And the new depository will not just be a well-guarded warehouse for that bullion. The law Abbott signed calls for the creation of an electronic payments system that will allow gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and rhodium depositors to write checks against their accounts, making the depository into a bank – one that will create a metal-backed money supply intended to challenge the paper currency issued by the Federal Reserve - or "Yankee dollars" as one of the law's top supporters calls them. And in case the Fed or Obama wants to confiscate Texas's gold, nice try Fed and Obama! In keeping with this suspicion of the Fed and Washington, the new law also explicitly declares that no “governmental or quasi-governmental authority other than an authority of [Texas]” will be allowed to confiscate or freeze an account inside the depository. Gold that’s entrusted to Texas will stay in Texas.
The depository law is the brainchild of a second-term state representative in the Texas legislature named Giovanni Capriglione, a 42-year-old Republican from Southlake, just northwest of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. A private equity manager with an MBA, Capriglione was elected in 2012 after beating an seven-term incumbent with the backing of Tea Party activists. He told the Star-Telegram that when he first announced his interest in establishing a depository in Texas in 2013, he “got so many emails and phone calls from people literally all over the world who said they want to store their gold … in a Texas depository. People have this image of Texas as big and powerful … so for a lot of people, this is exactly where they would want to go with their gold.” On his official Facebook page, Capriglione said he has “ just been overwhelmed with all of the contacts and write-ups and interviews” he’s gotten.
Fed critics herald Capriglione’s bill as a long-awaited and much-needed assault on the government’s printing press. Ryan McMaken at the libertarian Mises Institute (named after Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises) wrote that “while the Texas depository is a government-owned enterprise, it nevertheless is an improvement since it is a case of decentralization (and arguably nullification)” that will present “alternatives to the Federally-controlled monetary and banking systems.” In what Capriglione – the depository bill’s sponsor – called “an easy to read summary of the specifics” of the law, a Tea Party site described the depository as a “game changer.” The author of the piece, a metals dealer named Franklin Sanders, wrote that “since at least 1991 I have firmly believed that whenever an electronic payments system could be established using silver & gold, it could supplant fiat currencies worldwide within two years at most, less time given a crisis. Now Texas steps forward to make it stick. And if Texas has the nerve to carry though, it will make Texas a center of world finance to rival New York and London better than Switzerland, because it contains 27,695,284 Texans and all but two of ‘em are armed & serious.” (Sanders favors the term “Yankee dollars” to describe paper currency.)
Other gold enthusiasts go further in blowing the secessionist dog whistle. “If the Fed gets too carried away with its digital money printing, then Texas will already have some kind of system to work off of in terms of not using the dollar. I’m not saying it will come to this, but it is symbolic in retaining some liberty, similar to gun ownership in this country. It is not something that will likely be used against a tyrannical government because the symbolism itself keeps tyranny in check,” writes Geoffrey Pike at Wealth Daily. The Tenth Amendment Center, meanwhile, predicted that “while [the bullion depository] won’t nullify the Fed’s monetary monopoly on its own, it represents an important step forward in that direction.”
The depository, then, will insulate Texans from a just-around-the-corner economic and geopolitical catastrophe brought on by paper money and cauterize the seemingly-still-fresh trauma of Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 executive order making gold coin hoarding illegal during the Great Depression.
But to the trained ear, there’s an even more aggressively anti-Fed term being invoked in praise of the Texas depository: “repatriation.” Ordinarily it’s a word used to describe the movement of assets or currency from one nation to another. Yet on the website of SchiffGold, the gold brokerage owned by onetime U.S. Senate candidate Peter Schiff - whose claim to fame is to have predicted the 2007 housing crash (it happened!) followed by a death spiral of hyperinflation (still waiting!) - Texas is described “join[ing] the ranks of major global economies that want to bring their gold home from New York.”
“Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and other European nations have already begun to repatriate gold from the New York Fed or have proposed to begin doing so,” said a post on the firm’s website that ran on the same day as another predicting the coming of a “cashless society.”
According to this narrative, then, Texas isn’t just setting up its own depository, payments system, and a safe haven for gold that can’t be confiscated by the federal government. Instead, it is signaling a loss of confidence in the United States by pulling its gold out of the largest gold vault in the world eighty feet below the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Florentine-inspired headquarters in lower Manhattan. There, a special police force guards some 530,000 gold bars protected behind a 140-ton airtight steel and concrete framed door sealed with a 90-ton steel cylinder and time locks. Nobody enters the vault alone, ever; three people are present, even if it’s just to change a light bulb. Most of the gold in the vault belongs to other nations; the Fed stores and guards it as a courtesy to allies. Thus, the idea that Texas is somehow taking on an unwise risk by lodging $1 billion in bullion in the vault – so much so that it regards the New York bank as a foreign entity from whom gold ought to be justly “repatriated” – is to reject the practical and geopolitical realities of gold ownership in the 21st century. Even in fiction it is hard to recall a more secure site that has at its disposal more robust resources to guard and defend itself.
This is why, if you were suspicious about Gov. Abbott’s claim that “the [depository] law will repatriate $1 billion of gold bullion from the Federal Reserve in New York to Texas,” you were on to something.
Indeed, Texas has no gold bars in the Federal Reserve’s New York vault. And what the state has is not worth a billion dollars. Instead some 4,200 gold bars bought in 2011 by the University of Texas’s endowment fund (the second largest in the country after Harvard’s) are stored in the basement vault of HSBC’s headquarters at 450 5th Avenue in New York City, just south of the New York Public Library. For the last four years, the endowment has paid an estimated $1 million per year to store their gold there. (If it had been at the New York Fed the cost would have totaled about $15,400 over that period). And the new depository law does not require the university’s endowment fund to relocate the gold to Texas.
In case you’re wondering why the university’s endowment fund ever bought real physical gold to begin with (not just paper assets), that's a story almost as odd as the state's new effort to bring its gold back to Texas to ward off financial Armageddon in the country's other 49 states. That story seems to begin and end with a hedge fund manager named Kyle Bass. Bass, a former Legg Mason and Bear Stearns managing director and outspoken Fed critic, was named to the endowment fund’s board of directors (listed – and pictured – here… ahem) and immediately began pressing his apparently suggestive colleagues to shift their gold options investments into a stake of physical gold.
Bass isn’t just a casual metals speculator. When he believed nickel was undervalued he bought 20 million nickel coins to prove his point (they’re stored on a pallet in a Brinks vault). A brave new world mix of country club and prepper compound, in a Michael Lewis profile, Bass revealed that he’d prepared for a collapse of the government and economy by accumulating – in his words – “guns and gold.”
Like the others mentioned in this story, Bass believes that gold has an intrinsic value. In 2010 and 2011, he steered the University of Texas Investment Management Company’s board of directors to put nearly 5% of the then-$19 billion university and pension fund they manage into physical gold by converting options into bullion. Many large institutions invest in gold through paper investments like options. But most agree that owning actual physical gold bullion is a poor choice for a number of reasons - unless you're expecting a financial cataclysm so great you need actual physical possession of the metal. But coming off the 2008 financial crisis that's what Bass was expecting and he managed to convince his fellow board members. So for $764 million, the fund bought 664,300 ounces of the stuff in 100-ounce bars. Each of those 6,643 bars has enough of what Auric Goldfinger called “divine heaviness” that they can chip a concrete vault floor if dropped.
When the endowment fund bought the gold, their basis for calculating a return – called their cost basis – was $1,150.17 per ounce. The fund eventually traded a third of their physical gold stake for gold futures and other equities, but never reduced their overall exposure to gold. That’s why they still own about 4,200 bars worth just under $500 million. After a significant run-up and subsequent fall in 2012, gold traded on Monday at $1,186. Over more than four years that just a 3% gain for the fund before you account for the cost of housing the gold in New York and the transaction costs that will be incurred if and when the endowment fund ships the bars back to Texas or sells them to a buyer. Over the same period, the S&P 500 index - a broad measure of owning stocks - gained 60%.
Gold investors - and physical gold investors in particular – can be tempted to think of gold as a different kind of holding: a one-way investment whose sale can never be justified. Peter Schiff predicted in October 2012 that gold would soon climb from $1700 to $5000 per ounce. He keeps adjusting that timeline. Therefore, if you bought gold because it was a hedge against hyperinflation that did not happen, don’t sell the gold – just keep believing that inflation is coming in the next quarter, or next year, or that the government is secretly cooking the inflation figures. If gold prices slump, blame central banks for colluding to keep prices low. If the value of gold falls in dollars, quote a rise in another country’s currency that lets you tell a good gold story.
Fed a steady diet of fear, paranoia, and survivalism, the consumer market for physical gold is left particularly susceptible to magical thinking. So in addition to those 4200 University of Texas bars yearning to return home from Texas, that thinking is part of what helped the Texas bullion depository bill win passage in the Texas legislature.
Texas state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione first introduced his depository bill as a freshman legislator in 2013. Despite support from then-Gov. Rick Perry, Capriglione’s bill died without a vote when a fiscal analysis showed that the state would be on the hook for $14 million in the first two years due to the costs of setting up a state-run depository guarded and administered by people on the public payroll.
In a telephone interview with TPM, Capriglione said during the “interim period” between legislative sessions before his second term began, he set about re-designing the depository bill to outsource many of those more expensive functions to the private sector. Although the depository is performing the same functions in the new law as it had in the older version of Capriglione’s bill, shifting the execution to private contractors yielded a so-called “fiscal note” in the legislature that calculated an “indeterminate fiscal impact to the state.” Because it's outsourced rather than run by state employees, it is no longer counted as a concrete expense in the state budget.
Moreover, by privatizing the depository’s operations, Capriglione said he was able to begin recruiting “stakeholders” who “are interested in being a part of the system we’re creating.” Rather than build a Fort Knox-type facility in Texas, Capriglione said “there are commercial vaults not being used or not at full capacity, and I’ve heard from groups willing to start their own depository and IT security companies with underground storage facilities for data centers who can make space available” for gold and other precious metals.
Most importantly, Capriglione found that by offering gold brokers and dealers the chance to become “depository agents” who can accept deposits on the state’s behalf or set up accounts with their own precious metal holdings that can then be sold off and subdivided to would-be depositors, he found a broad network of supporters for the state depository. “These agents will be licensed and bonded,” he said, “they’re middlemen who can, say, deposit $1 million of their own gold into an account and, acting as depository agents, make other accounts by virtually moving the gold.”
In other words, by privatizing his would-be Texas Fort Knox and opening the system up to middlemen themselves looking to service the prepper-fueled market in physical gold, Capriglione gained a new legion of well-heeled supporters for his bill. With a newfound squadron of beneficiaries at hand, Capriglione saw his bill approved by both houses of the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Abbott.
Yet some details have yet to be worked out. “We’re not going to allow entities outside of [Texas] to seize assets,” he said. “In 1933, the Feds seized certain assets,” he said, referring to Roosevelt’s notorious executive order (memories of which are lucratively misstated by some metals dealers). He acknowledges that because the depository law bars the federal government from seizing or freezing gold accounts, it will be necessary for Texas to “do the right thing” in “civil asset forfeiture cases.” “We don’t want illicit goods to be repatriated or criminals or drug lords” to see Texas as a safe harbor, he added. “The [state] comptroller will have to come to a conclusion with the Attorney General” on setting policy.
As of yet, Capriglione doesn’t know where the bullion depository might be located. But he dismissed a suggestion that a building known as a the “Texas Bullion Depository” will attract criminal masterminds. “You don’t need as much security because gold is incredibly heavy and hard to liquidate,” he said. “There aren’t many heists of gold bullion…nobody’s going to be able to steal 80,000 pounds of gold.”
Rushed for time, Capriglione cut short his interview before he could be asked if he had ever seen the films “Heist,” “Goldfinger,” “Ocean’s Eleven,” or “Die Hard 3.”
Scalia’s decision to give Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment to Kagan was inspired:
“The parties set no end date for royalties, apparently contemplating that they would continue for as long as kids want to imitate Spider-Man (by doing whatever a spider can).”
“Patents endow their holders with certain superpowers, but only for a limited time.”
“To the contrary, the decision’s close relation to a whole web of precedents means that reversing it could threaten others.”
“What we can decide, we can undecide. But stare decisis teaches that we should exercise that authority sparingly. Cf. S. Lee and S. Ditko, Amazing Fantasy No. 15: “SpiderMan,” p. 13 (1962) (“[I]n this world, with great power there must also come — great responsibility”).”
Substantively, the case is another example of the disagreement between Scalia and Thomas about the value of stare decisis. While I’m dubious about the idea of “superpowered” precedents in general, in this case — involving statutory interpretation in an area of law in which Congress has been very active and contract law — it makes a certain amount of sense. I also thought Kagan’s discussion of the implications of stare decisis was interesting:
Respecting stare decisis means sticking to some wrong decisions. The doctrine rests on the idea, as Justice Brandeis famously wrote, that it is usually “more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right.” Indeed, stare decisis has consequence only to the extent it sustains incorrect decisions; correct judgments have no need for that principle to prop them up.
I don’t think this is strictly accurate. Stare decisis could also have value in preserving rules that in the first instance could have been reasonably decided either way in the interests of stability. But courts generally prefer not to be explicit about how much discretion they have — “correct” and “incorrect” sound more authoritative than “a decision in a case that could have plausibly come out either way.”
This is day 111, and the local news suggests this article is actually underplaying the deep divides in the House over what to do. Essentially, there has been no progress on negotiations in the last two weeks.
If there's no budget by June 30, state agencies will be unable to disburse salaries to state employees (who, as of last Saturday, are all deemed "essential" and ineligible for furlough). It's sort of a good time to leave the country and be distracted for a week or so--perhaps they'll have this figured out by the time I get back.
Doubts grew among Kansas legislators Tuesday about whether they can approve tax increases necessary to balance the state budget without deep spending cuts that could lead to more-crowded classrooms and even layoffs of prison guards.
Three Senate and three House negotiators canceled a second consecutive day of public talks on tax issues. The Republican-dominated Senate approved a bill Sunday that would raise sales and cigarette taxes to help raise $423 million during the fiscal year beginning July 1, but members of the GOP-controlled House doubt it can pass their chamber.
"I hope we get something done, but I'm losing hope," said Republican Sen. Les Donovan, of Wichita, his chamber's lead negotiator on tax issues.
The state's budget problems arose after legislators slashed income taxes at Republican Gov. Sam Brownback's urging in what he described as a nationally watched experiment in stimulating economic growth. He and many Republican legislators want to preserve those tax policies as much as possible, but they have shown no appetite for cutting spending enough to avoid raising taxes.
Legislators have approved a budget, but it doesn't balance. Because the Kansas Constitution requires a balanced budget, Brownback's budget director has told lawmakers that if they don't pass tax increases, the governor's most likely response will be to cut $400 million from the spending blueprint.
With Republicans disagreeing over tax issues, the Legislature's annual session reached its 110th day Tuesday, making it the longest in state history.
Rep. Gene Suellentrop, of Wichita, said fellow House Republicans were negotiating in private over a new tax plan to present to the negotiators.
"There'll be nothing until we can come together with an understanding on the House side," he said. "Otherwise it's just an exercise in futility."
But Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce said he doubts his chamber can pass another plan.
"The tax package we approved the other night is about as good as it gets for our members," said Bruce, a Nickerson Republican.
Budget Director Shawn Sullivan on Monday night told a group of House Republicans that if lawmakers can't pass a tax bill, Brownback is most likely to impose an across-the-board cut of 6.2 percent in what the Legislature has budgeted for the next fiscal year.
He said public schools would lose $197 million in aid, and a Kansas Association of School Boards lobbyist said that would like force schools to increase class sizes. Sullivan also said state prisons could be forced to cut "front-line staffing."
Some legislators viewed his comments as an attempt to push the House into passing the tax bill approved by the Senate. Sullivan said he was asked to answer questions about the consequences of not passing a tax bill.
Republican legislators are divided over how much to increase the state's 6.15 percent sales tax and how much to raise taxes for more than 330,000 business owners and farmers who stopped paying income taxes on their profits under a 2012 policy championed by Brownback.
The bill approved by the Senate would increase the sales tax to 6.55 percent, while dropping the rate on food to 4.95 percent in July 2016. It would increase the cigarette tax by 50 cents a pack, to $1.29, and increase taxes on business owners by $24 million during the next fiscal year.
Brownback has promised to veto any plan raising taxes on business owners by more than $24 million, but some House Republicans want to defy him and raise as much as $101 million.
That photo is causing me intense, physical anxiety.
If there’s one reason to study the 19th century, it’s to learn lessons on how to raise children. Today’s children are so spoiled, what with their education and not working and playing sports and 8th grade graduation parties and the like. Parents today pay for babysitters instead of just locking the kids in the bedroom for the night. Craziness. If the baby won’t go to sleep, why not dose it with opium? And if the child is in the way, how about hanging it in a cage outside your tenement house window?
Why study the past if we can’t learn lessons for the present?
Sharing this so I can find it the next time I need a gift for my sister-in-law.
When I first got heavily involved with science fiction and fantasy fandom, I was surprised at how frequently I saw knitting going on at conventions and other geek events — which only showed how little I knew, as geekdom and knitdom always has significant overlap, and that overlap has only grown over time. Now Joan of Dark (aka Toni Carr) has brought together the two in book form with Geek Knits, which features nifty knit projects for crafters, modeled by geek notables and celebs in photos by Kyle Cassidy (disclosure: I and Krissy are featured in the book). Here’s Joan to explain how the book got crafted in the first place.
JOAN OF DARK:
“You know what would be cool?” I tend to say that sometimes to people, and miraculously, sometimes they listen. (This is why there is a roller derby knitting book in the world) I think the first time I uttered those words about Geek Knits was after a visit with Neil Gaiman, when he wore the softest, blackest angora sweater that a friend of his had made for him. As my companions and I were heading home I said, “You know what would be cool? A knitting book with novel writers and scientists and comic writers and you know, GEEKS wearing knit stuff. Really good photos too. A knitting book that could almost double as a coffee table book. That would be really cool.” I mused on it a little bit, mentioned it to friends, and tried to let the idea go while I worked on other projects.
Then I hung out with photographer Kyle Cassidy a few times, and mentioned the idea to him. We started running over our dream list of geeks to photograph and what we would have them wear. Then we started talking seriously, who did we know? And the people we knew, who did they know? Could we make connections and make this happen? How could we do over 30 photographs in less than a year without having to fly to 30 different locations? This was madness. So naturally, I pitched it to my agent. She agreed. Wonderful, magical, madness. Let’s do this thing!
Selling the idea of the book was the easy part. It’s difficult to narrow down an idea as broad as “Geek Stuff” when working on a pattern book. Should everything be cosplay, mostly unwearable in real life, and probably hard for the beginner or average knitter to complete? Or should everything be fairly simple, such as sweaters worn in the Harry Potter movies and scarves worn in Doctor Who? Or how about general geekiness like ties and pocket protectors? Obviously, part of the fun of making a book like this is making things that people want to recreate!
Luckily, I realized that trying to please everyone is a quick path to the bad sort of madness. I decided the best thing to do was to design the patterns I wanted to design, and enlist the help of other designers to bring some dimension to the book. Which is how we came to have wonderful things like a stuffed Bunnicula Vampire Bunny (permission granted by James Howe to make him), an amazing sweater inspired by the question “What would Molly Weasley knit for Arthur?” and Cthulhu gloves.
I wanted to bring my favorite ideas about knitwear to life. I love that knitting can be either average or absurd and no matter what, it is, it’s a work of art. A bit of string looped around some needles becomes a sweater! Sure, a sweater is a pretty basic piece of clothing, but to those who know the hours it takes to create one, it’s sort of an amazing concept. Then there’s the slightly absurd. Could I design a knit fez? Could I get my talented designer mother to create a snow beast balaclava inspired by the alien that scared me in Star Wars? These are things most people aren’t going to throw on when they run out to the grocery store, but they fall into the “so weird it’s wonderful” category for me.
My initial idea, the “You know what would be cool?” concept of getting geek celebrities to do the modeling was almost as hard as the designs themselves. Writing to my heroes and asking if they would mind being a little silly, donning socks and hats and sweaters for my knitting book. Those were pretty tough emails to write. Luckily I have friends, and friends of friends who helped make connections. Even luckier, I realized that lots of celebrities don’t mind being silly. Paul and Storm serenading a stuffed worm comes to mind.
I’m going to keep saying “You know what would be cool?” and working to bring those ideas to life. Because you know what? This project was really cool!
My friend Jacqueline Kahn (pictured here with her husband Laurie, on their 60th anniversary trip) died yesterday morning. I want to tell you a little bit about her, and what she meant to me.
First, you have to know that in the 4th grade, I broke my leg. I broke it by hitting a moving Ford Pinto. Technically I was at a cross walk so I was not at fault, but there was a parked car directly in front of me and I ran out into the street, and the poor man who hit me couldn’t have possibly stopped in time. Regardless, my leg was well and truly smashed up, and I was in a cast and wheelchair for a big chunk of my 4th grade year.
The folks at my school decided it was not a great idea to have me tooling around the playground in a wheelchair, so for recess and lunchtimes I was carted into the school office, where Jackie was working, I believe, as a receptionist/secretary. I was ten and very very very chatty, so naturally I spent a lot of time blathering in her direction. Jackie, to her credit, was kind to me and talked back, rather than just genially ignoring me. Later, when my leg healed, I in my ten-year-old egotism thought that she would be sad that I was no longer there, so every day after that, as I headed to the bus to take me home, I would stop in and tell her a joke before I left.
I did that every single day through the end of my sixth grade year, my last year at elementary school. Most of the jokes were terrible. Jackie, bless her, continued to be kind to me.
And more than that. My mother went through a terrible divorce early in my sixth grade year, after which my mother, sister and I were briefly homeless, and then moved several times in the course of that last year, to cities other than Covina, which is where my school was. When we moved out of Covina, I should have no longer been able to attend Ben Lomond, the elementary school I was in. But of course I didn’t want that, and my mother didn’t want that, and I’m pretty sure that my mother didn’t go out of her way to tell anyone we had moved. But sooner or later it got out, and I think there was some question about whether or not I would be able to continue at Ben Lomond.
What happened then, as I understand it, is that Jackie said that if I was made to leave the school, she would quit her job.
And that was that. I stayed.
I didn’t know any of this at the time, of course. I learned about it much later. But I can’t tell you how important it was. As I said: Rough divorce, homelessness, and shuttling around to several houses, all in the space of a few months. We were terribly poor and because my mother had to find work where she could, when she could, I and my sister were left along to our own devices a lot of the time. What stability I had — honestly, the one place I could depend on not suddenly changing — came from my elementary school, where I had Jackie, my teachers (particularly Keith Johnson, my 6th grade teacher) and my friends. If I were to have lost that, among everything else I lost, I couldn’t tell you how I would have dealt with it. I suspect I would have dealt with it poorly. So I think I can say without exaggeration that Jackie’s act saved me, in ways I wasn’t aware of at the time, but am aware of now.
Jackie’s kindness to me didn’t stop once I left elementary school. We became friends and she was someone I depended on. She stayed in contact with me in junior high and high school. She took me to movies — a lot of movies, and good movies because she was a film buff — and let me visit her house, where she kept Corgis before Corgis were cool. In many ways she made me part of her extended family. I knew it and loved it, and thought of her in so many ways as another grandmother, equal to, and in most ways one I was closer to, then my own actual grandmothers.
In high school she read my stories and came to all the plays I was in. When I went off to college I would come back on holidays to see her and say hello. When it became clear Krissy and I were a serious item, I took her to Jackie’s house so she could meet her (she approved). She was there for my wedding. When I moved away she kept in touch with me through e-mail, sharing her own writing (she was a playwright, and a pretty good one) and keeping me up to date with her family, as I kept her up to date with mine. When my very first book came out, in 2000, I co-dedicated the book to her. She liked that. I knew she was proud of me and the life I’ve made.
And now she’s gone.
I had advance warning of this day, so I was able to prepare for it, which I think in many ways was a kindness. She was so important to me that having the news cold would have come like a hammer blow. Instead I had time to think of her and the totality of her life and everything I owe to her, in ways obvious and not so obvious, so that when this final door closed I could feel, not pain, but joy in a life that was well-lived and was generous enough to encompass me in it.
Jacqueline Kahn was a woman who was good to me as a child, a friend to me as an adult, and always, a home spirit — someone I knew cared for me, no matter what, and with whom I felt safe, and cherished, and loved. I love her, and will miss her, and will carry her and her kindness in my heart all of my days.
All my love now goes to her family, and to all of those who knew her and cared for her, and for whom she cared. May her memory be a blessing to each of them.
And thank you for letting me share a little bit of who she was with you. When you see me, you see a little bit of her in me. I’m glad of that. She was the best of people.
What’s the moral to this story? Two morals: One, the Internet is awesome because, sometimes, if you ask, you will get pictures of squirrels playing polo on the backs of Pomeranians. And two:
Today's lesson: Intelligence is a tool, not a trophy. Being "smart" doesn't mean shit. Doing something with the intelligence you have does.
Dangnation, what a page-turner this saga was, am I in the neighborhood of rightness or what? The wee cat, insinuating himself around the borders of my property, mewing scantily and clutching with his teethlings at whatever scraps I would render unto him! What was to become of him? Too small and scraggly to fend for himself, having been abandoned by kith and kin alike, I knew I had to snatchle him up.
So I come home yesterday, as is my custom, to find this little number setting up his shingle on my back porch.
NO. NO. NO. I REJECT THE SMALLNESS OF HIM IN THE ABSOLUTE.
The First Lady throws a really, REALLY terrible roundhouse kick.
You can discuss either the righteousness of this or whatever else is pressing on your mind; I'm tired from cat-rescuing and plan on taking a midday nap. You could also talk about the season two episode of Futurama where Dr. Zoidberg goes back to his home planet to try to have sex; I would also accept that.
So here's today's post out of left field: the studio version of this song is how I first fell in love with Neko Case, and I was at this concert. I think it's worth listening to it. (c:
The firebrand singer-songwriter gives her trademark vocal cords a workout in this familiar favorite. Subscribe to Pitchfork TV so you don't miss any new cont...
And — since I’m the food guy, it’s worth pointing out — without access to good food or nutrition education. This is murder by a thousand cuts. The rate of hunger among black households: 10.1 percent. Among white households: 4.6 percent. The age-adjusted rate of obesity among black Americans: 47.8 percent. Among white Americans: 32.6 percent. The rate of diabetes among black adults aged 20 or older: 13.2 percent. Among white adults: 7.6 percent. Black Americans’ life expectancy, compared to white Americans: four years less. (The life expectancy of black men with some high school compared to white men with some college: minus 14 years.)
These numbers are not a result of a lack of food access but of an abundance of poverty. Lack of education is not a result of a culture of victimhood but of lack of funding for schools. And rather than continuing to allow these realities to divide us, we should do the American thing, which is to fix things. Which we can do, together.
Not long ago African-Americans were enslaved; until recently they were lynched. Isolated racist murders still occur, but they are no longer sanctioned or tolerated, and we’re seeing the vestiges of that as both national and local attention is paid to violence by the police against black people.
But oppression and inequality are violence in another form. When people are undereducated, impoverished, malnourished, un- or under-employed, or underpaid and working three jobs, their lives are diminished, as are their opportunities. As are the opportunities of their children.
This is unjust and intolerable. The bad news is that we should be ashamed of ourselves: As long as these things are true, this is not the country we say it is or the country we want it to be.
The good news is that it’s fixable, not by “market forces” but by policies that fund equal education, good-paying jobs, and a good food, health and well-being program for all Americans.
He doesn’t pretend that food access is going to solve larger problems, which is an issue among many food writers who see food as a mystical experience. But he notes that we can solve the interconnected issues of poverty, injustice, and food access through good policy. Which is absolutely true and the position that the entire food movement should be taking on the recent uptick in protest against racism.
goodnight room
goodnight moon goodbye moon
no, I didn't say – goodbye room
I only said goodnight – goodbye, cow jumping over the moon
goodnight, not goodbye goodbye, light
it isn't time yet, it isn't time say goodbye
No one else probably cares, but the fact that anyone considers Kevin J. Anderson employable boggles my mind. The Jedi Academy Trilogy was **garbage**.
The year is 11 ABY, shortly after the events of Champions of the Force. Kyp Durron has just been returned to Coruscant with the Sun Crusher by Han Solo after having destroyed the entire Carida system, along with its 25 million inhabitants, for a trial.
LUKE SKYWALKER speaks before the council headed by MON MOTHMA, Borsk Fey'lya, and Leia Organa Solo.
LUKE: ...so, anyways, if you guys could just release Kyp back into my custody, I'll just, uh, take him back to Yavin 4, the planet where he initially encountered the spirit of Exar Kun and turned to the dark side, and continue his Jedi training.
MON MOTHMA: What? No.
LEIA: Absolutely not.
BORSK FEY'LYA: It feels borderline criminal that you would even ask us that.
MON MOTHMA: This is a court of law. You get that, right? Like...I get that he's your buddy, or whatever, but he's literally killed more people than Darth Vader and Moff Tarkin put together.
LUKE: Right, right, I know, but he's really sorry.
Note: Through a vortex and also quantum physics and a wrinkle in the space-time continuum, the Ladies are all now around 30 years old, but it's still like, 2015.
***
To: Katie, Nicole, Ash, Morgan, Jen From: Ali Subject: eating for two!!
Hey Ladies!!
Where has the time gone, seriously? This has been such an amazing winter. Sorry I've been so MIA, I've just been hanging out with some new girls I met. They are just so laid back yet really driven, and are so spiritually inspiring since they've embraced a really Eastern (Long Island) mentality. But you all are my #1 baes, and that is why I am so excited to see you all at our friends first....BABY SHOWER!!!!!!!
Congrats, Jen!!!! Are you feeling morning sickness yet?? Jen swore me to secrecy since she is still in the first trimester, but baby shower brunch places tend to book up, so we really don't have a sec to lose, so I guess the cat is out of the bag!!!
The baby is due in November, right? I am super booked up, but I think I can make a baby shower work at the end of Q2. Everyone please reserve every open weekend in May and June until I let you know what works best with my work sched!
I am so excited!!!! Jen, can you please text me the SECOND you find out the gender?? Or just facetime me into your gyn appointments. Showers are sooo much cuter if we can reinforce traditional gender roles and do something in the key of pink or blue.
Also, was this an on purpose pregnancy or accidental?? It's such a miracle either way!!! But if it was accidental, can you please tell me what birth control method you were using so I can avoid it??
Can everyone please send me ideas for shower themes? Also Jen can you please try to limit your weight gain to the bump area only for the instagrams??
Love!!
"Auntie" Ali!
---
"Don't believe me, just watch" - Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars, "Uptown Funk"
I'm trying not to make this into a Thing, but I really think this... it's not a turning point, but it's an indication of exactly how far up its own asshole the American right wing has climbed.
Gohmert--like Greg Abbott, Ted Cruz, and others--is an elected government representative, and he's endorsing the idea that the federal government in the US is so corrupt and untrustworthy that we should be worried about whether or not it plans to invade Texas.
Gohmert said in a statement that he understands Texans' concerns that the exercise, dubbed "Jade Helm 15," may be a precursor for martial law. He directed his criticism specifically at what has been reported to be a map of the training exercise, which labels Texas, among other states, as "hostile" territory:
"Once I observed the map depicting ‘hostile,’ ‘permissive,’ and ‘uncertain’ states and locations, I was rather appalled that the hostile areas amazingly have a Republican majority, ‘cling to their guns and religion,’ and believe in the sanctity of the United States Constitution," Gohmert said in the statement.
"Such labeling by a government that is normally not allowed to use military force against its own citizens is an affront to the residents of that particular state considered as 'hostile,' as if the government is trying to provoke a fight with them," he later added.
The congressman urged the military to alter the tone of the training exercise and draw up a new map so as to dispel any notion that the federal government is "intentionally practicing war" against particular states.
Read the full statement below:
Over the past few weeks, my office has been inundated with calls referring to the Jade Helm 15 military exercise scheduled to take place between July 15 and September 15, 2015. This military practice has some concerned that the U.S. Army is preparing for modern-day martial law.
Certainly, I can understand these concerns. When leaders within the current administration believe that major threats to the country include those who support the Constitution, are military veterans, or even ‘cling to guns or religion,’ patriotic Americans have reason to be concerned. We have seen people working in this administration use their government positions to persecute people with conservative beliefs in God, country, and notions such as honor and self-reliance. Because of the contempt and antipathy for the true patriots or even Christian saints persecuted for their Christian beliefs, it is no surprise that those who have experienced or noticed such persecution are legitimately suspicious.
Having served in the U.S. Army, I can understand why military officials have a goal to see if groups of Special Forces can move around a civilian population without being noticed and can handle various threat scenarios. In military science classes or in my years on active duty, I have participated in or observed military exercises; however, we never named an existing city or state as a “hostile.” We would use fictitious names before we would do such a thing.
Once I observed the map depicting ‘hostile,’ ‘permissive,’ and ‘uncertain’ states and locations, I was rather appalled that the hostile areas amazingly have a Republican majority, ‘cling to their guns and religion,’ and believe in the sanctity of the United States Constitution. When the federal government begins, even in practice, games or exercises, to consider any U.S. city or state in 'hostile' control and trying to retake it, the message becomes extremely calloused and suspicious.
Such labeling tends to make people who have grown leery of federal government overreach become suspicious of whether their big brother government anticipates certain states may start another civil war or be overtaken by foreign radical Islamist elements which have been reported to be just across our border. Such labeling by a government that is normally not allowed to use military force against its own citizens is an affront to the residents of that particular state considered as 'hostile,' as if the government is trying to provoke a fight with them. The map of the exercise needs to change, the names on the map need to change, and the tone of the exercise needs to be completely revamped so the federal government is not intentionally practicing war against its own states.
Seriously, people: what are we going to do when George Takei dies? The man is fucking irreplaceable.
Rare Japanese American artifacts and artworks created in internment camps during World War II and recently put up for sale in a controversial auction have instead been acquired by the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, officials are expected to announce Saturday night.
The acquisition, to be announced at the museum's annual fundraising gala, consists of about 450 works that had been set for auction April 17 through the Rago Arts and Auction Center in New Jersey. Tens of thousands of Japanese Americans, many former internees or their descendants, joined social media protests after hearing of plans to sell the works, some of which may have been donated decades ago with the expectation that they would be used for educational purposes, not for profit. Rago halted the sale.
Instrumental in convincing the auction house not to go forward with the sale was Japanese American National Museum board trustee and actor George Takei, Sulu in the original "Star Trek." An outspoken activist on social justice issues, Takei said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that he convinced Rago Arts' founding partner David Rago to cancel the auction.
“Many of the photos picture peoples’ grandparents and parents, and there’s a strong emotional tie there,” said Takei, who as a boy was imprisoned in two internment camps with his family. “To put that up on the auction block to the highest bidder, where it would just disappear into someone’s collection, was insensitive. The most appropriate and obvious place for the collection was the Japanese American National Museum. I talked to David Rago after the uproar, and he was very thoughtful and receptive.”
The collection acquired by the museum includes watercolors and oil paintings of life behind the barbed-wire fences of the internment camps, as well as hand-carved wood sculptures, furniture and black-and-white photographs of residents. Collectively, they depict the dark period in American history when about 120,000 people of Japanese descent, about two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, were forcibly moved to internment camps across the West and South in 1942. They weren’t released until after the war ended, in 1945.
Japanese American National Museum officials wouldn't say if a donor or donors bought the collection for the museum or how much the artworks cost to acquire. Takei said he contributed money but would not specify how much. “I’ve written my check,” he said, “I contributed.”
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, which represents the site of the former Heart Mountain Relocation Center and which was among the protesters of the Rago auction, estimated the collection's maximum value at $26,900.
“The works are priceless,” said Greg Kimura, president and chief executive of the Japanese American National Museum. “To us, they’re not just pieces of art; they are deeply important representations of the longing and hope of our families -- many of whom have passed away now -- who produced these artworks while they were incarcerated behind barbed wire by their own country.”
An oil painting by Estelle Peck Ishigo depicts families arriving at the Heart Mountain center, toting luggage and huddled together as they brace against Wyoming winds. Hand-carved nameplates that once graced tar-papered barracks represent in different grains of wood the imprisoned families inside: Kubota, Higashida, Kashiwabara.
Historian and author Allen Hendershott Eaton originally accumulated the collection. During the war, he began collecting artifacts made in the camps. Many of the items were given to him by camp detainees. The works informed his 1952 book, “Beauty Behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in Our War Relocation Camps,” about the injustices suffered by the camp residents. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote the forward to the book.
Eaton had hoped to curate an exhibition of the artifacts and educate the public about the plight of Japanese Americans during the war, but that never came about. His collection was passed on to his heirs and, eventually, it ended up with friends, the John Ryan family in Connecticut. The Ryans enlisted Rago, which specializes in arts and crafts, to auction the artifacts in 23 lots.
As word of the Rago auction spread weeks ago, Japanese American groups around the country pushed back in emails and petitions. A Facebook page, Japanese American History: NOT for Sale, had garnered 6,200 followers before the auction was set to take place.
Takei’s potential influence on social media, including more than 8.5 million Facebook followers, didn’t hurt.
“This collection wouldn’t be coming to JANM if it weren’t for the intervention and passion of George Takei,” Kimura said. “He stepped in to ask Rago that the auction be canceled, and, I mean, who can say no to George?”
Rago said the collection’s personal and historical significance took his company by surprise.
“Once it became evident that the community felt it would be disrespectful to bring this material to auction, we realized we had to pull this lot from the sale,” he said.
Initially, Rago said, the auction house had assumed the most likely bidders for the collection, whose value it estimated at $15,000 to $30,000, would be cultural institutions. After the uproar, he said, a few institutions offered to purchase the collection, but the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo neighborhood was the most appropriate home, Rago said.
“Their central mission is to share the Japanese American experience, and they’re based on the West Coast, where the camps were located,” he said.
Kimura described his talks with Rago and the Ryan family as amicable.
“It was an alignment of interests," Kimura said.
The museum will assess conservation needs for the objects, each at least 70 years old. After that, JANM foresees traveling exhibitions and loans of individual pieces to other institutions.
Giving the artifacts and their story maximum exposure is key, Kimura said, “not just for Japanese Americans but people outside the community who have been inspired by the story.”
The collection speaks to the resilience of the human spirit and is the physical manifestation of a universal story, Kimura said.
“It has moral lessons for the U.S. even today,” he said. “Lessons about guarding against our worst impulses during times of national crisis, about protecting our most vulnerable communities during those times, whether racial profiling after 9/11 or immigration reform or other issues that are not just related to the past but are relevant today.”
Takei emphasized the importance for the artifacts to become “object lessons.”
“It was an egregious violation of the American Constitution," he said. "We were innocent American citizens and we were imprisoned simply because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. It shows us just how fragile our Constitution is. Now these items can be shared with a large audience.”
At the Saturday gala held at a Century City hotel, the museum was to honor Takei with its Distinguished Medal of Honor for Lifetime Achievement and Public Service.
May 3, 9:21 a.m. This post was updated to clarify that the Japanese American National Museum is in L.A.'s Little Tokyo neighborhood, but the museum's gala was held in Century City.
Here’s a little something I’ve been keeping a lid on until this very moment: I’m back in the film commentary business. The folks at Sundance asked me to write an occasional column on film (every couple of weeks or so), and I said, “heck, yeah,” because, well. I started writing professionally as a film critic, have published two books on film, and love being able to keep a hand in. So yes — I’m once again officially a film columnist. I’m thrilled and pleased Sundance is giving me the space.
To start off, we’re doing something thing fun with Star Wars. Today is May the 4th, which is an unofficial Star Wars holiday (“May the Fourth be with you”), and in honor of that, we’re asking: In a battle between the dark and light sides, which Star Wars character will stand as champion? To determine this, we’ve created two sets of brackets, one for the light side and one for the dark side. You will decide which characters make it out of brackets for the ultimate showdown between good and evil in the Star Wars universe.
This week we’ll vote them down to the final two. In the next installment in a couple of weeks, we’ll put those two head-to-head for the final confrontation. It’ll be fun. Lightsabers might be involved.
Here’s the link. Do me a favor and follow it, and vote. And then tell your friends about it. I’d love to have a good first week on the job. Thanks!
She has one job, and it is to offer the hero a flower. She says, “Would you like to buy a flower?” and if he says yes, she says, “That’ll be 1 p,” and if he says no, then she says nothing.
She is lucky to have options. Her friend, Village Girl, simply says, “This is a nice day, isn’t it?” and across town there is a man who just holds his head in his hands and says, “oh no no no no no.”
All the heroes buy the flower in the end. She watches them run by again later, parties in tow, the blond girl in the back clutching the flower in her fist. She wonders what it would be like to be that girl. She wonders if the blond girl has options, or if her life is just take the flower or don’t take the flower. Fight and run and die this way.
She is a pert young thing, with comically large breasts and a green dress. She has a fan following on the internet. They call her Flower Girl. There are theories: the game designers meant to make her a playable character. She has lines of dialogue buried in the code. Once, someone posts a video that they claim is FLOWER GIRLS INTRO BATTLE SEQUENCE!!! but closer examination reveals it to be the blond girl, Serafina, in a clumsily Photoshopped green dress.
Waiting for the hero is the Flower Girl’s favorite part of her job. It makes her feel like she is on the edge of something beautiful and important: a blooming of endless possibilities. Then the hero appears, and she is forced to remember that this is all there is:
On Thursday, April 30, Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke at Johns Hopkins University in his native city of Baltimore, at the inaugural Forum on Race in America. This article is an edited transcript of his remarks.
About a year ago, I published “The Case for Reparations,” which I thought in many ways was incomplete. It was about housing and how wealth is built in this country and why certain people have wealth and certain other people do not have wealth, and the manifold implications of that, and the roots of that, through slavery, through Jim Crow, indeed through federal, state, and local policy.
The buzzword in that piece was “plunder.” If you want to understand the relationship between African Americans and the country that they inhabit, you must understand that one of the central features of that relationship is plunder—the taking from black people in order to empower other people. Obviously, enslavement, which lasted in this country for 250 years—the period of enslavement in this country is much longer than the period of freedom for black people—is the ultimate plunder. It is nothing but plunder; it is a total of your body, of your family, of your labor, of your everything—of your very essence.
And that plunder enriched this country such that in 1860, at the time of Civil War, the enslaved black population in this country—one-third of which constituted the amount of people living in the South—was worth something on the order of $3 billion, more than all the combined capacity of the nation. All the assets, all the banks, all the railroads, all the nascent factories and businesses in this country put together, were worth less than enslaved black people in this country. So plunder is not incidental to who we are; plunder is not incidental to what America is.
When you think about the period of Jim Crow and the stripping of black people’s right to vote, this is not the mere stripping of some sort of civic ceremony. It’s the stripping of your ability to have any sort of say in how your tax dollars are used. It’s this constant stripping, this taking away of rights that allowed us to enter into a situation that I talk about in “The Case for Reparations,” where—within the 20th century—you have programs being passed by which white families can accumulate masses of wealth through housing. The main group of people who are cut out of that are black people.
That’s federal policy. It’s not just a matter of private evil individuals. We get this picture of these white racists walking around with horns, you know, who use the “n-word” all the time, and I guess look like Cliven Bundy. That’s what we’re looking for, for a bunch of Cliven Bundys. But Cliven Bundy has never really been the threat; it’s the policy that’s the threat. And many of those people, are people who look like you and me—or maybe not quite like me—but who are like me in terms of they’re human beings. They’re mothers and fathers—good people, nice to their neighbors, but these are people who are responsible for policies in our country that leave us where we are.
Now, the reason why I say that piece was incomplete was because there is a methodology, a tool that has been used to make sure that black people are available for plunder. And a major tool in making that process happen has been the criminal justice system. It’s very, very important to understand. I read the governor in the New York Times today and he was saying in the paper that—you know, because it’s going to be a big day tomorrow—he was saying “violence will not be tolerated.” And I thought about that as a young man who’s from West Baltimore and grew up in West Baltimore and I thought about how violence was tolerated for all of my life here in West Baltimore.
When I was going to school, I thought about every little article that I wore when I walked out the house. I thought about who I was walking with. I thought about how many of them there were. I thought about what neighborhoods they were from. I thought about which route I was going to take to school. Once I got to school I thought about what I was going to do during the lunch hour—was I actually going to have lunch or was I going to go sit in the library. When school was dismissed I thought about what time I was going to leave school. I thought about whether I should stay after-school for class. I thought about whether I should take the bus up to my grandmother’s house. I thought about which way I should go home if I was going to go home. Every one of those choices was about the avoidance of violence, about the protection of my body. And so I don’t want to come off as if I’m sympathizing or saying that it is necessarily okay, to inflict violence just out of anger, no matter how legitimate that anger is.
But I have a problem when you begin the clock with the violence on Tuesday. Because the fact of the matter is that the lives of black people in this city, the lives of black people in this country have been violent for a long time. Violence is how enslavement actually happened. People will think of enslavement as like a summer camp, where you just have to work, where you just go and someone gives you food and lodging, but enslavement is violence, it is torture. Torture is how it was made possible. You can’t imagine enslavement without stripping away people’s kids and putting them up for sale. And the way you did that was, you threatened people with violence. Jim Crow was enforced through violence. That was the way things that got done. You didn’t politely ask somebody not to show up and vote. You stood in front of voting booths with guns, that’s what you did. And the state backed this; it was state-backed violence.
Violence is not even in our past. Violence continues today. I was reading a stat that the neighborhood where the “riots” popped-off earlier this week is in fact the most incarcerated portion of the state of Maryland. And this is not surprising. We live in a country where the incarceration rate is 750 per 100,000. Our nearest competitor is allegedly undemocratic Russia at 400 or 500 per 100,000. China has roughly a billion more people than America; America incarcerates 800,000 more people than China. And as bad as that national incarceration rate is, the incarceration rate for black men is somewhere around 4,000 per 100,000. So if you think the incarceration rate for America is bad, for black America it’s somewhere where there is no real historical parallel.
And incarceration is, even in and of itself, a kind of euphemism, a very nice word, for what actually happens when they cart you off and take you to jail for long periods of time. Jails are violent. To survive, you use violence. To be incarcerated in this country is to be subjected to the possibility of sexual assault, is to be subjected to possibility of violence from fellow inmates, to be subjected to violence from guards. And the saddest part of this is that this mirrors the kind of violence that I saw in my neighborhood as a young man in West Baltimore.
There’s a phrase I’ve been thinking about a lot recently by the great Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn has this great, great quote that I think about all the time: He says in his book The Gulag Archipelago, “Wherever the law is, crime can be found.” And I love this quote—it’s a beautifully written sentence—because it hints at, though it does not say, the human agency in law and what we call people. And so, certain things are violence, and certain things are not. Certain things are the acts committed by thugs, and certain things are the acts committed by the law. And in terms of rendering black people illegitimate, in terms of putting black people in certain boxes where things can be done to them, the vocabulary is very, very important—the law is very, very important—in terms of where we draw the line.
My words, particularly here at Johns Hopkins, and since I’m here at Johns Hopkins—and I’m not out in West Baltimore and I’m not on North Avenue and I’m not at Mondawmin Mall—my words for Johns Hopkins is that you are enrolled in this. You are part of this. You are a great institution here in this city. And I know that the president of Johns Hopkins didn’t ask for this. None of us individuals asked for this. Nobody asked to be part of it. But when you are an American, you’re born into this. And there are young black people who folks on TV are dismissing as thugs and all sorts of other words (I know the mayor apologized, I want to acknowledge that), but people who are being dismissed as thugs—these people live lives of incomprehensible violence.
And I know this! This is not theory here. I’m telling you about what my daily routine was, but I went to school with some kids who I can’t even imagine what the violence was like. It was just beyond anything. You know, I had a safe home, I had people who loved me and took care of me. I can’t imagine how crazy it actually can get.
So when we label these people those sorts of things—when we decide we’re going to pay attention to them when they pick up a rock, and we’re going to call them “violent” when they act out in anger—we’re making a statement. Again, being here in a seat of power, being here at Johns Hopkins—where I’m happy to be, thank you for hosting me—it’s a very influential institution! You’re a part of that! There are powerful people here sitting in the audience who can talk to folks and say, “Maybe we need to change our vocabulary a little bit.” What are we doing to actually mitigate the amount of violence that is in the daily lives of these young people? Let’s not begin the conversation with the “riot,” let’s back up a little bit. Let’s talk about the daily everyday violence that folks live under.
The children, having seen the spectacular defeat of their fathers — having seen what happens to any bad nigger and, still more, what happens to the good ones — cannot listen to their fathers and certainly will not listen to the society which is responsible for their orphaned condition.
What to do in the face of this deep and dangerous estrangement? It seemed to me— I would say, sipping coffee and trying to be calm — that the principle of what had to be done was extremely simple; but before anything could be done, the principle had to be grasped. The principle on which one had to operate was that the government which can force me to pay my taxes and force me to fight in its defense anywhere in the world does not have the authority to say that it cannot protect my right to vote or my right to earn a living or my right to live anywhere I choose. Furthermore, no nation, wishing to call itself free, can possibly survive so massive a defection. What to do?
Well, there is a real estate lobby in Albany, for example, and this lobby, which was able to rebuild all of New York, downtown, and for money, in less than twenty years, is also responsible for Harlem and the condition of the people there, and the condition of the schools there, and the future of the children there. What to do? Why is it not possible to attack the power of this lobby? Are their profits more important than the health of our children? What to do? Are textbooks printed in order to teach children, or are the contents of these textbooks to be controlled by the Southern oligarchy and the commercial health of publishing houses? What to do? Why are Negroes and Puerto Ricans virtually the only people pushing trucks in the garment center, and what union has the right to trap and victimize Negroes and Puerto Ricans in this way? None of these things (I would say) could possibly be done without the consent, in fact, of the government, and we in Harlem know this even if some of you profess not to know how such a hideous state of affairs came about. If some of these things are not begun — I would say — then, of course, we will be sitting on a powder keg all summer. Of course, the powder keg may blow up; it will be a miracle if it doesn’t.
They thanked me. They didn’t believe me, as I conclude, since nothing was ever done. The summer was always violent. And, in the spring, the phone began to ring again.
Now, what I have said about Harlem is true of Chicago, Detroit, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco — is true of every Northern city with a large Negro population. And the police are simply the hired enemies of this population. They are present to keep the Negro in his place and to protect white business interests, and they have no other function. They are, moreover — even in a country which makes the very grave error of equating ignorance with simplicity — quite stunningly ignorant; and, since they know that they are hated, they are always afraid. One cannot possibly arrive at a more surefire formula for cruelty.
This is why those pious calls to “respect the law,” always to be heard from prominent citizens each time the ghetto explodes, are so obscene. The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer. To respect the law, in the context in which the American Negro finds himself, is simply to surrender his self-respect.
And yet the same day that I re-read Baldwin’s essay and find it as timely and pertinent as the day it was first written nearly half a century ago, I also read this, from Steve Benen, “Top Senate Republican rejects call for voting-rights fix“:
It was just last month when much of the nation’s attention turned to Selma, Alabama, where Americans saw former President George W. Bush stand and applaud a call for Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act with a bipartisan bill. Many wondered if, maybe sometime soon, Congress’ Republican majority might agree to tackle the issue.
Voting-rights advocates probably shouldn’t hold their breath. Soon after the event honoring those who marched at the Edmund Pettus Bridge a half-century ago, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) dismissed the very idea of working on the issue. “I think Eric Holder and this administration have trumped up and created an issue where there really isn’t one,” the Texas Republican said.
Asked if Congress should repair the Voting Rights Act formula struck down by the Supreme Court, Cornyn replied, simply, “No.”
Yesterday at the National Press Club, another key GOP senator echoed the sentiment.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said Monday he doesn’t expect to bring up legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act, because lots of minority people are already voting. […]
“It depends on what you want to fix,” he said. “If you want to fix more minorities voting, more minorities are already voting.”
Cornyn and Grassley sound faint and distant, as though they were speaking from 1966. Today, in this 21st-century spring of 2015, James Baldwin is more urgently relevant than ever. The Senate GOP is not.
Myths and legends and ancient stories come down to us to be told and retold, but what needs to be done to keep those retellings fresh — and to avoid cliched narrative traps? Ken Liu gave this question very serious consideration for The Grace of Kings, and presents his own solution here.
KEN LIU:
At its heart, The Grace of Kings is a re-imagining of the rise of the Han Dynasty in a secondary world fantasy setting. It is the tale of two unlikely friends, a prison-guard-turned-bandit and a disinherited heir of a duke, who lead a rebellion against tyranny only to find themselves on opposite sides of a deadly rivalry over how to make the world more just once the ancien régime is overthrown.
The aesthetic of the book is what I call “silkpunk”: filled with technologies inspired by predecessors from Classical Chinese antiquity: soaring battle kites, silk-draped airships, chemistry-enhanced tunnel-digging machines, prosthetic limbs powered by intricate mechanisms made of ox sinew and bamboo. There are also jealous gods and goddesses, magic books, wise princesses, heroes who follow a heroine with a greater share of honor, women and men who fight in the skies, and water beasts who bring soldiers safely to stormy shores.
These are things I’ve always wanted to see in fantasy fiction. I want my book to be fun.
But it all started because I wanted to find a fresh way to tell an old story that is at the foundation of my own transcultural literary upbringing.
When I decided that I wanted to write a novel, I examined a list of favorite stories I’d written and noticed a constant theme running throughout: the idea of crossing boundaries, of translating between languages, cultures, ways of thinking, of disassembling a literary artifact in one frame of reference and reassembling it in another—challenging viewing communities and artifact alike.
“You and I both grew up osmosing Chinese historical romances,” my wife, Lisa, said to me. “Echoes of these stories can be heard from time to time in your work. Why not embrace this aspect of your writing and give an old tale a new life?”
And a light came on in my mind. I had found my novel: I wanted to re-imagine the story of the Chu-Han Contention.
Two Narrative Traditions
Like many of my fellow writers in the Anglo-American tradition, my literary models are drawn from a long lineage that pays homage to Greek and Latin classics, starts with Anglo-Saxon epics and histories, runs through the great poets and novelists on both sides of the Atlantic whose names are found in various Norton anthologies, and ends with the increasingly diverse, contemporary literary marketplace that gives more room for the voices of the historically marginalized.
But at the same time, I’m also indebted to a parallel Chinese tradition that starts with classical Western Zhou poetry, traverses Spring and Autumn philosophies, Han Dynasty histories, Tang Dynasty lyrical verse, Ming and Qing Dynasty novels, oral pingshu performances, and ends with martial arts fantasies of the 20th century and contemporary web-based popular serials.
Just as readers in the US often absorb the stories of Achilles and Odysseus, of Aeneas and Beowulf, of Hamlet and Macbeth not by reading the original, but through simplified children’s versions, popular film adaptations, and re-tellings and re-imaginings, readers in China absorb the stories of great historical heroes like Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) in similar ways.
The Chu-Han Contention of the third century B.C., an interregnum between the Qin and Han Dynasties, is a historical period that has proved especially rich for fictional treatment. Many important ideas about Chinese politics, philosophy, and identity can trace their origin to stories from this era. Upon the foundation of the core events and biographies penned by the historian Sima Qian, countless mythical legends, folk operas, oral traditions, and poems have accumulated over the millennia. The literary re-imaginings continue to this day in new media like video games, TV miniseries, and scifi adaptations (see Qian Lifang’s Will of Heaven).
As I grew up, I absorbed tales of the friendship and rivalry between wily, gangster-like Liu Bang and noble, cruel, proud Xiang Yu along with lessons about Chinese characters (I share Liu Bang’s family name), with Chinese Chess (the board is modeled upon the standoff between the two factions), with references and allusions in popular entertainment and textbooks, and with schoolyard games.
This is a story that is at once deeply Chinese and personal; mythical, historical, political, and fantastic; I wanted to try my hand at re-creating it for a new audience and readership.
Re-imagining
There is, of course, a long Western tradition of literary creations based on re-interpreting and re-imagining the old: James Joyce’s Ulysses, John Gardner’s Grendel, countless contemporary stagings of Shakespeare’s plays in new settings that the Bard never imagined, and even Milton’s Paradise Lost can be understood as a reworking of the tropes of classical Greek and Latin epics in the service of a new Christian epic.
But re-imaginations must be done with a purpose, and to be successful, they must appeal both to those who are familiar with the source material and those who are not.
Early on, I rejected the idea of setting the story in a secondary world version of Classical China, in the same way that Middle-earth is a secondary world version of Medieval Europe. Faced with the long history of colonialism and Orientalism in Western literary representation of China dating back to Marco Polo, I felt that it was no longer possible to tell a story of “magical China” without having it be lost through the mediation of centuries of misunderstandings and stereotypes.
And so I went with a bolder plan. I decided to create a new fantasy archipelago—as different from continental China as possible—in which the peoples, cultural practices, and religious beliefs are only remotely inspired by their source material. This was a way to strip the source story to its bare bones and to give them new flesh that would better serve my vision.
But it is in narrative technique where I took the most risk. Melding traditions from the Greek and Latin epics, Anglo-Saxon poetry, Miltonic verse, wuxia fantasy, Ming Dynasty novels, and contemporary chuanyue stories, the novel is told in a voice and style that should be at once familiar and strange. Here you’ll find kennings and litotes, gods who speak like a chorus and Water Margin-style backstories, dead metaphors from another language given a new periphrastic sheen. The title is an allusion to Henry V while the core chrysanthemum-dandelion image is inspired by a Tang Dynasty poem. I tried to write something that reads at the same time as both old and new, and which interrogates its source material as well as our assumptions about what is West and what is East.
I'm saving this one as a reference for the next time my father-in-law, the wannabe one-percenter, brings up the "fact" that the wealthy already pay so much more in taxes.
Second, it ignores the effect of state and local taxes, which fall disproportionately on the working and middle classes. The difference is shown by the latest annual report on “Who Pays Taxes in America,” released last week by Citizens for Tax Justice. (Hat tip to Josh Harkinson of Mother Jones.)
“Contrary to popular belief,” CTJ finds, “when all taxes are considered, the rich do not pay a disproportionately high share of taxes.”
CTJ shows that combined local, state and federal taxes produce a system that more resembles a flat tax than a progressive tax: In 2015, the top 1% will pay 32.6% of their income in taxes, while those in the 60th-80th percentile (with average income of $81,000) pay 30.4% and the next highest 10% (average income of $125,000) pay 32.1%. Overall, the bottom 99% pay 29.8% of their income in taxes, a ratio not much smaller than the top 1%.
And it’s not just red states:
Washington, despite its progressive, blue-state reputation, has the most regressive tax system in the country. There the poorest fifth of residents pay seven times as much of their income in state and local taxes as the top 1%.
One of the surest tests of irredeemable hackery is when someone conflates “federal income taxes” with “taxes.” (Cf. Niall Ferguson.)
AARGH AARGH AARGH SHITTY SURVEY QUESTIONS ARE THE WORST
"Neutral" does not belong on that scale. Are there really college presidents out there who have no opinion about sexual assault on campuses?
This is a really, really clear-cut case for an even number of options presenting a forced choice.
The White House has made preventing sexual assaults on college campuses a priority, The Hunting Ground documents extensive institutional denial and malfeasance, the Department of Justice finds that one in five college women are assaulted, research shows that 1 in 25 college men is a serial rapist, and students at almost 100 campuses have filed federal complaints against their schools.
Yet, according to a study of 647 college presidents, only a third (32%) believe that sexual assault is prevalent on college campuses in general and only a tiny minority (6%) think it’s prevalent on their own campus.
This is stunning. Never before in history has the problem of sexual assault on campus been better documented. The media has never covered the issue so thoroughly, frequently, and sympathetically. We are in a moment of national reflection. Under these circumstances, a quarter of college presidents claim that sexual assault isn’t prevalent anywhere and 78% deny that it’s prevalent on their own campus.
These were confidential surveys, so impression management can’t explain these numbers. Those 94% of college presidents who don’t think that sexual crimes are prevalent at their schools either think the numbers are wrong, think their own institutions are exceptions, or think that one in five isn’t fairly described as “prevalent.” Or maybe some combination of the above.
No wonder faculty are frustrated and students around the country have felt forced to turn to the federal government for help. It’s clear. College presidents are either recklessly ignorant or willfully in denial — that, or they simply don’t believe women or don’t care about them.
NOT THE BEES AAAARRGH NOT THE BEES is precisely how I feel about this story.
This is the greatest video I have seen in 2015. Rand Paul may be unleashing the dream, but President Obama has unleashed the bees.
Here is President Obama vainly trying to calm down a group of children who have been startled by bees while he was reading “Where the Wild Things Are” to them.
President Obama, as the leader of the free world, has to ponder many eventualities when he gets up each morning. But probably the thought that he would have to calm an assortment of children in the face of clear and present bees did not occur to him, or he would have prepared something a little stronger than this.
“Oh no, it’s a bee,” President Obama says. “That’s okay, guys.”
“That’s okay, guys”? No wonder he has such difficulty getting his agendas through Congress. This is hardly reassuring. Bees have stingers! Bees feature prominently in the remake of the Wicker Man starring Nicolas Cage! Frank Underwood would have killed these bees with his bare hands. “The trick,” he would have whispered into the camera, “is not minding that it stings.”
President Obama does not try that. “Bees are good, they won’t land on you. They won’t sting you, they’ll be okay.”
There are times to reason with children and assure them that “bees are good.” This is not one of those times.
The children are going ape(iary). They are having none of his blanket reassurances. They will not be placated. They will not be mollified. Easter is alarming enough, they seem to say, what with being asked to pose for pictures with alarming giant rabbits in heavy blue eye-shadow, without the addition of GIANT SWARMS OF BEES.
“Hold on! Hold on!” President Obama suggests. “You guys are wild things! You’re not supposed to be scared of bees when you’re a wild thing!”
But no. “Where The Wild Things Are” lies neglected and forgotten. They have forgotten that they are wild things. They have forgotten everything but the present threat of bees. The bees are there and the bees are no respecters of persons. This make-believe is no longer sufficient. NOT THE BEES, the children are saying, like Nicolas Cage before them, NOT THE BEES AAAARRGH NOT THE BEES.
In conclusion, everything about this is amazing, and it should be watched annually on this day from henceforth.
What to do in the face of this deep and dangerous estrangement? It seemed to me— I would say, sipping coffee and trying to be calm — that the principle of what had to be done was extremely simple; but before anything could be done, the principle had to be grasped. The principle on which one had to operate was that the government which can force me to pay my taxes and force me to fight in its defense anywhere in the world does not have the authority to say that it cannot protect my right to vote or my right to earn a living or my right to live anywhere I choose. Furthermore, no nation, wishing to call itself free, can possibly survive so massive a defection. What to do?
