And the Citizens Are Not United, and Divided is the Third Rail of the Capitalists
'Attack on American Free Enterprise System'; DATE: August 23, 1971 TO: Mr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chairman, Education Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce FROM: Lewis F. Powell, Jr
This is not your mamma’s blog today!
And that is what capitalism is about -- for the bosses, for the corporations, and they write the laws, and lobby for them. I have had three or four BOLI complaints for wrongful termination based on age, etc., and have "lost" all of them. I even applied for a BOLI job, as an adjudicator, and in those trainings, it is clear BOLI is really about protecting the rights of the employers over just taking the employee’s side. It was stated that way by one of the head trainers.
Yep, I went before three or four adjudicators, and alas, they always say, "Maybe you should get a labor attorney."
The law might be protecting them, these Air B & B’s looking for cleaners and paying them different hourly wages depending on which smalltown they end up working, but the ethics are wrong, and so my advice is to keep plugging them with the argument -- at-will state, and here are what RTW laws are also about, and Oregon is not one, YET.
As Martin Luther King Jr. noted long ago,
“We must guard against being fooled by false slogans such as ‘right to work.’ … Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. … We demand this fraud be stopped.”
I am referencing friend’s attempt to stop this bullshit divide and conquer — This letter here:
To whom it may concern,
I work as a housekeeper for an international vacation rental management company based in Portland, OR. I was hired in Waldport, OR, in the county of Lincoln. I am paid 20.50$ per hour.
As I was researching about other jobs opportunities on the internet, I came across one of my company’s job offers about a housekeeper position (same as me) in Newport, OR which is located in the same county of Lincoln, 13 miles from Waldport. The tasks description of the ad is the same as those I am currently working under — the other requirements as well, but the salary shows 23$/hour.
I contacted my immediate field manager to inquire about the wages difference. She asked to talk to me on the phone and so we did have a conversation in which she answered: “They are paid more over there (Newport) then us (Waldport) because it’s a different market and they have more houses”. As I was not satisfied with her answer, I asked to be redirected to someone else in a higher position that could provide me better answers. I am currently waiting to be answered back.
I would like an answer as if yes or no this is legal for them to pay different wages in two cities and yet in the same county? We are indeed in the same market on the central coast. I feel like my manager answer is not accurate. I want to be paid equitably and fairly and that’s why I am contacting you today.
If it’s not legal for them to do so, what are my options? What should I do next?
Thank you in advance,
+—+
This is what MY taxes pay for, this boilerplate shit shining crap, here, in blue Lesbian Guv Oregon?
+—+
Hello:
Employers are allowed to pay differently regardless of the experience, location, knowledge, seniority, or rank of the employees.
Regarding the Equal Pay Act, BOLI – Civil Rights Division has jurisdiction ONLY over ORS 652.220.
You can consult with an attorney. The Oregon State Bar Referral Program can help you locate an attorney specializing in law you need. You can have a legal consultation for a small fee. They can be contacted at 503-620-0222 or 1-800-452-8260 or http://www.osbar.org/public/ris/ris.html#referral
"Nothing in this communication is intended as legal advice. Any responses to specific questions are based on the facts, as we understand them and are not intended to apply to any other situation. This communication is not an agency order. If you need legal advice, please consult an attorney."
Thanks,
Civil Rights Division
Bureau of Labor and Industries
Fact — In the United States, employees without a written employment contract generally can be fired for good cause, bad cause, or no cause at all; judicial exceptions to the rule seek to prevent wrongful terminations.
+—+
A “right-to-work” (RTW) law—a misleadingly named policy that is designed to make it more difficult for workers to come together in a union to negotiate for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.1 Since workplace improvements secured by unions typically spill over into nonunionized workplaces, RTW have far-reaching harmful consequences for Oregon workers—both those who are in unions and those who are not.
Despite the name, right-to-work laws do not confer any sort of right to a job. Rather, they dilute worker bargaining power by making it illegal for a group of unionized workers to negotiate a collective bargaining contract (a contract governing workplace wages, benefits, and working conditions) that includes “fair share fees.” A contract with fair share fees requires all employees who enjoy the contract’s benefits to pay their share of the costs of negotiating and enforcing it. Under an RTW law, employees who don’t join a union but who are still a part of the collective bargaining unit would get all of the benefits of union membership without paying their fair share of the costs. By making it harder for unions to collect these fair share fees, RTW laws aim to shrink union resources. Shrinking union resources impedes the ability of unions to negotiate better wages, benefits, and working conditions—and makes it harder for unions to help workers organize new unions or maintain existing ones.
Some supporters of RTW laws falsely claim that these laws ensure that no one is forced to be a member of a union or pay to advocate for political causes they do not support. But those things are already illegal under federal law. RTW laws are targeted specifically at fair share fees, which can only cover the costs of union representation, not political advocacy.
Proponents of RTW laws also claim that they boost employment by creating a “business-friendly” environment to attract employers from other states, but this is an empty promise. RTW laws have not succeeded in boosting employment in states that have adopted them. Further, arguing that adopting RTW laws will make states more appealing to businesses reveals the true intentions of RTW proponents: undermining unions to lower wages.
And so, the law is against us, the people:
The U.S. political system has become distorted by the power given to the Supreme Court enabling it to block reforms that the majority of Americans are reported to support. The problem is not only the Supreme Court, to be sure. Most voters oppose wars, support public healthcare for all and higher taxes on the wealthy. But Congress, itself captured by the oligarch donor class, routinely raises military spending, privatizes healthcare in the hands of predatory monopolies and cuts taxes for the financial rent-seeking class while pretending that spending money on government social programs would force taxes to rise for wage-earners.
The effect of the corporate capture of Congress as well as the Supreme Court as the ultimate oligarchic backstop is to block Congressional politics as a vehicle to update laws, taxes and public regulation in keeping with what voters recognize to be modern needs. The Supreme Court imposes the straitjacket of what America’s 18th-century slaveowners and other property owners are supposed to have wanted at the time they wrote the Constitution. (Source, Michael Hudson, “Should There Really be a Supreme Court? Its role always has been anti-democratic”).
The Lewis Powell memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on August 23, 1971 laid out this plan. For a review of how this almost conspiratorial propaganda and censorship attack was financed see Lewis H. Lapham, “Tentacles of Rage: The Republican propaganda mill, a brief history,” Harpers, September, 2004.
Written in 1971 to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Lewis Powell Memo was a blueprint for corporate domination of American Democracy.
Dimensions of the Attack
No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. This varies in scope, intensity, in the techniques employed, and in the level of visibility.There always have been some who opposed the American system, and preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism). Also, there always have been critics of the system, whose criticism has been wholesome and constructive so long as the objective was to improve rather than to subvert or destroy.
But what now concerns us is quite new in the history of America. We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.
Sources of the Attack
The sources are varied and diffused. They include, not unexpectedly, the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic. These extremists of the left are far more numerous, better financed, and increasingly are more welcomed and encouraged by other elements of society, than ever before in our history. But they remain a small minority, and are not yet the principal cause for concern.The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. In most of these groups the movement against the system is participated in only by minorities. Yet, these often are the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.
Moreover, much of the media — for varying motives and in varying degrees — either voluntarily accords unique publicity to these “attackers,” or at least allows them to exploit the media for their purposes. This is especially true of television, which now plays such a predominant role in shaping the thinking, attitudes and emotions of our people.
One of the bewildering paradoxes of our time is the extent to which the enterprise system tolerates, if not participates in, its own destruction. (Powell, 1971)
And here it is, one of the B & B’s, that Air B & B, human stain: “Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has a philosophy on layoffs: ‘If you’re going to cut jobs, you better cut deep enough’”
And this billionaire NEVER gets confronted, man, and that is who owns the Orwell Big Brother Media:
In the first three months of 2023, U.S.-based employers alone witnessed a layoff bloodbath, with a staggering 417,500 jobs being cut. Adding to the intensity, companies such as Meta and Amazon have already undergone their third round of layoffs this year, creating a relentless cycle of headcount reductions.
Hence, Brian Chesky, the CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, suggested that struggling companies should spare surviving employees from the mental toll of multiple rounds of layoffs by opting for one drastic sweep.
Also Read: Close to 50% of employees in India feel insecure in their jobs: Report
“Multiple layoffs can be very difficult from a cultural standpoint, because if there's more than one, then people can't trust they’ll ever end—and the company is like, in a paralyzed standstill if that happens,” he said in a video interview with Bloomberg.
“When you do a layoff, if you're going to cut you need to cut once, and therefore you better cut deep enough. Try to avoid doing multiple layoffs,” Chesky insisted.
Chesky also expressed dissatisfaction with the standardised and impersonal manner in which layoffs are typically announced, finding fault with the robotic, carbon-copy approach adopted by many companies.
Chesky explained his perception of corporate communications, stating, " I always felt like when I read some of these corporate communications that...they weren't written by people." He further commented that the usage of corporate jargon is likely a result of committee-driven writing processes.
Chesky noted, "Many CEOs don't write anything that they put their name on. However, any communication that I write..." He doesn't make these remarks without personal experience.
And as you can see, Capitalism is about that — the Russian Roulette of being hired and fired and hated in the company.
Hang on, big Shift here, from short term rentals, to, writing, novels, Vietnam.
Here, that great pretender, that fucking movie,
…and his bullshit Deer Hunter: [Michael Cimino about a trio of Slavic-American steelworkers whose lives were upended after fighting in the Vietnam War. The three soldiers are played by Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage, with John Cazale, Meryl Streep, and George Dzundza playing supporting roles. The story takes place in Clairton, Pennsylvania, a working-class town on the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh, and in Vietnam.]
[Lend a hand — read, and purchase, my book. Contact me and I will sell you one, discounted, with signature.]
“ALL WARS are fought twice,” Viet Thanh Nguyen has written, “the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.”
Born in Vietnam to parents who fled to the United States in 1975, Nguyen understands this truth intimately.
Nguyen spent his first three years in the US in a refugee camp in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsyvlania and then with a host family in Harrisburg, where he was separated from his mother and father and sister. “Not everyone would take a whole family,” he says, speaking by phone from Boston.
“This period had a big impact on me, I didn’t realize how deep until much later.”
Nguyen’s family eventually reunited in 1978 and resettled in San Jose, where his mother and father opened one of the first Vietnamese grocery stores. It was not an easy period, given the virulence of anti-Vietnamese sentiment.
VTN: We don’t really talk about the books in my family, I don’t shove my books into the dinner table conversation, I think it’d be really tiresome. My dad was proud of the novel, he insisted on having his picture taken with it when I brought it home. I think part of him appreciates the reception of the book in the American press, but when the nonfiction book was about to come out, I think maybe he thinks of it differently, when I came home I told him I wanted to dedicate it to him and my mother, their sacrifices are absolutely what made me the person I am today. But he said, please, don’t put our names in the book. For him the history I deal with has not died, and to be associated with the book would be too dangerous. As if the history which put him through decades of war and made of him an immigrant is out there waiting to grab him or to grab me. A couple of weeks ago when we talked ago he said, “Are you done writing books now?” So I think there is something much more dangerous about the nonfiction work for him. That is something that I respect, and maybe something that shows that books are still dangerous, words are still dangerous, and he is a person that wants to put them back.
TAKING REVENGE AGAINST COPPOLA’S “APOCALYPSE NOW”
Steve Paulson: So, when you were growing up, did you identify more as Vietnamese or American, or were those identities always fused together?
Viet Nguyen: Those identities were always fused or confused. I definitely had the sense that I was American because I grew up completely surrounded by American culture and I absorbed the English language and saw myself very much as someone who belonged here in this country. On the other hand, I was also surrounded by Vietnamese people, had attended all these Vietnamese institutions and rituals and was reminded of the fact that I was Vietnamese by American culture, by things such as America’s movies about the Vietnam War, in which when I was watching them I identified with the American soldiers up until the point they killed Vietnamese people, and I realized I was also the gook in the American imagination, as well.
Steve Paulson: So, movies like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, even the Rambo movies?
Viet Nguyen: Oh, absolutely. I saw all of those and many more. For example, watching Platoon in the movie theaters, I was probably 16 at the time, and going along with the action and everything until this climactic battle where Vietnamese soldiers were being killed, and all of a sudden the audience erupts and cheers. I thought, “Where am I supposed to be in this particular scene? Am I supposed to be cheering the killing or am I supposed to be identifying with the person being killed?”
Steve Paulson: I want to come back to one of those movies, actually, because it figures in a major way in your book. Apocalypse Now. What kind of impact did that have on you, when you first saw it?
Viet Nguyen: I first saw it probably when I was 10 or 11 on the VCR, and it completely traumatized me. I was much too young to watch this movie, did not understand what was going on, but it left a deep imprint on my soul, basically. I still remember it vividly, to this day, particularly for a scene in which the American soldiers massacre a sampan full of innocent civilians. Obviously, this moment for the movie, is meant to signal the descent into darkness for all of these American sailors-
Steve Paulson: This is that scene where they go on a boat and suddenly some of the soldiers go a little crazy and they just start shooting this whole family on the boat.
Viet Nguyen: Right, they kill everybody. Not everyone’s dead. There’s a woman who still survives and the American sailors feel regretful and they want to rescue her but Martin Sheen, the character of Martin Sheen, has this mission to go kill Kurtz. He can’t let anything interrupt his mission, so he executes her. So, it is a turning point in the film, morally, for Americans and for Francis Ford Coppola. I understood that, but that left me so shaken that even 10 years later, in college, as I was recounting the scene to a film class, my voice would shake with rage and anger. This is testimony to the power of the movie and the power of art and the power of storytelling, that I respect that movie very much as being a great work of art. But, it’s also deeply problematic for someone like me, and it gave me the sense that I had to respond in kind, that this novel would be my revenge.
Steve Paulson: Well, we should say that one of your subplots is that your narrator ends up working on a movie set in the Philippines, clearly a lot like the making of Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola. I’m wondering if you could read a passage from that, because your narrator’s trying to convince the filmmaker to give the Vietnamese characters a little more humanity.
Viet Nguyen: Right, so he is asked to read the screenplay by the auteur. That’s the name I give to the director, and the screenplay has no roles for Vietnamese people in it. So, he’s very upset about that, and then eventually the auteur asks him to be the authenticity consultant to go with him to the Philippines to make sure all the details are correct. But the scene that I’m going to read actually takes place before then, with the first meeting with the auteur in Los Angeles.
Viet Nguyen: My meeting with the auteur and Violet, his assistant, had gone on for a while longer, with me pointing out that the lack of speaking parts for Vietnamese people in a movie set in Vietnam might be interpreted as cultural insensitivity. “True,” Violet interjected, “But, what it boils down to is who pays for the tickets and who goes to the movies. Frankly, Vietnamese audiences aren’t going to watch this movie, are they?” I contained my outrage.
Viet Nguyen: “Even so,” I said, “Do you not think it would be a little more believable, a little more realistic, a little more authentic for a movie set in a certain country, for the people in that country to have something to say? Instead of having your screenplay direct, as it does now, cut to villagers speaking in their own language. Could you not have them speak a heavily accented English? You know what I mean. Ching Chong English, just to pretend that they are speaking in an Asian language, that somehow American audiences can strangely understand? And don’t you think it would be more compelling if your green beret had a love interest? Do these men only love and die for each other? That is the implication without a woman in the midst.”
Viet Nguyen: The auteur grimaced and said, “Very interesting. Great stuff. Loved it, but I have a question. How many movies have you made? None. Isn’t that right? None, zero, zilch, nada, nothing, and however you say it in your language. So, thank you for telling me how to do my job. Now, get the hell out of my house and come back after you’ve made a movie or two. Maybe then, I’ll listen to one or two of your cheap ideas.”
Steve Paulson: That is great. Now, I’ve heard you describe this as an anti-American novel. Do you see it that way?
Viet Nguyen: Well, it is very critical of American culture and American politics and so on, but anti-Americanism is not so bad because it still has American in it. Anti-American critique still puts America pretty close to the center. And, if there’s one thing I learned from watching America’s Vietnam War movies is that Americans want to be at the center of the story even if they are the anti-heroes. It’s much better to be the star of your own movie, even if it means you do bad things, than to be the extra who gets killed.
A Man of Two Faces
+—+
Finally, back to the long term rental sicarios!
Imagine a novel about these criminals: “ Airbnb has an 'elite secret team' to hide crimes that occur in their accommodations, this is how they operate: Thefts, physical assaults, rapes and even the discovery of human remains are some situations that Airbnb has had to hide, spending millions of dollars to avoid a reputation crisis.”
Thanks to an investigation by Bloomberg , it is now known that Airbnb has an 'elite secret team' that reacts immediately to hide the crimes that occur in the properties offered by the platform. His way of operating includes shelling out millions of dollars to compensate victims and avoid a reputational crisis .
It may interest you: The Internet attacks Airbnb for high prices and hidden fees: 'These prices are ridiculous'
For years, the San Francisco, California-based company has had a special security department that handles incidents. The objective is that these do not reach the ears of the public and ensure that the victims release Airbnb from any responsibility for the events.
+—+
The Sympathizer
I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides. Sometimes I flatter myself that this is a talent, and although it is admittedly one of a minor nature, it is perhaps also the sole talent I possess. At other times, when I reflect on how I cannot help but observe the world in such a fashion, I wonder if what I have should even be called talent. After all, a talent is something you use, not something that uses you. The talent you cannot not use, the talent that possesses you—that is a hazard, I must confess. But in the month when this confession begins, my way of seeing the world still seemed more of a virtue than a danger, which is how some dangers first appear.
The month in question was April, the cruelest month. It was the month in which a war that had run on for a very long time would lose its limbs, as is the way of wars. It was a month that meant everything to all the people in our small part of the world and nothing to most people in the rest of the world. It was a month that was both an end of a war and the beginning of . . . well, “peace” is not the right word, is it, my dear commandant?
With smoke-and-mirrors panache, The Committed -- Viet Thanh Nguyen's sequel to The Sympathizer -- continues the travails of our Eurasian Ulysses, now relocated to France and self-identified as Vo Danh (which literally means "Nameless"). Having survived a communist reeducation camp, a perilous sea crossing, and a long sojourn in an Indonesian refugee center, he arrives in Paris on July 18, 1981 — the birthday of Nelson Mandela — to become, once again, a refugee. That our hero arrives four days after Bastille Day is significant, for the ideals of liberté, egalité, and fraternité have proven elusive in France's former colonies, and it would take a visionary of Mandela's stature to give them new life.
More intimate in setting than The Sympathizer's transcontinental scope, The Committed employs the motif of organized crime as linkage between the various demimondes populated by disaffected Algerian immigrants, maternal Cambodian prostitutes, and nostalgic Vietnamese thugs all living in France. From a satirical James Bond-esque spy story in The Sympathizer, the author shifts to James Baldwin's intersectional politics in The Committed to address greed, prejudice, and violence.
The Committed also reiterates the ideas first articulated in The Sympathizer. "What is to be done?" — the question that Nguyen poses in both novels — is a timeless inquiry into the forces that shape our moral worldview. And while it's a universal question, its ideological implications prove especially challenging for Vietnamese Americans who came of age after the end of the Vietnam War. Should our political sympathies align with our parents — refugees from the former Republic of South Vietnam who rejected Communism and left Vietnam for the U.S., or with those who chose to follow Ho Chi Minh's vision of freedom and independence? And can we have a balanced perspective if we did not directly suffer war or its consequences, but learned about war's impacts from family members toward whom we owe both blood and emotional allegiance?
+—+
I’m outta here: Got more reading to do = “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Racial Economics of Inclusive Capitalism”
[Photo: One in a series of racist posters attacking Radical Republicans on the issue of black suffrage, issued during the Pennsylvania gubernatorial election of 1866. The series advocates the election of Hiester Clymer, who ran for governor on a white-supremacy platform, supporting President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policies. (1866. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.)]
Dang, another Yankee Doodle Dandy, and then, at the end, the teacher shit, and, alas, another Kraut? Alas, again, Americans are so so afraid of another feeling about July 4, they just can't let it fly, and if they want to rah-rah that Grand Old Flag, then do it on your own time. Nothing she says does a damned thing to discount what I said, but she allows for out of context quotes or citations.
https://www.newportnewstimes.com/opinion/there-s-much-that-s-positive-in-the-usa/article_699beb58-1b7e-11ee-97cc-f38001fbfe12.html
America will always have its problems. However, an objective critique examines the positive as well as the negative; and there’s much that’s positive in the USA.
As a teacher, I observed that tearing a student’s work apart was not nearly so valuable as finding some good in it and seeking to build on that. This same principle might well apply to how we treat our country.
Again, I said July 4 was a celebration hollow for me, not hallowed, and did I make a call out to the readers to also follow my path? This is how a teacher, what k12, does her rhetorical shallowness?
RE: "Paul Haeder’s viewpoint (“Fourth of July not hallowed ground for me,” June 30 edition) merits a response. After his account of wrongs, he concludes that “critiquing America’s history does not make you un-American, unpatriotic, communist, socialist, or Marxist.”
I’m not saying it makes him any of those things, but I do have a question. Do the historical wrongs he cites warrant our demeaning the celebration of our country’s founding by calling it a “hollow” or “shallow” thing, as he does?"
Is there a Fish out there willing to do the comment? Or, again, not worth it, I know I know.
https://www.newportnewstimes.com/opinion/combat-duty-with-homeless-veterans-senior-ncos-and-a-variety-of-military/article_a2f09c6c-15db-11ee-88a4-836cf8348c4b.html
And, then there’s the sixteen year old kid, in Wisconsin, killed in a sawmill. What a horrible tragedy. There’s wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and handwringing, and demands for child labor protections.
Why?
Why now, motherfuckers? This is news to you? Child exploitation? Really? It’s as old as america, and it ain’t never stopped.
But, let’s wait for a dead kid, so some folks can have the opportunity to prostrate themselves, and virtue signal awhile. Then, back to business as usual. Back to work. Gotta go, go, go. Produce, produce, produce. Consume, consume, consume.
Shit ain’t gonna improve here, until, enough people, have had enough, and start doin’, and not just play actin’.
Think France.
Do I live in a kettle of frogs? It seems that shit ain’t uncomfortable enough yet, for the biped amphibians to get jumpin’. I think we might already be cooked.