The Pencil just got a hot tip that a certain very well-respected Indiana University professor is writing a comprehensive article on the Bloomingfoods/union dust-up for an upcoming edition of The Ryder magazine.
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Until it comes out, though, you can’t do much better than to keep monitoring Nancy Hiller’s Facebook page. Her posts on the situ. are must-reads.
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Here’s some alleged inside dope about the air that Bloomingfoods workers breathe. I caution you to take it with a grain of salt. It’s one person’s observation. I’ll continue canvassing other insiders at the five-store co-op, some of whose employees are making union noises these days.
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Acc’d’g to this B-foods employee — let’s call him Joe Doe — morale at the stores has been sinking for a good long time. There are several reasons for this:
Again, this is one Bloomingfoods worker’s testimony. If there’s any truth to it, though, it would indicate the co-op just might be suffering through a mid-life crisis. Most companies go through it. Brilliant, ambitious, visionary entrepreneurs start businesses that take off like rockets. For years these operations are model wealth generators, their set-ups sleek and enviable. After a couple of decades of robust growth, the ideas that put these cos. ahead of the pack have been co-opted by everybody else in the industry. Those one-time visionaries eventually find themselves incapable or unwilling to adopt newer ideas in their fields. They’ve become hidebound and cocksure.
Hell, even Apple kicked Steve Jobs out the door at one point. Every company needs a shake-out at the top at some point in time.
Is this Bloomingfoods’ time?
Maybe, maybe not. Stayed tuned here for more testimony from insiders who may or may not buy into this theory.
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And now a new flood of crazy has begun. This time the topic is ebola.
You had to figure that would happen, no? First, batshit paranoia emanated from the cakehole of that deep thinker, Phyllis Schlafly (who, unaccountably, is still alive and being interviewed). Schlafly sez Prez Obama, natch, not only is responsible for ebola coming into this holy land, he wants it here. The reason? So’s we can become just like the rest of the planet’s cool kids.
He wants us to be just like everybody else, and if Africa is suffering from Ebola, we ought to join the group and be suffering from it, too.
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So says the woman whose greatest accomplishment in life was to lead the battle against the passage of an amendment to the US Constitution that would guarantee civil rights for half its citizens. Thanks, Phyll.
Anyway, pop star, noted domestic abuser, and serial violent tantrum-thrower Chris Brown has now weighed in on the greatest threat to America since the last one. He tweeted yesterday:
I don’t know … But I think this Ebola epidemic is a form of population control. … getting crazy bruh.
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Laugh if you want, but his tweet contains an unassailable truth: he doesn’t know.
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Scads o’thanks to writer David Brent Johnson and publisher Malcolm Abrams for the neat profile of this scribe in the October/November edition of Bloom magazine.
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Somehow, Johnson succeeded in catching the gist of The Pencil and me in only 400 words. That’s writing, babies. And Abrams had the good sense to recognize that the founder of this communications colossus must be immortalized in his mag.
Honestly, boys, I appreciate it. Now, let’s see some good Bloom ink translate into a gazillion page views here!
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Wood czarina Nancy R. Hiller gets itchy just thinking about the whole Bloomingfoods/union contretemps going on.
Natch, which of us aren’t torn in this little tug of war? The majority of the citizenry of the People’s Republic of Bloomington are union partisans — yet everybody who’s anybody is hot for Bloomingfoods, the five-store co-op’s founders, its management, and its boardfolk.
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In any case, Hiller got her hands on a list of benefits B’foods offers its galley slaves. The bennies look good, I’ll have to say. Shoot, they even offer free professional counseling which employees are eligible for the minute they start working. Dang, mang, I’d have saved tens of thousands of dollars in shrink fees had I worked for B-foods in my late 20s through early 40s.
Anyway, as soon as I get some free time, I’m going to grill some insiders about their grievances. A very friendly inside source has provided me a list of names and phone numbers of people who just may offer some insight into why at least some B-foods workers are ready to man the barricades.
Until then, read about Bloomingfoods’ employee benefits here, courtesy of our town’s most adept juggler of hammer and saw, the fab Ms. Hiller.
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The two most effective political messages in American history were Lyndon B. Johnson’s fabled mushroom cloud TV ad in 1964 and George H.W. Bush’s Willie Horton spots.
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I was too young to remember the mushroom cloud commercial, being eight at the time, but I remember Willie Horton well — I was 32 in 1988. Willie Horton was almost perfect in its simplicity and impact. Lee Atwater and company concocted the archetypical bogeyman: a scary, grotesque, really dark-skinned black man, a rapist/murderer sprung from prison by a lily-livered, pointy-headed Democratic governor. And you wanted that milquetoast Dem to be your president?
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As Atwater, Bush’s storied political strategist, said early on, “By the time we’re finished, they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate.”
His strategy was no less craven than that of adman Tony Schwartz, who created the mushroom cloud commercial (which, BTW, ran only once.) But craven in politics and other public pastimes works. Barry Goldwater was effectively painted forever as a nuke-slinging madman, Mike Dukakis a patsy for criminals, welfare queens, and — worst of all — black people.
The secret to success in public discourse is to scare the bejesus out of people.
Just as soon as GHWB trounced Dukakis in the ’88 beauty contest, it struck me that what separated the Democrats from the Republicans was the latters’ gleeful willingness to scare the populace and the formers’ hesitancy to do so (at least in the years post-1964.)
I immediately thought of the environment — you know, the air we breathe and the water we drink? All the environmental movement needed to do was start making the citizenry of this holy land wet its pants about pollution and, next thing you’d know, we’d start doing a thing or two about it. After all, the Reagan Administration had been as careful a steward of the environment as an eight-year-old husbanding his bag of Halloween candy.
Cut to almost two decades later: Al Gore et al came out with An Inconvenient Truth. Wouldn’t you know it, that Oscar®-winning doc got millions of us shuddering over the possibility that the likes of New York City and Miami Beach might soon be under water.
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We on the crunchy end of the political spectrum finally had our Willie Horton.
Don’t get me wrong, I dug An Inconv. Truth the most. Still, as I watched the picture, I had the feeling that certain suppositions in it were less than sure-fire bets. Nevertheless, the scare job was for a good cause, not for painting an entire race of American citizens as murderers and rapists.
Now comes a think piece by Charles C. Mann in September’s The Atlantic mag. He posits that the environmental gang is overreaching with its oft-times overblown rhetoric. Mann is a science writer who penned, among other works, the highly-lauded 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
Mann feels the scare tactics of environmentalists are working against their own aims. He cites for support, for instance, French philosopher Pascal Bruckner, who insists that many climate worriers are apocalyptic fanatics:
A best-selling, telegenic public intellectual (a species that hardly exists in this country), Bruckner is mainly going after what he calls “ecologism,” of which McKibbenites are exemplars. At base, he says, ecologism seeks not to save nature but to purify humankind through self-flaggelating asceticism.
To Bruckner, ecologism is both ethnocentric and counterproductive.
McKibbenites, of course, are fans of high-profile ecologist Bill McKibben.
Mann is right about some of the overblown rhetoric: One anti-Keystone Pipeline activist says if the thing is built “civilization would be at risk.” Mann’s conclusion is such operatic verbiage marginalizes environmentalists.
Mann is wrong, though, about the scare tactics. He may know a lot about science — and Bruckner may know a lot about philosophy — but neither knows the American people.
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You had to know this would happen: many parents in Middlesex County, New Jersey, are far more teed off about the cancellation of the remainder of the Sayreville War Memorial High School football season than they are about the digital/anal raping/hazing ritual that caused the cancellation in the first place.
Just to keep you up to date, seven Sayreville HS football players have been arrested for their alleged near-daily hazing of team freshmen. Acc’d’g to the cops, the seven would trap freshmen in the locker room, turn out the lights, and proceed to digitally penetrate the poor kids’ anuses for fun and laughs.
Eek.
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Anyway, some student victims told their parents about the ritual and the parents called the police. Seems open and shut, no?
No. Because of the scandal, the school’s principal cancelled the rest of its football season. And many parents are steamed about having to face life without high school football.
Anally raping an adolescent is one thing, I suppose, but canceling a football season? Now that’s an outrage.
Football. America’s game.
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People occasionally bleat, “If we didn’t have guns, we’d still be colonies of England.”
To which I might respond, “So what?”
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What has become the United Kingdom is a parliamentary, constitutional republic. That’s pretty much what the United States is now, only without a bunch of pretentious, bloated, old, white peers shouting Here, here at each other. In this holy land, we have a bunch of pretentious, bloated, old, white self-proclaimed populists shouting Gimme, gimme at each other.
So yeah, maybe without guns we’d still be subjects of a useless, purposeless crown. How is that worse than being subjects of an obscenely rich plutocracy of transnational corporation CEOs?
The people of Scotland the day before yesterday voted by a healthy margin to remain under the ceremonial thumb of the Queen of England. Prior to the vote, there’d been a loud, seemingly wildly popular movement for independence. Scottish independence has not been, of course, the only mass call for autonomy in this mixed-up world in recent years. There’ve been successful independence movements in Zimbabwe, Namibia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Brunei, Yemen, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Timor-Leste, Latvia, Belarus, Slovenia, Estonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Macedonia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and even the Federated States of Micronesia, all since the late 1970s.
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Each of the aforementioned new nations became proudly independent, often at the cost of hundreds of thousands of its citizens’ lives and limbs. Not all newly independent states achieved their autonomy through the use of ammo, but most did. Very often, other, much more powerful nations gleefully assisted those seeking sovereignty if only to weaken or humiliate the countries the rebels were fighting. In fact, we would not be the United States were it not for the help of our friends from France. And the Confederate States of America might be a thing today if only Great Britain and France had pitched in to the Southern cause during the Civil War.
Funny thing is, it’s hard to glean just exactly what each of the proud, new independent nations gained, besides pride, of course, a new flag, and a national cemetery bursting with fresh customers.
In any case, the Scots opted not to fire guns at the Brits. They voted, huzzah. And the independents lost. Generally in such a case, there’d be a wailing and gnashing of teeth from the losing side, followed by the sound of guns and bombs. That’s the way, we’re taught, independence works. You try to talk your way to autonomy and then you blow the other guy’s brains out.
It hasn’t worked that way in Scotland. In fact, here’s what Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish independent movement said after Thursday’s vote:
It is important to say that our referendum was an agreed and consented process and Scotland has by a majority decided not at this stage to become an independent country.
I accept that verdict of the people and I call on all of Scotland to follow suit in accepting the democratic verdict of the people of Scotland.
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What the hell kind of revolutionary is that? Salmond resigned his post as Scotland’s First Minister this morning. What a wuss! Why didn’t he go down with guns blazing?
Perhaps it’s because he’s a civilized human being.
One of the very few in this crazy, mixed-up world.
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If you support the right of workers at Bloomingfoods to at least consider unionizing, here’s a Democracy for America petition for you to sign:
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Here’s your Lotus Fest 2104 lineup for tonight:
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● Noon to 5pm: Lotus in the Park 3rd St. Park
∙ 12:15pm: Kaia
∙ 1pm: Banda Magda
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∙ 1pm: Radha Lakshmi
∙ 1:45pm: Arga Bileg
∙ 2:30pm: Sancocho Music & Dance Collage
∙ 3:15pm: Lotus Dickey Song Workshop
∙ 4pm: The Revelers
● 6:30pm: FullSet Buskirk Chumley Theater
● 6:30pm: Arga Bileg First United Methodist Church
● 7pm: Banda Magda Bluebird
● 7:15pm: Catherine MacLellan First Christian Church
● 7:15pm: Tsuumi Sound System Ivy Tech Community College Tent
● 7:15pm: Las Cafeteras Old National Bank/Soma Tent
● 7:30pm: Nagata Shachu Buskirk Chumley Theater
● 7:50pm: Kaia First United Methodist Church
● 8:50pm: The Revelers Bluebird
● 8:50pm: Vanesa Aibar & Company Buskirk Chumley Theater
● 8:50pm: Derek Gripper First Christian Church
● 8:50pm: Nora Jane Struthers & the Party Line First United Methodist Church
● 8:50pm: Mames Babegenush Ivy Tech Community College Tent
● 8:50pm: Aurelio Old National Bank/Soma Tent
● 10:25pm: Emel Mathlouthi Buskirk Chumley Theater
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● 10:25pm: Singing for the Planets First Christian Church
● 10:25pm: FullSet First United Methodist Church
● 10:25pm: Orkesta Mendoza Ivy Tech Community College Tent
● 10:25pm: Movits! Old National Bank/Soma Tent
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How do like sleeping with the windows open all night long these days?
Now we come into fall, perhaps the prettiest, most comfortable season of the year. Natch, I didn’t always feel this way. For the longest time, well into my adulthood, I dreaded the coming of September and October — that meant it was time for another school year. For an inveterate school-hater like me, the fall was a jail sentence.
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Anyway, the cool is fine by me at this advanced stage of my life. So cool was it yesterday AM that I spied one woman walking east on Kirkwood Avenue wearing a heavy fall coat and a scarf wrapped around her neck.
No, let me amend that — it wasn’t that cool yesterday morning. Politics, apparently, isn’t the only thing that causes people to overreact.
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One of Bloomington’s most respected and beloved citizens has told me she was informed by her bank that the institution no longer wants her business.
Which seems odd, considering the fact that all sorts of reprobates and sociopaths are welcome to deposit their questionably-earned gains in banks from sea to shining sea. You may recall it took a federal statute to force banks to look into enormous deposits of cash. You know, the kinds of deposits drug kingpins make.
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In fact, it was only this past winter when JP Morgan Chase began asking people who wanted to make huge deposits for ID to make sure they were indeed account holders. JPM was forced to institute the new rule in the fallout from the Bernie Madoff affair. Spokesbeings for the bank said the rule was intended to weed out money launderers.
Nice of them. Of course, it took a US Justice Dept. investigation to get the Chase banksters to become such concerned citizens.
In any case, the Bloomington woman was phoned one recent morning by a rep from her __________ branch. She was told, after some hemming and hawing, “Your business is no longer welcome at __________.”
The woman says she’s been a customer of the same bank for at least 10 years. The bank was taken over first by another financial outfit and then by __________. The way the woman sees it, she should be considered a __________ customer for all those ten-plus years.
When the woman asked why __________ was doing this, she was told the Patriot Act was to blame. Or, at least, __________’s interpretation of same. The woman adds that all the __________ reps she spoke with (several people took the phone during the call in question) were “extremely apologetic.”
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Nevertheless, the woman was highly offended. One rep explained to her that because she was closely related to someone who “works for a foreign government” the bank could not longer do business with her under its own guidelines. The woman and her relative were natural-born citizens of a Middle Eastern nation. The woman has since become a naturalized American. “I’m not an Arab-American,” she says. “I’m an American.”
She may be an American, but she’s no longer a __________ customer.
[MG note: I will not identify the woman or the bank until I hear back from the bank.]
This Bloomington woman’s story comes at a time when Arab-Americans across this holy land are being given the bum’s rush by their banks. At least she got something of an answer when she asked why. Acc’d’g to a story in the LA Times, most Arab-Americans being told their accounts are being closed are given no reason at all.
I’ll continue digging into this story. Stay tuned.
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You wanna get even madder?
Okay. The National Football League didn’t give former Baltimore Ravens Ray Rice a lengthy suspension for punching his then-fiancé into unconsciousness until after video of the incident was uncovered by the gossip site TMZ.
[I’m not going to provide a link to the TMZ story because I don’t believe disseminating the video serves any purpose other than to hurt the victim again.]
NFL czar Roger Goodell had suspended Rice for two games after the incident first was reported. The video was revealed the other day. Suddenly, Rice’s two-gamer has become an indefinite lay-off.
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In other words, it’s sorta bad for an NFL player to punch the shit out of his beloved. It’s super bad if the act is caught on video.
Rice, BTW, has been fired by the Baltimore Ravens. Again, the team took no action against him even after he made a plea agreement with prosecutors over the incident. The Ravens acted only when they were embarrassed by the video.
More BTW: Let’s talk punches. It takes a monster blow to induce unconsciousness, despite what you think you’ve learned watching the movies or TV. Unconsciousness resulting from a blow generally occurs when the brain stem or the spinal cord near it are twisted or impacted. Such twisting occurs when the puncher delivers a roundhouse, forcing the recipient’s head to turn violently and suddenly. The impact trauma can occur when the inion, a small projection at the base of the rear of the skull, collides with the spinal cord, again due to a blow that causes sudden head rotation.
This is why boxers are taught to grit their teeth when they’re punched and why they work so hard to develop strong neck muscles. The idea is to resist the rotational forces of the cross punch.
So, Ray Rice didn’t merely jab at his fiancé’s face when he struck her in that casino elevator last February. He swung a roundhouse. He wanted to cause damage to her. He belongs in prison.
As for his then-fiancé — she is now married to him. She belongs on a psychiatrist’s couch.
Roger Goodell and the top officials of the Baltimore Ravens? They belong in hell.
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WFIU is reporting that Bloomingfoods employees are considering unionizing.
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All I can say is, Yay!
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