Category: Viewing with alarm

No May flowers in jobs report

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

One wonders what goes through the president’s mind as he awakens each morning. Probably something like, “Aw, shit.”

The May jobs numbers suck, thanks in part to the Elefinks’ relentless croaking of anything resembling actual job-creation measures.

Here in Bibleburg, the unemployment rate nudged up to 9.2 percent in April, considerably worse than the statewide average of 7.9 percent, which is only marginally better than the 8.2 percent rate nationwide. The figures indicate that more than 28,000 of my friends and neighbors were looking for work, while an unknown number have simply given up the hunt.

And the folks who are supposed to be empowered to have a go at doing something about this? They’re too busy running for office, running from their records, or simply running their mouths.

As Charles P. Pierce notes: “We have 300,000 long-term unemployed who, all evidence indicates, their government largely has abandoned, and about whom their country’s corporate landlords could care even less. Perhaps this isn’t the best time in history for the president to be boasting regularly about how much federal spending he’s cut.”

Charles, a wiser and funnier man than I, warns that the prez “cannot win re-election on the merits if he’s mixing pale middle-class nostrums with deficit-hawk snake oil.” Troo dat, Brother Pierce. If enough Donks and indies get depressed, say “Fuck it” and stay home on Election Day, leaving Teh Crazy to jerk levers from San Fran to Savannah, we will be enjoying the tender mercies of President Romney come 2013.

Chinese takeout

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Anyone besides me reading The New York Times series on the iEconomy?

Jesus. I feel like having a houseful of Apple products is the equivalent of standing outside a Foxconn factory and yelling, “Jump! Jump! Jump!”

Unhappy Mac
If you think this iMac is unhappy, you should see the Chinese who made it.

One of my Wall Street PowerBooks was assembled in Ireland, so there was a time when Cupertino preferred Irish slaves to Chinese. And the 12-year-old Pismo on the shelf behind me came from Taiwan. But all the rest of this iStuff comes from mainland China, and the production thereof is strictly from Upton Sinclair.

If you’ve not been following the series, here’s Part 1 and here’s Part 2.

The articles make it clear that Apple is not the only miscreant in the high-tech industry, and note the company’s attempts to nudge its suppliers toward creating more humane conditions for their workers.

But still, damn. Can’t say it makes me want to dash out and upgrade the old iPhone 3GS.

One war ends, another continues

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

The war in Iraq officially “ended” today, for those of you who believe in beginnings and endings.

But the war on civil liberties continues. The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act contains provisions that the American Civil Liberties Union says could authorize the U.S. military to pick up and imprison, indefinitely and without charge, civilians — including U.S. citizens — anywhere on the planet, including right here in the good old US of A.

Glenn Greenwald views this development with alarm over at Salon, charging President Obama with being more concerned with executive power than civil liberties.

At The Nation, Patricia J. Williams argues that under this law, “if the Defense Department thinks you’re a terrorist, there would be no presumption of innocence; you would be presumed a detainee of the military unless the executive decides otherwise.”

Her colleague Robert Scheer declared that this “assault on the Constitution’s requirement of due process represents a direct threat to the freedom of the American people every bit as menacing as any we face from foreign enemies.”

Andrew Cohen is less alarmist at The Atlantic, saying we’re still “much closer to the beginning than to the end of this dirty business.”

I don’t know whether to be reassured or terrified by that.

You can’t spell ‘OMG’ without ‘GM’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments

A tip of the salt-stained Mad Dog Campy cap goes out to the League of American Bicyclists for taking note of GM’s latest ad aimed at luring college kids even deeper into debt by adding “discount” new-car payments to their student-loan tabs.

“Stop pedaling … start driving.” Really? Jesus. I know the corporate ideal is to keep us fat, stupid and up to the hubs in debt, but could we try being a little less obvious about it, GM? I’m surprised your ad agency didn’t slap a big set of tits on that car. They’re implied, of course, by the sneering bimbo in the passenger seat, which is about as subtle as slapping a giant schlong on the grill of an Escalade. F-minus.

Just what every undergrad needs, right? Instead of a fashionable fixie and backpack — retail cost, oh, what, next to nothing? — s/he can take advantage of a “college discount” on a pick-’em-up truck that sells for $22,000 to $48,000, depending upon options, and gets 12-15 mpg city and 18-22 highway.

Sounds like just the thing. Upon graduation, our young GM owner can live in the truck, staying one step ahead of the repo man, until s/he runs out of gas. Then it’s either Mom and Dad’s basement or a Sally Ann tent under the bridge with the rest of the liberal-arts BAs.

• Late update: GM caves to velo-outrage, pulls ad.

The VeloHerd thins

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments

It took a while for the word to filter down to the cycling press, but it seems that even a blind dog finds a Milk-Bone now and then — Bicycle Retailer and Industry News reports today that John Wilcockson and Charles Pelkey both got the heave-ho last week from Velo (formerly VeloNews) and VeloNews.com. They followed Velo editor in chief Ben Delaney out the door shortly after the 2011 Tour de France wrapped. Ben was not pushed; he jumped.

I’m not a staffer with Velo or VeloNews.com; never have been. I’m a free-lancer — an “independent contractor,” in the parlance of our times — and my contract with San Diego-based Competitor Group Inc., now the owner of Velo, VeloNews.com and a number of other publications and events, bars me from discussing any “confidential information” that I may come across in the course of doing my little bit of business with the company.

Given that the information about the sacking of John and Charles has become generally known — throughout the industry, anyway, via BRAIN, for whom I also perform my one-ring circus act  — I no longer feel compelled to refrain from discussing it, albeit with some circumspection. Like John, Charles and Ben, I have bills to pay.

John has covered more than 40 Tours and Christ only knows how many other races in his years with VeloNews and other publications. He is a walking, talking VeloHistory book, so crucial to the chronicling of the sport that I even forgive him for having been born a Limey instead of an Irishman. He and the original Trio — the other two being David Walls and Felix Magowan — hired me as a cartoonist in ’89, and the work that they and editor Tim Johnson kicked my way when I quit my last newspaper job in 1991 helped keep food on the table, beer in the fridge and the wolf from the door.

Charles, in his 17 years with the company, not only covered a ton of races, he became a respected authority on cycling’s governance, the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs and the arcane testing/appeals process. He wrote a popular online column, “The Explainer,” and assembled a worldwide audience of devoted fans who attended his live updates from the Tour and other events as if they were papal addresses from St. Peter’s Square.

The silly sod also routinely got up at 3 a.m. to post cycling news from Europe. You might get me up at that hour to face a firing squad, but probably not. “Fuck it, just shoot me here. Bring me a cup of coffee first. And a newspaper. And Elle MacPherson. Not necessarily in that order.”

Charles and are old pals who tag-teamed the VeloNews.com op’ for a lot of years, and I always worked the late shift, because I was not born a German and have no children to interrupt my sleep. Being old newspaper guys, we have the sort of professional relationship that lets us shout “Fuck you!” at each other without anyone’s feelings getting permanently hurt.

I’d say we’ll miss these guys, but that seems kind of obvious.