Full

Full

Chicago’s iconic Marina City Tower, closeup. Designed by Bertrand Goldberg. If I’m not mistaken, if you park here, there is a valet service that will back your car into your designated spot. I’d be a little nervous parking here, at least the first few times.

Six Planes Over Marina City

here’s a different angle of the same building.

Tea Baggers Are Now Lobbyists for Big Business

Sketchy ATM Inside

Wow, didn’t even take a year for the Teabaggers to show their true GOP colors.

Tariff-free Asian paper may seem an unlikely cause for a nonprofit Tea Party group. But it is in keeping with a succession of pro-business campaigns — promoting commercial space flight, palm oil imports and genetically modified alfalfa — that have occupied the Institute for Liberty’s recent agenda.

The Tea Party movement is as deeply skeptical of big business as it is of big government.1Yet an examination of the Institute for Liberty shows how Washington’s influence industry has adapted itself to the Tea Party era. In a quietly arranged marriage of seemingly disparate interests, the institute and kindred groups are increasingly the bearers of corporate messages wrapped in populist Tea Party themes.

In a few instances, their corporate partners are known — as with the billionaire Koch brothers’ support of Americans for Prosperity, one of the most visible advocacy groups. More often, though, their nonprofit tax status means they do not have to reveal who pays the bills.

Mr. Langer would not say who financed his Indonesian paper initiative. But his sudden interest in the issue coincided with a public relations push by Asia Pulp & Paper. And the institute’s work is remarkably similar to that produced by one of the company’s consultants, a former Australian diplomat named Alan Oxley who works closely with a Washington public affairs firm known for creating corporate campaigns presented as grass-roots efforts.

 

(click here to continue reading Institute for Liberty – Tea Party Group With Business Agenda – NYTimes.com.)

and I’d quibble with this sentence:

The Tea Party movement is as deeply skeptical of big business as it is of big government.

That’s the talking point anyway. I’d argue the Teabaggers are not that skeptical of big business, because people like the Koch brothers are such big monetary supporters, and if you scratch the surface of any ten randomly selected Teabaggers, you’ll find nine Republicans and one Independent-Leans-Right.

Monkey King

For instance, Monsanto, the enemy of small farmers everywhere on the planet, is a supporter of the Teabaggers

Last year, the two groups also supported the effort by the agribusiness giant Monsanto to ease federal restrictions on its pesticide-resistant alfalfa. (In February, regulators agreed to do so.) Mr. Langer said he decided “to try out our grass-roots method on that, and frame it as a dairy issue and access to affordable food.”

He got a column published in July in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, talking up Monsanto’s product and asking readers to consider the value of bioengineered foods as they “stroll down the aisle of the supermarket.” The institute’s Web site urged members to speak up, and Mr. Langer filed a petition with the Department of Agriculture.

But a close look at that petition illustrates how a “grass-roots” campaign may be something else entirely. He submitted 8,052 comments he said were collected by telephone. The comments, under different names, were identical and began: “I was recently contacted by the Institute for Liberty and asked if I would be willing to lend my voice in support of moving these types of alfalfa to nonregulated status.” The New York Times examined a random sample of 50 names, and found that three of the people were dead when the comments were submitted. Others said they had no idea their names had been used.

“I vaguely remember responding to a survey as to whether or not the affordability of food for my family was important to me,” said Romeyn Jenkins of Iowa. “But that is far different than setting myself up as an authority on specific genetically engineered crops and authorizing my name for submission on form letters.”

and more data from Matt Yglesias:

The question of what, if anything, differentiates a “Tea Partier” from a conventional Republican has attracted a lot of attention over the past year and a half. Research from political scientist Chris Parker sheds light on one aspect of the situation: Tea Partiers are in the grips of apocalyptic fantasies such that “6 percent of non-Tea Party conservatives believe the president is destroying the country versus the 71 percent of Tea Party conservatives who believe this to be true.”

In ordinary times, you might think that an over-the-top grassroots base would be restrained by party elites. But Tea Party millennialism is reinforced, not constrained, by key conservatives. Matt Continetti of the Weekly Standard published a long article this week accusing liberals of “paranoid” dislike of the billionaire Koch brothers, who have emerged as the leading money-men of the American right. But according to Continettit’s own reporting, it’s the Kochs who seem paranoid. David Koch said to Continetti, “He’s the most radical president we’ve ever had as a nation,” he said, “and has done more damage to the free enterprise system and long-term prosperity than any president we’ve ever had.” Koch attributed this to Obama’s admiration for his father, who, he explains “was a hard-core economic socialist in Kenya.”

 

(click here to continue reading The Policy Apocalypse.)

Footnotes:
  1. well, says the talking points. I’d argue the Teabaggers are not that skeptical of big business, because people like the Koch brothers are such big monetary supporters []

The Fox Cycle of Lies

Fat Blak n Happy

Fox News is happy setting the agenda, especially if the agenda smears the left, and especially if the smear is not factually based. If I was in charge of the airwave spectrum, I’d revoke their broadcasting license, along with NBC’s. If corporations really want to be treated like people, there should be penalties. Let them buy back their license, if they really want them, help the national debt.

Yesterday, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility released the findings of its investigation into allegations that the Obama DOJ allowed racial and political considerations to affect its handling of the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. According to OPR, there was “no evidence” that race or politics impacted the case and the DOJ “did not commit professional misconduct or exercise poor judgment, but rather acted appropriately.”

This represents the final step of the Fox Cycle: the mechanism by which bogus right-wing attacks become mainstream news. The central allegation of the New Black Panther controversy — that the Obama DOJ dismissed charges against the fringe extremist group in accordance with a policy of racial preference that privileged African Americans — has been debunked by the OPR investigation. That debunking, however, comes months after the frenzy of media coverage that wrongly tarnished the reputations of credibility of the attorney general and his subordinates.

The taxpayer dollars are irretrievably wasted, and the damage is already done. And that was the point all along, from the moment this ridiculous claptrap was dreamed up.

(click here to continue reading The Fox Cycle: The New Black Panther Endgame | Media Matters for America.)

 

NBC is never critical of General Electric

Just in case you thought Fox was the only corporate media organization with a credibility problem, NBC has, once again, omitted criticizing its parent, GE. NBC pretends GE only does good things on earth, distributes puppies and the like, and isn’t one of the worst corporations on the planet. Of course, facts are troubling things…

Electricity comes from other planets

It’s the kind of accountability journalism that makes readers raise an eyebrow, if it doesn’t raise their blood pressure first. General Electric Co., reported the New York Times last week, earned $14.2 billion in worldwide profits last year, including $5.1 billion in the United States — and paid exactly zero dollars in federal taxes.

The front-page story drew widespread commentary in newspapers and on many Web sites. ABC News and Fox News, among others, were all over it.

But the story was conspicuously absent from the reportage of one news organization: NBC.

During its Friday broadcast, “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” had no time to mention that America’s largest corporation had essentially avoided paying federal taxes in 2010. Or its Saturday, Sunday or Monday broadcasts, either.

Did NBC’s silence have anything to do with the fact that one of its parent companies is General Electric?

NBC News representatives say that it didn’t. “This was a straightforward editorial decision, the kind we make daily around here,” said Lauren Kapp, spokeswoman for NBC News. Kapp declined to discuss how NBC decides what’s news or, in this case, what isn’t.

But to others, NBC’s silence looks like something between a lapse and a coverup. The satirical “Daily Show” on Monday noted that “Nightly News” had time on Friday to squeeze in a story about the Oxford English Dictionary adding such terms as “OMG” and “muffin top,” but didn’t bother with the GE story.

Ignoring stories about its parent company’s activities is “part of a troubling pattern” for NBC News, said Peter Hart, a director at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a liberal media watchdog group that often documents instances of corporate interference in news. He cited a series of GE-related stories that NBC’s news division has underplayed over the years, from safety issues in GE-designed nuclear power plants to the dumping of hazardous chemicals into New York’s Hudson River by GE-owned plants.

What’s more, Hart notes, NBC News has covered corporate tax-avoidance stories before — that is, when they didn’t involve GE. All three networks’ news divisions, according to Hart, have become reliable sources of publicity for their parents’ other corporate interests, doing news stories about upcoming sporting events or new TV shows carried on their own networks.

(click here to continue reading On NBC, the missing story about parent company General Electric – The Washington Post.)

 Solve Danger

Bill Gates Pulls a Gingrich on Paul Allen

Windows XP Launch

What? Is Bill Gates running for the White House? I thought Newt Gingrich had the Be-A-Jerk-To-People-With-Cancer nomination locked up, but Bill Gates is giving him a run for the money, if Paul Allen is to be believed…

Bill Gates schemed to take shares in Microsoft Corp. from his co-founder during the early days of the software company following his partner’s treatment for cancer, according to a new memoir by the billionaire co-founder, Paul Allen.

The allegation is part of a critical portrait in the book of Mr. Gates, with whom Mr. Allen formed a friendship in grade school that evolved into one of the iconic partnerships of American business. The book, “Idea Man: A Memoir by the Co-founder of Microsoft,” is scheduled to go on sale on April 17. A draft of the memoir was viewed by The Wall Street Journal. An excerpt of the book appeared on Vanity Fair’s website early Wednesday.

The book gives a revisionist take on some details of Microsoft’s history and the relationship between Mr. Gates and his former partner, the two of whom have long been viewed as cordial if not close friends. The book has created a rift between Messrs. Gates and Allen, say people who know both men. In the book’s acknowledgments section, Mr. Allen thanks Mr. Gates along with 17 other people for “general and logistical assistance.”

(click here to continue reading Microsoft Co-Founder Hits Out at Gates – WSJ.com.)

AssholeBadge.jpg

and from the aforementioned Vanity Fair excerpt, Paul Allen writes:

After resuming the radiation, I was in Bill’s office one day talking about MS-DOS revenues. Our flat-fee strategy had helped establish us in several markets, but I thought we’d held on to it for too long. A case in point: We’d gotten a fee of $21,000 for the license for Applesoft BASIC. After sales of more than a million Apple II’s, that amounted to two cents per copy. “If we want to maximize revenue,” I said, “we have to start charging royalties for DOS.”

Bill replied as though he were speaking to a not-so-bright child: “How do you think we got the market share we have today?” Then Steve came by to weigh in on Bill’s side with his usual intensity; it would have been two on one, except I was approximately half a person at the time. (Microsoft later switched to per-copy licensing, a move that would add billions of dollars in revenue.)

Not long after that incident, I told Steve that I might start my own company. I told Bill that my days as a full-time executive at Microsoft were probably numbered, and that I thought I’d be happier on my own.

One evening in late December 1982, I heard Bill and Steve speaking heatedly in Bill’s office and paused outside to listen in. It was easy to get the gist of the conversation. They were bemoaning my recent lack of production and discussing how they might dilute my Microsoft equity by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. It was clear that they’d been thinking about this for some time.

Unable to stand it any longer, I burst in on them and shouted, “This is unbelievable! It shows your true character, once and for all.” I was speaking to both of them, but staring straight at Bill. Caught red-handed, they were struck dumb. Before they could respond, I turned on my heel and left.

I replayed their dialogue in my mind while driving home, and it felt more and more heinous to me. I helped start the company and was still an active member of management, though limited by my illness, and now my partner and my colleague were scheming to rip me off. It was mercenary opportunism, plain and simple. That evening, a chastened Steve Ballmer called my house and asked my sister Jody if he could come over. “Look, Paul,” he said after we sat down together, “I’m really sorry about what happened today. We were just letting off steam. We’re trying to get so much stuff done, and we just wish you could contribute even more. But that stock thing isn’t fair. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it, and I’m sure Bill wouldn’t, either.”

I told Steve that the incident had left a bad taste in my mouth. A few days later, I received a six-page, handwritten letter from Bill. Dated December 31, 1982, the last day of our last full year together at Microsoft, it contained an apology for the conversation I’d overheard. And it offered a revealing, Bill’s-eye view of our partnership: “During the last 14 years we have had numerous disagreements. However, I doubt any two partners have ever agreed on as much both in terms of specific decisions and their general idea of how to view things.”

(click here to continue reading Microsoft’s Odd Couple | Business | Vanity Fair.)

Q Tonic With Quinine

Farmer's Gin
Q Tonic and Gin

On a lark, I bought a four pack of Q Tonic1 2 last fall, and it was delicious. As far as I know, only Whole Foods in Chicago carries the brand, but I’ll look. Will be good for spring gin and tonics on the roof…

One night in 2003, Silbert was drinking a gin and tonic in his Brooklyn backyard when his teeth started feeling sticky. He saw that the tonic’s “ingredients were identical to Sprite, with different natural and artificial flavors,” he says. Curious, he discovered that today’s tonics lack a key ingredient used in the original libation: quinine from Peruvian cinchona trees. It was replaced with a synthetic during World War II. Silbert ordered the bark for $10 online and found a recipe to extract the quinine. He added homemade seltzer and agave instead of sugar. He started making the tonic at parties, and his friends loved it.

Silbert started business school at Yale University in 2004 with plans to go into city development. He still tinkered with tonic, and a professor—an Honest Tea co-founder—encouraged him. Working on a business plan, Silbert realized he needed a bottling facility and found one in Worcester, Mass. Investors provided $3,000 for ingredients and bottles, and Q Tonic was born. Then he offered samples on foodie websites.

New York standard-bearer Gramercy Tavern was an early adopter, and farm-to-table trendsetter Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., signed on when Silbert ate there and brought Q Tonic with him. Downtown hot spot Bobo soon followed. “At first it was part of our competitive edge,” says Bobo owner Carlos Suarez. “Now I’d be surprised not to see it at a sophisticated cocktail bar in Manhattan.” Q Tonic has grown to six employees and is in more than 3,000 outlets, including Whole Foods Market (WFMI). Silbert calls it a start: “The goal is for every place serving Grey Goose or Tanqueray to have a good tonic to go with it.”

(click here to continue reading A Company Built on a Crisper Gin and Tonic – BusinessWeek.)

Also, totally agree with the premise of Q Tonic: tonic should have quinine, and not be sickly sweet.

Wikipedia:

Quinine is a natural white crystalline alkaloid having antipyretic (fever-reducing), antimalarial, analgesic (painkilling), anti-inflammatory properties and a bitter taste. It is a stereoisomer of quinidine which, unlike quinine, is an anti-arrhythmic. Quinine contains two major fused-ring systems: the aromatic quinoline and the bicyclic quinuclidine. Though it has been synthesized in the lab, the bark of the cinchona tree is the only known natural source of quinine. The medicinal properties of the cinchona tree were originally discovered by the Quechua Indians of Peru and Bolivia; later, the Jesuits were the first to bring the cinchona to Europe.

Quinine was the first effective treatment for malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum, appearing in therapeutics in the 17th century. It remained the antimalarial drug of choice until the 1940s, when other drugs replaced it. Since then, many effective antimalarials have been introduced, although quinine is still used to treat the disease in certain critical situations.

Quinine is available with a prescription in the United States and over-the-counter, in very small quantities, in tonic water. Quinine is also used to treat lupus and arthritis. Until recently, quinine was also a common “off-label” treatment for nocturnal leg cramps. This practice is now considered dubious by the FDA

(click here to continue reading Quinine – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

Footnotes:
  1. I thought I took a photo of a bottle of Q Tonic, but I guess not.  Maybe I took the photo and just didn’t post it to Flickr – that happens often []
  2. updated to add a photo of Q Tonic []

links for 2011-03-29

Goose Island No More

312 is golden

InBev aka AnheuserBusch has purchased the iconic Chicago small brewer, Goose Island. I’m saddened, but money talks louder than pride, and I hope John Hall spends his new cash wisely. I will continue to drink Goose Island beer, unless they start cutting back on quality, but it just won’t be the same to drink Budweiser in a fancier bottle. President Obama can now give politicians Bud Light instead of Goose Island without blinking.

Chicago-based Goose Island, one of the nation’s most respected and fastest-growing small brewers with sales concentrated throughout the Midwest, today announced it had agreed to be acquired by AnheuserBusch, its current distribution partner, in a move that will bring additional capital into Goose Island’s operations to meet growing consumer demand for its brands and deepen its Chicago and Midwest distribution.

Goose Island’s legal name is Fulton Street Brewery LLC (FSB). Anheuser-Busch reached an agreement to purchase the majority (58 percent) equity stake in FSB from its founders and investors, held in Goose Holdings Inc. (GHI), for $22.5 million. Craft Brewers Alliance Inc . (CBA), an independent, publicly traded brewer based in Portland, Ore., that operates Widmer Brothers, Redhook and Kona breweries, owns the remaining 42 percent of FSB and reached an agreement in principle to sell its stake in FSB to Anheuser-Busch for $16.3 million in cash. AnheuserBusch holds a minority stake (32.25 percent) in CBA.

Goose Island sold approximately 127,000 barrels of Honkers Ale, 312 Urban Wheat Ale, Matilda and other brands in 2010. To help meet immediate demand, an additional $1.3 million will be invested to increase Goose Island’s Chicago Fulton Street brewery’s production as early as this summer.

“Demand for our beers has grown beyond our capacity to serve our wholesale partners, retailers, and beer lovers,” said Goose Island founder and president John Hall, who will continue as Goose Island chief executive officer. “This partnership between our extraordinary artisanal brewing team and one of the best brewers in the world in Anheuser-Busch will bring resources to brew more beer here in Chicago to reach more beer drinkers, while continuing our development of new beer styles. This agreement helps us achieve our goals with an ideal partner who helped fuel our growth, appreciates our products and supports their success.”

 

The two Goose Island brew pubs are not part of the deal, but will continue in operation, offering consumers an opportunity to sample Goose Island’s award-winning specialty beers and food selections.

Founded by John Hall in 1988, Goose Island Beer Company is one of the Midwest’s first small breweries. Located at 1800 W. Fulton St., Chicago, Goose Island is acclaimed for creating world-class ales, including 312 Urban Wheat Ale, Honkers Ale, India Pale Ale, Matilda, Pere Jacques, Sofie and a wide variety of seasonal draft only and barrel-aged releases, including Bourbon County Stout, the original bourbon barrel-aged beer.

 

(click here to continue reading Goose Island Selects Current Partner Anheuser-Busch for Growth Strategy; Chicago Small Brewer, Craft Brewers Alliance to Sell Stakes in Goose Island; Expansion of Chicago Brewery Planned.)

Goose Island Beer Company

John Hall explains

When I first started Goose Island Clybourn in 1988, drinkers were just beginnning to explore new beer styles and “craft beer” was a term that no one had even thought of. I couldn’t imagine the explosive growth that craft beer has had in the last few years, or the amazing creativity of so many new brewers, and the discovery of the amazing possibilities of beer by a whole generation of drinkers.

I am very proud of Goose Island’s contribution too this craft beer movement, of the many awards won by our brewers, our growing number of employees, our support of the communities and life of Chicago, and the friendship of so many beer lovers in Chicago and elsewhere.

Over the past five years our partnerships with Craft Brewers Alliance and Anheuser-Busch have enabled Goose Island to reach a growing number of beer drinkers. This has fueled our growth to the point that demand for our beers has outgrown the capacity of our brewery. Recently, we’ve even had to limit production of some classic and medal-winning styles. To keep up with growing demand from drinkers we’ve explored a variety of paths too secure new capital to support our growth.

Today’s agreement to consolidate ownership of Goose Island under Anheuser-Busch will provide us with the best resources available to continue along our path of growth and innovation.

I am more excited than ever about Goose Island’s future. With the support and financial backing of our new partner, we will continue to brew our authentic classic styles, develop new amazing beers, and serve our drinkers.

Yeah, well, we’ll see.

links for 2011-03-28

  • The Transportation Security Administration is reanalyzing the radiation levels of X-ray body scanners installed in airports nationwide, after testing produced dramatically higher-than-expected results. The TSA, which has deployed at least 500 body scanners to at least 78 airports, said Tuesday the machines meet all safety standards and would remain in operation despite a “calculation error” in safety studies. The flawed results showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.
    (tags: tsa travel)
  • The American right is trapped in a hyperbolic and dysfunctional worldTo have credibility within the Republican party is to have none outside it. They act as if all their Kool-Aid has been spiked  Polls suggest there are between one in three and one in four Americans who would believe anything. More than a third thought President George Bush did a good job during Hurricane Katrina; half of those thought he was excellent.
    (tags: Rethuglicans)
    _2033_2298550293_29c1f690b9_o.jpg
  • Eminem sued his record label, the Universal Music Group, over the way royalties are computed for digital music, which boils down to whether an individual song sold online should be considered a license or a sale. The difference is far from academic because, as with most artists, Eminem’s contract stipulates that he gets 50 percent of the royalties for a license but only 12 percent for a sale. “As of now it’s worth $17 million or $20 million, but on a future accounting basis, five or 10 years from now, it could easily be a $40 million to $50 million issue,” said Joel Martin, the manager of F.B.T. Productions in Detroit, which first signed Eminem
    3082726817_c3d132f415_o.jpg
  • By now, you may have heard of the little app that could(n’t), Color. Funded to the tune of $41M pre-launch, co-founded by a prestigious Silicon Valley entprepreneur and already brimming with 27 employees, you’d expect the product to be decent if not extraordinary. And you’d be wrong.
    (tags: mobile iPhone PR)
    GirlFromChicago.jpg
  • In the wake of the demonstrations during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the city produced a white wash entitled “What Trees Did They Plant?” TV Stations that broadcast the film had to offer equal time to those speaking in opposition. One group was the Youth International Party or Yippies who produced this film. Paul Krassner wrote the script. Some classic film footage was re-mixed with footage shot during the demonstrations. There is some missing audio from this copy.

Lost Our Way

Whipped Into A Frenzy

Bob Herbert, in his last column1 for the NYT reports:

So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.

Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.

Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.

The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

(click here to continue reading Losing Our Way – NYTimes.com.)

We are failed by our leaders – both political and business – and desperately need a new infusion of ideas and commitment to restoring our country.

For instance, General Electric, the largest corporation in the U.S., paid less than zero in corporate taxes last year – receiving a tax credit of $3,200,000,000 to use to avoid paying future taxes. And they are not alone, far from it, as we’ve mentioned a few times before:

While General Electric is one of the most skilled at reducing its tax burden, many other companies have become better at this as well. Although the top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world, companies have been increasingly using a maze of shelters, tax credits and subsidies to pay far less.

In a regulatory filing just a week before the Japanese disaster put a spotlight on the company’s nuclear reactor business, G.E. reported that its tax burden was 7.4 percent of its American profits, about a third of the average reported by other American multinationals. Even those figures are overstated, because they include taxes that will be paid only if the company brings its overseas profits back to the United States. With those profits still offshore, G.E. is effectively getting money back.

Such strategies, as well as changes in tax laws that encouraged some businesses and professionals to file as individuals, have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts — from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.

(click here to continue reading G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether – NYTimes.com.)

I’ll let Mr. Herbert get the last word:

A stark example of the fundamental unfairness that is now so widespread was in The New York Times on Friday under the headline: “G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether.” Despite profits of $14.2 billion — $5.1 billion from its operations in the United States — General Electric did not have to pay any U.S. taxes last year.

As The Times’s David Kocieniewski reported, “Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.”

G.E. is the nation’s largest corporation. Its chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, is the leader of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. You can understand how ordinary workers might look at this cozy corporate-government arrangement and conclude that it is not fully committed to the best interests of working people.

Overwhelming imbalances in wealth and income inevitably result in enormous imbalances of political power. So the corporations and the very wealthy continue to do well. The employment crisis never gets addressed. The wars never end. And nation-building never gets a foothold here at home.

New ideas and new leadership have seldom been more urgently needed.

Footnotes:
  1. I’m saddened by this, he has long been one of my favorite OpEd columnists []

Demolition of Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Hospital Scheduled

Any Porthole in a Storm

I had thought the Bertrand Goldberg designed Prentice Women’s Hospital was already demolished years ago, but apparently not.

As Rahm Emanuel prepares to takes office May 16, the first big historic preservation battle of his mayoralty is taking shape: Northwestern University is gearing up to tear down the old Prentice Women’s Hospital, designed by Bertrand Goldberg, the architect of Marina City, and replace it with a new medical research building.

If the university wins city permission for demolition, it could be wrecking the boldly sculptural, brilliantly engineered high-rise at the very time the Art Institute of Chicago is celebrating it as part of a major exhibition of Goldberg’s work. “Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention,” opens September 10 and runs through Jan. 8, 2012.

Such a glaring juxtaposition, with creativity displayed on the museum’s walls and ransacked outside them, would reveal to the world anew that Chicago destroys architectural landmarks as fast as the city builds them. And it would demonstrate just how hard it can be to save leading examples of mid-20th Century modernism. Although widely admired by architects, old Prentice is by no means beloved by the broader public. Some liken it to a prison.

Located at 333 E. Superior St., the 36-year-old high-rise is unquestionably a major work in Goldberg’s career.

Preservationists have already laid the groundwork for a fight, meeting on old Prentice with downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd). “He’s one of the people who said you need to show how it can be reused,” said Jim Peters, president of Landmarks Illinois. Reilly didn’t return phone calls asking for comment. Nevertheless, it’s clear that the preservationists have taken a cue from his emphasis on finding a new use for the building.

Three Chicago architectural firms worked pro bono for Landmarks Illinois to prepare a study which looks at whether old Prentice could be re-used for offices, apartments or a research lab. The study makes a compelling case for the latter, arguing that the four quadrants of the former maternity floors could be sub-divided into research team areas and that the common space once occupied by nursing stations and nurseries could work well as a central breakout space.

(click here to continue reading Cityscapes: Northwestern wants to tear down Goldberg’s Prentice Hospital; preservationists have other ideas.)

I’d be pleased if the city found a way to preserve this building somehow, but I wouldn’t expect it to happen.

Red Light Shut Off

Haven’t eaten at Red Light1 in quite a while, but I pass it frequently walking down Randolph. Hope Jerry Kleiner’s KDK Restaurants pulls out of its death spiral…

Blue Light

Crain’s Chicago reports:

Red Light restaurant in the West Loop has closed due to an expired state license, the same week its South Loop sibling succumbed to its own license problems. Red Light, a pan-Asian restaurant at 820 W. Randolph St., on Wednesday posted a sign on its door saying it was closed, according to a woman who answered the phone at neighboring De Cero restaurant.

Calls to Red Light went unanswered Friday.

A spokeswoman with the Illinois Department of Revenue said that Red Light’s retail license expired Jan. 31 and the restaurant had been operating illegally and against the direction of the state office to cease operations. The Illinois Liquor Control Commission revoked Red Light’s liquor license in January, she added.

(click here to continue reading More trouble for KDK Restaurants: Red Light goes dark amid license problems | Restaurants | Crain’s Chicago Business.)

Jerry Kleiner Way

Footnotes:
  1. on W Randolph in the West Loop []

Michele Bachmann Vs. Eric Alterman

Running and Running, Yet Standing Still

I love when Eric Alterman really gets his back into flaying a story into shreds, like the idea that the ridiculousness that is Michelle Bachmann would be a viable candidate for president. Even for the Republican Party of 2011, filled as it is with morons, and ignoramuses, Bachmann is an extreme long shot.

This is one of those articles that I’d post the entire thing if I could, there are so many quality zingers. Instead, just click through and read it yourself. You’ll laugh out loud. At least I did. Ok, maybe I’m weird. Don’t answer that. Anyway…

Michele Bachmann is “reportedly” ready to form a presidential exploratory committee in early June. Shame on me (and this website) for paying the slightest bit of attention to this foolish and ridiculous spectacle, but here we are.

It’s a challenge to decide what, exactly, is silliest about this story. First is the generic issue, independent of Bachmann. “Ready to form a presidential exploratory committee?” What the hell does that amount to? Imagine, sitting down at a restaurant, calling the waiter over, and explaining that you may be ready, at some future point, to form an “exploratory committee” to discuss what you might like to order for dinner.   My guess is you might get a bottle of Perrier poured on your head.

OK, now let’s assume for the sake of argument, some actual content to this announcement. Let’s say Bachmann actually does, one day, form a presidential exploratory committee and even runs for the Republican nomination for president. After all, she has recently made multiple visits to key states like Iowa and New Hampshire and has been telling people that she will be filling out the necessary forms to be included in the party debates, which begin May 2 at the Reagan Library in California.

Bachmann has about as much chance of actually getting the nomination as Lindsay Lohan. Does anyone in the world, even Bachmann herself, sincerely believe that this would be anything other than an exercise in vanity and self-delusion?

(click here to continue reading Michele Bachmann’s Could-Be 2012 Presidential Run Not Worthy of Serious Coverage – The Daily Beast.)

New Archeology Discovery Outside of Austin

Marfa East, Hamiltons Pool area

Fascinating. Though I’m surprised the Texas Government has not banned this sort of science since it contradicts their beliefs about a 6,000 year old earth as described in their Holy Bible. If this new discovery ever makes it to a Texas schoolbook, there will have to be a sticker claiming the carbon dating1 is just a theory, one among many, with a Jesus-Fish superimposed over the arrow heads.

For many years, scientists have thought that the first Americans came here from Asia 13,000 years ago, during the last ice age, probably by way of the Bering Strait. They were known as the Clovis people, after the town in New Mexico where their finely wrought spear points were first discovered in 1929.

But in more recent years, archaeologists have found more and more traces of even earlier people with a less refined technology inhabiting North America and spreading as far south as Chile.

And now clinching evidence in the mystery of the early peopling of America — Clovis or pre-Clovis? — for nearly all scientists appears to have turned up at a creek valley in the hill country of what is today Central Texas, 40 miles northwest of Austin.

The new findings establish that the last major human migration, into the Americas, began earlier than once thought. And the discovery could change thinking about how people got here (by coastal migrations along shores and in boats) and how they adapted to the new environment in part by making improvements in toolmaking that led eventually to the technology associated with the Clovis culture.

The Texas archaeologists said the new dig site has produced the largest number of artifacts dating to the pre-Clovis period. The dates for the sediments bearing the stone tools were determined to range from 13,200 to 15,500 years ago.

 

Given the lack of sufficient organic material buried around the tools, the radiocarbon dating method was useless. Instead, earth scientists at the University of Illinois, Chicago, used a newer technique known as optically stimulated luminescence. This measures light energy trapped in minerals to reveal how long ago the soil was last exposed to sunlight.

(click here to continue reading Clovis People Weren’t First in Americas, Texas Arrowheads Suggest – NYTimes.com.)

 

Footnotes:
  1. actually optically stimulated luminescence []

Group Doueh – Treeg Salaam

Feeding My Addiction

Desert blues news from all over…

Western Sahara’s story is a sad but typical one for a post-colonial land with bigger, stronger neighbors. In the ’70s, a nearly century-long episode of Spanish occupation gave way to bruising jockeying for possession between Morocco (which currently holds sway), Mauritania, and the homegrown Polisario movement of nationalist liberation. Episodes of war have generated a civilian diaspora that’s spread from refugee camps in neighboring countries to Cuba, but life for the people who have stayed behind carries on like it does anywhere. Folks still like to marry and party, and if they do so in the coastal city of Dakhla, they’re likely to hire Group Doueh to bring the tunes.

The group is part of a family entertainment business run by Doueh, a Dakhla native whose birth name was Salmou Baamar. As a youth, he took a shine to the sounds of James Brown and Jimi Hendrix, which he heard on cassettes imported from Spain. His first experiences as a professional musician playing at local parties coincided with Mauritania’s occupation of Dakhla, and you can hear both Western rock sounds and Mauritanian rhythms in his music, which he’s been performing throughout the region and marketing on cassette for over a quarter century. Doueh plays the tinidit (a.k.a. tidinit), a Moorish four-stringed lute, and electric guitar; according to a recent Wire article, he favors a Fender run through a few pedals. The rest of the group includes vocalists Bashiri Touballi and Halima Jakani (his wife) and keyboardist Jamaal Baamar (his son). Rhythm duties are shared between collective handclaps, Halima’s tbal (a hand drum), and the keyboard’s drum programs.

When they aren’t playing at local festivals and weddings, Doueh runs a cassette dubbing shop, and that’s where Sublime Frequencies’ Hisham Mayet located him after a search up and down Morocco to find the musician responsible for “Eid For Dakhla,” the raucous, backbeat-heavy ruckus that opens Doueh’s first LP Guitar Music From the Western Sahara. That record also kicked off Sublime Frequencies’ series of vinyl-first releases of contemporary guitar music heard around the Maghreb. Although Group Doueh’s music enjoys the same no-budget recording quality as the rest of the series, it differs significantly from the Touareg-rooted approaches of Group Inerane and Group Bombino. The music of the desert interior sounds like the blues, sometimes jacked up to rock distortion and intensity; Doueh’s has a more complex rhythmic underpinning, closer to the Master Musicians of Jajouka or flamenco, and adheres to traditional Mauritanian modes that spin the melodies down different paths than those of their deep Saharan brethren, more elaborate but less open-ended.

(click here to continue reading Dusted Reviews: Group Doueh – Treeg Salaam.)

Interview:

It’s hard to imagine what the four Muslim members of Group Doueh thought about their first gig outside Western Sahara, playing inside an Anglican church that served cold lager within the gay neighborhood of one of the most flamboyantly gay cities in Europe, Brighton, England. A couple of hours beforehand, Terminal Boredom got a few moments to sit down with the band in the church basement after sound check as the musicians ate takeout chicken and tabouli. Sublime Frequencies Co-founder Hisham Mayet translated from English to Arabic and back: vocalist Bashiri Touballi provided answers on the band’s behalf while guitarist Salmou “Doueh” Baamar stood squarely in front of and pointed a video camera directly at their English-language-only interviewer. Outside, a peculiar mix of middle-aged, upper-middle-class world music fans and scruffy weirdos on drugs lined up — an audience peculiar for most bands, sure, but not a Sublime Frequencies one.

 

(click here to continue reading Terminal Boredom – DOUEH.)

I’d usually link to Amazon’s copy of this album, but since they ended my affiliate program in a tax-dispute snit with the State of Illinois, I’ll let you discover the album on your own, from wherever.