Showing my true Mental Age

Cindy Sheehan was arrested… ho hum — except the amusing part is the Texas Dept. of Public Safety’s spokesperson’s name is Tela Mange. Immediately strikes me as looking like an anagram for something… hmm, she may or may not be an Elegant Ma or contain Angel Meat… and I’m missing whatever symbolism there might be in an Enamel Tag… but one thing’s for sure: wasting resources going after the likes of Cindy Sheehan makes her a pretty Lame Agent.

Blue Lipstick on a White Collar?

Celinda Lake and Jim Grossfeld in The American Prospect discuss the opportunities they see for the the Democratic Party to talk about unions with white collar workers.  It’s a pretty fascinating read.  In discussing preconceptions about unions, they find:

It is not that white collar workers share the right wing’s obsession with unions as a demonic force in American life. In truth, most don’t think very much about unions at all. However, when they do, many will typically say that unions are obsolete: eight-track tapes in an I-Pod economy. As one Northern Virginia man told us: “They’ve divided everybody. You’ve got employees against management and really, to make it work, you’ve got to have everybody on the same team.” Agreeing with him, another man added that unions “haven’t evolved to really what they could do … facilitate solutions … start facilitating instead of talking about these class troubles.”

They go on to explain the challenges to unionizing such a workforce:

Attitudes like these are routinely exploited by employers to thwart union organizing drives. They understand that better educated white collar workers are more likely than others to recoil from the prospect of conflict with management. Even when faced with downsizing, white collar workers are often sympathetic to employers they believe to be up against economic forces beyond their control. And solving problems on the job and advancing their careers? They would rather do it themselves. They want the tools to reach their goals, but they do not consider themselves victims and they do not believe they need to be “helped.”

All that said, they conclude that white collar workers can be won over, because of the various economic pressures they face — intrigued by the idea of “new unions,” citing examples of union successes training employees for careers at Verizon, and the Professional and Technical Engineers union negotiating for workers to telecommute to their jobs at Boeing.   Among the more interesting findings to me is that the Writers Guild has helped provide employer-paid pensions to freelance writers. 

It’s worth checking out.  After all, as Senator-elect Jim Webb says, “Everybody needs and agent.”  And if Virginia of all places can elect a senator who thinks that (and more importantly, says that), maybe there’s hope for unions after all.  Whaddya think?

People’s Censure?

Everybody’s heard what Virgil Goode has to say by now…

For example, one article’s here.

…said Thursday that he will not retract a letter warning that unless immigration is tightened, “many more Muslims will be elected”…

…“I wish more people would take a stand and stand up for the principles on which this country was founded.”…

…Goode also told Fox News he wants to limit legal immigration and do away with “diversity visas,” which he said let in people “not from European countries”…

Question: Should we, the citizens of the nation, start censuring the districts that elect politicians like this, who clearly have a perverse, dare I say un-American, idea of “the principles on which this country was founded”? Some way of popularly voting that “We, the people, are really pissed off that you’d elect a jackass like this”? Or, would that possibly backfire and make his constituency defiant? Or is it just a dumb idea?

Who thinks the “new strategy” will be a new strategy?

Story: Bush defies commanders by bolstering troops

So we’re going to “temporarily” increase the number of troops. As if Bush ever would say that troops are going there permanently. Read: They’re just as “temporary” as all the other troops; so as long as Bush thinks they need to stay, they’ll stay.

Does anyone actually think that there’ll actually be any new strategy in the “new strategy”? We had 10 pretty smart people write a pretty extensive report, which everyone seems pretty lukewarm on — but in any case, we know it’s getting completely ignored. And, we know the generals are getting ignored too.

Is there any hope that whatever “strategy” is announced in early 2007 will be the result of any intelligent thinking?

DMCA Reform

I think there’s an insidious side effect of making Internet music legal: too many people seem to think that giving someone a mix CD, or sending a friend one or two copyrighted MP3s, are technically “stealing” music. (But they’re not worried they’ll ever get caught for it, because the RIAA has bigger fish to fry, which is true.)

At the very least, there are good arguments that sharing limited amounts of music with people you know is totally legal, and I’d say those arguments are right. And today I was just reading more about the proposed Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act, which seems like a good way to codify users’ existing rights, and reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Check out a petition supporting the DMCRA here.

Canyonero…

http://www.platewire.com

Saw this on CNN — report the license plates of the horrible, dangerous drivers you come across.

I haven’t reported anyone yet, but I think I like this concept more for the fact that I can feel like I’m doing something, and therefore relieve some frustration — rather than thinking this site will actually have much impact.

I Got Odds

If the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination was a horserace, here’s how I’d handicap it at the moment. (BTW: For prediction/discussion purposes only… I don’t actually endorse betting on this )

Hillary Clinton    3:1
John Kerry         5:1
Al Gore            9:1
Barack Obama       9:1
Evan Bayh         13:1
John Edwards      13:1
Wesley Clark      15:1
Tom Vilsack       19:1
Bill Richardson   19:1
Joe Biden         30:1
field             30:1
Christopher Dodd  40:1
Mike Gravel       80:1
Dennis Kucinich   80:1
Al Sharpton       80:1
Lyndon LaRouche  320:1

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