Gina Harris's Blog, page 168

Band Review: Traditions

Traditions is a rock band from Westfield, Massachusetts.
They list one of their influences as Taking Back Sunday. I can hear that, though I would say that the guitars have a harder edge.
The emotional sentiment actually reminds me of a slightly earlier era of emo, like the late '90s era (when the word was being used differently). A lot of those bands weren't very skilled musically. Traditions works better on a professional level while still retaining the emotion.
Current videos only include the sound tracks, but this is a relatively young band, with time to create more content.
They are worth checking out, certainly for fans of Taking Back Sunday, but I think also for fans of Christie Front Drive, and other earnest music, where it feels like everything depends on being understood.
https://www.facebook.com/traditionsofficial
http://takethistoheartrecords.bandcamp.com/album/cycles
https://www.youtube.com/user/T3Hrecords
https://twitter.com/TraditionsMA

De-privatization

I believe turning back the tide from contracting out government services is a way to help make things better.
This method is not specifically connected to racism, but in the process of assisting with income inequality it should help many of the people who try and work for social good have less stress and more energy.
Many people already acknowledge that more people being able to survive on the wages of a single job is a good thing, but there are various thoughts about how to get there. One is raising the minimum wage. I do support raising the minimum wage, but I believe de-privatization can be even more effective.
First of all, when minimum wage increases are rolled out, it tends to be staggered, slowing down the impact. There are often limitations on which sectors or business sizes are affected. There are the complaints about how it is sure to cause inflation. That has been demonstrated to be false, but the complaints will still happen and they will still make some people angry.
Imagine instead a new round of government hiring.
First of all, just removing the contracts from the contractors could be helpful in striking a blow at corporate influence, which has a value all its own. Besides that, the new hires will now be working at a living wage with benefits, because that is what government does, and should do.
Even with the benefits and wages, the government may still be saving some money. There is a lot of overhead with contracting. This money is now going to the workers, and probably being quickly spent. Most working class people are behind and trying to catch up now. That is going to increase cash flow in the economy right away, which is sorely needed.
Job creation was supposed to be accomplished by tax cuts to businesses and the wealthy, but oddly that did not work out. When you have people who are desperate for jobs, you can get them to work a lot without much recompense. This is not great for the workers or society.
Now that there are jobs available with better compensation, others seeking employment don't have to be quite as desperate. This is what actually drives wages up. It worked well during the Bill Clinton years. Wages and benefits were really good then, and it wasn't because of the goodness of corporate hearts, but because there was competition.
The current economic situation has stifled cash flow. You could give everyone a cash bonus, like George W Bush did with the rebates. That can have a limited impact, but with so many people in debt, most of the money would still go to banks, and not require new hiring.
Once upon a time World War II was an economic stimulus. It is not impossible that a natural disaster of some kind could jump start the economy, but hoping for disaster seems wrong. As it is, war in Iraq and Afghanistan enriched certain contractors without providing great benefit to the economy. I suspect some people have probably done well financially on various hurricanes, but it's the same people who do well with no hurricane, plus extra human suffering. That is not the answer.
So the government should just hire people. They can hire people to rebuild infrastructure. They can hire people to provide job training. They can hire people to document our times. We can take some inspiration from the Works Progress Administration, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, but we don't have to stop there. A lot of the KBR contracts were food service; let actual federal employees do that. Maybe let federal employees feed other people living in food deserts. There are plenty of needs out there.
One excellent place for new hires would probably be the Internal Revenue Service. Yesterday I mentioned Free Lunch; Johnston has another book, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich -- and Cheat Everybody Else.
Now, Perfectly Legal is a dryer read than Free Lunch, as you might expect of a book that focuses so much on tax law. However, it does show that there are a lot of holes in the system, and a lot of tax cheats. People hired to deal with that would pay for themselves.

A country is not a business

Also worth noting, cities, towns, counties, and states are not businesses.
That seems kind of obvious, but not every compliment for Trump has been about how refreshingly honest he is. I have also seen some comments that a businessman is what we need.
One could argue that even if that were true, Trump might not be the best businessman for the job given the bankruptcies in his past. I believe he has defended that those were not personal bankruptcies. This could be a poor defense, because if it is his business acumen that we want, his business dealings are more pertinent than his personal life.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/debtwire/2015/08/18/a-trip-down-donald-trumps-bankruptcy-memory-lane/
It gets to the heart of the matter anyway, because it is normal for businessmen to put other people's money at risk, so that if something goes wrong personal wealth remains intact. For an example of this, let us consider Portland's own Rose Garden, now officially Moda Center.
Team owner, Microsoft co-founder, and billionaire Paul Allen financed the construction in 1993 for $155 million. He did not want to personally guarantee the loan, which raised the interest rate. This may have made it easier to call the terms of the loan unfavorable when he defaulted on it, blaming reduced revenues due to the poor economy. This was in 2004, before the 2008 crash.
Now you might think that while this deal did protect Allen's personal assets, it at least meant that he lost the Rose Garden. That was true for a couple of years while he threatened to sell the team and the team demanded expensive renovations, but somehow in 2007 Allen was miraculously the owner again. The terms were undisclosed, but I suspect I know who got the better end of the deal. Allen's current net worth is 17.5 billion.
There is actually a lot that could be explored there about how professional sports require subsidies, thus making a sports franchise often a bad deal for a city, but that is a separate topic. David Cay Johnston's Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill) is a good starting point.
The real problem is that the purpose of a business is to make money. Government has many purposes to fill, but they should center around the public welfare. The common argument on the right is that governments are more inefficient than businesses in doing so, making privatization preferable.
Businesses may indeed find ways to be innovative and efficient in search of a profit, but when the financial interests are threatened they may also get evil. This can lead to things like...
- Halliburton subsidiary KBR billing for meals it didn't serve, overcharging and inflating prices, and refusing to turn over electronic data
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jun/09/arianna-huffington/halliburton-kbr-and-iraq-war-contracting-history-s/
- Enron defrauding California and manipulating the energy supply
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/05/enro-m10.html
- Tobacco companies hiding what they knew of smoking health risks (I recently learned that some companies with foods containing trans-fats worked hard to delay those risks coming out as well)
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2009/01/8115/deadly-deception-tobacco-industrys-secondhand-smoke-cover
- Private juvenile facility owners bribing judges in the Cash for Kids scandal
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/08/11/139536686/pa-judge-sentenced-to-28-years-in-massive-juvenile-justice-bribery-scandal
This list could go on and on (I haven't even mentioned Wall street or diploma mills!), but often it is something as simple as holding down wages, because there are enough people desperate for jobs that you can get away with it.
http://walmart1percent.org/how-rich-are-the-waltons/
The Waltons are just one example, but certainly an egregious one.
You can run a business successfully in a way that damages the threads of society. Lots of companies kind of are doing that now. It is also possible to run a business well and ethically, but it is not necessarily the same skill set needed for governance.
So, getting back to ways to help after we diverged for a while, one of the ways to help is not running a government entity like a business. More on that tomorrow.

One more thing on Bernie Sanders

As has already been written, people got really upset about Sanders getting disrupted. I have written about some of the reasons for that, but one thing I haven't really addressed is how people are really excited about Sanders.
It's increasingly rare to be excited about a political candidate, so I was acting as a killjoy there. That was not exactly intentional. I do feel the hype is unwarranted, and my post was a reaction to that, though it was more about stating my own position than pouring water on anyone else's preference.
For what it's worth, I am undecided about whom to support. Given that it is August 2015, and we have over a year before the general election, and even several months until the primaries, I am okay with this.
I don't find anyone exciting, which is not that unusual. In 2008 I was very reluctant to get excited over Barack Obama. Where that started to change was while we were in Australia, and people there liked him so much, and were so able to believe that he was not going to stomp all over diplomacy like Bush. I did feel very good when he was elected.
His presidency hasn't been everything that I wanted. I'm pretty sure that it hasn't been everything he wanted. There has been such steady opposition from the other side, with such a roar about any executive action, that the accomplishments that he has are pretty miraculous.
One thing I have seen pointed out a few times about Sanders and his irascibility is that neither Barack Obama - due to stereotypes about angry black men and the fear that invokes - nor Hillary Clinton - due to unfair gender expectations - could get away with it.
Previously I had seen that referred to as an example of white male privilege, but it was pointed out today in the context of how measured the president has been, despite being attacked regularly, that he has remained generally cool and collected, and that has served him well.
It's again a reminder that sometimes the pressures you have to learn to live with can be areas of growth, regardless of how unfair and wrong the pressures are.
And, it can lead to a concern about getting a hothead in office, someone who has never felt a need to be tactful or compromise or to wait and study something out.
Yes, that might sound like a concern about Sanders, and it is to some extent, but not to nearly the extent that it would be with Trump. It is especially a concern because that seems to be what people like about him. He's refreshing because he speaks his mind! Yes, he speaks his petty, racist, misogynistic, poorly informed, egotistical mind. Great.
(But there is another thing wrong with Trump, where Sanders has a clear advantage, and we should get into that tomorrow.)
Otherwise, it's had to get excited about any of the presidential candidates, and one thing we have gotten wrong is focusing so much on that aspect of politics, which will be yet another post.
For now, we will have an election, and someone will become the next president. That's the way it works, and despite being often disappointing, it is time-honored, and certainly better than a monarchy.
Knowing that, again, this is the time to raise your issues, while it's early. Tell the candidates what issues you care about, ask questions, on both sides. It is not the only thing that matters, but it still does matter, and right now things are more fluid than they will be in a few months.

Band Review: Ages Apart

Ages Apart is an alternative, active rock band from Alabama.
While it is definitely not country, I do hear the Southern influence, but with a generally heavier sound than Southern rock. If you have ever found yourself wishing that Daughtry or Cristian Kane had been more influenced by Metallica, Ages Apart may hit your sweet spot.
One of the most striking things about the music for me was a sense of assurance. I suspect that this is helped both by the guidance of producer Travis Wyrick and singer Cody Webb's own production experience. The music has a strong sense of direction and accomplishes its goals.
"Where Do We Go" is a good introductory track for conveying the strength and power of the group, but the softer side of "Victim" stayed with me more.
While there is currently no video content available, the band's pages look really good, with reasonable levels of content, so I suspect the Youtube channel will not be empty long.
http://agesapart.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AgesApart?_rdr=p
https://www.youtube.com/user/AgesApart
https://twitter.com/AgesApart

Band Review: Halfway to Hollywood

I kept liking Halfway to Hollywood more each time I listened to them.
Halfway to Hollywood is a trio from Vancouver, British Columbia creating pop rock and power pop. At first I thought they were fine, but as I listened more I started noticing fun keyboard details, reminding me of favorably of James Dewees. I then started hearing more emotion and sincerity in the music, and ended up liking them quite a bit.
I think fans of Boys Like Girls will enjoy the band. Check out "Last September" and see what you think.
Favorite tracks for me included "Somebody to Someone", "Speechless", and "Green Lights".
One mild criticism is that their video channel seems for focused on covers. This is not unusual for a band trying to establish itself, because it can show range and draw attention, but I believe Halfway to Hollywood can be confident in their own material, and focus on that.
halfwaytohollywood.ca/
https://www.facebook.com/HalfwayToHollywood
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2IW2ht5WyJVES9Tuc_9GsA
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/artist/halfway-to-hollywood/id285792574
https://twitter.com/HalfwaytoHolly

Leaving room for ugliness

I'll still be rambling a lot here, but it really does connect.
There was something at church that really irritated me a few months ago. They were having a musical talent show, and the announcement on when to try out specified all genres but rock.
One of my early thoughts was how dirty country sometimes gets, despite being generally popular with religious types. Really, it's such a ridiculous distinction when you consider the many beautiful and wonderful songs that would be classified as rock, and some of the trash that would not be rock. Of course opinions on what is trash and what isn't vary, but genre is a very poor criterion.
Let's leave music and go to comic books, to The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. I have written about it before. As important as the story that did happen was to me, I may have been more affected by the story that didn't happen. Shaun Simon and Gerard Way both refer to it in their notes from the special edition.
That story would have been kicked off with the protagonist's Ramones' tape getting erased. The villain actually didn't change that much. In Shaun's words...
"The gang would have found that another former gang had now become the largest health care corporation in the country and were hell bent on making the world a safe and clean place by removing all that was dirty, like the Ramones."
My first response to that was "The Ramones aren't dirty!" but, then "Beat on the Brat" started playing in my head.
Beat on the brat, Beat on the brat, Beat on the brat with a baseball bat,Oh yeah, oh yeah, uh oh.
Okay, that sounds pretty ugly. It is ugly. But then for the people who experience it, and are in the life where that happens and to be cheeky about it, that's empowering. It may not be the best way of dealing with it, but it is a way that can help, and that can lead to other ways.
(I never have done that post on subverting the language of your oppressor. Some day.)
It sounds like the people trying to make the world safe and clean should be the good guys, but it doesn't turn out that way. None of us who remember Camazotz from A Wrinkle in Time (or any of the other various science fiction places that were supposed to be utopian and ended up being dystopian) should be to surprised by that. Enforcing perfection goes badly.
What Shaun and Gerard did was remind me how badly we need the Ramones. When things are wrong, you need a way to give voice to it. There will be people who won't want to hear it. That's why it's helpful that there are people who are willing to be rude and offensive, or to be buffoons, sometimes, because that happens too. We need people who can cause a ruckus.
There are different ways to be the voice of dissent. It may mean marching or blocking train tracks, or pulling down a flag, or interrupting a rally. Sometimes those actions have concrete effects, and sometimes it is mainly discussion. Art may be more likely to inspire discussion, but then those discussions can lead to changes, so you never know.
We have to allow room for the things we find ugly. Okay, I do love the Ramones, but I rarely enjoy hip hop. I still see it's value, more and more all the time. I usually don't enjoy metal - all the anger of punk with none of the fun - but there are people who need it. If there are people who feel less lonely because of it, or feel like it gives them a voice, I want that for them. That doesn't mean subjective art is completely impervious to objective criticism, but it's something to keep in mind.
So when we are seeing protests and offended by them, own that, but examine it. Should you be angry at the interruption, or angry that it's apparently the only way of being heard? Are we disgusted with people who need our support? Is our comfort worth their blood?
Those are questions worth asking. There are ugly things inside us too, and they only come out honest examination.
"The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them." - Ida B. Wells
The wrongs will be ugly. Don't blame that on the light.
Related posts:http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/12/lessons-from-comic-books-true-lives-of.htmlhttp://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/02/nice-and-kind.html

Erasing the heart

Yesterday's post got some reactions. I was surprised by that - I have this idea that the normal reaction to me is "There she goes again."
It flowed into some thoughts that I have been having about Stonewall, which makes more sense than it sounds like. First of all, let me defer to Miss Major:
http://www.autostraddle.com/how-dare-they-do-this-again-miss-major-on-the-stonewall-movie-301957/
If you're thinking this isn't my specialty, it isn't, and there's a lot here. That reference she has to assimilation is apparently a whole thing that I never knew about. (In my defense, I was not born yet.)
That's okay actually; we learn when we go out of our wheelhouse. Coming in as not knowing very much, with just the Wikipedia article and the IMDB page I can see that the names of the detectives are in there but the names of the principle people on the other side are not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riotshttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt3018070/combined
Apparently some accuracy is important, but not all of it.
What does it matter if Roland Emmerich - who is after all the man who gave us 10000 BC - takes an event that was centered on drag queens and makes it about gay men who are mostly cis and white? I mean, even if that night was mainly trans individuals of color, white and cis gay men were part of the Pride movement that grew out of that, right? Is it significant that a prominent gay activist who is a white male thinks the critics are crazy?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/larry-kramer-confronts-stonewall-boycott-dont-listen-to-the-crazies_55c8bcc4e4b0923c12bd7288?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&kvcommref=mostpopular
This was interesting, from Wikipedia:
"Not everyone in the gay community considered the revolt a positive development. To many older homosexuals and many members of the Mattachine Society...the display of violence and effeminate behavior was embarrassing. Randy Wicker, who had marched in the first gay picket lines before the White House in 1965, said the 'screaming queens forming chorus lines and kicking went against everything that I wanted people to think about homosexuals...that we were a bunch of drag queens in the Village acting disorderly and tacky and cheap.'"
That might be the kind of attitude that leads to all white, all cis statues.
Here's the thing: it makes sense that this kind of a revolt happened with the people who were most marginalized. They took the most abuse and they had the least to lose. It also follows a certain logic that less marginalized people ended up becoming the face of the movement. Is the logical extension then that, despite huge strides in acceptance of LBG people, that the T falls behind? A trans women still has a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered by a cis person.
I am writing about this today because there was so much anger at the two black women who interrupted Bernie Sanders. That is beyond the comments on my blog - it's all over the place. I might get more into that tomorrow, but I think for now it is safe to say that people hate being interrupted. They hate being made to feel uncomfortable. They may later accept that the cause is right, but they hate the discomfort that forces them to think about the cause.
So then I think about how much of the work for women's rights has been done by black women, and how much of the work for African-American rights has been done by black women, and yet you have white mainstream feminists plagiarizing black women's work, and black men taking the sides of the white women, and how hard it is to get the same recognition for black women as for black men.
Black women have been the most marginalized; they have had lots of motivation to do the work, and they have done a lot, but they are less likely to reap the benefits. It's easier for that to happen when they are erased.
And it is wrong.
Marissa Johnson and Mara Jacqueline Willaford accomplished something big Saturday. This will affect not only Sanders' campaign, but all of the democratic candidates, and it will make this campaign about more important issues. They are also having their reputations drug, and are the targets of a lot of anger that would be better directed against the problems they are protesting.
This is not unusual, but it's not right. We can change that.
These are two other posts I found interesting, and kind of related:
http://www.thefeministwire.com/2015/08/complexities-and-messiness-how-to-be-and-not-be-an-ally-a-modest-proposal/
http://changefromwithin.org/2015/08/09/interrupting-bernie-exposing-the-white-supremacy-of-the-american-left/

Why I am not currently supporting Bernie Sanders

The "currently" up there indicates that I have not completely ruled out future support - not a change from past support.
I had been kind of leery of him from the get-go, without hating him, and then I read an excellent series on him which solidified that.
A lot of my feelings are centered around Black Lives Matter, and so watching his interactions lately have both solidified my lack of support and given me hope that he could come around.
Institutionalized racism is my key issue; Bernie's is income inequality. Don't get me wrong - I care greatly about income inequality. Unfortunately, it is a blind spot for him. He really seems to think it will fix everything else, and there is no evidence to back that up. We have had times with much greater economic mobility and better wages and stronger unions, and there was still institutionalized racism so that black people could not benefit from it.
If we have more jobs and better wages, but the same prejudices apply in who gets hired, who advances, and how much they make, that's not good enough. Sanders does not seem to have adequately explored that, but that's not even the reason it's my main issue now. Having higher wages does not do much good if you are not alive to spend them.
I know lynchings have a long history. One of the most chilling things I have read recently was someone recounting searching for the three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi, and they kept finding other bodies that weren't them. The swamp was full of murdered black people. Maybe it's just that we have better access to information now, but the death rate really seems to be escalating.
At least 1083 Americans killed by police since Mike Brown died. 317 this year. 120 (4 a day) since Sandra Bland was arrested. 4th teenager killed this week.
Not all of them are black or unarmed, but a lot are. We don't have video of all of them, but the excuses for the deaths are failing.
Improving the economy will not automatically fix that, lives have to take priority over money. If we valued people over money, it would stop a lot of economic abuse.
Therefore, two of the factors that sway me against Sanders are his blind spot on the economic issues (which are still important) and how that does hold him back on Black Lives Matter. The other is his crankiness. I know people admire this as keeping it real, but it is not actually a great diplomatic asset. That matters sometimes. You want the people in office to be able to keep calm and observe decorum. They should also be able to cast decorum aside sometimes when it is important, but cranky all the time is not a great executive trait. (That might be relevant to Trump too, but there so much else there...)
None of the other candidates are where I want them to be on Black Lives Matter yet, but Sanders is having to respond to the protests now, and making more effort. Again, he still returns to the economic issue too glibly, even when talking about racism, but it's better. That leads to two other very important points.
One is that these protests are absolutely necessary. No one would be paying attention otherwise. It is quite clear that most candidates will ignore racism if they can, if for no other reason than that it makes people uncomfortable. The protesters have to create a commensurate amount of discomfort, and I am thankful for their efforts.
It is disheartening to see how quickly Sanders' supporters will devolve into racist name-calling, though not surprising, but the other point is a response to some of their complaints.
No, it is not an attack to point out a need for change. No it is not unreasonable to ask for change. This can only derail his candidacy if he handles it badly, and if he can't handle it well he should be derailed.
Someone on Twitter was talking about efforts to split the vote among the Democrats so a Republican can win. Okay, this is a primary, where we are deciding whom we want. It is appropriate for the votes to be divided now. That's why you have primaries!
Let's say Sanders loses the primary and runs as an independent (which some supporters say they would like him to do now), that could lead to a Republican victory. However let us remember that even when you did have a third-party candidate with Nader, he still probably could not have been a spoiler if not for butterfly ballots, a Florida secretary of state who was involved with Bush's campaign, and a right-wing Supreme Court. That is not sufficient grounds for fear-mongering and stamping out dissent.
For that series that I found helpful, you can go to http://www.shakesville.com/2015/07/looking-for-bernie-part-1-sanders-72.html.
It is  amazingly thorough, more so when you remember that Aphra Behn did not have a research assistant of budget. It really gives a feel for his values and thought processes, good and bad.

Band Review: Primitive Race

It is hard to say very much about Primitive Race. They give their location as parts unknown, and given the evident large-scale collaboration over the internet, there is probably not one location that would make sense to list.
The collaborators have all been in other bands, including Pop Will Eat Itself and Ministry, so some fans may be led by the combined history.
There is a relentlessness to "Follow the Leader" that may benefit from the weight of their experience. The song washes over you in overpowering waves. I preferred "Addict Now", which I felt hit more emotional notes.
Overall there is a dark element to the music; they are willing to disturb. This can be seen in the glimpses of dental work in the "Long In The Tooth" video, where the images match the music's focus on getting under your skin.  This is not my preference, but I think fans of industrial and harder alternative will enjoy Primitive Race.
http://www.primitiverace.com/
https://www.facebook.com/primitiveraceband
https://soundcloud.com/primitiverace
https://www.youtube.com/user/PrimitiveRace
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_music_1?ie=UTF8&field-artist=Primitive+Race&search-alias=music
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/pig-vs.-primitive-race/id993038283
https://twitter.com/primitiverace