Month: April 2005

Florida Creates Poster Child for Reproductive Rights

Florida, America’s Wang, has been the most shameless corner of the vast right-wing conspiracy for years now. A phenomenon recently lampooned by Tom Tomorrow, policy makers in Florida pick the most ridiculous fights to stoke the flames of their supporters’ torch-and-pitchfork ensembles, even if the fights are completely contradictory to their own rhetoric. Now comes the latest, a judge has ruled that a 13-year-old girl cannot decide for herself to have an abortion. Judge Ronald Alvarez ruled that the girl is too young and immature to make the momentous decision to have an abortion by herself, plus, he claims he is concerned about the potential effect of an abortion on her physical and emotional health. Now, first of all, a full-term pregnancy and labor is a lot riskier for a little girl than a first-trimester abortion, and, secondly, if the girl is too immature to choose an abortion, how in […]

The Torch, Rekindled

The blue-line proofs of the new issue of “The Torch” came back from the printer today. Perhaps it was the contact high from the weird blue ink they use, but I’m really excited with the way it turned out. The Torch is the Journal of the Young People’s Socialist League. It’s my first issue as editor in five years. I am a little long in the tooth for any kind of young people’s league, but, after nine years in the organization (including a four-year stint as National Secretary and a three-year stint as Torch editor), I can’t just up and leave. I’ve basically been playing a supportive, back-seat role until I turn 30 and have to be sent to Sanctuary. That was until a handful of comrades, including Mary Loritz (known to my friends, for a time, as “that girl on the couch”), asked me to get The Torch going […]

Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart

A new-to-me website called Wal-Mart Watch is countering Wal-Mart’s “Made in America” rhetoric with details on Wal-Mart’s sweatshop factories in China. More good ammo as you take on Wal-Mart. They ask people with websites to link to them using the word Wal-Mart. See, Google and other search engines base their result, at least partly, on how many instances a certain term is linked to a certain URL. Websites that expose the true costs of Wal-Mart’s cheap underwear should rank highly when people search the web for Wal-Mart. Say it with me. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart. Try it at home. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart. For that matter, Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart.

Shaun Needs a Friend

It’s become pretty obvious that I am in desperate need of a new friend; the kind whose friendship and loyalty are entirely dependent on my paying for dinner and providing a place to spend the night, the kind who’ll tear up my papers, scratch my furniture and get hair everywhere. Enough pulling dying cats out of the gutter, it’s time to adopt a pet. I’ve been thinking for awhile about getting a cat. They seemed like low maintenance. When I’m working, I can be out of the apartment for 12-14 hours a day, and, being an apartment, there’s no backyard here. But I just don’t understand cats. They bite and scratch when they’re playing. They’re finicky. Plus, I don’t have anyone in the neighborhood to take care of them when I leave town for school or work. Dogs, I know. I’ve had dogs for about as long as I’ve been […]

What’s the Frequency, Leslie?

The Writers Guild of America, East, has been without a contract with the major networks since the first of April. The networks are demanding concessions in wages and work rules. The union will be staging a lunchtime rally in front of the CBS Broadcast Center (located at 524 West 57th Street) next Wednesday, the 27th of April, from 1:00 until 2:00. If you are free, you should go, not only because you support union workers but because you demand quality television. You do realize that this whole “reality” television craze is just a union-busting strategy, don’t you? Not only are there no writers (hence, no writers union), but the editors are not covered by that union’s contract and most of the on-location crews are non-union, too! Go to the rally as “concerned viewers for quality television.” Bring signs: “Sick of Survivor!” “No More ‘Reality’ Give Us Fantasy!”

Beer: The Cause of, and Solution to, All of Life’s Problems

It turns out I have at least two things in common with Warren Buffett, the shrewd billionaire. We’ve both disliked Bush for some time, and now it seems that we’ve both been investing in beer in this lousy economy. Of course, my investment has been a pint at a time, while Buffett “has become a significant shareholder” in Anheuser-Busch. In my role as a trustee for the American Socialist Foundation, I’ve recently been focusing a lot of attention on some of the inherent weaknesses in the US economy. In our quest to responsibly invest a $100,000 bequest, ASF Chair Barbara Garson and I have been meeting with economists and investment advisors to pick the safest strategy. The outlook is bleak. Bush’s huge deficits, these stupid wars, the declining dollar and oil uncertainty all point to an economic crash. It could be tomorrow, it could be five years from now. We’re […]

The Phone Rang

The phone rang this afternoon. A man in a high-pitched youngish voice asked for Mr. Richman and said that he had a few questions about the health of New York City and wouldn’t take more than 45 seconds. He sounded like a rushed telemarketer, reading a standard script. I let him ask his question, on the off-chance it was some kind of political poll. “Do you approve of the job that Mayor Mike Bloomberg is doing?,” he asked me. “Um…,” I hesitated, before finally emphatically declaring, “No.” (The truth is that I don’t think Bloomberg’s doing an awful job, especially after the bad Giuliani days, but, still, I’d rather get a Republican out of office.) “Okay, sir, I understand,” the young man said nervously, before launching a frantic and fast-paced rap that I wish I could have recorded in order to properly transcribe. It went something like this: “Keeping in […]

An Opportunity for Electoral Consensus in the Socialist Party USA

The Socialist Party USA has a unique opportunity to reach a consensus on electoral activity that can be translated into a coordinated agenda. Much of the debate in the party right now focuses on extraneous arguments about supporting Democrats (which few in the party actually do) or working within the Green Party. But these are pointless arguments if they do not come in the context of our larger strategy. The truth is that the Socialist Party is not really a political party. Although we do have a legally recognized “Socialist National Committee” that makes us a party in the federal government’s eyes, we lack ballot lines at any state level. We have fielded only a handful of token candidates across the country each year ever since the Socialist Party of Oregon lost its ballot line in 1998. (The story of the SPO’s temporary, but acrimonious, split belies our lack of […]

May Day! May Day!

This May First, hundreds of thousands of activists will march through the streets of New York. This won’t be a traditional May Day parade, not even a watered down “Workers Memorial Day”. No, if anything, this “May Day” is more in the nautical vein of “Save us!” On that Sunday, United for Peace and Justice and Abolition 2000 will lead a march down First Avenue, past the United Nations, down 42nd Street and back up to Central Park for a massive rally against the war in Iraq and in favor of complete nuclear disarmament. It was two years ago, on May 1, 2003, that George Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln, thrust his stuffed crotch in the general direction of a salivating press corp and declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. Of course, the war has just gotten bloodier and more hopeless in the ensuing time. Meanwhile, the United Nations […]

Does the NY Times Have a Homophobic Mandate?

Urban life for the straight guy is apparently quite the minefield these days. With all these homosexuals and metrosexuals running around, pinching bottoms and getting pedicures, a regular guy has to be ever-vigilant, lest an innocent dinner with another regular guy friend end in a mutual suck-fest. Thank goodness for those arbiters of social interactions at the NY Times Style section, who this week shine a light on an act that most adult men have been engaging in for as long as we can remember, but, well, might be a little gay: The Man Date. Although the term was admittedly coined for the article, it already comes with a lengthy set of definitions and rules: Simply defined a man date is two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports. It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a […]

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