Hungry Blues

In his Labor Day message to the nation, George Bush says the economy is in great shape.

Today, productivity is high, consumers are confident, and incomes are rising across our country. Our economy has experienced one of the fastest growth rates of any major industrialized nation. More than 8.3 million jobs have been created in America since August 2003, and the unemployment rate remains low. My Administration is committed to promoting pro-growth economic policies, keeping taxes low, and supporting small businesses to keep our economy strong and growing.

As usual, the facts to do not support Bush's rhetoric. The 2006 census data is out, and Eric Lotke has used it to assemble a useful economic scorecard that helps explain why so many of us are not experiencing the strong economy described in Bush's message.

Productivity continues to rise and corporate profits along with it. But working people aren’t sharing the gains.

• Poverty ticked down a hair last year. That’s good news but it’s the first decline on President Bush’s watch. Poverty rates are higher than when he took office(12.3% in 2006, up from 11.3% in 2000).

• The number of people without health insurance continues to rise, up to 15.8% last year. 47 million Americans lacked health insurance in 2006, an increase of 8 million since Bush took office.

• Median annual earnings for full-time, year-round workers fell last year, the third year in a row. The White House prefers to point to the rosier “household income” figure, which did creep up 0.7% ($360) last year. But don’t fall for it. Household income is down $956 since 2000. It rose that hair last year because more household members are working, and for longer hours. But they are getting paid less for their work. There’s no getting around the math.

• The trend to re-classify full-time workers as “independent contractors” continues to rise. Although the same work is done by the same people, contracting it out allows employers to dodge the minimum wage increase and terminate benefits that accrue only to “employees.” Reclassification also lets them avoid payroll taxes, a dodge that creates an invisible subsidy to corporate America in the range of $3 billion.

• The only good news is at the top of the economy. Between 2000 and 2006, the average income of the lowest fifth dropped 4.5% and the middle fifth dropped 2.5%. But the income of the top fifth increased by 1%. Not only is that good news at the top, but averaging them into the nation as a whole increases the national average, and helps to create the illusion of good news. After all, Bill Gates and I have an “average” income in the billions.

So the wages and earnings are basically flat, with a slightly downward tilt. It hurts because ordinary household expenses continue to rise. Working Americans feel the statistics when they pay the bills.

• Since 2000, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance for families have skyrocketed. The average monthly worker contribution for family coverage in 2000 was $135. In 2000, it increased to $248 (up 84%)

• Tuition and fees at public colleges went up 37% between 2000 and 2006.

• Gas prices have doubled since 2000. The price of home heating oil increased by 50%.

Today in the NY Times Dropkick Murpyhy's singer Ken Casey talks about selecting unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics for the DKMs to perform.

"I had to put on little white gloves and get yelled at for being too rough," Mr. Casey said. "But it's not like I had to search long and hard to find the right lyrics; half the lyrics sounded like a Dropkick Murphys song as soon as I read them."

"I look at Woody as the original punk-rocker, just from the way he lived," he continued. "When you think about legendary American songwriters, not many of them rode boxcars."

The article provides a nice overview of Nora Guthrie's supercool project to produce contemporary recordings of the 2400 unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics.

But the lyrics project is actually old news. The exciting part of the article is that the only known live recording of a Woody Gutrhie performance will be released this week!

In 2001 ... Guthrie's daughter Nora received a small box that contained two black-and-yellow spools of silver wire with a note that said, "I found this in my closet and thought you might like to have it." When she reopened the boxes in January for a reporter, the strands resembled the wire you might use for hanging pictures. But the spools were recordings, an exciting discovery.

"What these are," Ms. Guthrie, 57, said, "are the only decent live recordings we've found of Woody in front of an audience. When we could finally hear them, we flipped out, because it's Woody telling jokes, laughing with the crowd and singing songs for them." This week those recordings will be released on CD as "The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949" (Woody Guthrie Publications....

Peter Braverman, a student at Rutgers, owned a wire recorder - a device, available to consumers since the end of World War II and soon to be eclipsed by tape recorders, that magnetized sound onto stainless steel wire. On a whim he lugged his equipment to Fuld Hall in Newark on a December evening in 1949 to check out a folk singer he had just heard about. With a few dozen other listeners, Mr. Braverman heard Guthrie's wife, Marjorie, lead her husband through give-and-take interviews about his childhood in the Oklahoma Territory, his Dust Bowl migration to California, his work on the Bonneville Dam project in Washington State and his current life in New York.

Along the way he sang 10 of his songs, from obscurities like "Goodbye Centralia" to favorites like "Pastures of Plenty." The performances are uneven; Guthrie seems to sleepwalk through "The Great Dust Storm" and stumbles over the lyrics on "Jesus Christ." But his droll monologue about trying to play folk songs for his wife's modern-dance troupe is hilarious, "Grand Coulee Dam" bounds with energy, and a dramatic "Tom Joad" is the best extant recording of his greatest song.

I can't wait. Presumably the CD will hit the stores on Tuesday; I'll be driving a bunch that day, so I guess I'm taking the discman and the cassette to CD adapter for the old car.

In a surprising turn of events, Texas Governor Rick Perry granted clemency to death row inmate Kenneth Foster. Foster's death sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment. Until the reprieve came, things were not looking good. As the San Francisco Bay View put it in an email message a few days ago:

Five of the seven members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles must recommend clemency for Perry to even consider granting it. But Perry appointed the board members and, while it officially operates independently, the board is known to respond to pressure from the governor's mansion.

"It's my belief that if this does not become a political issue, then I have no chance," Kenneth wrote shortly after receiving his execution date.

He's right. Rick Perry won't spare Kenneth out of the kindness of his heart. Having overseen 159 executions since he took office in 2001, Perry has outdone even his predecessor George W. Bush. This summer, Texas will carry out its 400th execution.

In rejoicing over the saving of Kenneth Foster's life, we should remember two things:

• Texas is the most murderous state in the in US, with an incredibly alarming rate of executions since Governor Perry took office.
• Kenneth Foster is a member of the D.R.I.V.E. movement, which organizes death row inmates to practice non-violent resistance against the state's severe violations of their human rights.

After being moved to Polunsky, the men on Texas' death row lost virtually all the privileges they enjoyed at the Ellis Unit. The new facility keeps the inmates in 23-hour administrative segregation inside 60 square foot cells with sealed steel doors. They have lost all group recreation, work programs, television access (some inmates are allowed radios), and religious services. There are no contact visits allowed at Polunsky, meaning that the men on death row will never make physical contact with anyone other than prison staff as they move toward their execution date. Inmates are only allowed one five minute phone call every six months, their mail is often censored, the quality of food is particularly low, and they are given inadequate health and dental services.

For a detailed account of life in the Polunsky death row unit in Texas, read "Actions and Re-actions" by inmate Derrick Jackson:

I am an insulin dependent diabetic and I am forced to be administered my shots in areas where chemical agents are being sprayed and body waste of others is thrown and not cleaned. If one man is gassed all those in the immediate area suffer as I have at many times. Often the chemical agents used are in excess and are not necessary and protocol in use is not followed. Inmates who are secure in their cells, at the whim of an official can be subject to the use of chemical agents by simply refusing to be harassed by officials in any number of ways. I have been forced to live in cells with the body waste of the previous occupant (and not allowed nothing to clean with as all personal property had been confiscated and held in the property room and no cleaning supplies were made available to me). I have been forced to live in cells that flood when it rains outside (and leak as well). I am forced to live in cells where the ventilation system doesn't work, plumbing doesn't work - all because of my aggressive behavior (writing this is the most aggression I've shown about all of this thus far). I have a big box on my cell door (designed to keep inmates from throwing on guards) and my food is placed in this box for me to eat. I am not supposed to be allowed to clean it and the guards won't clean it but it is filthy with food, juices, coffee, etc. from previous meals - very unsanitary. My aggressive behavior merits this I guess.

(Read the rest.)

The second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is tomorrow, and for many thousands, the situation is still dire, and things are not getting any better. One can of kidney beans per day and some rice does not a healthy 65-year-old woman make.

BAY ST. LOUIS, MS - If she had known Aug. 28, 2005, what she knows today, Linda Addison says she would have stayed for Hurricane Katrina in her Bay St. Louis apartment and drowned.

Better dead than treated like a bum, better to be at rest than worry each and every day if someone will knock on the door of her FEMA trailer and tell her to move out.

"Don't get me wrong, I thank God for this trailer, I really do," said Addison, a 65-year-old who lives on $643 a month in Social Security. "But, I live in constant fear. I don't know when they're going to come and say, 'Well, now next month you gotta -' you don't know. And that's an awful thing to be faced with. You don't ever feel secure of where you are...."

Many homeowners have received federal grant assistance, insurance payments or volunteer labor and materials to rebuild on their property.

Former tenants without property find themselves turned away by agency after agency. And they aren't seeing any relief yet from programs designed to help, such as tax credits given to developers who will build affordable apartments....

The disaster certainly has strained Addison's budget. Although the FEMA trailer is free, her expenses are higher. Her federally subsidized rent for the apartment cost her only $109 a month. Because she lost her car in the hurricane, she now has a car note and higher insurance payments. Her telephone bill climbed because she must have a cell phone rather than a land line.

To conserve money, she eats only twice a day. A can of kidney beans stretches into two meals of red beans and rice. Forget the sausage.

If she runs out of bread before her monthly check arrives, she picks some up at the food pantry, but she hates feeling like a bum. She's never had to live like this before.

Addison has been everywhere she can think of trying to find a way out of the FEMA park, a noisy place compared to the apartment complex where she and other senior citizens lived. It's set to close in January, she said.

"I would sleep on the floor to get away from here if I had an apartment," she said. "This is the golden years? Lord. It's like people my age and in my predicament, they just don't want to deal with you. It's like they want you to disappear. I wish I could."

(Link)

That's Driving While Black. He has been in prison for ten years and is scheduled to be executed on August 30, 2007. He watches his daughter Nydes grow up from behind bullet proof glass.

Ten years ago, Kenneth was a young college student, a music lover, and recent father. Born in Austin, Texas, he spent his high school years working for several small record companies in the area. In 1995 he began his first year at St. Phillips College majoring in sociology, and less than a year later, in May of ‘96, he started his own label, Tribulation Records. Kenneth had a bright future ahead of him, no doubt.

But a year later, Kenneth was convicted of murder. The previous August, he had been driving a car with three friends in the San Antonio area. One of those riding in the car, Mauriceo Brown, got out in front of a party to talk to a woman, Mary Patrick. While Kenneth and his other two friends were eighty feet away, waiting in the car, they heard a gunshot. Brown had shot Patrick's boyfriend, Michael LaHood.

Kenneth never had a gun in his hand, never saw, let alone aimed at LaHood, and never he pulled the trigger. Even the prosecution admits this. And he did not know anyone was going to be shot that night.

But according to Texas' "law of parties," Kenneth should have anticipated the loss of life that was to come that night because he was in the same car as Brown. It's a law straight out of a Franz Kafka novel, where the accused are expected to have an almost psychic ability to predict when a crime is going to happen.

Kenneth's execution has been set for August 30th, 2007. He is guilty of nothing except driving a car.

Read the rest of Alexander Billet's article

Free Kenneth Foster

Donate to Kenneth Foster's Defense Fund

One of your emails about our dinner plans last night made me think of this song.

"The Old Stamping Ground" (1937)

Personnel:

Willie "The Lion" Smith - piano

Frankie Newton - trumpet

Buster Bailey - clarinet

Pete Brown - alto sax

Jimmy McLin - guitar

John Kirby - bass

O'Neal Spencer - drums, vocal

Old Stamping Ground [ 3:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

1. Half Moon - M. Ward
2. Radiate - Regina Hexaphone
3. Junk Bond Trader - Elliott Smith
4. Stompin at the Savoy - Ella Fitzgerald (Ella in Rome)
5. Jesus, etc. - Wilco
6. Dinah - Pee Wee Rusel & His Rhythm Makers
7. We Are the Heavenly Father's Children - Rev. Gary Davis
8. Blowin' in the Wind - Bob Dylan
9. Down the Depths - Blossom Dearie
10. Beckman's Hora - Budowitz

Cypress swamps are clear-cut and entire trees are ground up to make cypress garden mulch. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Lowe's are driving destruction of the Gulf's best natural storm protection by selling cypress mulch all over the country. It's time they stopped.

Get more info and ideas for activism at the Gulf Restoration Network.

Jane Mayer has a remarkable article in the latest New Yorker. It is a deeply disturbing companion piece to Katherine Eban's recent article in Vanity Fair. This is harrowing reading for anyone; I can hardly imagine how doctors and psychologists must feel to see a regime of torture so dependent on the participation and collusion of their colleagues.

A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity searches and the frequent use of suppositories during the takeout of detainees, likened the treatment to "sodomy." He said, "It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity. It breaks down someone's sense of impenetrability. The interrogation became a process not just of getting information but of utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation." The former C.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed the prisoners naked, "because it's demoralizing." The person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry said that photos were also part of the C.I.A.'s quality-control process. They were passed back to case officers for review....

In the process of being transported, C.I.A. detainees such as [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed were screened by medical experts, who checked their vital signs, took blood samples, and marked a chart with a diagram of a human body, noting scars, wounds, and other imperfections. As the person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry put it, "It's like when you hire a motor vehicle, circling where the scratches are on the rearview mirror. Each detainee was continually assessed, physically and psychologically."...

He has alleged that he was attached to a dog leash, and yanked in such a way that he was propelled into the walls of his cell. Sources say that he also claimed to have been suspended from the ceiling by his arms, his toes barely touching the ground. The pressure on his wrists evidently became exceedingly painful.

Ramzi Kassem, who teaches at Yale Law School, said that a Yemeni client of his, Sanad al-Kazimi, who is now in Guantánamo, alleged that he had received similar treatment in the Dark Prison, the facility near Kabul. Kazimi claimed to have been suspended by his arms for long periods, causing his legs to swell painfully. "It's so traumatic, he can barely speak of it," Kassem said. "He breaks down in tears." Kazimi also claimed that, while hanging, he was beaten with electric cables.

According to sources familiar with interrogation techniques, the hanging position is designed, in part, to prevent detainees from being able to sleep. The former C.I.A. officer, who is knowledgeable about the interrogation program, explained that "sleep deprivation works. Your electrolyte balance changes. You lose all balance and ability to think rationally. Stuff comes out." Sleep deprivation has been recognized as an effective form of coercion since the Middle Ages, when it was called tormentum insomniae. It was also recognized for decades in the United States as an illegal form of torture. An American Bar Association report, published in 1930, which was cited in a later U.S. Supreme Court decision, said, "It has been known since 1500 at least that deprivation of sleep is the most effective torture and certain to produce any confession desired."

Under President Bush's new executive order, C.I.A. detainees must receive the "basic necessities of life, including adequate food and water, shelter from the elements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat and cold, and essential medical care." Sleep, according to the order, is not among the basic necessities....

Professor Kassem said his Yemeni client, Kazimi, had told him that, during his incarceration in the Dark Prison, he attempted suicide three times, by ramming his head into the walls. "He did it until he lost consciousness," Kassem said. "Then they stitched him back up. So he did it again. The next time, he woke up, he was chained, and they'd given him tranquillizers. He asked to go to the bathroom, and then he did it again." This last time, Kazimi was given more tranquillizers, and chained in a more confining manner.

The case of Khaled el-Masri, another detainee, has received wide attention. He is the German car salesman whom the C.I.A. captured in 2003 and dispatched to Afghanistan, based on erroneous intelligence; he was released in 2004, and Condoleezza Rice reportedly conceded the mistake to the German chancellor. Masri is considered one of the more credible sources on the black-site program, because Germany has confirmed that he has no connections to terrorism. He has also described inmates bashing their heads against the walls. Much of his account appeared on the front page of the Times. But, during a visit to America last fall, he became tearful as he recalled the plight of a Tanzanian in a neighboring cell. The man seemed "psychologically at the end," he said. "I could hear him ramming his head against the wall in despair. I tried to calm him down. I asked the doctor, ‘Will you take care of this human being?'

(Read the whole thing.)

Mimi & Richard Farina

I'm so pleased it's on YouTube now. I love getting to watch Pete play this song. It is a big favorite of mine. I wrote a bit about it a couple of years ago. Rosco Holcomb's version is also pretty awesome.

1. If I Think of Love - OP8
2. This Land is Your Land - Bob Dylan
3. Moroccan Game - Klezmatics
4. Always - Rilo Kiley
5. The Needle Has Landed - Neko Case
6. Piano Improvisation No. 2 - Duke Ellington
7. Ballad of Big Nothing - Elliot Smith (La Boule Noire, 4.30.00)
8. Breathless - Robert Fripp
9. The Family and the Fishing Net - Peter Gabriel
10. This Little Light - Mavis Staples

Max Blumenthal - Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour

I don't call myself a Zionist because I don't think the ideology is good for Israel, Israelis or Jews, let alone for Palestinians. Blumenthal doesn't make the mistake of calling the evil nut jobs Zionists, but the usage is so widespread, even among legitimate critics of the so-called Christian supporters of Israel, that I just wanted to make the point.

I am deeply ashamed of Joe Lieberman. Watch the film. You'll see what I mean.

Blumenthal wrote a bit about making his film over at Huffington Post:

I have covered the Christian right intensely for over four years. During this time, I attended dozens of Christian right conferences, regularly monitored movement publications and radio shows, and interviewed scores of its key leaders. I have never witnessed any spectacle as politically extreme, outrageous, or bizarre as the one Christians United for Israel produced last week in Washington. See for yourself.

(Read the rest.)