Columns

The Generous Gents at Joe's

There's a long-standing rule in the retail world that warns: "If you break it, you bought it." That wasn't the case at the Berkeley Trader Joe's earlier this week when I was bagging my groceries on a counter and a wine bottle inside my paper shopping bag toppled—causing the entire contents to spill to the ground with a resounding "Ker-splush!"

Within seconds, TJ's mop-armed First Responders appeared to deal with the wreckage—a wine-soaked bag filled with frozen meals, milk cartons, and shards of broken glass. One TJer stepped up to hand me a complimentary wine-proof grocery bag followed by another employee who appeared and presented me with a replacement bottle of wine. (Apparently, he checked the label on the shattered remains of the bottle and quickly managed to find a match inside the store.)

It's time to update the old "You broke it; you bought it" rule. At Trader Joe's, the rule is redemptive rather than punitive: "You broke it; we brought it."

However, as I told one of the mop-up crew: "Just be careful you don't wind up rewarding clumsiness." 

A Call for "Bare-knuckled Love"? 

The English language has a penchant for rough verbiage. Our "tough talk" vocabulary relies on aggressive words like "strike," "hit," "slap," "punch," "kick," "knock," and "crunch," to "hammer home" an argument. 

Recently, an envelope from the Save the Children foundation arrived in the mail. On one side there was a compelling image of a young child with large, beguiling eyes and a bandage over her face. The words next to the photo invited readers to exert an "impact to change lives." The flip side of the funding pitch offered an even more hard-hitting message: "Is there a child in the world you're willing to fight for?" 

Why does it have to be "fight"? Why not "willing to care for" or "willing to sacrifice for"? 

Did You Pay Your Taxes? Amazon Didn't 

According to the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), 55 US corporations didn't pay any taxes at all. It's fair to say: "They didn't give a dime." 

One reason was Trump's onerous tax cuts for the rich, which lopped the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. President Biden has timidly suggested raising Trump's 14% tax slash by half—to 28%. (Nota bene: During the Eisenhower years, the tax rate on the richest Americans was more than 90%.) 

ITEP's investigation disclosed that these 55 corporations didn't pay a cent on a collective pretax income of $40.5 billion. Worse, they actually received $3.5 billion in tax rebates from the Federal Treasury! FedEx reported $1.2 billion in taxable earning but wound up receiving a $230 million rebate check from the Feds. Nike profited to the tune of $2.9 billion and cashed a $100 million government rebate check. 

Reich Versus the Rich 

For the first time in US history, the richest 0.1% of Americans now control nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90% and the richest 1% of Americans own 50% of the Wall Street's wealth. That's why UC Prof. and former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich has devised a seven-point plan to Tax the Rich. In addition to repealing the Trump Tax Cuts and returning to historic rates of wealth taxation, Reich also supports Sen. Elizabeth Warren's plan for a super-tax on the super-rich—an extra 2% on millionaires and 3% on billionaires. Under the Warren Tax, Reich observes, "Jeff Bezos would owe $5.7 billion out of his $185 billion fortune." Does that seem unfair? Not if you consider (as Reich does) that $5.7 billion is "less than half what [Bezos] made in one day last year." 

According to Prof. Reich's calculations, adopting his 7-Step Plan would bring in "more than $6 trillion over 10 years—enough to tackle the great needs of the nation." 

Mr. Mopp's Window Books 

Rising above the restrictions of the pandemic, Mr. Mopp's—the beloved book and toy story on MLK—has managed to stay engaged with the community thanks to its ability to curate and display a wonderland of theme-event book selections behind its wide expanse of windows. 

Mopp's recently devoted its window space to honor Black History Month with scores of captivating book selections and is now hosting an equally eclectic and elevating selection of titles to commemorate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. 

The following list can't possibly do justice to the window display, so the hope is you might find the time to stroll over to Rose Street and take in the view. Among the titles on display are the following: Jasmine Toguchi, Mochi Queen; Little People, BIG DREAMS: Bruce Lee; Eyes that Kiss in the Corners; Write to Me: Letters from Japanese American Children to the Librarian They Left Behind; Sakamoto's Swim Club; Thai Children's Favorite Stories; I Dream of Popo; Kuan Yin: The Princess Who Became the Goddess of Compassion; Mindy Kim and the Yummy Seaweed Business; and Ohana Means Family. 

Homi Bhabha and Other Bad Writing Award-winners 

From 1996 to 1998, the academic journal Philosophy and Literature hosted a bad-writing contest to celebrate "the most stylistically lamentable passages found in scholarly books and articles." The only condition for submissions was that entries be non-ironic. "Deliberate parody cannot be allowed in a field where unintended self-parody is so widespread," the journal's editors explain. In its final 1998 contest, the journal found it hard to suppress its delight that "two of the most popular and influential literary scholars in the US are among those who wrote winning entries." 

Homi K. Bhabha, professor of English at the University of Chicago, took second place for this observation in his book The Location of Culture (Routledge, 1994): 

"If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to 'normalise' formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality."  

Judith Butler, professor of rhetoric and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley, took home the top prize for this excerpt from an article entitled Further Reflections on the Conversations of Our Time, published in the scholarly journal Diacritics (1997): 

"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."  

Signing to the Deaf 

Here's a puzzle: Why do so many of the American Sing Language (ASL) interpreters who stand alongside public figures at press conferences appear to mouth the words as they wave their hands and flick their fingers? Deaf members of the audience can see the hand signs so why use your lips as well? And if deaf viewers can read lips, there's no need for hand-signs — you can just look at the lips of the actual speaker! 

Here is a newsclip of Nic Zapko, an ASL interpreter for the state of Minnesota. Zapko is even more exceptional because she is deaf herself. That mean she needs to rely on a second non-deaf, off-camera ASL interpreter to sign a speaker's words for her to reproduce in front of the camera. 

From a Letter to Joe Biden on Israel's Bombing of Gaza 

"It was like watching the Twin Towers fall, all over again. But this time it was Israel intentionally targeting high-rises in Gaza. Unlike the Twin Towers, these multi-story buildings didn't house only commercial offices—they also contained the homes of Palestinian families. 

"Israeli officials gave the residents one hour to evacuate. How much of your life could you pack up and salvage if you were told your home would be blown apart in an hour's time? 

"Compounding the shock. Israel targeted a building that also housed the offices of the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and other media groups. 

"This is Israel's 'Guernica Moment'." 

"The Mothers Are Crying; The Children Are Dying" 

Those were the words of Nadine Abdul Latif, a 10-year-old Palestinian girl trapped in the rubble of Gaza, who breaks down in tears while talking to foreign reporters. 

A Censored Anti-war Ballad from the 1970s 

The Covered Wagon Musicians was the name of a band of active duty US Air Force musicians who were stationed at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho in the early 1970s. Never heard of them? That's no surprise. The idea that a "band of brothers" would be writing protest songs about US atrocities in Vietnam was something the commercial US media couldn't digest. 

CWM opened an anti-war café in Mountain Home called The Covered Wagon Coffeehouse. The Coffeehouse was subsequently destroyed in what was called "a likely arson attack" and its loss was mourned in a New York Times letter co-signed by Noam Chomsky, Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda, Dick Gregory, Robert Lifton, and others.) 

Here's a recording of CWM's song, "Napalm Sticks to Kids." 

Mapping Militarism — Updated 

World BEYOND War reports: "We've made further improvements to Mapping Militarism to help you find what war looks like from various angles. For example, you can check out how much nations are spending on militarism, and what they were spending last year, to discover which have actually moved funds to address the disease pandemic and which have doubled down on death and destruction. 

"Or you can put the US arming of Israel and Colombia in context by mapping the dozens of brutal governments to which the US government is giving 'military aid.' Spolier: It's most of the world.' 

Can you guess what this map represents? 

The map shows members of the International Criminal Court (members are shown in color). There are a number of "rogue nations" that have refused to sign on—including the USA, the self-appointed leader of "rules based order."  

"There is a great deal to discover about war and peace in these maps," WBW notes. "Please check them out, share them with others, and send us your feedback." 

Which California Politicians "Voted with Courage"? 

The Courage Campaign has just released its 2021 Courage Score report card, celebrating members of the state legislature who racked up high scores for voting for progressive bills—and waving an upside-down thumb at the solons who failed to meet expectations. 

Each year, Courage California and more than 100 progressive groups—including the ACLU, SEIU, and Sierra Club—identify the best bills addressing key issues like racial justice, climate change, and housing reform and rate the state's lawmakers on how well they voted. In short: Did they vote "with courage or with corporations"? 

In this year's "Well-done!" list, we find activists like Maria Elena Durazo (SD-24, Los Angeles) who earned top scores for supporting progressive bills. On the other side, the Scorecard excoriates folks like Jim Cooper (AD-09, Sacramento) for "not even voting on 75% of the bills we scored from 2020." 

At 5 PM on May 26, the Courage Campaign will be hosting an online town hall to introduce this year's report card. Senator Lena Gonzalez and Assemblymember Ash Kalra will be on hand for the presentation and will explain how to use the Scorecard as a tool to hold representatives accountable. (ASL interpretation provided.)  

"We need a core team of Courage California members to help make the Courage Score an influential tool for holding our representatives accountable and passing more progressive bills in the state," the organizers explain. "Our town hall will show you how." Click here to register for our Courage Score town hall! 

Watch “River's End: California's Latest Water War” 

Sierra Club California, in partnership with ro*co films, will be hosting a virtual screening of the award-winning documentary, “River's End: California's Latest Water War.” The film, directed by Jacob Morrison, chronicles the risk that excessive water diversions from the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems—at the behest of Big Agriculture—pose to the San Francisco Bay Delta. Sign up here to watch the film and attend the panel discussion on Thursday, June 10 at 6:00pm. 

Correction: Apology to Spravato 

Thanks to my friend and pro bono fact-checker Bruce Africa for sending an editorial kvetch regarding a previous Smithereens item on the drug Spravato—an anti-depressant whose side effects include "worsening depression" and suicidal thoughts. 

Because Spravato's published side effects also included "feeling very happy or excited," I characterized the drug as "addictive." I should have written "may be addictive." Also, the warning that ""your healthcare provider must monitor you for serious side effects for at least 2 hours after taking SPRAVATO"—while alarming—is not a sign of addiction which, by definition, only manifests over an extended period of time.