means of rendezvousing with the self but also of showcasing the self—than any cinematic depiction until now.

So, there you have it. Three good reasons to get out and see this movie as soon as it is widely released and comes to a theater near-by.  But I know I'm going to be annoyed by all those commercials and previews.

 

 

The Politics of Food

A friend has been quoted in a local newspaper about her attitude toward the US practice of tipping.  Like it or not low wage earners are dependent on tips to make ends meet, and businesses that traditionally allow or encourage tipping are relieved of the burden of paying a living wage.  At the same time, consumers  presumably enjoy lower prices even if they end up paying more at the back end in tips.

My friend expressed her concern that while wait staff may increase income by getting tips, agriculture workers suffer from low wages,  few if any benefits,  zero job security and terrible work conditions.  It was only in the recent past migrant farm laborers on the North Coast were given access to drinking water while working in the fields.   And, it took a court case to force the legislature to amend farm labor laws to get that.  Porta-potties followed.

Part of the problem of the economics of American agriculture is  farm subsidies, a complex  labyrinth of corporate welfare benefits paid to farmers. The subsidies are  so politically prescious, so sacrosanct on the North Coast that even questioning the huge dollars paid  to farm corporations can get a candidate for public office defeated or lead to a feed store knock down.

The farm subsidy program, which was created during the depression to help small family farms, has morphed into $11 billion a year in government payments to large-scale commercial farms nationwide. Only about $4 billion actually makes it to those small family farmers today.  And, the average small-family farmer has an annual income of about $65,000.  (Source)

Still, while apple farmers are paid handsomely when an ice storm or heavy winds ruin the crop ($29 million '95-'03 on the North Coast) not a penny of that money goes to the migrant workers whose income was also lost.

The worker who picked and packed the North Coast apples  likely made around $7,500-the average annual salary for migrant farmworkers in this country.

In New York and in the majority of US states, the worker who picks and packs our food  does not have basic labor rights. Farmworkers do not enjoy the right to overtime pay, a day of rest, unemployment or disability insurance or health insurance.  More importantly, collective bargaining laws do not cover farmworkers in New York, they cannot organize to improve their lot.  It took an act of the state legislature to get them drinking water and portable johns in the fields.

A farmer can expect to be paid if his crop is lost, or he can be paid not to plant a crop at all.  But the farm laborer whose children need to eat through the winter is likely to be ridiculed in the press and drummed out of town for fear he might stick around and attempt to collect public assistance or food stamps.  On the North Coast the INS always conducts their farm commnity raids in October, after the harvest. 

When it comes to food (like gasoline)  Americans are spoiled.  The percentage of income Americans spend on food has dropped by 50 percent since the early 1900s. Statistics for the year 2000 show that Americans are spending 10.6 percent of their disposable income on all food consumed both at home and away from home.

This figure has dropped dramatically over the years, from a high of 25.3 percent in 1933, 20.5 percent in 1950, and 15.1 percent in 1965.

Consumers in the United States spend less of their income on food than in other countries.

International statistics show huge disparities. The U.S. percentage stands at 6.4 percent, while the next lowest figures come from consumers in the United Kingdom (10.2%), Canada (10.4%), the Netherlands (10.5%), and New Zealand (10.9%). Consumers in neighboring Mexico spend nearly a quarter (24.0%) of their income on food at home, while those in India (48.4%) and the Philippines (52.9%) spend nearly half.

 

Only 7 days to Leaf Day 2005.  Ready to party?

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