Year: 2005

New Advice from Pinkocommiebastard

Dear pinkocommiebastard, My parents got totally freaked out by Bush’s recent efforts to gut Social Security. They keep nagging me to open some kind of retirement savings account, but I don’t want to be a sell-out. I’m afraid that if I become invested in the system, I will lose my appetite for revolution. But I don’t think I will ever develop an appetite for dog food, which the ‘rents warn will be my daily diet without any kind of old age savings. Maybe I can make some kind of “socially responsible” investments. What do you recommend? – Concerned About Savings’ Harm Dear CASH, First of all, so-called “socially responsible” investments are hogwash. Any kind of investment is a deal with the devil. If you open a simple bank account, your puny savings are lent overnight to the Federal Reserve, who, in turn, lend them to private enterprises, big and small. […]

Help Animals in Need

It’s end-of-year charity-giving time. If you want to help rescue and nurture a dog or cat, I recommend a donation to the North Shore Animal League. It’s a wonderful no-kill shelter, where I have adopted most of my pets. The cat (still no name, suckers) was rescued from a Wal-Mart parking lot by a nice lady who would not let me contribute to her vet bill, so I made a donation in her name to NSAL.

Catching Up With 2005

Although list-averse (or else simply VH1-phobic), I would normally constrict a best records of the year list around now. Poverty and nagging unemployment, alas, put a real crimp in my record shopping for 2005. There are still at least a dozen releases that I must hear before I could properly judge. However, I am catching up. So here are some notes on 2005 releases that are new to me. “Honeycomb” by Frank Black In between victory laps with the Pixies, Black headed to Nashville to record a classicist country record. The experience and competence of the session players, plus Frank Black’s smokey baritone make “Honeycomb” work not just as a country record but as a reminder of just how high the bar should be set for a new Pixies record. The unfamiliar country soundscape allows Black’s lyrics (like “mommy killed a puppy and she thought it was asleep / she […]

January-February 2006 Socialist Magazine

I’ve been hard at work on this (and work, and school). It is done and off to the printers. Should be in the mail in a week, and on the web any day now. I’ll post more details at that time. I might now have time to elaborate on the transit strike.

Cabs are Scabs

And that’s really all that needs to be said on the matter.

Socialist Party Supports TWU 100

The Socialist Party of New York City strongly supports the right of transit workers to free speech, free assembly and free labor. We denounce, in the strongest possible terms, the Metropolitan Transportation Agency’s callous disregard of the safety and health of transit workers, as well as their unending demands for for wage and benefit cutbacks. We are sickened by the slave plantation politics of Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Pataki and Attorney General Spitzer, who would fine union members from two days’ wages up to a quarter of a million dollars each for the nerve of refusing to work without a contract. As commuters, we recognize and appreciate the hard work and dedication of New York’s transit workers. As citizens, we voted in large numbers in favor of the state’s transportation bond act – expecting that some of the money we approved would go to fair and equitable pay increases for the […]

Gene Russionoff Doesn’t Understand

Gene Russianoff, the grand poobah of the New York Public Interest Research Group and the Straphangers Campaign, is oft-quoted in the city’s media, and usually reliable for sensible good government critique. But Gene, apparently, doesn’t have a clue how unions work. Responding in the Times to a City Council bill that recognizes that local unions are distinct political entities with their own agendas that are distinct from the larger federations to which they belong, Gene says, “It will allow the same decision-maker to make multiple contributions.” I guess Gene’s opinion is skewed by how NYPIRG operates, where from Albany to Queens College to Stony Brook, the chapters carry the same message and work on the same campaigns: those that Gene decides. But in labor, while unity is the goal, the locals have their own goals and loyalties. For example, in SEIU, Local 1199 (health care workers) endorsed Freddy Ferrer while […]

Finding J.D. Salinger

Shedding itself of Sara Edward-Corbett’s delightful cartoon, “See Saw” and Alexander Cockburn’s enjoyably bilious essays long ago, the NY Press lost the rest of my interest when zinester Jeff Koyen resigned as editor. I’m glad, however, that I caught Sean Manning’s account of scanning a microfiche library of “New Yorker” back issues to read the most famous of J.D. Salinger’s “underpublished” short stories, “Hapworth 16, 1924.” Salinger had a very formative influence on me as a teenager, and is most responsible for my overuse, as a writer, of asides and adjectives like “awfully,” “lousy” and “terrific.” I also appreciate to hell the romantic mystery of this crazy guy going off to the country in New Hampshire to write in peace. He’s continued writing every day since he last published “Hapworth” in 1965. Some accounts have him as completing three whole novels. Others, more likely in my opinion, have him completing […]

Cat

She still has no name, but at least now she has her own page on the internet. Perhaps a MySpace profile will follow. It’s the cat! Call her whatever you would like. The best names of late have been Lt. Sulu, Jesus, Chairman Meow, Mr. Bojangles and Pukey McTwitches.

So Long, Armistice Day

It is amazing to think that a few veterans of the first World War still provide a living link to the war that provided the blueprint for the bloody twentieth century. Naked aggression and empire-building, chemical warfare and ethnic holocaust and official lies, deceit and stupid propaganda all marked that war, which left millions dead in its wake and the world’s people and governments vowing – briefly – never to do it again, only to do it again and again. Armistice Day – which marks the end of that war – was soon enough re-christened “Veteran’s Day” to honor the bravery of all the poor kids who fought in the bloody wars that followed the war to end all wars. It is ancient history, but, conversely, still a living history and we would do well to heed certain lessons. Before he died today, Alfred Anderson was the last man left […]

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