Burned Books Publishing

Save The Rich

2012-01-20T14:56:00.000-08:00

The Class War Has Begun | Common Dreams

2011-11-06T15:30:00.000-08:00

This is a great article by Frank Rich. I only have one of his books in my Biblio catalog, "The Best Story Ever Sold" for $4.00 USED.

First They... (variation)

2011-10-31T00:12:00.000-07:00

First they protested slavery, and I did not protest --
because I was not a slave.

Then they marched for suffrage, and I did not march --
because I was not a woman.

Next they stood against war, and I did not stand --
because I was never a soldier.

When blue-collar workers walked out on industry, I did not move --
because I wore a white-collar.

Finally they came to occupy Wall Street, and I could run no more --
because they had found me at last.

Steven Colbert Book Parody

2011-10-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

Watch on www.colbertnation.com

Thinking Outside The Book: Reflecting On Project Gutenberg And The Future Of Libraries

2011-10-18T23:26:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: These are my opinions and thoughts. While I am currently serving as a member of the Library Board in Tigard, Oregon, what I write below are my thoughts they do not represent the thoughts or policies of the Tigard Library Board or its members, nor do they represent the thoughts or policies of the Tigard Public Library or its staff. These are my thoughts as an individual, ebook publisher, and IT professional.

I was reading Eric Hellman's fine blog which caused me to reflect on the obituary for Michael Stern Hart the founder and visionary behind Project Gutenberg. This also caused me to revisit a question I was recently asked, which was, "in light of the growth of ebooks, what did I think about the plans to expand the Lake Oswego library?"

I don't know specific details about the Lake Oswego library expansion plans, so I could not answer that specific question. BUT, as a general rule, it is my belief that communities should not be building bigger brick and mortar libraries. And here is why...

Before I go into that explanation, let me clarify that I am not making any value judgement about books. Books are great and they have served human culture well. No one, let alone myself, wants to see books disappear. In fact, I have written many blog posts on the dangers posed by the disappearance of books. Yet my passion for books cannot lead me to overlook the obvious. Ebooks are going to gain more and more of a foothold in the publishing industry and as they do print books will become more rare. Therefore, what any forward thinking library should be doing today is planning how they will bring ebooks and ereaders into their communities.

Often people respond emotionally to the notion that printed books are vanishing or that libraries, in response, must change. So before any of my readers respond emotionally to what I have written above, let's remove libraries from the equation.

Suppose you were a small independent bookstore and, all of a sudden, you came into a large sum of money. You were currently in a 6,000 square foot retail space but there was a great 30,000 square foot retail space down the road that you had always envisioned as this great community resource - a bookstore and cafe. You could take the money you have and invest it in that new space and try to create this vision OR you could keep your 6,000 square foot retail space, invest in some servers for the back room, install WiFi, and start selling ebooks and ereaders. Which would you recommend? Let's call them the Borders model and the Amazon model.

You see my point I hope.

All of us in the book business love books. What we cannot do is to allow our love of books as an object cloud our appreciation of books as a tool for reading, learning, and entertainment. Books are a good tool, but let's be honest they have some limitations. It would be great to be able to easily search a book to find a special quote. It would be great to be able to easily copy and paste that special quote into whatever project one was working on without having to re-type it. It would be great, if one were tired, to have someone else read the book to us.

Don't get me wrong, a book is a fine piece of technology. It has many great features that have made it a successful technology for thousands of years. But, as with any technology that has been around as long as books, it also has its limitations.

Yes ... we can love books and simultaneously recognize that the times are changing and a new technology has arrived. And, if we are forward thinking about libraries we must recognize that while printed books required a large brick-and-mortar footprint to house them, ebooks, by their very nature, require a smaller brick-and-mortar footprint. Therefore, building larger libraries today seems as though one were fighting to keep alive the Borders model against all indicators that it is a model that is no longer relevant.

In fact, because most libraries keep a large print collection, they have allowed ebooks to be the sole domain of for-profit entities. Many libraries which today distribute ebooks, do so through a contract with the OverDrive corporation. Library patrons wishing to check out ebooks are re-directed from the library servers to the OverDrive catalog to complete the transaction. While libraries own their print collections, their ebook collections are owned or managed by OverDrive on OverDrive's servers. This begs the question if companies like Apple, OverDrive, Sony, Kobo, and Amazon all were able to sign agreements with the major publishers so that they could sell ebooks through their servers why didn't the libraries also sign agreements with these same publishers? A forward thinking library, today, rather than building a larger brick-and-mortar footprint, should be taking that money and going to major publishers and asking for the right to distribute ebooks from the libraries servers - not through some third party - but directly from the libraries servers - so that libraries had possession of the digital files in their digital collection.

Here then are my recommendations for what a forward thinking library would be doing

Invest in technology not in brick-and-mortar

Create publicly owned servers that contain publicly controlled ebook collections that library patrons can download and read.

Buy more copies of the ebook version of a book than the print version so that it is easier for patrons to get the ebook, mp3, or movie download rather than the physical item.

Invest in the .epub format both financially and with the technical expertise of your librarians. Of special importance here is that ebook formats are enhanced so that the published material is archival and able to be reliably referenced.
Invest in and develop, in partnership with a 3rd party company, a tablet device or at least an App that is geared to the needs of the public library patron.
Add QR Codes to the library catalog system so that users with smart devices can instantly get to the ebook, mp3, or movie download.
Recognize that every time a patron can satisfy their needs without ever stepping foot inside the library the library has not only saved the patron money but also saved the library system money.

Invest in scanners and hire people or get volunteers to scan any books in the library's collection which are out of copyright and store the digital files on the libraries servers so that all library patrons can access them. It was short sighted for libraries to allow Goole to scan their books because now those digital files are stored on Google's servers. The books that were in the public domain, which were owned by public libraries, should have been stored on publicly owned servers and Google could have indexed these servers just as it does with any other server in the world, but the files would have been publicly owned and publicly controlled.
Workstations within a library should have access to the entire ebook collection without a patron needing to check out the material. It should work exactly the same way as when a patron now pulls a book off the shelves and reads it in a chair at the library. This is why some device or App as described in 1.3 above is needed. The App needs to know that it is on a library computer and it needs to have full rights to pull any ebook copy off the shelf for in-library reading. The same goes for mp3 or digital movies.
By investing too heavily in a physical collection and not having full rights to its digital collections libraries are behind the curve on the fact that today people have a 24 hour/7 days a week need for information. While a physical collection can only serve library patrons during normal business hours, a well crafted digital collection is available 24/7. To be a relevant, modern, information resource a library must maintain a 24/7 presence.

Worst Companies To Share Your Email Address With

2011-10-18T22:42:00.000-07:00

The graphic says it all. Surprisingly, Zazzle a company which promises that "We hold ourselves to the highest standard. We don’t compromise on our ethics for any reason, period," sent almost as many promotional emails in a 21-weekday period as Expedia, and Office Depot. And REI, the "nation's largest consumer cooperative," which claims that "Our core purpose guides everything we do: we all work to inspire, educate and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship" is comfortable sending as many promotional emails in a 21-weekday period as Target, Fandango, Etsy, and Cafe Press.

It's Not Banned Or Burned If It's Just Disappeared

2011-10-01T00:21:00.000-07:00

The Friends Of The Seattle Public Library book sale was this past weekend, September 24-25th, 2011. I, once again, attended this sale and bought books for my online radical bookstore (look under the Just In section). As you know, if you have been reading my blog for a number of years, I have a love-hate relationship with library book sales. I love them because I always find great books and I hate them because when I find a great book at a library book sale it means that, perhaps, some library has removed this book from their collection. There are many reasons why books may be removed from a library's collection and I don't profess to be an expert on library collection policies, but I do know this, one of the main reasons why books are sold by public libraries is because they were not circulating.

Everything, the sum of all human activity, is being evaluated in an American Idol style popularity contest. What lasts is no longer what is good, or what is needed, or what must be preserved, but merely what is popular, what is profitable, what creates the loudest buzz.

So here is a short profile of some of the library books I bought, and why they should have remained in the Seattle Public Library's collection. Pictured above is the title page from a short book America's Disappeared. Here is the quote I took from the back cover of the book

On any given day, over 20,000 men, women, and children languish in indefinite detention in the United States. In Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, thousands more are imprisoned or shipped to other countries where the rules for interrogation permit greater amounts of coercion and violence. These are America’s disappeared. This book contains their voices, and the voices of those who fight for their rights as human beings.

I will go out on a limb here and write, before I check my facts, that I bet there is not a single copy of this book remaining in the Seattle Public Library system. Wait... I'll go check... OK, so I was wrong, they have TWO copies remaining. Before the library book sale this past weekend they had a total of THREE copies. Worse, these two copies are currently available for check out. What does this mean Seattle? It means that if these two remaining copies don't begin to circulate they will wind up in a future library book sale.

Another former library book that I bought was Christopher Hedges What Every Person Should Know About War. This book may not be a classic like George Ross Kirkpatrick's War-What For?, but it is a book that a major library system should keep in their collection. Luckily there are still THREE copies available for checkout from the Seattle Public Library. Check it out and read it, especially if you are a teenager who is thinking about enlisting.

I bought a book from one of my favorite authors, Tariq Ali at the library book sale. I never pass up an opportunity to buy any book written by Tariq Ali and this book is a book that I actually carry new, in my online store. Pirates Of The Caribbean profiles three South American political leaders Eva Morales, Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro. It is a great book, new or used, and I bought the second to last copy that the Seattle Public Library had in its collection. That's right, there is only one copy remaining in the entire Seattle Public Library system. I thought you guys up there is Seattle were liberals! Why are you not reading everything that Tariq Ali writes?

I bought a number of books that were donated for the sale and did not come from the Seattle Public Library's collection. The rarest book I found was Jo Durden-Smith's Who Killed George Jackson. This book about the death of Black Panther Party member and author, George Jackson is not available from the Seattle Public Library. Just so you don't feel so bad, Seattle, it is not available from the Multnomah County Public Library in Portland nor the San Francisco Public Library. If you live in Seattle, and you would like to read this book, the WorldCat library catalog system says that you would have to go to either Central Washington University, University Of Puget Sound or Washington State to check it out. In Oregon you'd have to go to the Springfield Public Library or Linfield College. WorldCat lists 346 libraries worldwide that have this book and, to be fair, almost all of these libraries are in the United States. If you are a university student there is a good chance that you can get this book at your school's library or a university library nearby. If you are a public library user your options are much fewer, unless you can order the book for interlibrary loan through your local public library. Outside the United States don't even think about looking for this book. Six libraries in Canada, three libraries in Australia, two in Germany and two in the United Kingdom, one in both the Netherlands and New Zealand have this book.

I am sure that many of you are thinking, why is this guy complaining? 346 libraries have this book it is clearly not banned, burned or disappeared. So here is my challenge to my readers, go find this book. This is a new game we'll call Bibliocaching. Go find this book and then take a picture of yourself holding this book and send it to me over email and tell me where you found it. Maybe bring a sticky pad with you and leave a sticky note inside the book so that others looking for the book will know who else has embarked on this adventure. I will do a blog post at some point in the future letting everyone know about the success of this first Bibliocaching challenge. At least if people start looking for copies of this book it will create a buzz and maybe someone, somewhere, will begin to think that this book is popular, and therefore valuable, to keep in their library collection.

No Such Thing As FREE

2011-09-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

I was doing a Google search the other day and I came across this book by Chris Anderson. The obvious comment is that Anderson's book is not FREE, not even the ebook version. But then, that is a cheap shot. Anderson is not suggesting that FREE in-and-of-itself will make one money. Obviously if a company gives everything away for FREE the company will go broke. So, if I am not going to take the cheap shot at the book, why post anything?

What caught my attention was the blurb posted on Amazon, written by Anderson, or more likely, someone from his publishing company. The blurb says

"The costs associated with the growing online economy are trending toward zero at an incredible rate."

This is a ludicrous statement. The costs are not tending towards zero in any way one looks at it. Technology is one of the most expensive and time consuming investments a company makes. And for small independent booksellers, our costs to maintain a web presence are significant. Sure, a web presence is MUCH cheaper than a brick-and-mortar store, but when one lists their books online one must enter all the book information into some database; make sure that pictures and descriptions are accurate, legible, and attractive; upload their book inventory to multiple online listing sites (Biblio, Abe, Alibris, Amazon, ...), where each site may have their own formatting requirements; and agree to pay each listing site a commission for the sale and a fee for that site to handle the credit card transaction. To be able to do this at all a small bookseller must also maintain and pay a monthly fee for their internet connection and keep their computer system up-to-date with the latest database software, virus checkers, etc. The cost is anything but zero, and the trend, if I may be so bold is that these costs are going to continue to increase.

Yes certain costs associated with computers have come down dramatically - like the costs for memory and hard drive space. Yet other costs have skyrocketed, like the costs for telephone service which back in the 1970s was a very inexpensive service to provide. One may have paid $10 per month for a phone line in 1975 while now one is paying $80 per month, or more, for a smart phone. Sure one could look at this and say with everything a modern smart phone does that is a bargain, but one cannot say that the costs are tending toward zero!

Book Review: Jesus And Nonviolence

2011-09-01T01:37:00.000-07:00

Wink, Walter. Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.

I bought this book, used, from Powell's back in November of 2010. Powell's was fast and efficient in refunding my money after my blog post about the poor condition of this book. However, the excessive underlining throughout the text meant that the book fell to the bottom of my pile of books to read. Even though I knew I would be interested in the material, I just could not bare to open the book. That was until last week. I read the book and what I found was a charming high school level text on the history and philosophy behind nonviolence. In a short 117 pages, including notes and bibliography, Wink is able to give a thoroughly enjoyable primer on nonviolence.

I wish I had owned and read this book before I tried to answer the challenge posed by a GreenIsTheNewRed reader that I defend and explain nonviolence. Wink does a great job and I would encourage anyone who questions the effectiveness of nonviolence to give Wink's book a quick read. In the early pages of the book Wink lays out many of the standard arguments against nonviolence. He writes "Neutrality in a situation of oppression always supports the status quo." (p. 5), and on the same page, that some pacifists have been criticized for being "more concerned with their own righteousness than with the sufferings of the afflicted." He deals with the fact that many people, especially Christians, misuse nonviolence to mean non-confrontation writing "[t]hey would like the system to change without having to be involved in changing it." (p. 4) He addresses the fact that nonviolence as a word is a negative concept writing "[i]t sounds like a not-doing..." (p.3)

In chapter 2 he begins to answer these criticisms. First he reminds readers that the King James translators of the bible, because they were working for the ruling class, had their own reasons for making Jesus' nonviolence seem impossible or inscrutable. Obviously if one did not understand Jesus' revolution one could not carry it on. Wink writes "Jesus did not tell his oppressed hearers not to resist evil." (p.10) This he says centers around the mistranslation of the Greek word antistenai as "Resist not evil" The Greek word, Wink asserts, means primarily military confrontation or armed revolution. It does not, Wink suggests, command that one accept evil, it commands, rather, that one not go to war with evil, or that one does not resist evil with violence. Wink writes that what Jesus was suggesting was militant nonviolence against those in power, yet the King James translators morphed that into "Resist not evil" suggesting passivity. Wink emphasizes on page 13, "Jesus abhors both passivity and violence as responses to evil." Wink then goes on to re-tell three of Jesus' instructions to his followers; turn the other cheek, if someone seeks your coat given him your shirt as well, and if you are forced to walk a mile walk two instead. If you want to read Wink's explanation you'll have to get the book.

Wink debunks the idea that nonviolence is in any way dogmatic. I am not arguing here that some pacifists don't apply it dogmatically, and neither is Wink, what he says, and what I believe, is that nonviolence requires us to be creative in our response to oppression, to always think about how we can turn the tables on the powers that be without killing them outright. However, Wink would be the first to admit that if you can't find the nonviolent course then armed revolution is better than submission. One also must note that Wink, and myself, believe that there always is a nonviolent course as long as one is willing to be militantly nonviolent. If we only try petitions, letters, marching before throwing up our hands and and announcing that nonviolence failed, then we are failing to be creative in our approach to nonviolence.

In an attempt to pull some of this creativity to the forefront of the readers mind Wink presents 13 points drawn from the work of Saul Alinsky summarizing at the end of these points "Jesus' teaching is a kind of moral jujitsu, a martial art for using the momentum of evil to throw it." (p. 43) To the 13 points Wink takes from Alinsky, Wink ads his own rule, "[n]ever adopt a strategy that you would not want your opponents to use against you." (p. 46) This is such an important point. When animal rights protestors glorify the torching of an animal research lab they should think about when black churches have been, and are today, torched by white supremacist groups. Endorsing arson in the name of animal rights is to endorse arson as a tool for social, political, or societal change, i.e. to endorse the burning of black churches, if the social, political, or societal change one seeks is not animal rights but white power. It would be supremely hypocritical to say that arson is valid when fighting for animal rights, but invalid when fighting for the right to be a racist or a bigot. Wink reminds us that our refusal to "love our enemies is a result of seeing the opposition as a monolith." (p. 61) If we can't recognize that our opposition has the ability to change then we feel justified in taking any means necessary to stop them.

"Violent revolutionaries are involved in a contradiction that jeopardizes the very order they wish to establish. They plan to gain power by the very means that they will declare illegal when they gain power. But they will have established a precedent that legitimates the use of violence by those who disagree with them and wish to replace them." (p. 73)

Wink also deals with the double standard for evaluating violent and nonviolent revolutions. He writes that nonviolence is discredited by its opponents when they can find one instance of it not working, while they continue to endorse violence which "regularly fails to achieve its goals." (p. 54) To aid in this argument of statistics Wink presents many comparisons between violent and nonviolent revolutions throughout the book. In one example he states that India's three hundred million inhabitants were liberated largely through nonviolence over seven years at a cost of about 8,000 lives while Algeria's ten million inhabitants fought off the French in a violent seven year struggle at the cost of 1,000,000 lives. (p. 52)

Wink does not present an objective comparison between violence and nonviolence. I don't think anyone has ever attempted such a thing. He argues passionately for his position, that there is always a nonviolent approach to revolution which does not entail submission or passivity but active and creative revolution against oppression. This book should be required reading at the high school level not because it is a brilliant new argument for nonviolence but because it handles the material in a mature and comprehensive manner in a short 117 pages. Given the volumes that our kids have to read which extol violence, forcing them to read, and think about, this short book would be the least we could do to challenge the supremacy of violence.

Book Review: If They Come In The Morning

2011-08-27T22:39:00.000-07:00

Davis, Angela Y. If They Come In The Morning. New York: New American Library, 1971.

Anyone interested in the topic of political repression or the ideas espoused by Will Potter on his blog, GreenIsTheNewRed, would benefit from reading Angela Davis' book, If They Come In The Morning. Serious students of American political repression would observe that the treatment metered out against black activists in the 1960s and 1970s was merely those decades reinvention of the political repression which American society has, decade after decade, visited upon our cherished social reformers. There is nothing new in If They Come In The Morning just as there is nothing old. In fact, reading the pages makes one wonder if anything has changed, could change, will ever change!

The book is inspired by Davis' arrest on October 13, 1970 in New York, her speedy extradition to California, and her trial in Marin County California for murder, kidnap and conspiracy. The book also touches on her political activism, her fight to free the Soledad Brothers, and her firing from the University system in California, by then Governor Reagan, for openly expressing her adherence to communist ideals.

On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson entered the courtroom where Ruchell Magee was a witness in the trial of James McClain. Jackson was armed with a .380 caliber pistol, a .30 caliber rifle, a .30 caliber M-1 carbine, and a 12 gauge shotgun. Jackson used the weapons to arm the prisoners in the courtroom and they proceeded to take hostages and try to make their escape. They made it outside, got in a van, and attempted to drive away. That is when San Quentin guards and other officers opened fire on the van. Three of the prisoners and one hostage, the judge, died in the gun fire. Angela Davis was sought in connection with this escape attempt because the guns used had all been purchased by Davis.

Davis fled California and remained on the run until she was captured and sent back by Federal Agents on October 13th. The book is broken down into nine parts

Part I: Political Prisoners, Prisons and Black Liberation
Part II: The Prison System
Part III: Realities Of Repression
Part IV: Bobby Seale And Ericka Huggins
Part V: The Soledad Brothers: Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette, George Jackson
Part VI: Ruchell Magee
Part VII: Angela Davis
Part VIII: Angela Davis And Ruchelle Magee On Trial
Part IX: The Campaign

The book does a great job of laying out the persecution which the black community felt, and the atrocious conditions that black revolutionaries faced in prison. Comparing the book to the work that Will Potter does on his blog, exposing the precarious conditions that eco-warriors in prison face today, they are very similar, both in scope and unfortunately in the treatment that the activists face. Black revolutionaries were kept in extended solitary confinement, were denied the ability to speak with their lawyers (and when they were allowed to speak with their lawyers their conversations were monitored). Often the rules governing prisoner treatment as well as basic civil rights and court proceedings were ignored, and the activists were treated as potentially violent even if they had a history of non-violent revolutionary activities. In many ways, Potter's blog only seems alarming because we forget the treatment of black revolutionaries during the 1960s. And the treatment of black revolutionaries in the 1960s was alarming only because the public had forgotten about the treatment of the IWW and other labor radicals from the early part of the 1900s.

The book is a good reminder that revolutionaries face repression even in a country like America where one's freedom of speech and freedom of association are protected by our constitution. As Angela Davis wrote of her own trial, "[i]t seems to be a general rule that prosecutors attempt to obscure the political character of trials involving radicals and revolutionaries, only to later hypocritically reinject political content." (p. 251) For example one reason why authorities claimed that Davis was "armed and dangerous" during her life on the run, even though she was a college professor, was that she was an avowed communist, a member of many radical black organizations, and a supporter of freedom for the Soledad Brothers.

That being said, one also has to admit that Davis was the registered owner of at least four guns, and the guns she owned were used to lead a courthouse escape attempt. While one could clearly see the political motivations behind the manhunt for Davis, one must accept that the police were wise to assume that Davis owned more than the four guns used in the escape attempt, and that she may use them to prevent her own capture. Even if Davis was certain that she could not receive a fair trial in California, it was not political motivation which led the police to seek to question her about how her guns wound up being used in the escape attempt. The sad thing about the book is that Davis and her supporters spend 288 pages discussing all aspects of this case without once answering this basic question: how was it that guns that she owned were used in this escape attempt? If it were me, and if I had owned four guns that were used in a prison escape attempt, I would want to know how that happened. I'd want answers. I'd want to know who took my guns and who gave them to Jonathan Jackson. And I want to know why. Because in using guns that I owned in an escape attempt the persons behind the escape plan knew that they'd be framing me for conspiracy in their plan.

As far as gun ownership, one always must consider that your guns can be stolen and used for criminal activity. As far as revolutionary movements, one has to recognize that people act for their own motivations and often don't consider well enough the consequence of their actions. Davis was a vocal and well respected advocate for radical political ideas. She was fearless when she stood up to Reagan and the University regents. The fact that some movement idiot used guns that she owned in an attempt to free other black revolutionaries, thereby framing Davis for conspiracy and forcing her to go underground, was a myopic decision. In fact, if it were me, at the time, I would have suspected that the escape attempt using guns for which I was the registered owner was a deliberate move by someone in the movement to silence me. The converse is that the guns were used with Davis' permission and she was involved in the conspiracy to free these prisoners. What I wish the book contained was some sense of her outrage, which if innocent of the conspiracy charge she must have felt, at the poor decision to steal her guns and use them in the escape attempt.

A Vegan/Vegetarian Guide To East Glacier & Glacier National Park

2011-08-01T11:03:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from five days in East Glacier Montana. Because I could find little information about vegan/vegetarian food options in the town of East Glacier and Glacier National Park I have decided to relate my experiences in the hope that others will find this helpful.

My family and friends stayed at the Glacier Park Lodge. Because the rooms in the lodge are fairly basic - they do not have microwaves or refrigerators - we reserved the Golf House which slept up to 8 people and had a full kitchen. Our first obstacle when arriving at the Golf House is that the water in East Glacier comes from surface sources and is of unreliable quality. There were signs in the Golf House telling us that we could not drink the water and must boil the water for 5 minutes before cooking with it. This seems to be a problem for the whole area surrounding East Glacier, but it did not seem to effect the main lodge as there were functioning water fountains in the lodge's lobby.

The Golf House was comfortable and we did find the full kitchen essential. The kitchen was well stocked with plates, glassware, mugs, and silverware. What the kitchen lacked was a good selection of pots and pans. There were three old Teflon coated pans. The Teflon coatings were scratched and the pans were not in great shape. There were two frying pans and one small sauce pan. Luckily we had not planned on preparing any large or deluxe meals in the kitchen, but for a house that could sleep 8, the pots and pans were not sufficient to cook for 8. If I were to visit East Glacier again and rent the Golf House at the Glacier Park Lodge, I would bring my own pots and pans.

On our second day in East Glacier we had planned on food shopping for essentials, bread being the most important item that we had not brought with us. We had planned to shop for food in Browning, a town on the blackfeet indian reservation. However, right before we left on our trip a friend told us that Browning would not have a lot of vegan/vegetarian food choices. This friend recommended that we shop in West Glacier (an hour and a half drive to the other side of Glacier National Park). We had no stomach for such a long drive on our second day there so instead we decided to make due with what we could find at the East Glacier Trading Post. If you are only vegetarian you will be able to buy bread and a whole lot more at the stores in East Glacier. Most of the breads available in the stores come from the Sunshine Baking Company and according to the labels all contained dairy products. Ultimately we were able to find a package of bread bagels on the shelves at the Trading Post that did not list dairy on its ingredients list.

We had brought tofu, veggie hot dogs, tofurkey slices, and a seitan chicken salad that we could eat on crackers. None of these items were available in any of the local stores. If you can shop in West Glacier you can probably (I say probably because we never did go shopping in West Glacier) find some of these items. West Glacier is a much larger town with large chain supermarkets and an assortment of restaurants. On our second day we decided that rather than cook we'd go out for dinner. We choose Luna's which was walking distance from the Golf House. Luna's offered an eclectic menu which included a vegan sweet potato soup, a number of salads, and a veggie burger (the bun is not vegan). The staff at Luna's was friendly and we sought advice on where to go shopping. They agreed that Browning would not have many options, even at the IGA market in Browning, and they said that they shop in West Glacier. We ate at Luna's once more before we left East Glacier.

East Glacier is really an isolated area of Glacier National Park. It is not near many of the big tourist locations within Glacier. For example, it is about a 40 minute drive from East Glacier to St. Mary's where the Going To The Sun Road ends on the east side of the park. However, that isolation really gives one a feel for the natural setting. Once one leaves East Glacier on any road one is alone with the mountains and, at least when we were there, one does not face any traffic issues. You may see another car every once in a while, but the roads are very sparsely traveled. Our favorite spot quickly became Two Medicine Lake.

Two Medicine Lake is beautiful. It has many great hiking trails and is only about a 10 minute drive from East Glacier. Best of all, at the campground store, we were able to find some hot dog buns that were vegan. We spent many hours exploring the Two Medicine Lake area walking the trails and visiting Running Eagle Falls (formerly Trick Falls).

No trip to Glacier National Park would be complete without a trip along the Going To The Sun Road. You could drive it yourself or you could take one of the many tours. We took the Sun Tours run by the blackfeet indian tribe along Going To The Sun Road up to Logan Pass. The tour bus picked us up at the East Glacier lodge at 8 am. After a few initial hiccups, some people had misread the pickup time and delayed the start of the tour, the tour went off without any problems.

Three quarters of the way through the tour our bus stopped at St. Mary's for lunch. St. Mary's is a little more congested than East Glacier, being the eastern end point for the Going To The Sun Road, but there are more vegan/vegetarian options at the restaurants in St. Mary's. We ate at the Park Cafe even though our tour guide had picked another restaurant for the tour group. When we discovered that the chosen restaurant did not have any vegan options our guide was happy to drop us at the Park Cafe and pick us up there at the end of the lunch break.

We had wanted to make it back up to St. Mary's to eat at the lodge restaurant, but found that we did not have energy for the 40 minute drive later in our trip. The biggest difficulty that vegan and vegetarian travelers will have at Glacier is that on the east side of the park each town has its own unique feel. The lodge at East Glacier offered little food for the vegan traveler, the lodge in St. Mary's seemed more accommodating. While St. Mary's was smaller than East Glacier it had more restaurant choices and offered wireless internet access in the lobby. East Glacier was much more peaceful - no TV, no internet access, and spotty cell phone coverage.

Our last night in East Glacier we ate at Serrano's Mexican Restaurant. It was easy to get a bean burrito with no cheese (rice on the side) and the guacamole and chips were great. This is a very popular restaurant so be prepared to wait for a table. However, while waiting you can get drinks and sit on their vast porch.

Overall, traveling to East Glacier is not impossible for the vegan traveler. Plan to bring some food, but if you are staying in the Glacier Park Lodge only bring dried items that won't need to be reheated or refrigerated as your room will not have a microwave nor a fridge. For the vegetarian traveler there are many options for food in the town of East Glacier but if you are traveling with vegan friends you may not get to explore all of them. If you want a little easier traveling experience and can't live without your cell phone, email, facebook, or TV you may want to book your lodging in St. Mary's. You will be a 40 minute drive from the remoteness of East Glacier but you will have much more access to vegetarian and vegan food and very easy access to the Going To The Sun Road.

Humans Were Never Meant To Think About Meaning This Much

2011-07-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

Recently the good folks at Citizen Radio had the opportunity to interview comic legend, and raw food vegan advocate, Dick Gregory. Mr. Gregory repeated an often heard statement about soy estrogen that I have always found about as compelling as the idea that eating a tiger's gallbladder or a rhino's horn will make one virile. But, what really caught my ear in the interview was the way Dick Gregory phrased his statement, saying "...soybeans was never meant to be consumed by human beings..."

The human condition is this search for what we, as humans, are meant to do. Unlike other creatures on this planet we seem to be the only ones who have no idea what we are meant to do. Because of this we develop all sorts of crazy ideas - some religious, some scientific, others political - to try to answer this basic human question.

Here is what occurs to me, we are not meant to do anything! That is not to say that we should not do anything, just that there is no PLAN - there is no universal objective for the human race or any other creature in the universe. We are. The universe is. We aren't meant to be good and we aren't meant to be bad, we aren't meant to eat meat and we aren't meant to be vegetarians, we aren't meant to question and we aren't meant to be complacent. It seems to me that we are basically designed to live until such a time as conditions change and we don't live anymore.

For some of us the time we are alive is longer than for others. Those of us who are still living assume that we have found THE SECRET to living a better life and, because we are generous or maybe a little boastful, we want to share our secret to living with everyone else. I am not knocking Dick Gregory here, this just appears to my mind to be the human response to the human condition - we don't know what we are meant to be doing so when we think we've found the answer we want to share it with others. Everyone does it! And by doing it we perpetuate the MEANT TO culture, a culture that desperately seeks meaning as well as cause and effect.

Let's focus on food for the moment since this was the topic being discussed when Dick Gregory sparked my observations on the word meant. An animals digestive track works in such a way that anything that is introduced into the system is broken down into its constituent parts. Nutrients that can be used are taken up by the body while everything else is expelled as waste (to be eaten eventually by some other organism).

Our bodies need certain nutrients in order to sustain our lives. We could eat a very efficient diet and gain those nutrients in a very efficient manner or we could eat a very inefficient diet and produce a lot of waste. Either way our digestive tract will extract the nutrients from the food we eat and leave behind that part of the food we have eaten that we either can't digest or don't need at the moment. We are not meant to be either way. How we eat comes down to a number of factors including our access to food, our ability to make that food edible, and our ability to handle the waste generated in the process.

One could reasonably argue that the best way to eat would be to eat in a way that is the most efficient in delivering the nutrients one needs while minimizing the waste one leaves behind. Of course one could also reasonably argue that as long as the "waste" we are talking about is itself organic matter that can be used by some other organism to sustain its life then it is not really waste but rather a link in the food chain. We tend to only worry about waste when our waste sustains enough non-target (i.e. not us) species that they become a nuisance to us or that their presence begins to threaten our lives. Human beings lived on mounds of their own shit until one day when enough bacteria, living in the shit, existed that the humans became sick. Then we made the pronouncement "humans are not meant to live in close proximity to their own shit!" Which is the worst kind of shit because what we really meant was that shit is food for a whole lot of organisms that, when present in high enough quantities, make people sick and therefore hasten the day when we are not living anymore. So, we move our shit someplace else and hasten the day when some other animal or organism is not living anymore!

As far as soybeans go, I don't think it is a question of whether we were meant to eat them or not - the question is CAN we eat them. That is, can soybeans be prepared in such a way that our digestive tracts can extract the nutrients we need from the soy. If the answer is yes then one can choose to eat them if one can afford to do so (i.e. if one has the time, money, and ability to make them edible). As far as the issue of soy estrogens, I think it is a red herring. As far as I understand western culture, we tend to eat a lot of female animals. We eat female cows, female chickens, female pigs, and we eat a lot of the reproductive waste of female fowl (i.e. eggs) or the glandular excretions of mother cows (i.e. milk). The western diet is swimming in estrogen, and not just plant estrogens but mammalian estrogens. Yet we spend little time thinking about the huge does of cow estrogen we just ate when we ate a steak - in fact many men believe that eating that huge dose of cow estrogen has actually made them more manly.

We have all sorts of primitive beliefs about which foods make one manly and virile and which foods make one feminine and submissive. To my knowledge none of them are based on any scientific evidence. When a man eats his BK Tripple Stacker he believes that his estrogen soaked meal - because it is meat - makes him more manly while sitting across from him his wife who may be eating a smaller burger is not worried about her breasts shrinking and her voice becoming deeper because she choose the manly meat meal. Yet had she chosen a salad or the BK veggie burger there would have been the perception that she was eating a more feminine meal. None of it is fact. It is just gender stereotyping and sexism - it is just men clinging to the primitive idea that meat - no matter if it is from a male for female animal - makes one virile.

We spend too much time as human beings inventing things that we were meant to do. We believe men were meant to have sex with women, and women were meant to have sex with men, so that anyone who deviates from that design are somehow broken. We believe that humans were meant to have dominion over the earth and therefore anything we do is OK. We believe that kings were meant to rule and that the common man was meant to toil. Even when we try to throw off kings we then believe that all men were meant to be free and that they were endowed by their creator with certain rights that they were meant to have (and therefore we can use that meant to be as an excuse for all sorts of repression).

There are certainly ways to live that allows space for other creatures to also thrive. These ways are, in my opinion, better for the planet and for every creature and organism on the planet including the human race. But I don't think we were meant to live in these ways. We can choose to, and if we do we may lengthen the time we are alive in this world. Dick Gregory certainly has discovered this. But for those of us who choose to live in a more destructive way - to ourselves and to the world - we/they are not violating any plan for what was meant for the human race.

Holland's Books A Great Source For Radical Non-Fiction Books

2011-07-07T11:01:00.000-07:00

At the Rose City Used Book Fair I met a fellow local Portland bookseller, Steve Holland (not pictured), who invited me to his warehouse space to check out his inventory of radical non-fiction books. I was totally impressed by his inventory. In fact I bought a number of books including Morris Hillquit's Socialism In Theory And Practice; Stephen Whitfield's Scott Nearing Apostle Of American Radicalism; and Aexander Berkman's Prison Memoirs Of An Anarchist.

Steve has been selling non-fiction books for 20 years and has collected, in that time, a great selection of radical books, books that everyone should read!

Holland's books is not an open store, but a warehouse. So how can you find books in his inventory? The easiest way is to go to the Portland Area Used Booksellers Association's web page (www.pdxusedbooks.com) and use our search form. Steve's inventory will be searched along with the inventories of a few dozen other local, independent, Portland used book stores (including my own). Or, if you prefer browsing books on shelves over online searches, you can find the contact information for Holland's Books and make an appointment to browse the warehouse.

If you find a book online at Holland's Books that you want to buy, Steve does offer local residents a pickup option to save shipping costs.

Sales Figures: Rose City Used Book Fair

2011-06-27T01:22:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, June 24-25, 2011, I sold my books at the Rose City Used Book Fair. If you are a used book lover, if you appreciate antiquarian and unusual books, if you spent your weekend enjoying the Portland sun rather than book shopping, then you missed a great event. The book fair opened at 2pm on Friday to a waiting and eager crowd. I have no idea how many people came through the book fair during the 2-days it was open, but I can say there was a steady stream of people.

As far as my booth went, I did amazingly well. I sold a total of $105.70 in merchandise with $71.64 of that total being profit (yes, that's a 67% profit margin)! If you have read my sales figures from previous events where I have setup a book sale table you will know that my profit margin is generally about 30%. So how did I manage to make so much money? OK, its a funny story...

You see back in January when I was putting in my order for new bumper stickers, pins, and magnets I ordered a number of stickers, pins, and magnets that just said Book Junkie. I knew I was going to be having a table at this book fair and I knew there would be a lot of book lovers coming through the event over the two days. I figured everyone would love these Book Junkie stickers, pins, and magnets. They did! Of the 32 items I sold, 13 of them were either a Book Junkie sticker, pin, or magnet - that accounts for 40% of my sales over the two days!

If you broaden out and look at everything that I sold, 26 of the 32 items I sold were some sort of sticker, pin, or magnet - that's 81% of my sales. Why do I sell stickers, pins, and magnets? Because they are low overhead, high profit items. This is why almost every non-profit organization sells stickers, pins, and magnets. The unusual part of the Rose City Used Book Fair this year, for my store, is that I only sold 5 books over the two days. While I did OK on these books, only one of the books that I sold was a new book and therefore a relatively low profit item, my sales figures would have been abysmal if it were not for my sticker, pin, and magnet sales.

Now for the BAD NEWS, I still ultimately lost money even with a 67% profit margin. The booth at the book fair cost me $95. I sold $105.70 in merchandise, however, after subtracting out my cost-of-goods-sold (COGS) as the IRS calls it, that left me with $71.64 in profit. Subtracting my cost for the booth means that I LOST $23.36. If I calculated in the cost of my gas to go to and from the book fair, and the cost of my packing up all the books (that took the better part of 2 weeks) and what it will cost me to unpack all the books this week and maybe next and re-shelve them, I ultimately lost a lot more money than that.

Will I do the book fair again next year? Of course! The book fair is a great event. I see a lot of friends and get to talk with a lot of interesting people. At this fair I met a guy who is writing a book on conscientious objectors. An event like this always inspires me to try to be a better book seller as well as a better activist. We need to change the world, we need to begin to value those things that will help us remake society. The conscientious objectors to World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam war knew this. They would have been delighted at my books and as confused as I was when they confronted the fact that rather than buy books people who walked past my booth choose instead to buy stickers, pins, and magnets. Proving loud and clear what we know (or should know) about modern consumerism, that when provided with a choice between shopping local or at some national chain - people too often choose the national chain. When provided with a choice between buying a good radical book or some kitschy radical slogan - people too often choose the kitsch. And, when given a choice between being a Peace Junkie or a Book Junkie - people too often choose to be a Book Junkie because to announce to the world that one likes books, by putting a bumper sticker that says that on ones car, is a whole lot safer than to announce to the world that one likes peace!

Rose City Used Book Fair

2011-06-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.pdxbooks.org/bookfair.php

Did Anthony Weiner Violate House Ethics Rules?

2011-06-08T01:18:00.000-07:00

The astute political observer must be shocked - Congress has ethics rules? No shit! Does anyone follow them?

Of course we all know that Nancy Pelosi calling for an ethics investigation is like the beef industry asking the poultry industry to investigate salmonella appearing in hamburger. The poultry industry would not dig too deep lest the source of salmonella in beef turned out to be the chicken poop in cattle feed. Similarly, nobody in Congress has any serious stake in investigating ethics unless they are investigating the ethics of someone outside of Congress. In addition one can only guess what would be revealed if a CSI team went through the house and senate office buildings with one of their spunk revealing black lights - you may need to go to DC to appeal to your legislator, but you probably don't want to sit on that couch!

With a nod from Pelosi (and the scent of blood having been picked up by Republicans), Congress will happily spend thousands of dollars investigating Weiner's ethics. Did he use anything related to his official office when he was engaging in this online sex play? Weiner says he does not think he did.

I wonder how long it will take before members of Congress and their ethics bloodhounds realize that Weiner has already admitted that he tweeted this most recent picture. One look at his OFFICIAL twitter page and one realizes instantly that the Congressman uses this twitter page for OFFICIAL communication as well as for his after dark conversations. How can one say that they did not abuse their office when intermixed with comments about the debt ceiling, digs at the GOP, and announcing OFFICIAL appearances like that on "Rachel" or visiting Wisconsin one also inserts pictures of their erect penis.

Or look at the banner on his twitter page - one is told that this is the twitter account of a "Member of Congress, 9th District, New York City." Sounds pretty official to me!

I am not offended by what representative Weiner did as long as he was tweeting, texting, or private messaging people who were interested in his cock, and of the age of consent, that's great. I am not overly concerned that Congress is going to launch an ethics investigation because I don't think many members of Congress could define the word, let alone live up to the spirit of the ethics of government for, by, and of the people. The most lewd behavior in Washington, in my opinion, is that our government tries to feather the nests of the already wealthy by redistributing the wealth of the country into the banks on Wall Street and other major corporations.

What really concerns me is that in an effort to pad the books of an already high-paid Washington law firm, Congress will launch an investigation that will uncover nothing more than what is already right in front of their noses. If it is a violation of house rules to use your OFFICIAL office in the pursuit of sexual pleasure, even if the pleasure one derives is only the titillation of tweeting ones dick, then representative Weiner did that. No need to investigate it. Put away the Congressional check book and check that off your to-do list.

Operation No Compromise

2011-06-07T01:37:00.000-07:00

The latest season of Whale Wars began this past Friday, June 3, 2011. Replacing last season's tag line, "It's not about whales. It's about 42 crazy die-hards with a mission," Animal Planet is calling season 4 "Operation: No Compromise." Wow, thanks Animal Planet and Paul Watson, I guess it only takes a tag line like this for Americans to know that this season you are going to stop fucking around and actually do something!

Watson has taken his biggest complaint about Greenpeace, that they don't actually do anything, and turned it into a TV series, staring himself, and his dimwitted crew. And Watson and crew have not actually done anything for three seasons now. What unmitigated turds. Then they turn around and tag their lame escapades with bold sounding promises of action. Hey, Animal Planet how about Operation: No Integrity.

Cast your vote - What? Who's your favorite Sea Shepherd? Are you fucking kidding me! Is Watson trying to start the American Idol of activism? And who the fuck cares about the people on the ship - isn't this about the whales? Oh wait, that's right, in season three we were told it was no longer about the whales, it's now about 42 crazy die-hards with a mission. Yep, and here are two of these crazy die hards getting ready apparently to hose each other off in some network-innuendo-boy-meets-boy-homo-erotic-activist-freakshow. I bet you guys cry yourselves to sleep at night in your berths. I won't vote online, but I can't wait for the sexy wall calendar!

And then there is the merchandise, like this Whale Wars Worth Dying For T-Shirt. Clearly it wasn't worth dying for when it was $24.95. If anything sums up what Paul Watson has reduced anti-whaling activism to, it is that it is only worth dying for at 20% off retail.

Yet Whale Wars makes compelling television, not because one is inspired by the Sea Shepherds, but, because we are all watching to see how low these activist will sink. It is the saving whales version of Paris Hilton & Nicole Ritchie's Simple Life "reality" TV series. In season one the activists were taking themselves too seriously, but as the seasons have progressed they are learning how to ham it up for the cameras (as in the photo above). In season 3 they were able to take a multi-million dollar boat and let it sink after it collided with a Japanese whaling vessel. Sure the Sea Shepherd activists blamed the Japanese for the collision, but, of course, the crew of the Ady Gil were busy hamming it up on the stern of the vessel joking about how they weren't scared of the L-Rad on the approaching Shonan Maru No 2. Do you think if they were not being filmed by Animal Planet at the time that the captain and crew may have been doing something more important - like actually taking care of their ship. Has anti-whaling activism gotten so blasé that, in the middle of a confrontation with whaling ships, a captain of an activist vessel would just sit around on the stern of the vessel joking with his crew while the whalers approached. The captain made no attempt to signal the approaching Japanese ship that his ship was not under power, not a single long blast, followed by two short blasts, on the Ady Gil's horn or no semaphore warning. If Paris Hilton & Nicole Ritchie had been charged with piloting the Ady Gil they would have done the same thing, just sit on the stern of the ship joking around while the collision happened. They knew how their audience roared with laughter when they broke shit on TV. They knew what it was that kept the people tuning in week after week. Who wanted to watch Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie actually doing shit? No one! But watching them fuck up, brilliant!

So while Whale Wars is a disaster for animal activism, as far as compelling TV goes, one can't turn away.

Representative Weiner's Bright Part Incident

2011-06-02T13:03:00.000-07:00

I love the way that Jon Stewart has been covering the Weiner/Breitbart hacking-sac-tweet controversy. To start reporting, as Jon Stewart did on May 31, 2011, by saying, in essence, I know Anthony Weiner and that's not Anthony's weiner, was brilliant. How better to make a Congressman shrink in the public's eye.

As representative Weiner has responded to these allegations I found Stewart again hitting the mark. On June 1, 2011 Stewart reflects disappointedly about Weiner's remarks that he, representative Weiner, could not say for certain if the picture was or was not of himself, "Well I guess that clears that up....", Stewart sarcastically croons, "You know I'm not certain about a lot of things but there are three things in this world that I do have certitude on. Empire Strikes Back was the best Star Wars movie; OJ killed those two people; and the third one is what my erect penis looks like in my own underwear."

On June 1, 2011 Weiner goes on Rachel Maddow's show and when asked if the photograph was of himself, he responds "We don't know for sure, the photograph does not look familiar to me..." While I love Rachel Maddow she does not ask representative Weiner the logical followup question which is "Sir, have you ever taken a photograph of your erect penis in your underwear?" This, of course, called back into my mind the interview which Colbert conducted on May 31, 2011 with author James Stewart about lying. In this interview James Stewart proposed that there are some things where there is an objective truth. One of those things, in my mind, would be if a picture was or was not a picture of ones erect penis in their underwear. Not to be able to answer that direct question with a direct answer, or to allege that maybe it was a picture of oneself which had been photoshopped, one is saying in that case, yes, that's a picture of me. If it was not a picture of him, if there was no way it was a picture of him, Weiner would say it!

It is unfortunate that Andrew Breitbart is somehow mixed up in this exposing of Weiner's alleged tweet. Breitbart does not have a good record on exposing scandals given the Shirley Sherrod video. Approximately 17 minutes into her talk she relates a story from her early years where she was called upon to help a white farmer try save his farm land. The video segment which Brietbart released, cuts Sherrod's story short and makes it seem as though Ms. Sherrod did not help the white farmer. In fact, the story was mostly about how class and not always race is the determining factor when one is appealing to the government or through the legal system for redress. Breitbart was also involved in the video expose on ACORN.

Why has Brietbart's tactics worked so well? Because when ACORN was attacked they did not come out and unequivocally deny that the videos were truthful. In fact, ACORN fired some staff for behaving inappropriately in the videos, suggesting that there was some element of truth in the videos. When Shirley Sherrod was attacked and forced to resign, the NAACP, taking a page out of the ACORN playbook, initially condemned Sherrod before, days later, turning around and releasing the full video of the event and retracting their initial condemnation. But even with that, there are moments in Sherrod's talk when she speaks in a way that is uncomfortable for modern listeners - like when she says that she turned the farmer over to "his people," meaning a white attorney, with the thought that they would "take care of their own." It was to her shock to discover, she relates later in the story, that poor white people were as mistreated by the system in a similar way to black people.

But the thing is, at her age, Sherrod should have been able to come out and defend herself. She had lived in the South, she has worked within government, she had been active in the civil rights movement. All it would have taken was for her to have a well thought-out response, a response which acknowledged that, of course, she worried, in the racially charged atmosphere of the South, if she should be helping this white farmer while black farmers were loosing their farms all the time. Of course, she did what she could do, given her limited resources, but that yes, perhaps, she did not approach the situation, at the time, with the same fire in her belly that she may have approached other situations. Ultimately, however, she was able to help the farmer save his farm.

There is an objective truth. You deal with the objective truth and move on.

So, while people are now saying that Brietbart is at it once again attacking representative Weiner, which is certainly true, representative Weiner is not helping the situation by not addressing the objective truth of the photo. It either is or is not a photo of himself. Once you deal with that then one can deal with how it came to be tweeted on representative Weiner's twitter account. When confronted with this image to merely say "shucks I can't say for certain who's dick that is" ignores the objective truth and makes it seem like one has something to hide. Should I go as far as to suggest that everyone has pictures of their own junk, especially in this day and age of digital photography and smart phones. I think representative Weiner knows if he has or has not ever taken a photo of himself like the one which was tweeted.

What he needs to do is to say, "of course I have taken photos like the one shown here, but this photo (is) / (is not) of me. I (did) / (did not) take this photo and I have never seen this photo before in my life. As to how this photo appeared on my twitter feed we are still investigating. I did not tweet this photo, and no member of my family or staff, who may have had legitimate access to my twitter feed, tweeted this photo on my behalf."

There. Done. That's all one has to say. If you can't say this, then there is something wrong!

Book Review: The Wrecking Crew

2011-05-31T13:31:00.000-07:00

Frank, Thomas. The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008.

I don't know why it took me so long to get around to reading this book. I should have read it when it was released. It has answered so many questions, questions I had throughout the Bush administration (2000-2008). Looking back on the devastation that the Republicans wrought in that eight year period, after reading this book, it all makes sense to me. Every random misplaced conservative talking point that used to leave me scratching my head now fits into a philosophical framework. It turns out the Bush administration was not incompetent but brilliant in securing for conservatives what they had long sought. Bush, of course, can't take all the credit, because, as Frank points out, these things had been on the conservative's agenda for decades. The real value in this book is that Frank takes the time to go back in history and uncover the foundations of these ideas and to show how different conservative hands had touched these ideas throughout the years - molded them, matured them - and ultimately unleashed them on the American public.

I moved to Washington in 2003, Frank writes in the introduction, just in time for the comeback, for the hundred-year flood. At first it was only a trickle in the basement, a little stream released accidentally by the president's friends at Enron. Before long, though, the levees were failing all over town, and the city was inundated with a muddy torrent of graft.

How are we to dissect a deluge like this one? We might begin by categorizing the earmarks handed out by Congress, sorting the foolish earmarks from the costly earmarks from the earmarks made strictly on a cash basis. We could try a similar approach to government contracting: the no-bid contracts, the no-oversight contracts, the no-experience contracts, the contracts handed out to friends of the vice president. We might consider the shoplifting career of one of the president's former domestic policy advisors or the habitual plagiarism of the president's liaison to the Christian right. And we would certainly have to find some way to parse the extraordinary incompetence of the executive branch, incompetence so fulsome and steady and reliable that at some point Americans stopped being surprised and began simply to count on it, to think of incompetence as the way government works. (italics and bolding mine. Page 1-2)

How many books include such a wonderful statement of the problem in their first two pages? The introduction alone is worth the price of the book, and I don't think one can say that about very many books.

What Frank has identified right at the beginning of his book is the idea that "incompetence as the way government works" is not just an accident caused by a few bad apples in politics, this is the backbone of the conservative agenda. The idea behind most conservative political programs has been to prove, by deed, this simple philosophical point - that government, no matter how warm and cuddly the programs appear - government - is incompetent. The brilliance of the conservative plan is not just in saying that this is so, but to demonstrate it is so. They run for office and once elected they seek to destroy government from the inside.

I have spent years, literally decades of my life, sitting around the neighborhood pub with friends complaining about the incompetence of Republican and Democratic lawmakers. You see, I thought that people were running for office to actually make things better. Naively I thought that conservatives actually believed that by cutting taxes and lavishing praise on the rich that ideas like Reagan's "trickle down economics" was a real thing and that conservatives believed that they had a possibility of working. I think Frank would say, after hearing me admit this, that at the low level, on the street, many middle class and working class Republicans actually thought that trickle down economics was a real thing as well, but that the leaders of the Republican party knew better. Read what Frank writes on page 4 of the introduction

[The truth] It is just this: Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society.

Mr. Frank, I am sorry I left your book sitting on my bookshelf for all this time unread. Maybe it was the cover design, as lack luster as it was, that made me not understand what a brilliant work of political analysis was contained therein. No matter what the reason, I have now read your book and I thank you.

For those of you reading my blog go dig this book off of your bookshelf, or pull it out the bag of books you are planning to donate to the library, and actually read this book. I have only quoted from up to page 4 of the introduction, 270 more pages that actually back up, with historical references and in depth analysis, what Frank gets us thinking about in the introduction, are yours to discover.

Profit Motive And The Whispering Wind

2011-05-30T16:50:00.000-07:00

Watch more free documentaries

This is an interesting film, especially given that today is Memorial Day.

My biggest complaint with the film is that it is not until the very end, during the credits, when each grave is identified by location. I think it would have been better to show, on a map, the location of each grave prior to filming the location. Also, many grave stones and markers were impossible to read and I would have learned more if the filmmaker had taken the time to transcribe the information on each.

The film is very calming and creates an atmosphere of reflection and contemplation which I really enjoyed.

I struggle during holidays like Memorial Day to put things into perspective. Everyone puts out their American flags and there are patriotic displays at all the stores. When I was doing food shopping yesterday there was a table saying support our veterans and a guy was handing out red carnations. The problem is that every American already supports our veterans, literally, with our tax dollars. We pay their salaries when they are soldiers, we pay their benefits and medical costs when they return from war, and we pay their pensions when they retire from the military - for the rest of their lives. It is frustrating that after all that support we are to feel guilty when a holiday, like Memorial Day, rolls around and we don't fly the flag and we won't wear red carnations.

The war mongers, the right wingers, they demand so much support from us. The pacifists and anti-war activists generally just demand they they don't get arrested for expressing their opinion, and that they don't get beat up for saying violence, any violence, is wrong. While we have our heros we don't demand that people wear red carnations to support them and we don't try to guilt people who disagree with us into silence or into waving our flags.

So, watch the film. If, like me, you have trouble putting holidays like Memorial Day into perspective the film will at least take the edge off and leave you feeling inspired to go back out tomorrow and make a change in your community.

Attack The Money

2011-05-18T17:15:00.000-07:00

There are hopeful signals that American's finally understand the root of their problems which is greed - free market Capitalism! This recent move towards right thinking began, in my estimation, with the movement to end corporate personhood. Organizations like POCLAD and MOVE To AMEND want to strip the rights usually granted to living, breathing persons from, what are legal fictions, corporations. Both of these organizations recognize, at some level, that when the Supreme Court considers money to be equivalent with speech then corporations gain the upper hand in the democratic process because they have unlimited amounts of money (which legally would be equivalent to unlimited amounts of speech).

Most of us understand quite reasonably that money is not speech. Money may buy access to venues where your message may be heard - i.e. ads in newspapers and magazine or on TV, or the funding of conferences and political rallies. Sure money greases the skids of speech, but money, by itself, is not speech. This, then, is the biggest problem with attacking the free speech rights of corporations. You can strip them of their rights to free speech (this may have some unintended consequences and blow-back effects) but merely stripping them of their right to speak won't attack the real source of corporate power which is their access to an almost unlimited supply of cash.

However, don't loose hope. There are other moves to address corporate wealth. One, US UNCUT, the US version of the British UK UNCUT, is seeking to get back from the banks and other financial institutions their ill-gotten government bailout money. The logic here is that many of these institutions have not paid any federal income tax in recent years, yet, when they ran into financial difficulty, they received billions in tax-payer bailout money. There is also the half-hearted Democratic effort to take back tax breaks for the big oil companies. I don't take the Democrats seriously in this effort, I don't think they really want these tax breaks back. But if the message begins to wake up more Americans to the fact that major corporations are stinking rich, that will be a service to the larger effort.

So, what, in my opinion, is the larger effort? Not to end corporate speech nor get back tax breaks, but to get all their money! Bankrupt the m*&%$#f&@kers!

If I was a young anarchist thinking about smashing a few bank windows during the next WTO or G8 protests I would stop and think and thereby take a more pro-active approach. I'd get a job inside the WTO or apply for an internship and I'd take them down from the inside. If I were an animal rights activist thinking about shooting some undercover video in a factory farm or research lab, I'd get a job inside one of these institutions and take them down from the inside - and I don't mean that I would get a job there, shoot some video, and then expose some minor abuses that can be quickly fixed - I mean take these organizations down, financially.

It's all about money. Corporations have no more, nor less, free speech rights than any of the rest of us. What they have is more money. More money means more access to get their message out. More money means more ability to send lobbyists and other corporate flacks to DC to bend the ear of government officials. More money means more ability to offer jobs and other "incentives" for government officials to side with the corporate interests.

If we want to end corporate rule we need to go after corporate money. And not just their ill-gotten gains, not just their government kickbacks and no-bid contracts, not just their tax breaks and legal advantages. If we want to end corporate rule we need to go after every cent they have!

We need to pierce the corporate veil and go right for their bank accounts! But let's be clear, NOT after their customer's bank accounts. What good will it do to hack some customer database of Visa or Sony or Bank of America. Why steel money or the electronic identities of some poor working class schmuck. The rich are way more exposed than the rest of us to identity theft. Think about it. The rich need people to do their taxes, they need nannies to raise their children, they need employees to run their companies, they need drivers to drive their cars, captains to sail their yachts, and pilots to fly their planes. The rest of us are running around doing the bidding of the rich and enabling them to exploit the system for their own benefit and at our expense!

At every step there is some working class person who is pushing the right button, entering the correct code, making the correct decision that enables the wealthy to maintain their wealth. But what if there wasn't? What if the next time some accountant had to handle a huge stock transaction they screwed it up? What if the next time some man or woman in the billing department of some large corporation had to pay a bill they accidentally sent the money to some lefty cause instead? This is the age of electronic finance, by the time anyone caught on the money would be gone. What if the next time some corporate lobbyist works for months on a mock-up of some pro-corporate legislation, the day before the "bill" was to go before congress, some congressional aide hits a wrong button and the files get deleted.

What I am talking about is monkey wrenching on a grand scale, not as factory workers but as white collar workers, and with a precise target, "their," the rich and the corporation's bank accounts. In the 1970s and 1980s anti-logging activists thought tree spiking would raise the cost to the lumber companies and ultimately save trees. It was a good idea, but it fell short because these costs were relatively minor expenses that could easily be passed on to the consumer. The kind of corporate spiking we need in 2011 is widespread, large-scale, economic spiking that cannot be easily passed onto the consumer.

Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote two notable books on how the rich conduct these campaigns on the rest of us, Wealth Against Commonwealth and Strike Of Millionaires Against Miners. Both discuss how the wealthy use their wealth to subvert the commonwealth. What I am suggesting is that we, the people who work for and support the wealthy, WE, need to use the power of the fact that the rich rely on and depend on us, and the commonwealth, and we need to use our power to subvert the wealthy.

Yahoo Slurp Crashed My Site

2011-05-18T00:37:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to an email from my web host saying "We are notifying you that your account, or a portion or feature of your account has caused an overload on one of our servers." I had other things I wanted to accomplish today besides running down some crazy error on my web page. But when I went to my computer to check my web page I discovered that my web host had suspended my page and locked access to the root directory of my account. So, even if I did not want to spend my day running this down, I had to if I wanted to get my web page back up and running.

Like most computer errors the error message was cryptic, at best, and did not spread much light on the situation. Here is a portion of what I saw

HTTP_ACCEPT=text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET=ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING=gzip HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE=en-us,en;q=0.5 HTTP_HOST=www.burnedbookspublishing.com HTTP_USER_AGENT=Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp) REDIRECT_STATUS=200 REDIRECT_URL=/index.php REMOTE_ADDR=67.195.112.244

Of course, the full error report from my web hosting company went on for six pages (and I am sure that they too only sent a portion of the error messages generated). The important fact was that the HTTP_USER_AGENT was identified as Yahoo! Slurp.

My web host would only make my web page accessible again if I installed a robots.txt file on my site and if I checked my code and optimized my site. I agreed. What could I do, I needed my web account accessible so that I could check the error logs to find out what had happened.

The details are still a little sketchy. My web page is back up and running and I have created a robots.txt file which explicitly bans Yahoo from scanning my site. When I looked at my log files I found that Yahoo Slurp had, since the beginning of May, generated 12,948 hits to my web page using up 77.35 MB of bandwidth. At the point my account was suspended by my web hosting company Yahoo Slurp was generating 1 to 2 hits a second on my site. But more surprising than that was the history of a high hit rate from Yahoo Slurp. In April of this year Yahoo Slurp had generated 24, 671 hits to my web page using 144.89 MB of bandwidth. And in March Yahoo Slurp came in with 17,529 hits to my web page using 102.59 MB of bandwidth. Contrast these numbers with Googlebot 294 hits for all of April using a mere 689.09 KB of bandwidth. This means that in April Yahoo Slurp hit my site on average 822 times a day, or 34 times an hour, or about once every two minutes.

What was Yahoo Slurp looking for?

Yahoo Slurp ruined my day. But maybe Yahoo Slurp ruined your day as well. I can't imagine that my site is the only site that Yahoo Slurp scanned 55,148 times since March 9th. Imagine the amount of internet traffic Yahoo Slurp has been generating if it has been doing this to even 1% of the web pages out there (assuming 8 billion web pages, that would be 80,000,000 pages) that would amount to something like 400,000,000,000 (400 billion hits) since March 9th if Yahoo Slurp hit these web pages at the same rate as it hit mine. If one estimates that each hit generates 2.34 KB of data on the web, then that would amount to around 9,360,000,000,000,000 bytes of data (I am sure I've made some estimation mistakes so I would not take this number to be 100% factual until someone else verifies it). That's a lot of traffic. If Yahoo Slurp is generating this kind of net traffic then it must be one reason why the net is so slow. Today I was trying to watch a youTube video and it kept on pausing mid-play while the download caught up with the player. Could that slowness be attributed to Yahoo Slurp?

Yahoo you have some explaining to do. Why did you scan my site 24,671 times in April when Google only scanned it 294 time? Did you really need those extra 24,377 hits to index the 16 files that make up my web page? One would imagine that if one were only indexing 16 files it could be done with 16 hits on a web page. Speaking of that, Google, why did it take you 294 hits, nearly 10 hits a day, to index my site? Couldn't you have been a little more efficient. Don't worry Google, I'm not serious, 294 hits is nothing when compared to Yahoo Slurp.

May Day 2011, Portland, Oregon

2011-05-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

Thousands or people turned out yesterday, May 1, 2011, for the May Day rally and march in downtown Portland. The event is always festive with music and speakers. Having lived in numerous cities in the United States, I always missed the fact that we Americans don't celebrate May Day (as does the rest of the world).

Now that I live in Portland with an active May Day coordinating committee who plan and organize a large rally and march each year I look forward to May Day and to taking part in the festivities. May Day, like paying attention during the world cup, is one way that Americans can get in touch with, and have something in common with, the rest of the world. Maybe the protests in Madison, Wisconsin, have signaled that America is once again ready to join hands with working class people around the world to demand change.

If that is how you are feeling, but you missed the May Day rally and march in your city this year, begin planning for next year. If your city does not have a May Day rally and march, come to Portland, Oregon next May 1st and join us.

The Death Of Bin Laden

2011-05-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

I am embarrassed for humanity when I see people cheering death. It is discouraging when victory is equated with destruction, as though progress only occurs when we tear things down. To deal with my disappointment over the fact that once again we celebrate death, we cheer destruction, we burry, for the time being, any real chance for peace and reconciliation - I present Ernest Crosby's poem, The Tyrants' Song

'TIS not the man with match alight
  Behind the barricade,
Nor he who stoops to dynamite,
  That makes us feel afraid.
For halter-end and prison-cell
  Soon quench these brief alarms;
But where are found the means to quell
  The man with folded arms?

We dread the man who folds his arms
  And tells the simple truth,
Whose strong, impetuous protest charms
  The virgin ear of youth,
Who scorns the vengeance that we wreak,
  And smiles to meet his doom,
Who on the scaffold still can speak,
  And preaches from the tomb.

We kill the man with dagger drawn -
  The man with loaded gun;
They never see the morning dawn
  Nor hail the rising sun;
But who shall slay the immortal man
  Whom nothing mortal harms,
Who never fought and never ran -
  The man with folded arms?

Ernest Crosby, Swords And Plowshares, London: Grant Richards, 1903. Page 96.

Obviously Crosby was writing as much to those who seek to over-turn the dominant social order as to those who seek to maintain it. Wouldn't Bin Laden's epitaph have been better written had it not been soiled with the deaths of so many innocent people? Bin Laden, and America's response to Bin Laden, are both equally poisonous paths that will never lead the world to peace. Each only promises further war and misery.

The only way to truly change the world is to change ourselves. Each and every one of us must take responsibility for our own actions, the consequences those actions reap in the world, and, if we want change, if we want a better harvest from our actions, we must choose a different path. Every religious tradition has been telling the human race this for thousands of years. We cannot drown this message out even with the raucous celebration of the death of another human being. The truth of this message will cut through the din and a small number of eyes will be opened, for the first time, to the fact that there is a better way.

Is It Possible To Make Money Selling Radical Books?

2011-04-20T01:10:00.000-07:00

No body expects to get rich selling books, especially radical books, but given how poor my sales figures have been since the beginning of 2011, I am beginning to despair.

The seeds for Burned Books Publishing were sowed in the middle 1990s. I was searching for books on peace, nonviolence, environmental issues, and vegetarian-vegan topics at my local library but I was finding less and less. I was living in Washington, DC at the time and so I did what any researcher who lives in DC would do - I headed on over to the Library of Congress.

I was amazed by the number of books that were listed in the Library of Congress catalog on the topics I was interested in. It still amazes me that Senators and members of Congress so often pontificate such ill-conceived ideas when they have access to the best research library in the country. But I digress. What occurred to me was that somebody needed to start compiling a bibliography of radical books so that activists who did not live in DC (or in the United States) could discover the bibliographic information for these books and thereby search for them in their local communities.

It is difficult to find something when you don't know what you are looking for.

For example, say you are interested in animal rights and you search for Henry Salt at your local library. What do you find? Here is what you find at the Multnomah County Library in Portland, Oregon. It is an anti-slavery book written by Thoreau but edited by Henry Salt. (Frankly I am amazed that even one book is listed) Now, go to the Library Of Congress and search for Henry Salt. You get 46 titles including Animals’ rights, considered in relation to social progress, Salt's 1894 book. When I first discovered this book I was amazed that someone had written a book about animal rights, and not only that, but that they had used the phrase "animal rights" in the title, way back in 1894. When I read Singer's 1975 book Animal Liberation I was shocked that I lived my life without considering animals very deeply. But when I discovered Salt I was surprised that Singer's book was considered such a landmark in the animal liberation movement because Salt had been writing on these topics 81 years earlier. How could activists literally have forgotten Salt? I realized it was because nobody knew to look for Henry Salt.

I began work immediately trying to piece together a bibliography of radical books. I catalogued 1,500 books before the project evolved once again.

The thing was, as I was discovering more and more books, I decided that I needed to start buying these books for my personal library. I became a book collector. Around 2004 I began to notice that the books I was looking for were showing up in greater numbers in public library book sales. I also took note of the growing trend towards ebooks. It was at that time that I decided to begin buying new and used books with the aim to resell them and at the same time to begin converting the really old radical books I was finding into ebook format.

My plan was simple, I would use the income from my new and used book sales as well as my sales of ebooks to purchase and rescue more and more older radical books. It seemed like a natural fit. In 2005 I produced my first ebook, a reprint of George Ross Kirkpatrick's socialist anti-war classic WAR-WHAT FOR?. I began distributing it on CD-ROM to anyone who expressed an interest. It was then that I discovered that people did not understand ebooks and they did not see, like I saw, that ebooks were going to be the future of books. After a few years I converted my ebook edition of WAR-WHAT FOR? so that it could be read on an Amazon Kindle. Finally in 2010, on the 100th anniversary of the publication of WAR-WHAT FOR?, I deleted my Kindle version of the book, and I put the full text of the book online for FREE and asked for a donation if people enjoyed the book or found it useful.

My ebook version of WAR-WHAT FOR? got 510 unique hits in March of 2011, around 2100 total hits, or about 70 hits per day. Yet since putting this title up online for FREE in 2010 I have received zero donations. Worse, since the beginning of 2011 I have only sold books when I have setup tables at community events. Don't get me wrong, setting up a table at a community event is great, but after I subtract out my cost to table at an event I usually don't make any money (your can read my accounting of my last table on this blog. I think I am the only radical book seller who makes public his sales figures.) My online sales are stagnant!

Many local book sellers have suggested that I think about selling my used books through Amazon.com (many small independent new and used bookstores do just this... in fact, AK Press, the anarchist press and distribution house sell their stock on Amazon). If I sold my books on Amazon.com I am told I would begin to see my sales increase. But I have insisted on sticking to my beliefs and I only sell my books through Biblio.com. Biblio is a great site that truly wants to support small independent bookstores. They have a great social responsibility policy and they have used their profits for good projects. Given the nature of what I do Biblio.com is the kind of business I want to support.

As with authors, if people don't know something exists they can't look for it. Biblio suffers like the rest of us because they aren't well known. If you do one thing after reading this blog post it should be to tell your friends to shop for their mainstream books on Biblio.com! (And, of course, to shop for their radical books at my site!) What is the world coming to when an anarchist press is willing to sell their titles through Amazon.com rather than through a community oriented site like Biblio?

I know this has been a long post and, if you have read this far, you are probably wondering what my point is. My point is a simple one, libraries sell radical books in their book sales because they don't have the money to keep these titles on the shelves (and the titles are not getting checked out). Radical presses fail because mainstream bookstores won't buy their titles and those of us who run small independent radical bookstores don't have enough cash to purchase many books throughout the year. Small independent bookstores can't survive and purchase new stock if people, like you, don't shop with us.

So... to encourage you to jump on over to my store and shop there, I am offering FREE SHIPPING in the continental United States on all book orders. I don't know how long I can continue this. In addition, from May 1, 2011 (May Day) until May 15, 2011 I am offering 15% off every purchase, just enter coupon code: B506813-MayDay at checkout.

I have so many things I want to do this year. I have more ebooks to produce, I want to purchase more titles from Ozer's Peace Movement In America series, and, of course, there are wonderful used books that I know I will find. But I cannot purchase them and make them available to all of you without some cash flow. Remember, nothing happens without you. I can survive the year even if sales don't pickup, but I can't do anything new until I begin to sell some books online. Also, remember that every sale through my online store also helps to fund the good work that Biblio.com is trying to do. You help two ambitious projects with every purchase. Could you ask for anything more?

Post a comment and let me know what kind of books you buy, where you shop, and why.

May Day March And Rally, Portland, Oregon

2011-04-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

http://www.jwjpdx.org/actionalerts/actionalert-1301350541.32

Corporate Freeloaders

2011-04-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

http://front.moveon.org/which-corporations-are-the-biggest-freeloaders/

Bookstores And Libraries Not Prepared For ERROR 404

2011-04-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

Have you ever sought to get your hands on a book that is out of print, what have you done? Perhaps you have gone to a library or visited your local used bookstore. This tactic works because books - physical books - can be bought, sold, and loaned. This works because bookstores and libraries invest in their inventory and collection. Unless we begin to act soon, this will all change.

Publishers have proposed what they are calling the Agency Model for ebook sales. This means that a bookstore will not own the ebooks it offers for sale. These ebooks are not stored on the bookstore's web page nor held by the bookstore in any way. The bookstore acts merely as an agent for the publisher, linking the customer to the publisher's web page. When the customer buys an ebook from the publisher the bookstore is paid a commission on the sale.

Many small independent bookstores have been led astray by the big publishers into thinking that this agency model is going to be good for their business. Small independent stores are being told that the publisher will strictly control the sale price of ebooks and that big-box stores, like Amazon.com, won't be able to underprice their ebook offerings. This is, in my opinion, at best a rosy prediction and at worse a complete falsehood. While big-box stores may not be able to independently set the price on the ebooks they sell, they can certainly offer after sale rebates or coupons that continue to encourage the book buyer to shop at the big-box retailer. In supporting the agency model, local independent bookstores are ignoring the importance of their inventory to the success of their business.

Under the agency model local independent bookstores are going to loose control of their inventory. When a publisher decides that a book is no longer profitable, and they discontinue selling that title, the links to that ebook will immediately be broken and local bookstores across the nation will immediately be prevented from selling that title. It will feel like the long hand of the publisher has reached into every small independent bookstore and removed the title from their shelves.

Libraries face a similar fate. Many Libraries distribute ebook titles through a contract with a company like OverDrive. These ebook titles are not owned by the library, they are never part of the library's collection. The library is only acting as a distribution channel for the ebook data files, and if a publisher decides that this title should no longer be distributed by OverDrive the title will instantly vanish from library catalogs across the nation.

While consumers are focussed on how they either like, or dislike, reading books on a computer screen or on a portable reading device, the true ebook revolution is happening with publishers maintaining much stricter control over the works they publish. In the future a publisher will be literally able to reach into the hands of every reader and take the book they are reading away.

The distributed nature of the publishing industry, up to now, has meant that readers could generally find a copy of the book they wanted to read. Even if the book was out of print, banned, or hand published by some small press. In each of these cases some bookseller or library, somewhere, had a copy of the book on their shelf, and the reader, if diligent enough, could get their hands on it. Without some government control or government mandate that libraries are able to archive ebook titles, readers searching for that obscure out of print title may only find a series of ERROR 404 messages, as one-by-one broken links are unearthed. Similarly unless local independent bookstores begin to demand an end to the agency model for ebook sales they will find that they no longer have an inventory - that thing which makes each independent bookstore unique and valuable.

4 ways DRM is like airport security

2011-04-18T11:32:00.000-07:00

An interesting blog post on DRM from O'Reilly Radar.

"No Justice, No Peace" ... yeah right... maybe next time

2011-04-06T15:24:00.000-07:00

Are we too meek? Without a doubt we are! Rather than calling for revolution leaders on the left, more often than not, call for civility. When these leaders do recognize a need for mass action they always use grand language to describe what they want "Nonviolent action is predicated upon the assumption that the power of a dictator (or any power holder) depends upon the consent of the governed to comply with the directives and requisites handed from above. It is a hierarchical understanding of power. When 80,000 people show up rejecting that paradigm from operating as usual, it sends a shock to the system. Without the people in the streets and the national attention toward the Democratic senators in a Rockford hotel, momentarily becoming an ally to the will of the people, injustice would have continued unabated..." Yet these same leaders fall short of delivering a sustained mass campaign that really challenges the political establishment, not merely with small reform measures but with a total overhaul of the system. For example, the Socialist Equity Party, "passed out thousands of copies of the statement [...] which calls for a general strike of all Wisconsin workers to force the immediate resignation of Walker and his entire administration." While Governor Walker may be the current thorn in the side of Wisconsin public employees he is not an atypical political leader - from either the Republican or Democratic parties. The Democrats have supported NAFTA, "In the 1990s, the Clinton administration and a number of prominent Democrats pushed through a number of agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)," they have supported the Patriot Act, "All but two Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted for the original USA PATRIOT Act legislation," the Democratic party, "recently and historically supported Israel."

While there is no argument that Wisconsin needs to get rid of Republican Governor Walker, the idea that merely replacing his administration with another as being a victory for labor is short sighted. As George Ross Kirkpatrick wrote in 1913, "And for a hundred years - when we could vote - we have stupidly followed the political crook to the ballot-box, and then we have meekly teased for laws, whined for relief, and humbly coaxed the 'reformer.'"

The socialists in Wisconsin are right that we need a general strike, but it cannot end with the replacement of Walker, there needs to be some real systemic changes. Public sector workers, as with workers across American industry, have seen their wages and benefits decreasing, or remaining stagnant, for the past 30 to 40 years. If we merely put a stop to the current assault the situation will not be OK. It will be better than it will be if the Republicans get their way, but public sector workers already had reason to complain before this most recent attack on organized labor.

Yet we are too timid to ask for things to get better and we constantly seem satisfied if we can just keep them from getting worse. The problem with this strategy is that the line slowly creeps to the right (i.e. more pro-business and less family and worker friendly) and when we stop the creep we do not spend any time moving the line back to where it once was. When the creep begins anew, one, two, perhaps three years down the road, the Republicans don't have to retake ground they have lost, the line has been held stable at the last point, and the Republicans can easily begin to take new ground.

We need a general strike but we need to maintain a nationwide general strike until the line moves back to the left. We need universal health care, we need strong collective bargaining protections, we need strong whistleblower protections, we need strong environmental, and civil rights protections, we need strong regulation of the rich and the corporations and we need to get back all the taxpayer bailout money that was paid to the Wall Street banks and the auto industry so that we can restore public funding for needed programs. Once we have moved the line back, then we can end the strike.

I think there is a sense that a general strike would be impossible in this day and age. Such actions are from labors past and would be impossible to maintain in 2011 many leaders believe. I think we underestimate how quickly the ruling elites would bend if facing a unified national strike. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, certainly nothing on the scope of a national general strike, lasted only a year. Imagine if nationwide every K-12 teacher walked off the job tomorrow, how long could the anti-union effort last against even this single industry strike. But add to that all transit workers, all police and fire personnel, all library staff, all public university professors, all staff in every federal and state agency, every congressional staff person, and all staff at every state and local government branch. And this is just the public sector workers. Imagine if even a small percentage of private sector workers joined in.

Republicans are threatening a government shutdown in an attempt to leverage more anti-worker policies and cuts to basic services that strike at the heart of the lower and middle classes, while Republicans simultaneously plan on giving more tax cuts to the rich and corporations. If we can contemplate shutting down the government to push the line further to the right why not shutdown the government to pick the line up and move it dramatically back to the left? We could do this!

And all the corporations and companies, and members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who think they can do it all on their own, let's see how well they function when they don't have the basic public services that they are not willing to pay their fair share of taxes to support.

My point is a simple one. We have the power and yet we don't flex our muscles, we don't take even the easy stand of not cooperating with our own exploitation. The teachers in the Tigard-Tualatin School District have been working for more than a year without a contract. Now, the school district is facing further budget cuts and teachers are upset by the proposals. But if you have already worked a year without a contract who is going to take you seriously when you oppose new budget cuts. The district knows that the teachers will keep on working and that the budget screws can be further tightened without serious ramifications. When is enough enough? Why do we, in America, let it get as bad as it has gotten before we stand up to merely stop if from getting worse. We should have stood up much earlier! And we can no longer be satisfied with merely stopping the erosion of our human rights and the elimination of the social programs that make a community a community.

We carry signs that read "No Justice, No Peace" but we ultimately accept our situation and continue on even without justice. We give them peace even when they deny us justice. We like to think that we need to move forward and that we should not dwell on the past. Our political leaders try to help us to constantly move forward and to stop grieving for what we, as a society, have lost. Nothing is written in stone in a democracy, we don't have to accept the current situation. Remember the famous labor slogan, "Don't agonize, organize!" No wonder the politicians don't take us seriously anymore. We forget that we need to organize. We don't take seriously the power that we have granted ourselves. We march in the streets, sign petitions, hold rallies, and vote - but we always stop before we actually sit down and refuse to do anything more unless justice is restored. If we would stop voting for the "best of the worst," if we don't show up to work without a contract, if we don't cooperate to make the system function, then it won't, and we can win real change.

That is what is needed now. We need a general strike. We need to stop being timid about shutting the system down. The Republicans will shut the system down. They will cause Wall Street crashes and bank failures. They will strip vital social services and leave the poor to fend for themselves. They are fucking hard-ass Republican anarchists who will use market chaos to raid the treasury. And they get us talking about civility. Now that is ironic. Yet we show up for work each morning, we pay a larger and larger share of our health care costs, we see our paid leave and sick time being diminished, we accept shorter lunch breaks and longer work hours, public school programs are slashed and school days and school years are shortened. We do nothing.

Everything depends on our cooperation. The system does not function without us. Cab drivers will refuse to pickup fares in low income neighborhoods for fear of street crime yet they continue to pickup fares on Wall Street? Why do we continue to serve the people who are truly harming us, our children, and our society? We like to compare what has happened in Wisconsin with the protests in Egypt, but that is a myth. We are not willing to really shut down the system to get the change we want. We will be content if the Republicans are defeated in this latest attempt to move the line further to the right but we are not prepared to demand that the social structure is truly reformed. The people in Wisconsin will go back to work but the assault on unions and workers will continue just maybe in a less public way. It does not have to be this way. We can stop further assaults and take back some of the rights we've already lost.

All we need to do is nothing, nada, zip. Sit down, turn off, tune out, resist! Strike!

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow lines up behind Obama’s attack on Libya

2011-03-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow lines up behind Obama’s attack on Libya

Changing Oregon's Free Speech Protections WTF!

2011-03-18T02:07:00.000-07:00

Legislators are getting ready to discuss and to put before Oregon voters a series of changes to Oregon's expansive free speech protections. I did not know this, but apparently, Oregon's free speech protections are broader than what are provided for in the federal constitution. Now Oregon lawmakers are trying to change that in a series of three proposals being discussed in Salem and soon to appear as ballot measures for the voters to approve. HJR (House Joint Resolution) 35 and SJR (Senate Joint Resolution) 37 are almost identical measures which, if approved by Oregon voters, would amend the Oregon constitution to make the state free speech protection almost identical to the federal first amendment protections. Specifically, it is being proposed that the following language be removed from paragraph 1, section 8, of the Oregon constitution

No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever; but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right.

and this phrasing would be replaced by

The Legislative Assembly shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. The people, in the exercise of the initiative power reserved to them under section 1 of Article IV of this Constitution, shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.

Personally I like the current phrasing because is specifically mentions, and therefore protects, the "free expression of opinion" and the "right to speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever." The problem with the federal language is that it only mentions the "freedom of speech or of the press" which has led to many heated legal debates about what is, or is not, "speech" and who, and when, is someone acting as, or employed as, a member of the "press."

You have to look no farther than the current flap over Wikileaks to see the confusion that surrounds the federal first amendment. Here is the Christian Science Monitor in an article entitled WikiLeaks: Would First Amendment protect Julian Assange?, "You’d think that the Supreme Court would have settled this question long ago, given all the years that have passed since the First Amendment was adopted. But it hasn’t." I think the Oregon first amendment, as it currently stands would clearly protect Assange. Here is another federal mash up on the first amendment, according to the web page TG Daily, "A federal judge has ruled the US government can subpoena records from Twitter to assist in an ongoing criminal investigation of WikiLeaks. Indeed, U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Carroll Buchanan believes the data isn't protected by the First Amendment"

Are you starting to see what Oregonians would loose if we change the free speech protections in our constitution to more closely resemble the federal language - we'd loose the explicit right to "speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever." After the change we'd open our courts to expensive legal battles over what is, and is not, speech and who or what constitutes a member of the press.

So why are lawmakers eager to change the Oregon constitution? To find out you have to look at the language of the SJR 28. This resolution leaves paragraph 1 of section 8 of the constitution alone but adds this paragraph 2

This section does not prohibit the state or any county, municipality or district from regulating the location at which a business or organization may offer live entertainment or other services performed by a person in a state of nudity, as defined by the jurisdiction imposing the regulation.

So, all of this boils down to strip clubs?!? Seriously?!? We are going to change the free speech protections that all Oregonians enjoy because our legislators are upset about strip clubs!

SJR 28 tries to be a comprise, of sorts, because it leaves in tact the original strong Oregon language protecting our right to "speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever," but it grants a new power to the state, the specific right to regulate nudity. In many ways, while this appears to be a compromise, it is the most insidious option - to write into the section of the constitution which is meant to protect free expression an explicit limit to free expression.

After the 8-years of the Bush administration, if we have learned only one thing, it should be that we, as citizens of the United States need more broadly defined free speech protections. We, as citizens of Oregon, should not be considering moves to explicitly limit free speech or to change the language of our strong state protections to mimic the weaker federal protections that the Bush administration regularly abused.

If the result of strong free speech protections in Oregon is that we have a more difficult time regulating strip clubs, at least from my perspective, that is an OK trade-off. Whatever happened to our representatives championing the free market. The easiest way to regulate and reduce the number of strip clubs in Oregon is if the people who don't like strip clubs don't patronize them. And since we currently have strong free speech protections in Oregon those who oppose strip clubs can "speak, write, or print freely" against strip clubs in their communities and can use the power of their presence to protest and oppose those operations. I am certain that if a strip club had people protesting outside of its doors its business would fall off to such a degree that it would close and move to a neighborhood where people did not object to its operations.

I am sympathetic to, and recognize the usefulness, of state, county, and city applied zoning regulations. If it is the case that Oregon courts have ruled that Oregon's first amendment protections insulate strip clubs from zoning restrictions, I can understand how that can frustrate local communities and civic leaders. That being said, modifying the language of Oregon's free speech constitutional protections is not the right way to go about regulating strip clubs. And if it turns out that strip clubs fall outside of regulators reach, because of our constitutional protections, then these legislators can just add them to the list of speech they do not like, or speech they do not agree with, but speech they must tolerate because that is what we all must do when we live in a society which not only values but recognizes the importance of free speech protections.

Michael Munk: Letter To The Editor

2011-03-16T00:04:00.001-07:00

I am posting this here with permission from Michael Munk. (get a copy of Michael Munk's book The Portland Red Guide)

To the editor, The Oregonian

Your editorial "Wisconsin erupts, Oregon bargains" (March 11), reminds us that The Oregonian speaks as a voice for business interests and, since breaking a long and bitter strike of your employe unions almost 50 years ago, as an enduring enemy of organized labor.

The present evidence for this is your demanding cuts in public employe benefits while ignoring the loss of $93 M in state revenue from the cut in business taxes that Gov Kitzhaber just signed off on. And it would be consistent with your track record when you support the Republican plan to cut taxes on capital gains by up to $400 M.

Contrary to your claim that "most Oregonians" agree with the benefciaires of corporate welfare that Oregon budgets should be balanced on the backs of union workers, I believe most of us want big business and the wealthy to shoulder a significant share of the pain from the current recession and not hold business like yours harmless.

Michael Munk

visit my website www.michaelmunk.com

No Marketing Left Behind

2011-03-15T21:38:00.000-07:00

This is what happens after decades of government budget cuts on the national, state, and local levels. This is what happens when conservatives object to the government engaging in "sex" education. Instead of getting a comprehensive human development class or an in-depth human sexuality class, what our kids get is marketing for Proctor & Gamble products.

I'm not fucking kidding. This is the package that 5th grade boys are given in 2011 in the state of Oregon. It is a pamphlet entitled "Always Changing: puberty and stuff. About you. Boy's Booklet." (get it, because Always is a Proctor And Gamble product.) The pamphlet is sealed in a red plastic bag, the kind you'd get at any weird corporate trade show event, with a sample of Old Spice deodorant. The bag itself is stamped "English Boys Kit." I'm not making any of this up!

When you open the pamphlet there is nothing inside that mentions Proctor & Gamble. In fact, there is no information at all about which human development and human sexuality professional educator authored the information in the pamphlet. This is 1,000 times worse than the worst unverified WikiPedia entry. We try to teach our kids how to be conscious information consumers, and we expect our teachers to give our kids information that is impartial and unbiased, yet because we won't let them talk about human sexuality and human development and we've cut their budgets so that they can't afford to hire a real educational professional to teach human sexuality and human development, our schools have to give our kids this Proctor & Gamble crap! And yes, it is crap!

Proctor & Gamble makes this available to school districts around the USA for FREE. (This is surprising only from the fact that many companies like to get paid by us for using our bodies and our kids bodies for advertising. Think SWOOSH!)

I began to suspect there was something up when on page 3 of the pamphlet I read these bullet points

your body may sweat more and you may develop body odor
your hair may become oily
you skin may become oily and pimples may develop

When I was a growing boy I did not really need to know this kind of information. I had other questions about other parts of my body. Besides, I did not care about b.o. or pimples, when I was 12. In a side bar Proctor & Gamble wants our kids to not worry writing "Some of these don't sound like a great deal of fun - who wants body odor, oily hair, and pimples? But they are all normal, and can be managed with good hygiene and habits." I wonder why these are the traits of puberty that Proctor & Gamble decides to focus on? I mean the bullet list contains other items that don't sound like much fun either like you get hair under your arms and in your pubic area, your voice gets deeper, and your "penis and testicles become bigger, and sperm starts to be produced." Perhaps it is that Proctor & Gamble sells products that can help you deal with body odor, and oily hair and skin.

The kids are told about sweat, body odor, and oily skin and hair on page 4, and on pages 10 and 11, the pages where the staples are, the "center fold" of the pamphlet, the kids are told particularly about deodorants and anti-persperants, including being shown a picture of an Old Spice deodorant and a cartoon picture of a boy applying a deodorant under his arm, the deodorant container is red, the same color as the Old Spice deodorant shown on the same page. Again, I'm not making any of this up, but I don't believe it myself so I am including a picture of pages 10 and 11.

Now I know many parents are probably thinking, "well, if the human development and human sexuality information provided in the pamphlet is good, and Proctor & Gamble is willing to provide it for FREE to our public schools in exchange for a little bit of marketing, then why not take advantage of it." The thing is, the information in the pamphlet is not good. I know that may be shocking to many parents who may be wondering why schools would give out information that is not good and call it education. But does one really need to ask that question. The schools are laying off more and more teachers every year and they are prevented from giving kids any real human sexuality or human development information out of fear that some parent will object to their kids being taught something that contradicts the parents religious views about sex, sexuality, and development.

The day before getting this marketing information in the guise of human development education teachers in the Tigard-Tualatin School District read a pamphlet to 5th grade students on HIV and AIDS. That pamphlet provided by the people at The Great Body Shop, tells kids that they can prevent HIV and AIDS by not having sex. It does not mention condoms, latex gloves, or dental dams. In this day and age, when we are facing a world wide health epidemic caused by HIV and AIDS, are we really going to let our education programs be dictated by people who are opposed to condoms? I guess so.

Back to the Proctor & Gamble puberty for boys pamphlet. On page 8, the bottom paragraph on ejaculation begins, "Sometimes semen spurts out of the penis." Yep that is what it says. I'm not fucking kidding you! No mention about why this may happen or what you may have to do to make this happen. Just sometimes... you know... like at church, or when you are eating pizza, or playing catch. This is on a page ironically entitled, "The Way It Works!" Well it may work that way at Proctor & Gamble board meetings, when their stock prices go up, but for a normal male it takes a little planning before semen just spurts out of your penis.

I know it must be demeaning to teachers to be reduced to being mere marketing zombies for Proctor & Gamble. I am sure that most teachers would prefer to give students real information and to have real classroom discussions. But we have little space anymore for those kind of teachers in public education. After years of education budget cuts we are finally reaching the bottom, the absolute minimum that we can do for our kids, but don't worry when they leave the classroom our "teachers" will make sure that none leave their sealed marketing packet and product samples behind.

Undercover Worker

2011-03-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

I am constantly insulted by the concept behind the CBS show Undercover Boss. It appears to my cynical mind to be merely a weekly PR campaign for corporate CEOs. Perhaps others may see it differently. However, that is not why I am using it as the inspiration for this blog post. What I want everyone to consider is that an undercover corporate CEO PR campaign is sold to the American public as entertainment while workers going undercover to document corporate abuses is considered whistle-blowing and perhaps a felony.

CBS boasts that 17.7 million viewers watch their CEO PR campaign and this PR campaign, masquerading as TV entertainment, was also nominated for an Emmy Award. Workers who have been suffering under the abuses of the corporate system are given token rewards for participating in the CEO PR campaign and tears flow all around. But rarely does the CEO announce anything more than superficial changes to address the problems the CEO has "uncovered" during each episode.

Since CBS wants to help CEOs reform their image, perhaps they will also commit to airing a show called Undercover Worker where workers are given hidden cameras and are allowed to document what really happens behind the corporate curtain. Look at the footage captured by Mercy For Animals in their under cover investigations. Wouldn't it be great to have a mainstream primetime show that would expose similar abuses and confront corporate CEOs for their irresponsibility. Then maybe we'd see real tears from these CEOs as they realized that their cover was truly blown!

Book Review: War, Racism And Economic Injustice

2011-03-14T00:56:00.000-07:00

Castro, Fidel. War, Racism And Economic Injustice. New York: Ocean Press, 2002.

I was not prepared for Castro to be the sanest person in the room. Isn't it amazing that the anti-Castro propaganda works so well. The Cuban revolution came to an end in 1959 when Castro and his rebels finally gained control of the Cuban government. Imagine if during all this time the American public had been allowed to hear Castro's speeches and our press had honestly reported on events in Cuba rather than demonizing Castro and presenting only one side of the Cuban story. What could we have learned about ourselves!

This book was a wonderful read and may go a little way in correcting the Cuban story and in restoring Castro's reputation. The book collects interviews with Castro and speeches he made from June 2000 until November 2001. I did not expect Castro to be a wacko or completely insane, but I did expect that he would be more dogmatic than he was. After all, that is all most of us in America know, or think we know, about Castro, that he is a communist and a devoted supporter of the old, cold-war style Russia. You expect every third word out of his mouth is going to be something about the proletariate or the bourgeois capitalist governments. Perhaps the editors removed all of these references. More likely, Castro, contrary to how American's would stereotype him, does not speak like that.

The other thing that I liked about this book was that it presented Castro's ideas on current issues - the war in Afghanistan, 9/11, the economic bubble, the third world and AIDS, as well as the politics of south and central America. This is not your parents Castro, this is a modern politically astute leader who has been an observer of recent world changes, and, he has something to say!

Here is part of what he said at the U.N. Millennium Summit in New York on September 7, 2000.

"There is no longer a real economy. There is a virtual economy. World exports total somewhere over $6 trillion a year. Everyone knows, however, that $1.5 trillion is involved in currency speculation operations, following the elimination of the gold standard in 1971, [...] some stock markets have turned $1,000 into $800,000 in a period of just eight years. It is more of a perception, something in the realm of imagination, based on prospects, even if the companies involved register losses. A colossal virtual economy has been created. An enormous bubble has been inflated and one day it will burst. This is absolutely inevitable. Then, we will be faced with the major crisis that might help to create a new world political and economic order." (page 34-35).

Two observations from this paragraph, first, he mentions the fact that the United States eliminated the gold standard in 1971 (perhaps Castro sounds a little like Ron Paul here) a theme he returns to a few times in various speeches, and, second, he warns about the financial bubble. This was a speech given in 2000 when the Bush administration could have taken steps to both reign in currency speculation and the practices in the stock market that were creating the bubble. Just another example of how White House officials misspoke when they said that no body could have anticipated the bubble bursting. Here is Castro anticipating it, and in a speech delivered in front of the U.N. and inside of the United States. Maybe the Bush administration was merely ignoring all the warnings.

Castro's observations of the aftermath of 9/11 and who took advantage of that tragedy to promote their political agenda was spot on. Maybe we could not see that when he gave the speech in Havana on September 22, 2001 but today, with the Bush administration behind us, listen to Castro's observations afresh, "The human and psychological damage brought on the people of the United States, the unexpected and shocking deaths of thousands of innocent people - whose images have shaken the world - have caused understandable and unanimous anger. But who has profited? The extreme right, the most backward and right-wing forces, those in favor of crushing a growing world rebellion and sweeping away everything progressive that still remains on the planet." (page 113) I heard Michael Moore on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now radio show talking about how members of the right-wing feel emboldened since the financial collapse to further their attack on the middle class. I am sure that Moore is correct that the fact that they got away with what they did during the financial crisis has contributed to the more recent attack on union rights, but I think Castro is correct to remind us that 9/11 was the real launching point for what has been a sustained attack from the right that continues to this day. How is it that Castro was able to see, a mere 11 days after 9/11 what many Americans cannot see even now?

Castro also comments about American right-wing elements and compares them to the Taliban, "I find it impossible to determine where the fanaticism is stronger." (page 116). He dismisses the idea that Afghanistan is a "war for oil" stating simply "No one would commit such a mistake [starting the war] simply in pursuit of oil, least of all a country with access to all the oil in the world..." (page 124). I find this observation to be very insightful and now I would like to know more about the United States' "geo-stategic design," that Castro does see as contributing to the war in Afghanistan.

If you have never read anything Castro has written or said, this book is a great place to begin. It is modern, it is fresh, it is non-dogmatic, it is insightful. After reading this book I definitely want to read more of what Castro has written, and luckily, Ocean Press publishes a few books on or by Castro.

Oregon Single Payer Conference Sales Results

2011-03-11T13:13:00.000-08:00

I don't have any good photos or good stories to relate from my day tabling at the Oregon Single Payer Conference. I was glued to my table all day. My book sales have been really, REALLY slow. I thought book sales were slow in early 2010, but I only had two sales for the month of December, 2010. This meant that when I setup my table at the Single Payer conference I really needed to sell some books.

I sold a total of twelve (12) items at the conference. My "cost of goods" to buy the items I would sell at the conference was $52.09, I made a total of $88.74 in sales, which means that my "profit" for the day of selling books was $36.65. However, I paid $35.00 to the conference organizers to setup the table. If I subtract that from my book sales, that left me $1.65 in actual PROFIT for the day.

I am not complaining. I just barely covered the cost of my table which is certainly better than not covering the cost of the table. Many people learned about my online store and I got lots of compliments for the books I carry. As with any business, one hopes that the people who liked my table will visit my web page and buy items in the future. However, I continue to face a dismal financial picture and I continue to struggle to earn enough money selling books to restock my inventory and to keep new ebook titles appearing on my web page. People ask me all the time, "Will you ever open a brick-and-mortar store?" Obviously not on $1.65 in profit!

You can stop reading now if you don't want to learn something about the economics of book selling or what are and are not "small DIY businesses." People come up to me all the time when I am selling books at a community event (I get more of these comments depending on how "radical" the individuals attending an event perceive themselves to be) and they ask me why some of my books are so expensive. For example, at the Oregon Single Payer Conference I had Mary O'Brien's book "10 Excellent Reasons For National Health Care." I list this new books at its cover price of $13.95. Because I can't discount my new titles I am sometimes accused of being a capitalist. Many small book sellers (certainly anyone else who is as small as I am) would not even attempt to carry new books because there is no profit margin in a new book. Publishers and distributors don't give very favorable terms to a bookstore who can only order one or two copies of a title. After you subtract out the other associated costs with ordering a book from a distributor or a publisher a small bookstore makes only a few dollars on each new title they sell.

When one looks at the prices from a slightly larger store one sees that this store may be able to offer better pricing on new books. That is only because they are able to order in larger quantities and therefore they get a better discount from the publisher or the distributor and they get some efficiencies in shipping costs because a full box of books ships for about the same cost as a half-full box of books. Yet when one considers which store fits into the capitalist model it is the slightly bigger store who is able to take advantage of efficiencies of scale and volume discounts and therefore it is the slightly bigger store which proves to be the store which best fits into the capitalist retail model. Yet often when we see a store that is charging less we forget that cheaper prices are the hallmark of capitalist efficiencies.

I think we also too often don't consider how much money even a slight increase in scale entails. While I rarely advertise my store, I do, from time to time, look for opportunities to promote my store. In many ways setting up a table at events like the Oregon Single Payer Conference is as much promotion for my store as it is sales. Recently I was online and found a site where I thought I could become a sponsor. I am not going to mention any names here. The site is a small radical political operation which attracts web visitors who would certainly like the kind of books I sell. Finding sites like this is very rare. Amazon can advertise anywhere and find customers, but what I offer is a much more select catalog of books and to reach my audience I really need to find a targeted venue. Anyhow, I contacted this site to ask about becoming a sponsor. I got a swift email in return which was very kind and said, in essence, sponsorship is beyond your means. And they were right. Other sponsors that the site has are paying $700 per week in sponsorship fees according to the email I received.

The online site is a small lefty/radical political site and their sponsors are all small lefty/radical political organizations. I don't know many radicals who would be upset either by supporting the site or any of the sponsors. But imagine, these sponsoring organizations can afford to pay $700 per week. That's $2,800 per month. And we're not talking $2,800 per month total cost for these organizations to operate. They pay their staff, they pay their electric, phone, internet, heat, rent or mortgage, and they still have an extra $2,800 every moth that they can spend on this one sponsorship (maybe they sponsor or pay for advertising on other online sites as well).

I continue to be the only radical book seller that I know of who will publicly publish my sales, costs, and profit figures for everyone to see. I wish more companies serving the radical community would do this because every time someone pulls the curtain back for me to see behind the scenes I am amazed by what I learn.

CBS Primetime Hypocrisy

2011-03-02T13:49:00.000-08:00

This is not a defense of actor Charlie Sheen for any action he may or may not have undertaken. The fact that he has not been able to make very many cogent statements when he has appeared on various news/entertainment programs suggests that he is having some trouble dealing with the consequences of his supposed actions. I just want to point out the hypocrisy of condemning Sheen for possibly being in real life what his character Charlie Harper is on the TV show Two and a half Men. If CBS thinks that being an alcoholic whoremonger is funny enough for primetime television then why condemn Sheen, and cancel the remainder of the season of Two and a half Men, just because Sheen has taken this character off set.

This seems to be merely a continuation of the long policy of a double standard when it comes to what we call entertainment. We can enjoy the antics of the flamboyant gay man (Jack on Will and Grace) when it is entertainment but in real life many Americans (and many TV executives) would be uncomfortable if they ran into that same character in their real life. We can laugh about the drug culture on Weeds but if this was our real neighborhood we'd be calling the cops on this family.

I am not suggesting that we should blur the lines between entertainment and real life, but I am suggesting that if we are going to use controversial themes, characters, and behavior as the plot structure for our entertainment then we should not go all "moral majority" when we see these same things in real life. Isn't part of the point about putting controversy into entertainment that it can act as a vehicle through which members of a society can discuss and maybe advance their social thinking on such topics. It would be impossible to imagine that the interracial themes of films like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner where put there just for entertainment value rather than to begin a society-wide dialogue. And wouldn't it have been hypocritical for someone to say, after seeing that film, if they later saw Sidney Poitier kissing a white woman in public, "I liked that movie that he did, but now he has taken it too far!"

Tax The Rich (Citizen Radio interview of Johann Hari 2011.02.21)

2011-02-28T09:18:00.000-08:00

The February 21, 2011 podcast of Citizen Radio included this great interview with journalist Johann Hari. I have excerpted it here because it begins about 43 minutes into the podcast. Hari talks about the importance of making the rich pay their fair share of taxes and the organizations UK Uncut and US Uncut.

Biblio's 8th Anniversary

2011-02-23T10:45:00.000-08:00

Very few small independent retailers can maintain a modern eCommerce site on their own. Most of us use a third party vendor to handle our online sales. I list and sell my books through Biblio.com. There are many reasons why I chose Biblio above any of the other possible online aggregate sellers. I guess the most important to me is that Biblio, at least right now, has the best policies and best support for a small bookseller.

I am amazed that Biblio is only eight years old, and that may explain why very few book buyers seem to know about Biblio or choose to buy their books through Biblio. If you shop for books online and really want to support your local small independent used bookstore, you NEED to shop for these books on Biblio.

So here is your incentive to try Biblio. Use the promo code BIBLIO8 to get $8 off $80 or more in book purchases or BIBLIO5 to save $5 on ANY 8 books you buy (discount does not apply to shipping and/or taxes. Offer ends on 3/1/2011). The great thing about this 8th anniversary promo is that it does not cost us, the small booksellers, anything. So, if you buy 8 books from the Burned Books Publishing Biblio store you are going to save $5 without costing my store $5 in revenue, it is Biblio that is giving you the discount.

That's great right!

I have many great radical books priced under $5. Using the BIBLIO5 promo is a great way to get 8 of these great, inexpensive, radical books at a huge discount! Click here to go to my Biblio store and search my selection of books under $5. Find 8 books you want and enter the promo code BIBLIO5 at checkout and you will have supported a small independent bookseller.

Google Books A Video Review

2011-02-18T16:03:00.000-08:00

This is the first video review I've ever done. It's about 10 minutes long.

Chapter 11: The Rapidly Changing Retailing Environment For Books

2011-02-17T08:30:00.000-08:00

In what appears to be another blow for bookstores, Borders announced that it is seeking "reorganizational relief under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code." The need for reorganization by Borders is due, according to the mega-bookstore chain, to the "ongoing impact of the difficult economy of the past few years, and the rapidly changing retailing environment for books and related products," a mantra we could all recite by heart. So how will this reorganization by Borders improve economic conditions or address the rapid changes in the book industry? The simple answer is it won't! Read the remainder of the Borders reorganization web page and one gets the sense that for Borders it will be business as usual.

Will the Borders retail stores change? Apparently not, "Borders stores are open for business. We will continue to provide our customers with a vast assortment of books in a warm and relaxing environment - and we intend to build on this."

Will the Borders web page change? Apparently not, "Borders.com is operating as usual."

Will Borders revamp its "Rewards" marketing program? Apparently not, "Our Borders Rewards programs, including Borders Rewards Plus, remain in effect."

So what does Borders intend to accomplish during the reorganization, according to their web page, "Through this process, we intend to put in place a sound financial structure, enhance Borders' technology to better benefit you, our customers and introduce new and exciting products related to our book offerings - all while providing you with great customer service." I'm not sure what that statement means, personally it just sounds like marketing hype to me, or perhaps restructuring platitudes.

Let me summarize, tough economic times and the rapidly changing nature of the book business means that Borders is currently not as profitable as someone wants it to be, so the company files for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. The reorganization plan, aside from closing a few "underperforming" stores, is to continue to build upon its national network of mega-bookstores, to continue to sell books through it web page, and to continue to offer its "Rewards" marketing program, basically all the things it is already doing and, which it claims, are not currently proving to be profitable enough.

Borders, if you are listening, here is some of the same advice that I recently gave to Powell's Books. Every print book you sell should come with the ebook version, on CD-ROM or on a flash drive or as a FREE download. The thing that consumers want is ease of access and cross platform use and compatibility. They may buy a print book but they also want to be able to read that book on their mobile devices. They aren't going to buy both the print and electronic version, and if they are forced to choose they will choose the format that gives them the most platform freedom. There are times when readers want to read the printed page and there are times when readers want the search and linking capabilities of an ebook. For example, if I am writing a book review I love having the ebook version so that I can cut and past quotes. The way that sites like Google and WikiPedia have changed the world is that people today expect to be able to use electronic resources to quickly grab the information they need. Sure they still may want to read the latest Harry Potter novel, but when they are looking for the page where Harry cast a certain spell, they are going to get online and search for it.

The future of books is electronic books but in these rapidly changing times the retailers who will survive and grow are the ones who understand that consumers are not pro-book or anti-book they are pro-choice. They want their information both ways.

Let me try to emphasize this point with another example. Music CDs and movie DVDs are similar products and both are assumed to be dead formats. However, I still find some usefulness in CDs, while I am constantly frustrated by DVDs. The difference is the ease with which these content packaging formats fit into my lifestyle. When I buy a music CD I can bring it home, pop it into my computer, and the tracks are quickly copied into my iTunes library. I can then use iTunes to access my music on my computer or transfer my music onto my iPod. I don't own a CD player. Even so, I find the ease by which I can use the content of CDs to be a factor in how I make purchasing decisions. If I can only buy the music I want on CD I do not worry because I know I can transfer that music into a format that is useful to me. Contrast that with DVDs. When I buy a movie on DVD I have to watch it on my DVD player. DVD security encoding means that I can't just pop the DVD into my computer and have the movie appear in my iTunes library. Instead of buying DVDs I now download the movies I want to watch from the iTunes store. The digital download gives me more options than owning the physical DVD. So why would I buy the DVD? I wouldn't, I don't. The movie industry proved more inflexible to content format transfers and suffered because consumers could not get content and use content in the manner that was most convenient for them.

Consumers are pro-choice, we don't want to be told how to access the content (books, movies, music) that we purchase. We want content in multiple formats so that we can choose when we read the electronic version or the print version or when we listen to our music on our CD players or our mp3 players or when we watch our movies on our TVs or our iPods and tablets. Physical items must be able to be easily accessed in digital form and digital items must be easily transferred onto a physical platform.

Too often publishers and retailers see print books and ebooks as being locked in a struggle for market domination. But the truth is that in the future, when most of our books are delivered electronically, people will still want to be able to print out a chapter from a book. In fact, the winning ebook format and eReading device will be the one that easily allows this kind of consumer choice. Take a look at Chapter 1 from my ebook version of Henry Demarest Lloyd's "Wealth Against Common Wealth." You will notice that it displays nicely on your web browser. You can use all the standard search features to scan the text. It even includes references to the original page numbers. Now print it out. It is also formatted nicely for the printed page. This is what readers want!

Frankly I am surprised that Chapter 11 Bankruptcy reorganization is as easy as it looks from the Border site. If I were the judge reviewing their plans I'd ask "So what are you planning to do differently?" This is the real question booksellers... In an age when consumers want access to information across multiple platforms success will not come with better marketing or a better rewards programs and we can't just keep on saying "choose book, it best" without sounding anachronistic. If you want to keep selling books what it takes is real change.

Citizen Radio

2011-02-11T13:54:00.000-08:00

I have just discovered the podcast of Citizen Radio and I love it!!! I have not listened to them long enough to say that every show that Allison Kilkenny and Jamie Kilstein produce, the voices behind citizen radio, was/is/will be great or that all the opinions they express are consistent. I know I have a tendency to get excited by the new voices of radical progressive politics that I discover online, only to be disappointed later when they reveal themselves to be inconsistent ass-bags (yes... I am talking about GreenIsTheNewRed.com) and I hope that I never feel that way about Citizen Radio. So, checkout Citizen Radio NOW!

The Rich Don't Need Democracy, Freedom, or Human Rights

2011-02-11T09:51:00.000-08:00

Think about it, if you haven't, that in the most despotic government you can imagine there are still people who are rich, and for them, life is good. When the American colonists were rebelling against the English crown it was not because the rich in America were suffering under English rule. This does not mean that rich colonists did not see an opportunity to become even wealthier if they could throw off their masters in England, but, if the American revolution had failed, rich colonists would have continued to enjoy a pleasurable, educated, and respected role in both English and colonial society. Imagine a time or a place in all of human history where a wealthy traveler arrives bringing gifts for the local petty despot and that traveler is not treated with a certain amount of respect. The more gifts, the more respect. Even the worst tyrant will eventually become enamored with this wealthy person and will seek that persons council on matters of local importance. Education is important, beauty is important, political power is important, but what really paves the way throughout all of human history is wealth.

This brings me to my main point and that is that the history of secular Democracy is the history of the class struggle. Yet we don't recognize the struggle for democratic governance as being a class struggle in the same way that we do see Socialism and Communism as being part of the class struggle. Perhaps the socialist and communists were more honest about their ultimate goals. One distinction that can certainly be made is that for the Socialists and Communists it was economic redistribution that was a primary goal, while the history of Democracies has been one of trying to redistribute political power while leaving economic power untouched. Too often we focus only on the distinctions between Democracy, Communism, and Socialism and we overlook the similarities, i.e. the class struggle.

In America we only have one recognized class that everyone is comfortable talking about and that is the middle class. We no longer, in America, have a recognized or commonly discussed "working (lower) class," and we certainly don't like to think about our super-rich as being an "upper class," but both Republicans and Democrats alike love to tout the middle class. If we don't have a concept of an upper or lower how come we are so certain about the middle? Yet the middle class is a relatively new creation. If you consider that the human family has been on the planet for approximately six million years, the existence of a "middle class" (no matter how one defines it) is less than one-thousand years old. Prior to the evolution of the middle class you basically had two groups, lets call them slaves and masters. The political, social, religious, and educational powers were held by the masters. If you were part of the master class you ruled and you did not need to consult with the slaves before making decisions. If you were part of the slave class you never presumed that you should give advice on how society should be structured. In fact, for people living in these ancient societies the concept of class struggle, I suspect, would have made little sense.

The evolution of the middle class, neither full-time master nor full-time slave, is what created the class struggle. As this middle class evolved its members wanted to have a say in the decision making process. This was not something that the ruling class welcomed. Certainly the ruling class witnessed the evolution of a merchant (middle) class but the assumption remained that it was the role of the ruling class to rule. These were Devine rights of power in many cases. Democracies came about not because the ruling class ceded power but because the middle class demanded power.

We should never forget this. The ruling (upper) classes in society never needed Democracy. Their voices were not being ignored, their economic interests were not being thwarted, their ability to transfer their wealth and power from one generation to the next was not being overturned by their societies. Democracy was demanded by the middle and lower classes in society because it was these classes who were suffering under the dictates of king and queen, pope and priest.

Today when we consider democratic reforms we must continue to recognize that the rich don't have a historical stake in democracy. Its not in their blood. This is why major multinational corporations continue to setup shop in countries controlled by petty despots, they know that no matter how badly this local tyrant treats the middle and lower classes of their society the voice of the corporation, representing wealthy business interests, will be heard. No tyrant can last long whose ears are deaf to the cries of the wealthy.

This is why we must look on most of the modern American right wing populists campaigns skeptically. Abolish abortion, seriously? - name a time in human history when the rich did not have mechanisms to deal with their illegitimate children. Do you think the rich ever followed a single moral code on this topic? Did the rich always provide adequate child support? Did they treat their illegitimate children as equals? Did they, in those days, condemn themselves for sex outside of wedlock? And when the churches did take note of the indiscretions of the wealthy couldn't everything be smoothed over with a large donation? The rich step in and out of the moral code that binds the rest of us!

What about campaigns against drugs, alcohol, tobacco, or prostitution. Can't you see that these only became social ills once the middle and lower classes began to partake? The cigarette, I assert, has long been considered a lower class vice and has been the subject of attack solely for this reason, while pipe and cigar smoking, considered more of an upper class indulgence, continues, to this day, to enjoy a certain respectability. In jurisdictions where indoor cigarette smoking is banned, there generally are specific exceptions made for cigar bars. Smoking is nasty and people should not do it, but it would be naive to assume that cigarette smoking is any more dangerous, and therefore in need of stricter regulation, than cigar or pipe smoking. When people talk about banning abortion they really should take a lesson from prohibition, because prohibition did not stop the wealthy from drinking. What would have happened to Carrie Nation had she invaded the homes of the wealthy Kansans rather than the working class saloons and began smashing the wealthy's wine, bourbon, and scotch supplies? The temperance movement would have ended swiftly! The laws against public drunkenness are not about cleaning up the streets from the likes of Paris Hilton, they are about locking up the homeless man with no limo waiting to whisk him away.

Hard fought communist, socialist and even democratic reforms are under attack all the time by rich and powerful interests. Who needs welfare? Obviously not the corporate CEO who gets a $400 million dollar golden parachute when he steps aside. But don't talk about corporate welfare, then you will be reminded that this is not welfare but job creation or infrastructure investment or national defense. Social security too is not something the wealthy have much use for, unless the money is to be invested in their Wall Street schemes and then that is praised as a plan for "saving social security." Like they care! The second amendment is great, according to many right wing commentators, when they talk about how it can be used to subvert the democratic process, but how often do you hear talk from these same pundits about patriotic gun owners taking their guns into Wall Street financial institutions and demanding the taxpayer bailout money back, or demanding that these firms cancel their million dollar staff bonuses. The rich don't need democratic processes, they have other ways of getting what they want... but give back ill-gotten gains - blasphemy!

We don't often discuss this topic and so I think it is just important from time-to-time to mention that the rich don't need Democracy, they don't need freedoms, they don't need human rights. The rich can step around all limitation and restrictions they may experience. It is those of us in the middle class and the lower (working) class who need and have demanded Democracy to raise ourselves out of bondage.

The Probability That The Book Business Will Be Profitable: Minus Thirty-One And Counting

2011-02-09T10:23:00.000-08:00

Powell's Books, the Portland, Oregon, iconic bookstore announced that they were laying off 31 employees, citing, according to the Oregonian, "the unprecedented, rapidly changing nature of the book industry." Here's the thing, there was no rapid change in history that was better addressed when less people were working on it. Imagine Martin Luther King, Jr. standing in front of the crowd crooning "Due to the rapidly changing nature of civil rights in America the Southern Christian Leadership Conference today announces staff lay offs..." He wouldn't and the reason is because staff lay offs are not about anything more than reducing expenditures (i.e. increasing profit) and the SCLC was not trying to make a profit they were trying to change the world.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why Powell's must lay people off. The one aspect of the "rapidly changing nature of the book industry" that can be addresses through staff lay offs is that the book business has less and less profit in it due to retail price pressures exerted by mega-retailers and online discounters. That's my Alan-Greenspan-speak for the day. Much of the Oregonian's report, and the other media reports I've heard, concerning the Powell's lay offs, are about how the company is positioning itself, through these layoffs, for better short term profitability. But the "rapidly changing nature of the book industry" is not a single dimensional phenomena.

The other aspect of the "rapidly changing nature of the book industry" also mentioned by the Oregonian is the effect that changing technology (i.e. ebooks and mobile devices) are having on "consumer reading behavior." It is this dimension of the problem that is not addressed by staff lay offs, this is a bookstore's change the world opportunity. Let's be reasonable, if Powell's sole plan to address the impact of ebooks and mobile devices on its business is to lay off staff it won't be too long before Powell's has no staff left. In fact, one could reasonably argue that if medium sized independent bookstores reduce staff and make their stores less consumer friendly more and more consumers will be forced to change their reading behavior. Powell's already has many consumer disincentives built into the hodgepodge design of their 68,000 square foot store on West Burnside. But I suspect that many consumers never even find that out about Powell's because these consumers are buying their books through the store's web page or other online retailers or downloading books directly to their mobile reading devices.

So let's return to the real issue, the issue that will effect the long term viability of Powell's and every other medium to small independent bookstore and that is ebooks. The mega-retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble have positioned themselves through their mobile reading devices to control the ebook market. Other large companies and non-profit organizations (Google, Apple, The American Booksellers Association, even the Library of Congress) are struggling to keep pace and to re-define their roles as digital books become the norm and print books become a special order item. Powell's assertion with these lay offs is that it is better positioned to address these looming changes with less staff, and I say that does not make any sense. In fact, what Powell's should be doing is to address the ebook opportunity directly, and you can't do that with less people.

OK, that may not be strictly accurate. If Powell's is laying off cashiers that may make some sense because what they need are probably not more cashiers but more people who are knowledgeable about the ebook business and can help Powell's to make sound decisions. However, when 25% of the people you are laying off work in your technical group and help maintain your web presence, that does not make sense. In fact if Powell's had asked me I would have told them to close some of their brick-and-mortar retail space and expand their web presence.

So here it is, Powell's, my unsolicited advice:

1. Close all your other retail locations except the Burnside store and the technical store across the street. That's going to save a lot of money right there.

2. Move the technical books into their own section at the main Burnside location. Maybe you have to reduce the size of some other sections to accommodate this, but there is a lot of bloat in these sections that could reasonably be put into cheaper warehouse space.

3. Convert the current technical bookstore space into Powell's eBooks. Maybe partner with Free Geek for part of this. Setup banks of computer systems where people can go online and read ebooks (or whatever... the one aspect of library services where libraries see continued growth in demand is for internet access) and in the same space Powell's can sell new and used mobile reading devices. I have an old Kindle that I would love to sell and as time goes on there are going to be more and more older mobile devices that people are going to want to sell so that they can buy the current technology. The current technical bookstore space may be small for this long term, but at least it will give Powell's an opportunity to evaluate its business feasibility. Powell's can get in on the ground floor and define how this business is going to evolve rather than passively watching the ebook business take more and more of the Powell's business away.

4. Long term Powell's should have technical staff who are knowledgeable about each and every mobile device and Powell's should create apps for devices like the Apple iPad that will allow a person to purchase and install an ebook on their iPad from the Powell's servers. Long term profitability in the ebook market is about ease of purchase and download. If a person has to go to the Powell's web site, buy the book, download the book to their computer, load the book into iTunes, and then sync the book to their iPad they aren't going to do it! Especially when they can just open their iBooks app and click on the store button and the books they buy automatically appear on their bookshelf. This is why I say Powell's should not be laying off staff, but hiring staff who can help them address the ebook opportunities directly.

5. Powell's should take a clue from my business and begin collecting copyright free ebook versions of the used books that Powell's continues to sell. In some cases this may mean having staff scanning books and making PDF or ePub files from the scanned material, in other cases it means just finding these books that are already available online for free. Then Powell's should offer a customer who buys a used book the chance to either get a flash drive with the ebook version on it, or a free download of the ebook version. Check out how I have done this for Scott Nearing's book "The Next Step." I listened to the people on Fox12 News saying that they just like books better than ebooks, yeah... blah... blah, you just sound more sophisticated and less like a techno geek when you say that. I've also heard the people who say "I hate reading on screens," like that stops them from going to Google every time they need to look something up or it stops them from text messaging their friends. Books are sexy and sophisticated I get it, but I need access to my email throughout the day which means when I am away from my desk I am going to have a mobile device with me. If I can load that mobile device with games, music, and ebooks I am going to do it because, if I have a spare moment, I can open up a book I've been meaning to read and read some of it. If I had the choice when I was buying a used book between buying the book alone or the book with an ebook version I'd choose the second option. I may never take advantage of the ebook version, it may just sit there on my iPod or my computer while I read the lovely printed book I bought. But I can guarantee you that when I am away from home I am probably not carrying around that printed book but I am carrying around my iPod. And if I have an ebook version of that book I want to read on my device there is at least the small chance that I will open it up and read a little more of it.

OK, that's all the advice I am willing to give Powell's for free! For the Powell's worker all I can say is take my advice seriously and start agitating within Powell's to get the store to move headlong into the ebook business. So far the store is just dabbling around the edges with Goolge ebooks, Adobe Digital Editions, Microsoft Reader, and eReader editions. There is nothing compelling to what Powell's is doing. The management decision, as far as this outsider can tell, has been, I suspect, something like "well if we can add ebooks to our web page without really spending any effort to understand ebooks let's do it!" But you know what people say, shit or get off the pot. If Powell's management is just going to moan and groan in the press about "the unprecedented, rapidly changing nature of the book industry" without taking direct and assertive actions to address these changes then more lay offs are coming!

To Fight Amazon, Fight Capitalism! - Part 3

2011-01-23T00:56:00.000-08:00

On January 20, 2011 The Oregonian ran a story on a local bookstore, Looking Glass Books, that may close, "a victim of changing times." The article calls the economic down turn, along with price competition from online retailers and the move to ebooks "a perfect storm" for the retail book business.

The section of the article I found the most interesting was relating an anecdote from store owner Karin Anna "In December, Anna said, a customer picked up a $40 book and used her cell phone to scan the bar code. She held up the phone for Anna to see: The same book was $16 cheaper online." Obviously the small store could not match the online price. What the author of the article failed to do was to find out how the online seller was able to sell the book so cheap.

I took note of this section because this is something that retailers rarely face - consumers price checking their stock. When I was in my 20s, living in Virginia, I used to carry a notebook with me when I did my food shopping. I was trying to live as cheaply as I could. I would record the prices of the items I regularly bought and when I went to another store I would price compare and record their prices as well. It did not take long before I was approached by an employee of one of the stores who wanted to know what I was doing and why. I remember that I eventually stopped recording prices, but I can't recall now if I was told that I could not record the prices. But I remember how shocked I was that this retailer was paying that much attention to what their customers were doing in the isles. It kind of freaked me out!

A great idea for an app would be one that would allow a person to capture the UPC for an item and record the date, store, and price and then be able to price compare while they are shopping. Retailers would oppose such an app and they would quickly begin lobbying in DC to get laws passed that prohibited consumers from using such an app, the retailers would claim that product pricing was a trade secret or some such nonsense, but I digress!

Bookstores have been battling scanner for years, not in their retail establishments but at book and estate sales. If you have been to a public library book sale in the last year or so you probably have seen the signs saying either "no scanners allowed" or "scanners allowed." In recent years the mammoth used book warehouse stores and book scouts who may be working on commission have been teaming up to scarf down as many books as they can from any medium to large book sale. Teams of people move through the book sale with electronic scanners. They pickup books, scan the ISBN bar code, price check the book online and either drop the book back on the table or into their box for purchase. Those of us who buy used books at book sales get really cheesed off at these people and their scanners.

The big thing that bothers us is that the scanner operators are really aggressive. They push and shove their way through the sale because they don't enjoy books and they don't value books, these scanner wielders are just there to make a buck. We also dislike these scanner operators because when they decide a book has no value to them they dump it unceremoniously back on the table and they leave, in their wake, a huge mess. They don't have time to put the book neatly back in place because they are working a book buying assembly line and they can't be bothered by rejects they have to move on to the next book. Those of us who value books for what they are and not what they will fetch, spend time at book sales gently putting the books back in place and perhaps reorganizing the table after the scanner vultures move on. We know that while a certain book may not have value to us, it will be of value to someone, and therefore it must be treated with respect.

We like to blame these book scouts who use scanners, we certainly look down on them, but we really should be blaming capitalism because, once again, that is the real culprit. The big stores who equip their book scouts with electronic scanners are BIG because they have mastered the bottom line thinking adored by capitalists. To them a book is not words or ideas it is a commodity to be bought and sold, it is dollars and cents plain and simple. They don't care if the book is a first edition, they don't see the archival paper or the unusual binding, they only care if they can buy the book and resell it at a profit.

To Fight Amazon, Fight Capitalism! - Part 2

2011-01-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

I know that many people disagreed with my last post which proclaimed "To Fight Amazon, Fight Capitalism." I am certain that a good number of people who read that post felt that it was not the influx of capital into Amazon that accounts for Amazon's success, nor is it the responsibility of authors and publishers to ensure that their books are sold on a fair basis. It is so easy to blame the consumer and so difficult to discern what is going on behind the scenes. We like the myth that there is such a thing as a free market. We like to think that success comes to those who work hard and, is in no way, due to the system being rigged. Even though we can speak of people being born with a silver spoon in their mouths we don't like to think that that is why they became President. When the system fails we like to blame individuals (and not the system) and when the system propels someone to fame and fortune we like to attribute that success to the individual (and not the system).

So here is more evidence in the case against Amazon. Above

is a screen shot from iTunes for the download of the movie The Social Network. The iTunes price is $19.99. To the right is a screen shot from Amazon showing the Amazon price for the movie. One can buy the two-disc collector's edition of the movie from Amazon for $12.99.

How is it possible for Amazon to sell below the iTunes price? In order to carry the DVD, Amazon needed to order the DVD from the distributor and Amazon needed to have the DVD shipped to their warehouses. The DVD had to be entered into the Amazon inventory and eCommerce system. Don't forget also that the distributor of the film needed to spend all that money on copying and packaging the DVDs - this includes the cost of the DVD media, the box, the cover insert, the tape to seal the box and the shrink wrap. For iTunes to carry this movie the distributor had to incur none of these costs and therefore the distributor would not have passed on any of these costs to iTunes.

Amazon is not underselling iTunes by a little bit. The $7.00 difference in price represents a 35% discount over the iTunes price. This kind of discount is impossible given the cost difference between what Amazon must do to stock the DVD and what iTunes must do to make the movie file available for download.

Therefore, ask yourself the question, is the consumer responsible for the steep Amazon discount? Obviously not. The fact that Amazon can offer the DVD for 35% less than it is available on iTunes is due to one of two possible causes; (a) either there is a supply chain discount or incentive that Amazon is able to take advantage of to make this DVD available at such a retail discount, or (b) iTunes is taking a huge profit rather than passing along the savings to its customers. While option (b) could be true, it seems unlikely, because online sales are so price driven and the folks behind iTunes understand that their product needs to be price competitive. If iTunes could match price with Amazon they certainly would or they would come as close as they possibly could and hope that the convenience of a digital download would outweigh their remaining price disadvantage. Of course, there is the possibility that I am wrong about iTunes and they are run in the way Apple used to be run where the company did not strive to be price competitive because they saw their customer base as a loyal group of brand fanatics.

I know that the film The Social Network is a popular movie so before I posted this I wanted to check if there was a price difference on a less popular movie. I picked a documentary called The Collapse. iTunes offered this documentary for download for $14.99 on January 11, 2011, Amazon sold the same for $10.49, or 30% less than the iTunes price. I am sure one could find other examples.

Amazon's internal costs must be higher than iTunes internal costs. In addition to the servers which both companies must maintain, Amazon also needs warehouse and distribution facilities. We can blame the consumer for shopping at Amazon if that makes us feel better but to do so ignores the fact that there are cost structures behind the scenes, far out of reach of consumer influence, that are driving the pricing on both Amazon and iTunes. Right now it appears that these behind the scenes influences favor Amazon, even with its higher operational costs, over iTunes.

We live in a time when a digital download can't price compete with a physical product. That time will come to an end. But when it does, we will not return to a time when the small retailer can be price competitive with the large companies. Once again, consumer choices are not dictated by consumer demand. No matter how much a consumer would like to buy their digital music from a small neighborhood record store, they aren't given that option, just as they won't be given the option to buy ebooks from their neighborhood bookstore. Consumers can demand all they want, the decisions are being made in another place far from their influence.

Not More Civility, More Truth

2011-01-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

In the media/politically fueled aftermath of the shootings at an event hosted by Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, I worry that we are already loosing sight of what is important. Left and right now seem to agree that it is the tone of the political name calling that we have witnessed since the Presidential election in 2000 which creates the risk that mentally unbalanced individuals will "go postal" so to speak. The tone of the discourse is so raucous, it has been suggested, that the substance of the debate gets lost on "these people" who are so mentally unstable that they are prone to violent action.

The problem, as I see it, is not so much one of tone, but of substance. Jon Stewart tries to get at this in his interview on January 12, 2011 with Tim Pawlenty. Everyone accepts that in a Democratic system of governance there will be, at times, a raucous debate where passions are inflamed and cherished beliefs are threatened and, perhaps, fortunes are won and lost. This process challenges a Democracy with the possibility that someone will take action outside of politics to secure and protect their position or to attack those in opposition to their position. It is certain, and it would not take much of a historical expert to demonstrate, that earlier debates of national importance - civil rights, women's rights, worker's rights, the ending of slavery, and the disposition and status of the native population of America, to name just a few, - have all caused an unharmonious debate throughout the nation. The question Jon Stewart was striving to get answered was not about wether we as a nation should have such impassioned debates but, whether the current accusations about tyranny and socialism within the Democratic Party have any basis in reality. Civil rights, women's rights, worker's rights - these are real things upon which one could naturally have a diverse set of opinions. These real things can be debated and this is healthy for a Democracy. The problem comes when we have a rambunctious debate about nothing more than name calling. When the debate becomes whether or not a person espousing a certain position on civil rights is a communist and the anger in the debate on civil rights becomes intertwined with fear and anger towards communism then we have an almost certainly explosive situation and one that is difficult to defuse.

It is valid to ask, in times of national debate, does the tone of the rhetoric match reality. After this recent incident of violence people are attacking the tone because there has been a perception during the last two years of the Obama administration that the fervor of the opposition rhetoric does not match the reality. However, I find myself agreeing with Sarah Palin that political debate in this country has rarely been civil, and we cannot blame the tone of this or that debate for any consequent problems. Even in the most civilized discussions a person may be pushed to take extreme measures, what some Republicans in this last election cycle called "second amendment" measures, when they feel that their side has no hope of victory. While we shouldn't blame the tone of the debate we certainly can blame the substance.

This some may say is an attack on the first amendment. It is not! We have a long legal tradition of laws which protect an individual or organization from libelous or slanderous attacks. You can't yell fire in a crowded theatre unless the theatre is actually on fire! I think the real disservice that is done to the political debate in this country is when neither side, Republican nor Democrat, forces their opponents to stick to the truth. We live in a nation where veggie libel laws are all the rage but political libel laws are non-existent. Barack Obama is not a socialist and to call him one is the worst kind of political libel not just about Obama but also about Socialism. Imagine if all one knew of what it means to be a socialist were the words and actions of Barack Obama. They would think that socialists would bail out Wall Street and jump into bed with the health insurance companies (and compromise on universal health care). They would think that socialism was about expanding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and about compromising with the right wing on tax cuts for the wealthy. Even if Obama did not want to sue the people who are calling him a socialist one would think that real socialists in the United States would. I listen to a number of political radio shows and I have never heard Senator Bernie Sanders threatening to sue because, as a socialists, he does not want to be lumped in with Obama.

I know some legal experts worry about the chilling effect that political libel suites would have on the political discourse but, personally, I don't think that is why these suites don't happen. I think both parties take advantage of their ability to spin the truth without consequences and if and when one political party decides to blow the whistle on this "look the other way" policy towards political lies and political deception then they know the game is up for them as well. It is as simple as what is expedient for you is also expedient for me. And it means more than that one gets to make up stories about their opponent it also means that one gets to make up stories about their own actions. This is how we get serious public debate on statements like "I voted for the bill, before I voted against it." The fact is that all politicians like to take both sides on every issue just in case the political tides shift and one stance becomes political suicide.

Rarely, any more, does the media attempt to set the record straight. One could reasonably argue that when political libel suites were abandoned there was still a functioning media who would fact check the public dialog on political issues. Some media, like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, still provide this fact checking service. Watch this clip from her January 10, 2011 broadcast. However, more commonly the media sees their role as merely broadcasting both sides in the mainstream political discussion unedited and without verification on the underlying facts. This is why many news programs which discussed the Obama health care reform bill consisted of Republicans calling the bill and Obama socialist while the Democrats said, in essence, it was not socialism. Any journalist who understood socialism and Obama could have easily debunked these Republican claims. A journalist taking a stand on the facts of a story is seen in todays politically charged media world as violating journalistic impartiality. Anyone who understood the true meaning of "impartial" would understand that facts, by their very nature, are impartial. If a TV show presents a Democrat saying something is blue and a Republican saying the same thing is red and the moderator never comments on the truth of the matter, that reporter is not being impartial they are not being anything at all - they are ether - a non-corporal presence of the news, a ghost.

Democracy is served when a person is screaming the truth at the top of their lungs and we do a disservice to Democracy when we hear a person screaming lies at the top of their lungs but instead of pointing out the lies we merely say that shouting is not the best way for political discourse to proceed and it may even be dangerous. Americans don't desire a more polite discourse. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are widely popular not because they are polite and not even because they are funny but because they try in their humorous way to uphold the truth.

To Fight Amazon, Fight Capitalism!

2011-01-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

In early December I watched a segment on BookTV discussing the book Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC published by the University Of Illinois Press. During that discussion, Judy Richardson (a co-editor of the book) remarked (click the movie above to hear)

Umm, try not to buy it on Amazon, buy it through Teaching For Change, they were umm ... some of us remember when we had Drum And Spear Bookstore which we were ... Jennifer and I and others here ... hello there ... yes were part of, right up the street and ... what did us in was when then Britanos started underselling us ... umm ... at cost, do not let that happen to Teaching For Change ...

I own and operate a small online radical bookstore and, as such, I am well versed in the problems faced by a small bookstore as well as how the publishing industry, as a whole, favors the big stores. I thought I would spring board off of Ms. Richardson's comments and use their book as a demonstration of this favoritism. Warning: what I am about to say may be controversial.

Under a capitalistic economic system, the consumer is the victim. I know it is easy to blame the consumer for buying cheap crap, and to be sure, consumer's need to take responsibility for what they buy. However, consumerism, like democracy, operates within a system where the rich set the constraints. We have a two party system because this is how the system was established by those who exerted economic and political control a long time ago. There is clearly voter demand for change and voter interest in independent political parties. The two party system remains because those who exert economic and political control today continue to maintain that constraint on democracy. In the consumer marketplace a similar system exists. Those who have economic and political control constrain consumer options.

The book discussed above is a book that would fit well into my small catalog of books. I already carry many related books. After seeing the BookTV show I decided to inquire into adding this book to my catalog. To begin with I needed to search for this book on Amazon. Amazon (on 01/03/2011) sells this book for 28% off list price. Obviously making a purchasing decision without knowing the Amazon price, especially on a new book, would be unwise. Next I needed to inquire of the University Of Illinois Press as to the terms they would offer.

A few weeks after sending an email to the University Of Illinois Press I received an email reply stating that a 40% retail discount is available for this title in the quantity I wanted to order. Now, for those without book selling experience, you should also know that bookstores pay shipping on the titles they order from a publisher. Shipping is about 10% of the wholesale price. Therefore, a 40% retail discount is really a 30% discount when one calculates in shipping costs.

Amazon is selling this title at 28% off the retail price, the publisher is willing to give me about 30% off retail price. That is what Ms. Richardson means when she says "underselling at cost." It means that I could buy this book from Amazon at almost the same discount that I could buy it directly from the publisher. This is what I mean when I say that those who have economic and political control constrain consumer options, because there is no way that I can carry this book. Even at a 40% discount I would need to add back in my operational costs to the price I would need to resell the book for. My costs are fairly modest, they amount to about 15% on the titles I sell, but I usually estimate them at 20% to give my self some wiggle room. That would mean that I could not sell this book for less than 20% off the cover price (and at best, if my costs were as low as possible, 25% off the cover price). Even in that best of all possible worlds Amazon would still be underselling my price by 3%, but most likely Amazon would undersell my price by 8%. So I can't even consider carrying this book, and therefore, even if consumers wanted to buy this book from me, they can't! That is constraining consumer options.

So, can I blame the consumer for buying this book from Amazon? Not really. In fact the only reason why small bookstores continue to survive is because when people are browsing in a small bookstore they don't price compare with Amazon or, maybe more likely, they impulse buy books that they weren't looking for in the first place. But here is the rub, are small bookstores really that valuable if their survival requires either that people pay higher prices than they'd pay at another store or that people have poor impulse control?

If I can't blame the consumer, who can I blame? Can I place blame with the authors and the publishers? Authors and publishers have one goal and that is to sell more books. Neither cares much about how those books are sold. If they are sold in a brick-and-mortar store, sold online, sold in lots at auction, sold in kiosks at an airport, sold on an eReader, etc., does not matter to the author or the publisher. What both desire are higher and higher sales, and if they get a runaway bestseller, that's golden. To that end, most authors ignore where their books are sold, as long as their books are selling. It is great for Ms. Richardson to encourage readers to buy the book she co-edited from a local independent bookstore, but then why would she sell her book on Amazon at all? If one were to ask Ms. Richardson I assume she would respond that those decisions are made by the publisher and not her. But she could have negotiated a contract with her publisher that made her book less attractive to Amazon if she had only thought about that when she was negotiating her book deal. Of course that would have meant lower sales of her book and maybe no ebook version or audio version down the line.

What of the publisher, what is their responsibility? Publishers are responsible for one aspect of the success of Amazon and that is volume discounts. Let's assume that Amazon was given the same retail discount that I was offered, that is 40% off the cover price. Assume also that Amazon paid a similar shipping cost to what I would pay, that is around 10% of their purchase price per book. That would mean that Amazon got these books for 30% off cover price and is reselling them for 28% off cover price, or a mere 2% markup. Now let's also consider that this book is eligible, according to Amazon, for super saving shipping. There is no way that Amazon could cover its operational costs plus offer free shipping on this book with a mere 2% margin. The conclusion therefore is that either Amazon is loosing money on each of these books, or, that the publisher gave Amazon a better deal than 40% off list price + shipping.

There is no way to know for sure which is happening. Amazon certainly could afford to loose money on this book because they will make up these losses on other sales. But this book is not going to be a very popular book and I doubt Amazon would consider such a title to be a "loss leader" (i.e. a book that would draw in customers who would buy other books to cover what Amazon is loosing on this sale). Consider that Borders sells this title at no discount. So how/why is Amazon offering such a steep discount? I suspect that both Amazon and Borders are getting a better discount from the publisher than I was offered. I don't know this for sure, but I suspect it to be the case. Next, I suspect that Borders is expecting that customers who have their rewards card will get at least a 10% discount on the purchases of this book either online or at a store, and with coupons the Borders rewards customer may even be able to get a better deal than they could get on Amazon.

Can consumers alone save the small independent bookstore? No! Publishers have to stop offering steep volume discounts to the big stores. If every retailer got a 40% discount then small and big retailers would be competing based on a level wholesale price. Authors need to assert more control over their books and demand at least this much. But even with that the large book retailers like Amazon, Borders, and Barnes & Noble could still sell a selection of their books below cost. These "loss leader" sales are already common in book retailing. There is no way that authors or publishers could prevent a book store from selling a book below its cost.

The real problem is capitalism. The problem is that these large book retailers are publicly held companies with huge capital investments. Obviously with that kind of capital advantage no mom and pop bookstore could compete. One sees this all the time, a small bookstore will add a cafe section to their store, modeling on the big stores, hoping that that will bring in more business. Or a small store will setup a web page, again following the lead of their larger competitors, thinking that online customers are easy to find. But what really makes the Amazon web page so successful is not its interface (which is actually kind of crappy) but the huge advertising budget that Amazon dedicates to promoting its web page. There is no secret of business here. These larger book sellers are not better book sellers, they just have more money and, as the saying goes, it takes money to make money.

Look at any regional larger bookstore like Powell's here in Portland, Oregon or Joseph Beth Booksellers out of Kentucky and even these large privately held book stores are suffering because while the families behind these stores may have money they don't have the ability to raise capital like their larger publicly held competitors.

The problem is capitalism. The influx of a major amount of capital into almost any venture is enough to make it profitable for a while. You give any mom and pop bookstore $54 million dollars (look at Amazon's IPO) and they will be able to create a truly impressive bookstore. This is what propelled Amazon to the top in 1997. Now, of course, they had to make good business decisions since then to stay at the top. But the truth is that without the $54 million that Amazon got in its IPO even the best business decisions from that day to today would not have made Amazon the household name it is.

Capitalism requires huge capital investments and huge capital investments encourages companies to grow, to acquire smaller competitors, to think in bottom-line only processes, and to the extent that a company is successful it will attract more and more capital. It is fine to yell at consumers for buying from Amazon, but their purchasing choices are being controlled and guided by others with both economic and political power. It is fine to yell at authors for not standing up for their own rights and for allowing publishers and retailers to dictate terms which ultimately harm small bookstores. But we really should be yelling at greedy investors who are willing to profit as neighborhood bookstores die. We really should be standing against capitalism which is destroying our communities, our schools, and our elected government.

One should also note that many small used bookstores survive today because they can list their stock on Amazon. It is sad to watch because they are cooperating with their own destruction. But after the initial Amazon blast tore through the book business in 1997, these small used bookstores have been able to survive a little longer because right now Amazon needs their diverse used stock to attract even more customers to Amazon. The ultimate death slayer of the used book business has already been born, it is the ebook, which cannot be resold nor copied and redistributed without the consent of the publisher. And the big players will ensure that the digital copyright laws are not relaxed, they have the capital to invest in lobbying.

A Savings of $3.99 At Powells

2010-12-27T00:16:00.000-08:00

In late 2010 I was looking for a copy of Jesus and Nonviolence by Walter Wink. First I checked the Portland Area Used Booksellers Association (PAUBA) web page but no small independent bookstores in Portland, Oregon carried this book. I checked Amazon, and they had a new copy of the book for $9.99. Seeing that the book was available I decided to check Powell's. Powell's is a Portland, Oregon icon and a well respected store for both new and used books. Powell's also had a new copy of the book listed for $9.99 but they had a used copy for $6.00. I decided to buy the used copy through the Powell's web page and pick it up at their Burnside store.

The book they gave me was in horrible condition. On the cover was plastered a non-removable sticker (trust me I have tried to peel it off) proclaiming CCSU Textbook Protection Plan. Across the spine another non-removable sticker with the CCSU web URL, a proclamation that this is a USED BOOK and the CCSU phone number. And on the back two larger stickers with the small Powell's bar-code for my pickup order. In addition to the cover stickers 75 of the 103 pages have yellow highlighting on them, that's 72% of the pages in the book highlighted.

I can't figure out why Powell's sold this book. The book buyer at Powell's had to notice the stickers on the front and back covers as well as the spine. And it would be impossible not to notice the yellow highlighting. That, one would imagine, would trigger a book buyer to pass on purchasing a book. Powell's has a reputation for being selective when buying used books so one really has to wonder how this slipped through.

After Powell's acquired the book it had to be placed on a shelf in the warehouse and listed on their web page. Again one wonders how the defects in this book were missed. When I purchased the book online this triggered another string of Powell's staff interaction with this book. Apparently, nobody examined the book when it was pulled from the shelf in the warehouse to see if it was in a fit condition to sell. Nobody examined the book when it arrived at the Burnside store to make sure that the warehouse had sent the correct book, if they had they could not have missed the stickers and the highlighting. When the book was placed on hold on the 4th floor and scanned into the computer there so that an email could be sent to me saying that the book was ready for pickup nobody noticing the stickers questioned if this book should be sold.

Could it really be that no one paid any attention to the condition of this book from the day Powell's bought it to the moment I picked it up?

I can only see two possible scenarios; (1) nobody paid any attention to this book from the day Powell's bought it to the moment they sold it to me, or (2) they did examine the book and, having examined it, someone decided that it was OK to sell a book with ugly non-removable stickers on the front, back, and spine as well as 72% of the pages with yellow highlighting.

Book Review: Practical Agitation

2010-12-10T01:27:00.000-08:00

Chapman, John Jay. Practical Agitation. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900.

This book was a challenging read. While reading, I would often loose track of the arguments being made on the page and my mind would wander. I almost felt like I remember feeling as a very young child while sitting in Sunday school. I knew the people were talking about something they wanted me to consider important, but their vocal tones were so calm and soothing, and the outside world looked so inviting that I could not focus. Thus with Chapman's writing, his style was almost too soft, or as wikipedia puts it, his "work is marked by originality and felicity of expression." I could not have said it better!

When I could focus I found what he was writing to be good advice for the agitator. Practical Agitation is such an apt title for the book, and that, if anything is my biggest criticism. His advice is practical. Almost too practical. Perhaps this also contributed to my wandering thoughts. Nothing in the book slaps you in the face. You read it and think, "yes... well put... very wise advice." In fact the book is filled with so many practical observations that it does not seem like agitation at all. Chapman, a lawyer turned essayist, would have admired Obama's style, and if you, like Jon Stewart, find yourself falling asleep every time Obama expresses his "fighting" spirit in such conciliatory and practical terms, then you will fall asleep reading Chapman.

With that in mind here is what I found valuable in the book (quotes in bold):

"When you began you did not say "I stand for a readjustment of political interests. There will be a continuation of many abuses under my administration, to be sure; but I hope they will not be quite as bad as heretofore. I shall not insist on the absolutely unselfish conduct of my office. It is not practical." If you had said this, you might have got the friendly support of a few doctrinaires. But you would never have got the support and approval of the great public. You would not have been elected. And therefore you did not say it. On the contrary, what our reformers do is this: They begin, before election, by promising an absolutely pure administration. They make proclamations of a new era, and after they have secured a certain following they proceed to chaffer over how much honesty they will demand..." [Italics mine] - Page 8.

When I read this I felt as though Chapman was writing about Obama, almost a warning to those, who weary of the Bush years, might believe Obama's reform rhetoric.

"According to both Democrats and Republicans, independent voting is "voting in the air," and is at odds with the spirit of our institutions, which contemplate two parties and no more. And, finally, every one condemns the independent because he violates that thumb rule which slovenly thinkers regard as a summary of all political philosophy, "Between two evils choose the least."" [Italics mine] - Page 13.

Doesn't Ralph Nader feel vindicated by these words written 100 years before he was vilified for daring to run as a third party candidate!

"The first discovery we make is that the worst enemy of good government is not our ignorant foreign voter, but our educated domestic railroad president, our prominent business man, our leading lawyer. If there is any truth in the optimistic belief that our standards are now going up, we shall soon see proofs of it in our homes. We shall not note our increase of virtue so much by seeing more crooks in Sing Sing, as by seeing fewer of them in the drawing-rooms." - Page 46.

"Liberty and democracy are thought to be such worthy ends, that we must obtain them by any means and all means, even by hiring mercenaries." - Page 110.

"Everything is known about the moral law, except how you yourself will act under given circumstances. You have nothing but example to contribute." - Page 139.

"What we love in the young is not their youth, but their force. The energy that runs through them makes them sensitive. They feel the importance of remote things, and infer the relations of the present to the future more truly than their elders." - Page 150.

And finally:

"It makes no difference which man is made president; it makes no difference which is governor. There is no choice between McKinley and Bryan, between Republicanism and Democracy. There is no difference between them. They are one thing. They both and all of them are part of the machinery by which the government of a most dishonest nation is carried on, for the financial benefit of certain parties, — certain thousands of men who have bank accounts and eat and drink and bring up their families on the proceeds of this complicated swindle.

There is no reality in a single phrase uttered in politics, no meaning in one single word of any of it. There is no man in public life who stands for anything. They are shadows; they are phantasmagoria. At best they cater to the better elements; at worst they frankly subserve the worst. There is no one who stands for his own ideas himself, by himself, a man. If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic party or the Republican party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, —then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem..." - Page 146.

If you have read this far and have, perhaps, smiled or chuckled at some of the quotes, then forget what I have written at the beginning, Chapman's book will be of value to you. The good news, if you want to read more of what Chapman wrote, is that you can download the entire book as a PDF from my web page.

2010 GOP and TEA

2010-11-03T22:13:00.001-07:00

The modern Tea Party movement, like its historical namesake, is predominantly controlled by middle and upperclass wealthy businessmen. Here is Howard Zinn quoting Pauline Maier's writings about the 1773 Tea Party, "The officers and committee members of the Sons of Liberty were drawn almost entirely from the middle and upper classes of colonial society." (A People's History Of The United States, p. 68) Maier notes, according to Zinn, that while these men recognized the need for revolution, they placed an "emphasis on order and restraint" and John Adams, according to Zinn complained about the "rude and insolent Rabbles." These historical "tea partiers," like their modern counterparts surely had the tiger by the tail. They needed to arouse the masses to strike a blow against England, without getting them so aroused that they would throw off their colonial masters as well. Here is wikipedia's account of Samuel Adams trying to walk this line and control the tiger, "While Samuel Adams tried to reassert control of the meeting, people poured out of the Old South Meeting House and headed to Boston Harbor. That evening, a group of 30 to 130 men, some of them thinly disguised as Mohawk Indians, boarded the three vessels and, over the course of three hours, dumped all 342 chests of tea into the water."

The post-mortem of the 2010 election is that Republicans took control of the House Of Representatives in a historic 60 seat victory over House Democrats. Obama failed, the GOP triumphed and were given a mandate to alter course, "Republicans Capture House in Historic Wave, Claim 'Mandate' to Shrink Government" headlined Fox News. The problem is that many of these GOP gains were really Tea Party gains (12 seats according to the San Diego Union Tribune). While the Tea Party candidates may caucus with the Republicans and may have won Republican primaries and been listed on the ballot on the Republican ticket, I think it is a fallacy for mainstream Republicans to assume that Tea Party victories signal a mandate to the Republican party. Modern tea partiers, like their counterparts in 1773, are the tiger whose tail is being held by mainstream Republicans. The Republican jubilation the day after the 2010 election is because they falsely assume that they can control these Tea Party members of Congress. To that I say good luck! The Tea Party candidates are the zealots of the Republican campaign dogma of no taxes, no regulation, no education, no compromise. While mainstream Republicans understand these as mere political pontifications the Tea Party members of Congress are true believers.

Continuing on with the 2010 post-mortem, did Obama fail? Massively so, but he failed the day after his historic election in 2008. You see, Obama is a politician who may have used the rhetoric of "hope" "change," and "yes we can" but, as with any politician he was/is not a true believer. Unfortunately the people who cast their votes for Obama in 2008 believed and Obama failed and continues to fail every time he does not live up to his lofty campaign rhetoric. Watch Jon Stewart try to get Obama to recognize the origin of his failure and why the Democrats will continue to fail until they begin to live up to the hope for change expressed in the 2008 election.

The results of the mid-term election in 2010 show the Republicans making the same mistake as the Democrats. They have true believers amongst them in the aftermath of the election, yet the career politicians within the GOP understand that the party cannot deliver on any of the promises they so gallantly campaigned on. The problem the Republicans face today, as observed in 1773, is that the Tea Party may get out of control and those advocating more direct methods may not think it sufficient to sit in a meeting and debate the issues long into the night. They may instead pour out into the street and take matters into their own hands. To mainstream Republicans who have enflamed this tiger one must ask, what then?

Book Review: Wealth Against Commonwealth

2010-11-02T19:37:00.000-07:00

Lloyd, Henry Demarest. Wealth Against Commonwealth. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1894.

I have just finished editing and posting online an electronic edition of Lloyd's anti-monopoly classic. While this was an incredible amount of work, it gave me a chance to re-read this wonderful book and to reflect on Lloyd's observations 116 years after he penned them.

What is immediately clear is that in the last 116 years corporations have consolidated their power along the lines that Lloyd warned about. Just reflect for a moment on the monumental 2004 film The Corporation, where the film makers concluded that "150 years ago, the business corporation was a relatively insignificant institution. Today, it is all pervasive...." where abuses are blamed on a "few bad apples" while the truth is that the corporation is a "paradox" an institution that "creates great wealth but causes enormous and often hidden harms." The filmmakers explore the extent to which a corporation, if personality traits are analyzed, could be considered a psychopath. WOW, even for 2004 that was a stunning and radical statement. Now jump back 116 years and read what Lloyd wrote on the very same topic.

"The man who should apply in his family or his citizenship this 'survival of the fittest' theory as it is practically professed and operated in business would be a monster, and would be speedily made extinct, as we do with monsters. To divide the supply of food between himself and his children according to their relative powers of calculation, to follow his conception of his own self-interest in any matter which the self-interest of all has taken charge of, to deal as he thinks best for himself with foreigners with whom his country is at war, would be a short road to the penitentiary or the gallows."

How is it that after 1894 we lost Lloyd's words to such an extent that when the film The Corporation was released in 2004 it seemed so revolutionary. It is also stunning, and one reason why I transcribed what I did from the beginning of the film, to note that the film says that 150 years ago the corporation was a relatively insignificant institution, while Lloyd, writing 116 years ago was already facing the largest monopoly the world had yet known, and was already well versed in the abuses that the corporate form creates. That means that in a short 32 years corporations were able to gain almost total control of the business, political, social, and religious life of America and the rest of the world.

"A friendly journal, the New York Sun, of April 25, 1889, in an editorial paragraph concerning the wealth of one of the trustees, said: 'his regular income is twenty millions of dollars a year. That makes him the richest man in the United States—perhaps the very richest in the world.' This is nearly three times the dividends paid in 1892 to all its stockholders by the Bank of England. The Bank of England has built up this earning power by two hundred years' work at the head of the finances of the greatest empire of history. This American wins thrice its dividend capability in less than a generation by contriving and managing an institution which he says does not do any business. Another entirely friendly paper, with sources of information of the very best, put his income two years later at $30,000,000 a year. No denial of the Sun's statement was attempted, and the Sun never withdrew or modified its figures."

The speed with which these corporate masters multiplied their fortunes was unheard in all of human history. Here is Lloyd again

"Commodore Vanderbilt, Parton tells us, was forty-four years old before he was worth $400,000. In the next thirty years he increased this to over $100,000,000—perhaps twice that; no one knows. Vanderbilt had to multiply this nest-egg of his forty-fourth year 250 times, but one of these 'trustees' will be a billionaire when he has turned himself over only ten times."

Remember, this was 1894, and Lloyd is talking about incomes of $30,000,000 a year and fortunes in the hundred of millions to billions. Lloyd tries to put this kind of money into perspective

"These incomes are sums which their fortunate owners could not count as they received them. If they did nothing but stand all day at the printing-presses of the Treasury Department while the millions came uncrinkled out in crisp one-dollar greenbacks, or worked only at catching the new dollars as they rolled out from the dies of the Mint, they could not count them. If they worked eight hours a day, and six days a week, and fifty-two weeks in the year, they could not count their money. The dollars would come faster than their fingers could catch them; the dollars would slip out of their clutch and fall to the floor, and, piling up and up, would reach their knees, their middle, their arms, their mouth, and Midas would be snuffed out in his own gold."

Even today fortunes this large are incomprehensible to the average mind. To hear that someone is worth $400 million dollars or is a billionaire still shocks the average mind. Imagine the reader in 1894 trying to take in this information. If we had studied Lloyd's book, if we had understood the corrupting influence of corporate power, there would have been a revolution when the Supreme Court issued it's ruling in the case of Citizens United v Federal Election Commission.

In 1909, John D. Rockefeller published a biography entitled "Random Reminiscences Of Men And Events," in an attempt to partly answer Lloyd's critique. In chapter three, The Standard Oil Company, Rockefeller writes, "It would be surprising if in an organization which included a great number of men there should not be an occasional employee here and there who acted, in connection with the business or perhaps in conducting his own affairs, in a way which might be criticized. [...] To judge the character of all the members of a great organization or the organization itself by the actions of a few individuals would be manifestly unfair." (Rockefeller, John D. Random Reminiscences Of Men And Events. Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc. 1933. Page 55) Does that sound familiar? Go back to the beginning of the 2004 film The Corporation and you will see how "bad apples" within a corporation are blamed for each and every scandal.

We are still engulfed in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and, in 2010, we are still lead astray into blaming "bad apples" within particular corporations, or individual bad practices - like credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations - rather than the underlying structure of Capitalism where individual gain is prized above all else. Here is Lloyd again in 1894

"For a hundred years or so our economic theory has been one of industrial government by the self-interest of the individual. Political government by the self-interest of the individual we call anarchy. It is one of the paradoxes of public opinion that the people of America, least tolerant of this theory of anarchy in political government, lead in practising (sic.) it in industry."

Why is our modern analysis so shallow when Lloyd got it back in 1894?

Wealth Against Commonwealth is a must read for anyone who seriously wants to understand America, Capitalism, and why, given our enormous wealth, our society continues to decline.

"We have chartered the self-interest of the individual as the rightful sovereign of conduct; we have taught that the scramble for profit is the best method of administering the riches of earth and the exchange of services. Only those can attack this system who attack its central principle, that strength gives the strong in the market the right to destroy his neighbor. Only as we have denied that right to the strong elsewhere have we made ourselves as civilized as we are."

Capitalism & Bed Bugs

2010-10-14T00:44:00.000-07:00

Capitalism often can be blamed for contributing to the worlds problems. It is a fact that the unrelenting hunt for greater and greater profits has directly led to human rights abuses, inhumane treatment of animals, environmental pollution, tens, if not, hundreds of thousands of workers killed on the job each year, the spread of new diseases, and wars. We are encouraged, mostly by those who espouse Capitalism, to see the cause of these afflictions as coming from another source. And so it is with bed bugs.

Bed bugs, the common wisdom dictates, were almost eliminated in the western developed world in the early part of the 20th century thanks, in large part, to pesticides like DDT and Malathion. "Bed bugs were a common problem in the United States up through the World War II era. Around this time, they were virtually eradicated from the US with the wide scale usage of pesticides, such as DDT and Malathion." Or here from the University Of Kentucky, "Bed bug infestations were common in the United States before World War II. But with improvements in hygiene, and especially the widespread use of DDT during the 1940s and ‘50s, the bugs all but vanished." Great, my capitalists readers are now thinking, American industry, thanks to science, freedom, and American ingenuity, solved this problem. But our friends in Kentucky continue, "The pests remained fairly prevalent, however, in other regions of the world including Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe."

Fallacy #1: problems can be solved in a piecemeal way

Here is a thought exercise which may help to illuminate this fallacy. Apartment 2A has a cockroach problem. The tenant complains to the building manager who calls in an exterminator. The exterminator treats apartment 2A. The exterminator is paid for this services. The problem here is that everyone knows that if apartment 2A has a bug problem then it is likely that the rest of the building has a bug problem. Treating one apartment and not the whole building merely moves the problem from apartment to apartment and will require multiple visits from the exterminator and, in fact, eventually the bugs will return to apartment 2A.

Unfortunately, under a capitalist system there is no economic incentive to address the problem in a more comprehensive way. Both the building manager and the exterminator are satisfied to be chasing the tail of the bug problem because for the building manager, individual treatment is cheap, and for the exterminator, repeated treatments guarantees a regular cash flow.

The fallacy about the elimination of the bed bug problem in the western developed world after World War II is identical, just on a larger scale. In this case the adjoining apartments are oceans apart and the infestation will take longer to return. Thought of in this way the common wisdom about the elimination of the bed bugs was merely an elaborate shell game.

Reality Check: Globalization defeats the piecemeal

This obviously should not need to be stated, but unfortunately it does. There has been a tendency to blame environmental regulations and the banning of pesticides for the resurgence of the bed bug problem. "It is also likely that changes in pest management practices coupled with the development of resistance to modern day pesticides has contributed to the successful re-establishment of bed bug populations in the United States." Or our friends in Kentucky echoing this sentiment "Changes in modern pest control practice — and less effective bed bug pesticides" Returning to our thought exercise this is akin to arguing that if stronger and better pesticides were used in apartment 2A then the bugs living in the walls of apartment 8C would no longer be a concern. The distance between apartment 2A and 8C may, for a while, provide the illusion that the pesticides used are preventing re-infestation. The reality is that pesticides or not it takes time for re-infestation to occur. Maybe the pesticides will delay the re-infestation a little while, but they cannot prevent it.

Now throw globalization into our thought exercise. Imagine that every day items are moving around the apartment building from one apartment to the next. The person living in apartment 11E gives the person living in 8C a box of children's toys, and the person in 8C gives the person in 2A a stack of old magazines, and the person in 2A gives the person in 11E some holiday decorations, and so on... This movement of goods around the apartment building will only increase the rate of re-infestation.

The discussion of the bed bug problem hints at this aspect of globalization without calling it out by name. Here is the Kentucky site "Immigration and international travel have undoubtedly contributed to the resurgence of bed bugs in the U.S. [...] The bugs are efficient hitchhikers and are usually transported in on luggage, clothing, beds, furniture, and other items." And here is the other site I've been quoting "Some of the more common dispersal mechanisms include overnight stays in bed bug infested quarters, the purchase of infested furniture (rental furniture, used/second hand furniture, reconditioned mattresses etc.), the acquisition of discarded items that are infested, and migration of bed bugs from one infested dwelling to another in multi-occupancy settings (apartments, college housing, medical facilities, senior communities etc.)"

Why blame the environmental regulation of pesticides rather than globalization? Because the assumption is that we can't do anything about globalization, people as well as goods and merchandise will naturally move around the globe. Therefore, the only thing we can do, the Capitalistic logic dictates, is to take steps to kill the invaders before they can establish themselves. You see, this is what companies have been doing since World War II, our conservative friends would argue, and that is what has kept the bed bug problem under control. And this is where the argument becomes bullshit... mere propaganda.

Problem #1: While DDT was banned in America in the 1970s it continued to be used in other parts of the world.

I find it interesting that I began this blog post quoting the common knowledge that strong pesticides like DDT and Malathion resulted in bed bugs being eliminated in Western developed nations around World War II. The odd thing is that bed bugs persisted in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe according to these same reports. According to wikipedia "The Stockholm Convention, which took effect in 2004, outlawed several persistent organic pollutants, and restricted DDT use to vector control." So, as recently as 2004 DDT was still being used in many parts of the world for vector control, yet world wide the bed bug population is exploding. Again, the common knowledge about the resurgence "There has been a general increase in bed bug activity on a world-wide basis over the past decade. Due to the increased prevalence of bed bugs world-wide, the frequency of encounters with bed bugs during travel is also likely to have increased resulting in a greater number of introductions into the US than in the past. Most of the early introductions appear to have been associated with travel as many of the early infestations in the late 1990’s were identified in hotel guest rooms." Why was DDT and other strong pesticides being used in other parts of the world not enough to control the bed bug population? That question is not asked in any story on the bed bug problem that I have read or listened to.

One answer has to be that the bugs have developed resistance to DDT. Again, wikipedia, "Resistance was noted early in spray campaigns. Paul Russell, a former head of the Allied Anti-Malaria campaign, observed in 1956 that 'resistance has appeared [after] six or seven years.' DDT has lost much of its effectiveness in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Turkey and Central America, and it has largely been replaced by organophosphate or carbamate insecticides, e.g. malathion or bendiocarb."

If the bugs gain resistance so quickly then why are some arguing that the EPA needs to approve additional pesticides to fight the bed bug problem? "The Environment and Natural Resources Committee of the Ohio Senate adopted a unanimous resolution urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to grant an emergency exemption for Propoxur..." is Propoxur going to work better and longer than DDT? Let's read between the lines.

Why can't Propoxur be used now? "Propoxur had long been labeled for use in homes. It lost that status last year because the manufacturer had declined to pay to re-test and re-register the product..." I get it! Now the capitalistic pieces are falling into place. The company did not want to pay to re-test and re-register their product so the bed bug crisis can be used to grant the company an exemption.

You see, that is all that is needed because the reason bed bugs began to re-immerge in the United States was because hotels just did not have the right pesticides to treat the problem. "In the past, hotel guest rooms were typically treated on a regular basis with residual pesticides. As a result, bed bugs introduced during travel were likely to contact pesticide as they left the luggage and traveled to the bed. During the mid 1990's there was a dramatic shift in pest management practices. Routinely scheduled treatments of baseboards in hotels, motels and apartments were replaced with targeted applications of baits for pests such as ants and cockroaches." So what you are saying is that hotels, motels, and apartment buildings just stopped using the pesticides they had available to them.

Here is a quote from an MSNBC story about the cleanliness of hotel rooms, "How often are the bedspreads cleaned? The truth is: not that often. Cleaning bedspreads is expensive, and most folks would balk at the room rate if that cost were passed on to the customer." The truth about the resurgence of bed bugs in the United States and world wide is right here. Cost.

Why were bed bugs nearly eliminated in the Western world after World War II? Because we had the money to hire people and to put in place practices that kept the bed bug population under control. The hunt for greater and greater profits and the disparity of the distribution of wealth has finally reversed those gains. How will new pesticides solve this problem if hotel, motels, and apartment buildings continue the practice of spot treatments and piecemeal solutions? And if hotels, motels, and apartment buildings want to switch back to policies that may have been effective in the past, how can they survive if consumers, whose wages have been stagnant, can't afford the passed along cost increases.

The bed bug crisis is not a crisis of science nor technology nor education nor public understanding... it is a crisis of Capitalism, it is a crisis of inequality, it is a crisis or poverty. All sources agree that after World War II, Western nations were able to gain control of their bed bug problem while poorer nations, what we later called 3rd world nations, never did. There is no better evidence that the economic inequalities which expanded after War War II are leading to an increase in world wide poverty than the resurgence of the bed bug population. While the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, like Wall Street bankers, bed bugs are feasting on the carcasses of the masses.

Looking for intelligent books on Capitalism?

Free Expression Victory in Oregon | Bookselling This Week

2010-09-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

Free Expression Victory in Oregon | Bookselling This Week

It's Not About Whales...

2010-08-31T10:50:00.000-07:00

Now that Whale Wars season three has ended I feel like I can finally write something about this season and the unfortunate tag line, "It's not about whales. It's about 42 crazy die-hards with a mission." Let me begin with a disclaimer: I am not a fan of Paul Watson (if you want to know why, post a comment asking why and I'll post a response explaining). Be that as it may, I always try to recognize truth as being true no matter who the messenger is, and, therefore, I appreciate many of Paul Watson's efforts to save whales as well as his criticisms of Greenpeace. His observation that Greenpeace spent a number of years making "whale snuff films" (I think that is how Paul phrased it) is/was totally correct. Greenpeace expected, perhaps naively, that if people were shown the truth their hearts and their minds would change. One could substitute almost any environmental issue and the Greenpeace campaign would have looked the same - document what is really going on, grab the media's attention with some daring action, and publicize, publicize, PUBLICIZE the truth. Greenpeace is adept at using the media as a tool for laying the seeds of social change, but they were always weak on follow through. To many inside, and outside, of the organization it did appear, at times, that our (I say our because I worked at Greenpeace at one time) campaigns stopped after we grabbed the media's attention.

Summing up. I'm not a fan of Paul Watson, but when he suggests that Greenpeace stumbled after documenting the slaughter of whales from actually putting into place any real program for social change, I can agree with him 100%.

In contrast to Greenpeace, Paul Watson and his organization The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society worked from a different perspective. If one had to summarize the Greenpeace philosophy in a single sentence I think it would be "use the media to expose abuses so that an outraged public will demand that the abuses end." If one had to summarize the Sea Shepherd philosophy I think it would be "stop abuses." It never seemed to me that Paul Watson or the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society cared about media attention, they certainly did not care if the rest of the world agreed with them or not. Given that, it is somewhat shocking that it is Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society who are behind the Whale Wars TV series. Using the media to publicize the death of whales was Greenpeace's shtick, not Paul's, and it was one of his main criticisms of that organization. Because Paul Watson never really valued media attention, Paul is now running a campaign in the guise of a TV series, but Paul is not very good at media campaigns.

I know it just can't be me, but each episode of Whale Wars seems more lame. Even after three seasons the deck crew still can't launch the inflatable boats without a hitch. The Sea Shepherds continually deploy prop-fowlers that don't work. They throw rotten butter at the whaling ships and laugh about how that is going to stop the whaling but it does not seem to even slow the whalers down. In all honesty whalers are used to working hour after hour in the bloody remains of whales, do you really think some stinky butter is going to phase these guys?!

In his pre-media days Paul Watson would load the front of his ships with concrete and ram the whaling ships and sink them. Now he takes a ship down to the arctic ocean that can't even break ice and could sink if it followed the whalers into an ice field. WTF! They bring a wave-piercing trimaran, the Ady Gil, into season three and it sinks. They lose two inflatable boats in a storm and when retrieving one an over anxious crew member guns the engine on rocks and destroys the propeller. They chase the whalers in boats that go too slow to keep up and when they do catch up they seem to lack any plan on how to actually shut down the whaling operation. And worse of all, they allow it all to be filmed and broadcast on international TV.

One can criticize Greenpeace for its media operations, but Greenpeace understood early on if one were going to use the media to create social change then one had to control the message. Paul's inexperience with the media has meant that he has forgotten that he needs to control the message. This explains why, on the third season of Whale Wars, Paul Watson allowed the tag line for the season to become "It's not about whales. It's about 42 crazy die-hards with a mission." Again, WTF! Anyone who knows Paul Watson knows that it is about the whales. For christ sake he has spent decades fighting against whaling, if it has not been about the whales what has it been about? Season three of Whale Wars was a cluster fuck in every way, but the most disheartening thing about season three was that Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society did not stop the show once Animal Planet began using this tag line.

Here is a guy who once rammed and sank whaling ships and now he sits back and let's some TV network say his life's work is "not about whales!" WTF. What happened to Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society? Is the money they are making from Whale Wars really that good? Has it truly stopped being about the whales? Is Animal Planet correct?

Book Selling 101: What We Call Success

2010-08-07T22:22:00.000-07:00

I setup a book sale table this weekend, August 6-7, 2010, at the Jesus Radicals conference here in Portland, Oregon. Before I go into the business of book tabling, let me praise the organizers of this conference. It was a GREAT conference, and anyone who knows me knows that I rarely say such things. Perhaps my enthusiasm for the conference stems, in part, from the fact that I did not know what to expect. I feared that a conference discussing Christianity and Anarchism would either be creepy (i.e. too much Christianity) or disorganized (i.e. too much Anarchy). I was pleased to discover that the conference was, for me, a perfect balance. For that, credit must go to the organizers.

I also must admit that the conference started off really strong. The first two sessions I saw, "Race, Racism and the Nation-State: A Christian, Anarchist Perspective," and "Behind the Blue Wall," were wonderful sessions. Andy Alexis-Baker's history of policing in the "Behind the Blue Wall" was very thought provoking, especially in light of the Red & Black Cafe controversy. He presented a wealth of facts about the origin of police forces in the United States and Europe. Nekeisha Alexis-Brown left me speechless after her discussion of race and racism. I was also pleasantly surprised by the morning session on the 2nd day "Navigating the Security Culture: Activism in a Post 9/11 World." I had heard both Laura Regan and Tre Arrow when they spoke at Reed College earlier in 2010 or late in 2009 and they were not as good in that presentation as they were at this conference. They really engaged the audience this time and spoke directly and without hesitation about the new realities of activism and police surveillance. If you missed this years Jesus Radicals conference you really missed something special.

Now let's look at selling books at a table at a conference. First off, for this conference I was never informed of any set fee for the privilege of setting up my book table. Therefore, I dropped $10 into the conference donation bucket. Given the nature of this conference I brought a lot of my Christian pacifist/activist inventory, including most of my Ozer books, the biography of Philip Berrigan, Staughton Lynds history of nonviolence, and many more. My inventory drew much praise which always makes a bookseller happy. Unfortunately during the first day of the conference I only sold two things, the autobiography of Dorothy Day entitled The Long Loneliness and a bumper sticker. While I was enjoying the conference I was becoming worried that I would not sell any stock.

However, on the second day of the conference sales picked up. But even then, not until after lunch on the second day. So when setting up a table at events like this one really has to stay with it and not bail on the first day when sales are really slow or walk too far away from ones table, just because sales have been slow, for interesting conversations while ignoring people who may be wanting to pickup something. Sitting at a table is boring but staying there does pay off. The pace of selling at a table is erratic, there are many distractions and when good sessions are being conducted you may not sell anything, but during breaks and before and after lunch or dinner sales will increase. So you can get in good conversations once you become familiar with the pace of the conference and get a sense of which sessions are going to be popular.

Also, one has to remember that on the first day of a conference people may be saving their money just in case something really cool comes along. It would suck to be broke after the first day and miss some incredible opportunity the next day. So, one needs to be patient and to be around to answer questions and let people know that you will be there the next day as well.

On the second day of the Jesus Radicals conference I sold 11 items. The most surprising was a copy of "Fighting the Lambs War," the biography of Philip Berrigan. I have carried this book in my inventory for 5-years and this is the first copy I have ever sold. I love the book but I have trouble selling my copies because when I ordered them, the publisher had run out of stock on softcover editions and sent me the hardcover editions instead. They apologized for doing this but they still charged me a whopping $31.97 for a book whose list price was $35.00. So these books have sat on my shelves for 5-years because I have no room to discount them from list price and I rarely find someone who knows of, and loves the Berrigans, so much, that they will buy this book. Mostly I see people who say they love the Berrigans but can't afford the book.

So, did I make a ton of money? I am probably the only bookseller in the United States that will publish these figures publicly, but here they are, this is what booksellers call success.

I sold 13 items total over 2 days. I took in $116.75 for those 13 items. But remember each of these items that I sold had a cost for me to purchase in the first place. When I subtract out my Cost Of Goods Sold (COGS) (as the IRS puts it) I made $45.75 (minus the $10 donation I made to the conference left me with $35.75 in cash after the two days). I did not have any travel expenses (the conference was in Portland and I live here), I paid for my food and drinks out of my own pocket, and I don't pay myself for the 14 hours I spent at the conference tabling (if I did, and if I spent the entire $35.75 in profit on my salary I could have paid myself $2.55 an hour). When I look at numbers like these I wonder how AK Press manages to send people to book sales and radical conferences all up and down the West coast. They have traveling expenses and the people working their tables are not making $2.55 per hour (at least I hope they aren't). My profit percent ($35.75/$116.75) was 30% which is pretty average for my sales. But for me to really survive or to be able to do what AK Press can do I would either need a huge volume of sales at a 30% profit or I need a much larger profit margin (say 60%).

Yet, for me, this was a success. The conference was wonderfully organized, the sessions were interesting, I met a ton of really cool people and had great conversations, and I made $35.75 extra so that I can add a few more titles to my inventory. I think I'll buy Ozer's remaining stock of Clarence Darrow's wonderful book "Marx vs Tolstoy," look for them to appear in my inventory in the next month or so.

Book Review: "Last Night I Dreamed Of Peace," by Dang Thuy Tram

2010-07-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

Dang Thuy Tram, "Last Night I Dreamed Of Peace: An Extraordinary Diary Of Courage From The Vietnam War," Random House, New York, 2008.

I can't say that I loved this book, but I also can't say that I hated it. In many respects I was just annoyed that Thuy's diary was more like reading Marcia Brady's diary than a war diary. Perhaps it was the decade in which it was written, a time when things were just simpler. If you have ever seen the opening to the movie Dick let me transform that scene into Thuy's diary. Two teenaged girls in the Watergate apartment building jumping around in their pajamas writing a love letter to Bobby Sherman. Take the entire scene, replace the pajamas with black Vietcong clothing, move it from the Watergate building to the jungles of South Vietnam, but leave the writing of the love letter to Bobby Sherman in tact, except replace the name Bobby Sherman with the phrase "Little Brother," "Big Brother," or "Little Sister" leaving all the teenage romantic sentiment, and you get the idea why this diary could be annoying. It was like one big non sequitur. You have this war going on, bombs falling all around, bullets flying overhead, land mines exploding underfoot. Bloody soldiers are showing up at all hours of the day at Thuy's medical clinic. They are constantly hiding from American reconnaissance. There is never enough food or medicine to go around. Yet these love letters are apparently crisscrossing the battle field and Thuy and her friends are stealing moments away to hug, cry, and share their intimate thoughts with each other.

At the same time, this is what makes the diary so compelling. Like Anne Fank you get to look into the minds of teenagers struggling with all their teenage emotions while simultaneously trying to fight a war. The drama here is real. It is not two middle class American white girls wondering if they will ever see their true love again because it is bed time and their mom is making them get off the phone. For Thuy every parting brings real uncertainty. Will she live through the night, will she be captured by the Americans, or will her friends, called away to the front, ever return. The diary is also compelling, from an American perspective, because Thuy was fighting against the Americans during the Vietnam war. "This is war;" Thuy writes on page 149 "it spares no one, not a baby or an old woman, and the most hideous thing about it is the bloodthirsty Americans." The revelation that shocked me the most in this war diary was that we Americans targeted medical clinics like Thuy's during the Vietnam war. Her clinic was completely destroyed on numerous occasions by American bombs or missiles, tanks or infantry. When American reconnaissance planes would circle above the clinic Thuy and her staff would know that their location had be given away and they would rush to pack up and move the clinic before they were attacked. Sometimes patients too sick to move would be hidden and Thuy would stay behind to care for them while others would move the clinic up or down the side of the mountain.

This diary is anti-war, as most honest war diaries are. While there is a certain thrill to be had by evading your enemy the day-to-day uncertainty is emotionally and physically draining. The daily horror of watching your country, your countryside, and the people you love and care for being torn apart by war can never breed a joy for battle. "Why are there such terrible, cruel people who want to use our blood to water their tree of gold?" Thuy wonders. I find hope in the fact that she is able to ask this question while mired in the daily struggle of war.

You Won't Get A Headache Reading The 2009 Water Report

2010-06-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

The summer 2010 Know H2O report from the Tigard Water Service Area arrived in the mail just the other day. After living in Ohio for a number of years I know how important it is to read these reports, because you never know what is in your water. However, since moving to Oregon I've gotten a little lazy because of the prevailing environmental ethic that pervades this state.

In the midwest the dominant sentiment about water seemed to be expressed like "What?... you expect clean water!" You just couldn't phase people there. The Cuyahoga river caught fire and as everyone knew the waters were deadly. In fact, even today, while drowning continues to kill persons who inadvertently fall into the river, if one were to survive the current and undertow, merely being exposed to the water is a health concern. After strong thunderstorms raw sewage spills into the river and Lake Erie, and yet you continue to see people swimming in these waters.

People in Portland pride themselves on the quality of their drinking water. My dentist has informed me that water out here is not fluoridated as it is in other parts of the country. And, of course, water recreation is a popular past time. Since moving here, however, I am beginning to think that all is not well. I have overheard visitors to the beaches at Sauvie Island commenting about the people who are swimming in the water. I just heard a talk about the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the possibility of leaking radioactive waste on the banks of the Columbia River that, frankly, scared me. And while having lunch recently at the Old Spaghetti Factory on the banks of the Willamette River I noticed a familiar looking sewage overflow sign announcing that the river water was not safe after strong storms. I thought I had left that behind when I left Cleveland! People in Portland would not put up with sewage overflows, would they?

Now back to the Tigard Water Service Area report. On page seven it presents a table entitled "2009 Water Quality Analysis Results." Back in Ohio, I would have thought, "Oh god... let's see what's in our water" but with my Oregon attitude I thought "This will probably be not that interesting." Boy was I wrong. I was surprised to see that along with the stuff you'd expect, Ibuprofen is in our water at a maximum detected level of 3.50 (ppb). A friend of mine who is a nurse has worked on a campaign in the hospital where she works to end the practice of dumping expired medicines down the drain. And, at least, Ibuprofen was tested for by the water service. But, WTF!, Ibuprofen in the water... I'd expect that in Ohio and people would not complain, maybe they'd even think there was a benefit to it, but in Oregon, do we really want the salmon doped up on pain killers?

Maybe we do! Maybe a little Ibuprofen in the water helps to sooth the pain these fish must feel from radioactive exposure and sewage overflows. In all seriously, if Oregonians won't fluoridate their drinking water why would we allow our drinking water to contain Ibuprofen. My nurse friend assures me that this is only the tip of the iceberg. You would not believe the medical soup that gets dumped down the drain by many medical centers and hospitals. And, she warns, if these expired medicines are thrown in the trash they will ultimately leach into the ground water if and when their containers become broken or unsealed.

Now when I cross the Tualatin River and see people out kayaking I wonder, "how clean is the water today." That's not something I've thought about much since moving here from Cleveland.

Don't Bailout Petroleum

2010-06-01T10:08:00.000-07:00

Conservative pundits and politicians are attacking President Obama and the Democratic leadership for not taking aggressive action to stop the oil flow and cleanup the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Many of the pundits and politicians who are now in favor of the federal government spending time and money cleaning up BP's mess are the same ones who came out in strong opposition to "corporate bailouts" of Wall Street banks. Obama's not doing enough in the Gulf of Mexico, they say, but he did too much on Wall Street.

It is also fashionable to compare the BP disaster to hurricane Katrina. Just as Bush was criticized for reacting too slowly to Katrina, Obama, it is said, has acted too slowly to the BP disaster. Both Katrina and the BP disaster are disasters of capitalism. Pro-business regulations, lax environmental enforcement, crumbling infrastructure, reductions in staffing in regulatory agencies charged with oversight and inspections, not to mention reductions in staffing in agencies responsible for emergency response contributed to the scope of both disasters. Of course, neither Democrats nor Republicans want to bring up these similarities between Katrina and the BP disaster. Instead Katrina is used as a political weapon against Obama rather then against the President and administration whose lackadaisical response imbrued the phrase "hurricane Katrina" with such dread. But let's take the comparison seriously for the moment and ask, "Is the BP disaster Obama's Katrina?"

No. Why not?

Because NOAA warned about the severity of hurricane Katrina before it made landfall. Because President Bush went on TV to warn gulf coast resident before the hurricane made landfall. Because there was warning, after warning, after warning before the hurricane made landfall. Yet the Bush administration still bungled its response to Katrina. According to the same Washington Post article linked to above, when asked about the lame government response, then President Bush responded "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

If the Obama administration had 24 to 48 hours warning about the BP disaster and still failed to act in a swift manner I could see a more direct comparison. Secondly, there is a second party involved in the BP disaster and that is the company British Petroleum. They were responsible for the drilling platform and for being ready in case there was an emergency on the platform. They were responsible for having in place both policies and procedures, as well as appropriate technology, to handle the catastrophic failure of one of their drilling platforms. There was no similar company directly responsible for hurricane Katrina. Pundits and Republican politicians are reluctant to mention BP's responsibility in this disaster.

Are there similarities between what happened in Katrina and the current BP disaster. Yes. As mentioned earlier they are the fact that government oversight has been slashed, that environmental regulations have been slashed, that disaster response budgets have been slashed, and that those responsible for the devastation will not be held to account because laws limiting liability have been put into place. The problem with the pundit and opposition responses to both Katrina and the BP disaster is that these real causes are ignored leaving us vulnerable to the next disaster. I agree with the conservative pundits on one point however, we should not bailout BP. Cleaning up this disaster is not the government's job, that honor belongs to BP and BP alone. Let them cleanup the spill, don't bailout any more corporations!

Fahrenheit 000111000011

2010-05-11T22:16:00.000-07:00

The recent fire at Great Northwest Books in Portland, Oregon, has me thinking once again about our endangered books. As I sifted through the remains of Great Northwest Books it became obvious that books, while made of paper, do not burn particularly well. Fahrenheit 451, while a great title for a dystopian novel, stands in stark contrast to what remains after a three alarm fire in a book store. Shelf after shelf of books which, from a distance, looked pretty good. In fact, the largest threat to these books was the water which was used to put out the fire. Even in the pile of books pictured, one can still make out the print on the pages. While reading one of these books would require extra effort, they would need to be dried and cleaned from debris and they would need to be aired out to reduce the smell of smoke, they could, if one were desperate enough, still be read.

It makes one understand why books have been such an enduring mechanism by which human thought and culture have been passed down from generation to generation. Books are hard to destroy! If Bradbury were writing his novel today the title would have to be changed from "Fahrenheit 451" to "Fahrenheit 000111000011" to symbolize the fact that in the future books will not be burned but instead deleted.

Returning to the fire, it is also interesting to note that within a day, after the fire was out, Phil Wikeland, the owner of Great Northwest Books, was able to get back into his store and begin to sort through what remained of his stock, while a week later his computers were still out of commission suffering from a combination of water, heat, and smoke damage. Digital books are less robust than print books. They require electricity to be read. The reading devices are sensitive to heat, static electricity, dropping or crushing, viruses, water, operating system updates, data format incompatibilities, and a host of other factors. Imagine taking a book outside and hammering a nail through it, can you still read it after the nail is removed? Now do that with your Kindle (OK, if you do and your Kindle won't work... don't blame me)!

Baiting The Hook And Goading The Public

2010-04-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

The May 2010 issue of Portland Monthly contains a short opinion piece on the aftermath of the passage of issues 66 & 67 entitled "Baiting The Hook." The essence of the piece is that surrounding states are using the passage of issues 66 & 67 to entice Oregon businesses and wealthy individuals away from the state. The tone of the opinion piece suggests that the approval of issues 66 & 67 by Oregon voters was a huge blunder. Further the piece suggests that issues 66 & 67 passed only because the majority of voters would not be personally effected by the tax increases and because the YES campaign "dumbed down" the language of their campaign "to a nursery-school story about nasty businessmen swiping lunch money from children..."

How insulting!

When I read the language in my voter pamphlet on issues 66 & 67 I did not get the sense that I was reading a "nursery-school story," nor that the language was "dumbed down." (Read my earlier blog posting on these issues) What did come through loud and clear was the fact that Oregon was already a very business friendly state. According to the Portland Monthly opinion piece "Even with 66 and 67 in effect, Oregon still ranks as the country’s 14th most business-friendly state, according to the Tax Foundation, a tax policy think tank in Washington, DC." So what's the big deal? Public services needed additional funding and Oregon voters decided to ask the rich and the business community to step up and pay a little more. There are still 36 states that are less business friendly then us! Being ranked as the 14th most business friendly state out of 50 is great. If you look at college and university rankings in Oregon, Marylhurst University is ranked 14 in the state. Sure, they'd like to be in the top 10 or even #1 but I am certain Marylhurst University officials would look at what it would take to jump ahead in the rankings and ask "but at what cost...?" I believe that is what Oregon voters said when they passed issues 66 & 67. Sure we'd like to be the #1 business friendly state in the nation, or maybe just in the top 10, but at what cost to social programs and eduction?

The most disturbing anecdote in the opinion piece was that of "Salem businessman William Colson and his sons" who, in 2006, " hopped over the Columbia River to Washington the year before selling their Holiday Retirement Corp, a massive elderly living company, for $6.8 billion." This, in my opinion, makes the point for the pro-issue 66 & 67 campaign. The fact of the matter was, as highlighted in this anecdote, that wealthy Oregon businessmen and their companies were not paying their fair share into the Oregon treasury. The opinion piece suggests that Oregon was stupid for its rigid tax structure and the businessman was smart for moving to Washington before the sale.

How insulting!

Look at it another way. Mr. Colson did not cross the Columbia river because he wanted to pay his taxes in Washington, he did not want to pay any taxes on his capital gains. If Idaho had less capital gains taxes than Washington he would have moved there. If Utah was still better, he would have moved there. And if there was a state that offered him ZERO capital gains taxes, he would have moved there. Mr. Colson did not love Washington nor did Mr. Colson wish to contribute his fair share to ensure that Washington had good social services and education. Mr. Colson just simply did not want to pay capital gains taxes! He did not care what effect that would have on state government, he did not care what effect that would have on education or parks and recreation, or police or fire protection. And the author of this opinion piece Bart Blasengame wants us, the Oregon voter, to feel sorry that Mr. Colson left our state.

Why? Why should we feel sorry? Who wants to live or work with a person who is not willing to contribute to make their community a better place? Looked at properly, the message in this opinion piece is that Oregon businesses want police and fire protection, they want education for their employees and their employee's children (so their employees don't have to take personal time for childcare), they want roads and snow removal (so their employees can get to work and their customers can get to their stores, or their company's products can be shipped), they want parks for company picnics, they want public transportation for their low-income workers, they want government protection against liability, BUT they don't want to pay for it!

If one was to follow the logic of the opinion piece to its logical conclusion the only safe position is to be the #1 most business friendly state because, if your state is anything less, businesses in your state might leave your state to move to the #1 most business friendly state. And if that is what it is all about, I say, let them leave! If your only stake in a community is "what has the community done for me lately" then we don't need you.

Checkout "Static" From The Seattle Public Library

2010-04-20T09:48:00.001-07:00

The Spring Book Sale of the Friends Of The Seattle Public Library was this past weekend April 16-18, 2010. As you know, if you have read my previous blog entries, I have a love-hate relationship with library book sales. I love them because I can find great books for my online store. I hate them because when I find books in a library book sale it means that these books were not getting checked out so the books are being sold to make shelf space available for more popular titles.

The challenge for all of us who want to keep books like Amy Goodman's "Static" on library shelves is to make sure that these books continue to circulate. The photo to the right shows that the copy of "Static" which I bought at the Friends Of The Seattle Public Library book sale was acquired on March 22, 2008. That was only two years ago, 24 months. When I scanned the Seattle Public Library online catalog I noticed that all remaining copies of "Static" in the libraries collection are checked in. If these books don't circulate more copies of "Static" will be sold in the fall book sale. So, if you live in Seattle and have a Seattle public library card, click here and check out a copy of "Static."

Here is a list of the other Seattle Public Library books that I bought in the most recent book sale. If a title interests you, go to your local public library and check it out. That is the only way these books will remain on library shelves.

Gore Vidal, "An Evening With Richard Nixon" (the Seattle library system has 0 copies left!)

Noam Chomsky, "Hegemony Or Survival: America's Quest For Global Dominance"

Ralph Nader, "Crashing The Party: How To Tell The Truth And Still Run For President"

Ralph Nader, "The Ralph Nader Reader" (Barbara Ehrenreich editor)

Tariq Ali, "Bush In Babylon: The Recolonisation Of Iraq"

Sarah Vowell, "Assassination Vacation"

Jeff Goodell, "Big Coal"

Molly Ivins, "Bill Of Wrongs"

If you want to own one of these books click here and look for it in my online catalog.

Book Review: "Growing (Up) At 37" by Jerry Rubin

2010-03-21T14:56:00.000-07:00

Jerry Rubin, "Growing (Up) At 37," M. Evans And Company: New York, 1976. ISBN: 0871311895 Call#: HN90.R3R88

Jerry Rubin (1938-1994) was a 60s radical, famous for being one of the founders of the yippies. His first book, "DO It!," was very much a yippie manifesto. I have not read his second book, "We Are Everywhere." I just finished reading his third book, "Growing (Up) At 37" and I loved it. The book is a lament against fame and ego, a reflection on revolution, and a quest for wisdom and self knowledge. Any activist who is in transition between one cause and another or one phase of activism and another will relish in Rubin's words. Just read the opening two paragraphs of the book from the chapter entitled "Crying at My Own Funeral" to get a flavor for what is coming

"In 1970, at the age of thirty-two, I had everything I thought I wanted in life. I was a leader in a powerful political movement struggling to transform our country's institutions. I loved and enjoyed the love of a warm woman. I had written a best-selling book and was a folk hero of rebellion to young people. My life was exciting, involved, relevant. I had satisfied all my childhood dreams. And then: crash.

In two brief years the mass political movement disappeared and the woman left me. A group of young kids publicly retired me from the movement for being over thirty. My fame turned to notoriety and "Where is he now?" stories. Newspapers began describing me with adjectives like "erstwhile" and "aging." People began relating to me as an image, not as a human being. Worst of all, I myself believed the image: I forgot who I was. I felt dead at thirty-four."

WOW, right? How does anyone survive that? The truthful answer is that they don't. The Jerry Rubin who emerges at the end of "Growing (Up) At 37" was not the same Jerry Rubin who began the journey recounted in the book. Even by page 17 the transformation was beginning and while the young activists of his day may have seen this Jerry Rubin as over-the-hill, in perceiving of him in this way they failed to listen to, or see the value of his critique.

"In the movement of the sixties we were guilty of many of the things we were fighting against in America. We were male chauvinists, we competed, we were entranced by the mystique of violence, we glorified youth, we lost touch with our bodies, we oversimplified reality, we became images to each other while playing the theater of protest. We OD'd on our own energy, demonstrated, screamed, pushed ourselves to exhaustion, and needed a rest to catch our breath. We lost control of our own energy. We manipulated ourselves into premature confrontations with men who used guns and brute force. We needed to stop-and look. It is vital for us to go inward and see how similar we are to the society and the parents against whom we are protesting. Changes cannot be made on the political level alone, or the society we are changing will be repeated. We must examine our own process."

No wonder the youth thought Rubin needed to retire. These words don't sound like the words of a revolutionary. Yet, what Rubin was imploring the youth to do was to create a real revolution, not merely a political transition. Relating this to our current age, all the effort to replace Bush with Obama was a mere political transition. We are left, after the transition, with all the bad policies and personal and societal hang-ups that we had before Obama became President. Reflect on the Bush-Obama transition and then re-read the paragraph above and you may appreciate more how revolutionary Rubin was being.

Much of the book focuses on Rubin exploration of many different personal growth, self-help, alternative medicine fads and movements. Rolfing, est, acupuncture, Fisher-Hoffman psychic therapy, yoga, gestalt therapy, and others. In my opinion, the best therapy for Rubin was the writing down of these experiences and the political and social observations that tie them together into an amazing work. In reading this I am reminded of Norah Vincent's "Self-Made Man" or John Ross' "Murdered By Capitalism." Both stunning works of political as well as personal transformation.

I was most saddened while reading "Growing (Up) At 37" by the chapter entitled "Dear Abbie," a letter written to Rubin's friend and fellow activist Abbie Hoffman. "I love you, Abbie, "Rubin writes on page 191, "You helped free me [...] You are a genuine American humorist, social critic, and revolutionary. It was such an experience to grow and build with you - to watch yippie evolve from an idea to a household word." Hoffman was underground at the time, fleeing from a drug arrest. What I found sad in this chapter was Rubin longing to be involved in a movement that was truly going to change the world. He writes on page 194, "I want to be politically active again - but not at the expense of my happiness and health. I do not want to be in a crazy movement that psychologically drains its people. [...] We want to be active again, but in a new way." And on page 196, "Wouldn't it be far-out if we could build a movement based on positive self-love and love for everyone without destructive infighting? A movement that always tells the truth, that communicates love and positive vibes, that fights injustice with humanity and love." This, in my opinion, is always the struggle that activists face. It is difficult to build a movement where those who get national and international attention as activists do not suffer under the effect of their own ego. A movement where men treat women as equals, where the youth respect the wisdom of the older activists and where the older activists respect the energy and drive of the youth, a movement where class, race, gender, and political ideologies cannot be used to divide us.

I guess what made me the most sad in the chapter "Dear Abbie" was that we never know if Abbie Hoffman ever reads these words and how, if ever, he responds. Could other 60s activist leaders understand what Rubin was saying? Did they agree? Or were they still fighting the demons of their own ego seeing their vision of revolution as the only possible path.

Checkout Radical Books From Your Local Public Library

2010-03-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

You know what they say, "one man's trash is another man's treasure." At the Friends Of The Salem (Oregon) Public Library Book Sale the treasure, or trash, that I found were three books removed from the collections of a couple of Oregon public libraries. I am always thrilled when I stumble upon a great book at a library book sale. Who wouldn't be? Finding treasure in another man's trash carries all the adrenaline rush of any great discovery. However, as the adrenaline slowly fades I become sad that our libraries don't have endless shelf space and can't act any longer as a repository for the great works of human literature and as an archive of human culture.

Of course there is the web and its famous search engines, but these present a mere snapshot of human culture and not a true repository nor a secure and well organized archive. Besides, as Daniel Tosh pointed out in the intro to his show Tosh.o, the web has been taken over by idiots.

Further, there is little similarity between how a search engine organizes the information it finds on the web and how a librarian catalogs a library collection. This is so obvious it should not even need to be mentioned. And if one were looking for a concrete example of this, look no further than the YouTube video "Surprised Kitty." Search engines catalog this video, YouTube wastes server space and takes up bandwidth allowing (by todays count) 21,576,241 individual viewings of this video. Libraries and librarians must deal with the physical limitations of library space. Therefore they cannot include EVERYTHING in the library's collection. There is careful consideration given to what materials a library acquires. Look at any public library's Materials Evaluation policy and you will see statements like the following from the Cleveland Heights-University Heights public library

"The rising cost of library materials and the information 'explosion,' coupled with limitation of funds, have greatly increased the difficulties of selection. The result is that the library must be highly selective in many fields and aim for a comprehensive growth that concentrates on the areas in which there is the greatest community interest."

Yet there is one similarity between modern library Materials Evaluation policies and the web and that is that both try to present that material that is of "the greatest community interest." This does not mean that librarians would remove all videos from library shelves and replace them with 21,000,000 copies of "Surprised Kitty," because that video has suddenly become all the rage. But it does mean that unpopular titles eventually do find their way into library book sales to make shelf space available for the latest Harry Potter novel or the big new political scandal book. As John J. Miller writes in the January 3, 2007 Wall Street Journal

"But this raises a fundamental question: What are libraries for? Are they cultural storehouses that contain the best that has been thought and said? Or are they more like actual stores, responding to whatever fickle taste or Mitch Albom tearjerker is all the rage at this very moment?"

Maybe libraries were always run this way and it is only with the advent of computerized circulation systems that librarians can easily identify which books are not being checked out. Maybe a real change has occurred in the reading public with modern readers passing over truly meaningful books for mere pulp entertainment titles, book versions of what they see on TV and in the movie theaters. Whatever the reason, the result is that great books find their way into library book sales.

So this past weekend I picked up these three books: Jerry Rubin, "Growing (Up) At 37," Cornelia Meigs, "Jane Addams," and Mercedes Randall, "Improper Bostonian: Emily Greene Balch." I am happy that I found these books, but I am sad because these books are difficult to find in any public library. At the Multnomah County Library, if you search for Jerry Rubin you don't find any books, Cornelia Meigs 7 titles (none her biography of Jane Addams), and Mercedes Randall also nothing. Search for Harry Potter and you get three pages of result totaling 248 individual titles.

What can you do about this? Well, for the books that are gone you could ask that your local library re-order them. They might. However, for the books that continue to be on the shelves the only way to keep them there is to check them out. Books that don't circulate are sold. So, every time you go to the library you should find one obscure title and check it out. Even if you don't read it and you just return it two weeks later, if the books continue to be checked out they will remain on the shelves and out of the sale bin. Don't know what authors to look for, well go to my web page and browse my database of radical books by author. Pick an author from the list and the next time you go to the library find one of that authors books and check it out.

"I AM A CAPITALIST..."

2010-01-29T12:26:00.000-08:00

Every time I hear an average American expressing the sentiment that they are a capitalist, I cringe. Maybe I should not be surprised by this misuse of the term. We have just emerged, after all, from the long eight years of the Bush administration, where little value was placed on language and its proper usage. Yet the misuse of the word capitalist pre-dates the most recent Bush administration. If anyone reading this has not yet googled the word or looked it up in their own dictionary, here is the definition from my dictionary (The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language: New College Edition, copyright 1981)

"1. An investor of capital in business; especially, one having a major interest in an important enterprise. 2. Any person of great wealth."

The disconnect here is palpable. While the majority of Americans might insist that they are capitalists or that they believe in capitalism, the reality is that very few Americans are really capitalists. How much capital do you personally have invested in other businesses? OK, if you participate in a mutual fund you have some capital investment in other businesses, but these are investments that you do not control, in fact, you may not even know what stocks or bonds your mutual fund owns. A crucial part of the definition above is "one having a major interest" in an enterprise. This, excludes mutual fund participants from calling themselves capitalists. Of course, they still can, but they would just be technically wrong based on the definition above.

So how many people actually own stock (outside of a mutual fund)? According to wiki.answers.com "The Mutual Fund Industry group - Investment Company Institute - has a lot of data on this subject. Its 2002 study, http://www.ici.org/pdf/rpt_02_equity_owners.pdf showed that 49.5% (or 52.7 million) of US Households owned equities in some way shape or form in 2002. However, only 21 million (less than 20%) owned individual stocks outside an employee sponsored plan." So, only 21 million Americans actually own stock that they can control. If less than 1 in 5 Americans actually own stock, why do so many say they are capitalists?

Capitalism is another sticky term. Many Americans claim to support capitalism and say ludicrous things like "capitalism is the best economic system in the world." Yet here is the dictionary definition of capitalism

"1. An economic system characterized by freedom of the market with increasing concentration of private and corporate ownership of production and distribution means, proportionate to increasing accumulation and reinvestment of profits."

When you talk to average Americans they are angry at large insurance companies and large banks. They feel more and more surrounded by huge big box retailers and confounded by corporate policies that keep individual wages low and job security nonexistent. They are outraged when huge bonuses are paid to those, at the head of these corporations, who already have too much. Yet, individually, Americans generally profess to being capitalists and supporting capitalism. Have they not read the definitions? The pitfalls of capitalism are right there in the definition "increasing concentration of private and corporate ownership" both of "production and distribution" at the same rate as there is an "accumulation [...] of profits." in the hands of those who have "a major" capital investment in these companies and who are persons of "great wealth."

Similarly, Americans get socialism all wrong. When they hear socialism they think Marxist-Leninist dictatorship of the proletariate or Hitler. Yet the dictionary defines socialism as

"1. A social system in which the producers [i.e. workers] posses both political power and the means of production and distribution."

Don't most Americans believe that the people should posses the political power? Yes. So we are half way to socialism. To get all the way there all we have to do is believe that the people should also control the economic and business power within society. So do we believe this? Of course we do! We just don't like to think that that is socialism, we mistakenly call it capitalism instead. Saying that someone is an entrepreneur is a modern, politically correct way, of saying they are a socialist. Because in a democratic society an entrepreneur is one who thinks that they should run the means of production and distribution as well as being the one who holds the political power through their ability to vote and thereby effect political change. The Democrats and Republicans both stand up in public and praise the small business owner, but small business owners have way more in common with socialists then they do with capitalists. Most small business owners conceive of business at a much different scale then do most capitalists. While small business owners may desire to make a profit they are in business for many more reasons then the profit motive. Small businesses are usually family owned sole-proprietorship operations, their kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, friends and neighbors work for them. While there may be modern business practices that are shared between a small business and a large corporation, the small business owner more closely resembles the traditional craftsman then the distant Wall Street banker.

The fact of the matter is that most American's incorrectly use the words capitalism and capitalist and have historically been prevented from understanding socialism because of a government/business hysteria in response to the outcome of the Russian Revolution.