Chop-chop Video

You may remember a previous blog post a few years back where I interviewed my friend Trung who was, at the time, enrolled in the master's program at University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC). Trung is also a blogger who shares my contempt for the tea party. Well, apparently the ignorant teabaggers have contempt -- actually, violent hatred -- towards Trung's alma mater.

Trung explains the ongoing situation in his blog. It involves Andrew Breitbart (need I say more?) and secretly (actually, not so secretly) video taped lectures of UMKC econ professors. Of course, Breitbart and his minions are up to old tricks. They gave the splice job to these videos in the same way they distorted and minced Shirley Sherrod's words last July.

Breitbart and his BigGovernment web site are using the obviously edited videos to accuse two labor-studies professors of indoctrinating innocent, malleable minds to the violent ways of union thugs. The complete unadulterated videos, however, reveal the exact opposite. One professor tells students to resist violence because it "gives credence" to the argument that "these people need to be controlled."

But facts be damned. In a twist that's not really a twist because it's totally predictable, the teabaggers are actually the violent thugs. Incited by the erroneous videos, they started with phoning in threats to the university but quickly escalated the situation by trespassing on the UMSL (University of Missouri-St. Louis) campus and threatening students with violence:

In order to distract people from the fact that they were busted lying, St. Louis tea party provocateur Adam Sharp, who's blogged on Breitbart's sites before, apparently trespassed on the UMSL campus on Saturday to harass students and instructor Don Giljum. Sharp attempted to film students in their classroom, pestered them as they walked out of class with questions like "do you condone violence," and was arrested and charged with trespassing. Don Giljum was also taken to the police station because there was an altercation, and as students waited outside of the police station, another tea partier approached them and began taunting them and daring them to "take a swing" at him. This is after a week where the tea party violated students' privacy by putting videos on YouTube showing comments made for the purpose of classroom discussion.

Breitbart, in an April 18 interview with Sean Hannity, said he planned to "go after" educators. And there you have it. We've seen ethnic intolerance, religious intolerance, and every other shade of bigotry from these nuts, but now... academic intolerance.

Freedom of inquiry by students and faculty is the foundation of education and our university system. It's all too fitting that the teabaggers go after this.

Modern Serfs

"People who work for free are far hungrier than anybody who has a salary, so they're going to outperform, they're going to try to please, they're going to be creative." — Kelly Fallis, chief executive of Remote Stylist.

The above quote comes from this article in Fortune which asks if unpaid jobs are the new normal. Dear god, I hope not. I could be mistaken, but I thought slavery was outlawed.

Yeah, I understand that some college grads will take internships in the hopes of receiving valuable training and "getting their foot in the door." That's fine, but of course, a person who can take such a non-paying job has to already be in some kind of financially stable position (like living with their parents, perhaps).

And while contemplating the article, I remembered that I had worked for free. A friend and I spent a couple of years designing and programming some mobile games. But then that's really not the same, is it? I was working independently in the hopes of pure profits at the end of the road (which never quite materialized).

If I ever had the balls to assume I could hire a staff of fifty to assist me -- without any pay -- hell, I'm sure I could have been way more successful. I could have turned out more products and sucked up all the profit for myself. But that's just not right. I believe the word is "exploitation."

But we are living in anti-labor times now. The Fortune article laments, yes really laments, that using unpaid labor isn't always legal:

Unfortunately for many employers hoping to use unpaid labor to advance their business goals, there are strict federal and state rules that workers must be paid the minimum wage and paid for overtime, and must abide by other provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act, which applies to about 135 million people working for 7.3 million employers. The FLSA doesn't apply to companies with less than $500,000 in annual revenue unless they engage in interstate commerce -- which can be as little as accepting credit cards or placing phone calls to another state.

The FLSA is there for a reason. In many job sectors a lack of wage laws can create a race to the bottom with each company cutting worker compensation to compete with the other companies that have cut worker compensation. And in the corporate world, that means that every person willing and able to work for free is taking a job away from somebody who needs income.

But now let me make a confession of sorts. It's kind of funny really. Or sad. The last few months I've been working in a "virtual sweatshop." Yes, I've been pimping my human intelligence to Amazon Mechanical Turks. Mostly I've been writing short informative articles for content farmers. I've found the work mostly enjoyable and kind of challenging.

For example, I've written informational pitches for snowboard products, despite the fact that I've never snowboarded, skied or made fluffy snow angels. Talk about creative writing.

But it's not the low pay that makes me creative. And I'm certainly not motivated by hunger. In fact, I can't say I work particularly hard at these assignments. I have no illusions of my work landing me a "real job." For me, as a person with a disability, it's a simple case of accessibility. I browse some HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks), click a button, and have an assignment. No commute. No long hours. No job interviews. No coming face-to-face with people's prejudices.

The pay, however, is embarrassing. I could maybe live off of it... if I moved to Zimbabwe. One of my friends suggested that the turkers unionize. I think he was joking, but I'm not sure.

Dropping the Pretense

It's not about the budget. I'm talking about Wisconsin, of course, where Republicans just ended a three week stalemate by passing a standalone bill that strips public unions of almost all collective bargaining rights.

Basically, Wisconsin Republicans redefined the union-busting portions of the budget bill as non-budgetary, so they could vote on it without the Democrats being there.

But then Governor Scott Walker contradicted the whole process by saying, "In order to move the state forward, I applaud the legislature's action today to stand up to the status quo and take a step in the right direction to balance the budget and reform government." So was it a budget bill or not? Sounds shady either way.

But here's a Wisconsin Senator confirming that union busting isn't about, never was about, balancing the budget:

(YouTube video.)

It's about winning elections by yanking support away from Democrats. But if they have to resort to such guileless, underhanded moves, are they going to win much of anything? It's quite obvious they hate democracy and ignore the law.

And you know, none of this fixes the economy one iota. It's Gov. Walker dicking around with people's lives while pretending he's the new Reagan.

Appeasing the Gods of Deficit

So I was going to post the Daily Show clip where Jon Stewart accuses Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker of "appeasing the gods of deficit" by closing the budget gap (created by millions in tax cuts for businesses) by ritualistically killing the unions. It's a pretty good take on the situation so watch the clip anyway, but the end kind of rubs me the wrong way. Ever since the March to Restore Sanity, Jon's been pushing this whole "both sides meme," and either he's not getting it or I'm not getting it.

Yeah, Fox supported the Tea Party protesters and condemns the Wisconsin union protesters, and the flip side is true for MSNBC. But the union protesters are a lot less crazy, didn't bring guns, and actually have their livelihoods at stake. The tea partiers? I've written enough about them, but they want "their country back" and don't want certain people to have health care. I think I'm smart enough to point out which side is loony, and Jon should point it out too.

However, back to the whole budget deficit thing, this is important because way too many Republicans are trying to tell us that things like social safety nets and collective bargaining by unions, all the things Republicans never liked anyway, are just too darn expensive. But the Rachel Maddow show is challenging this whole myth that unions cause budget crises:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Respect for the Law

Ohio Governor John Kasich thinks that police officers who do their jobs are "idiots," and he says it a few times just in case you missed it.



Unsurprisingly, he wants to push the same union-busting bologna that's going on in Wisconsin.