Business Archives - Waxman Files

Emulating Gabriel Heatter

February 22, 2014 by Jerry Waxman Leave a Comment

By Jerry Waxman

Author’s Note-This was supposed to be a column about the monthly meeting of the Sierra Club and its program. It developed into something else and I was powerless to stop it.

*Look for the silver lining, whene’er a cloud appears in the blue
Remember somewhere the sun is shining, and so the right thing to do is make it shine for you

If you’re of a certain age (at least 65 and over) you remember what radio was like in the 1940’s and 1950’s before commercial television took hold. Every network and some local radio stations had their commentators as well as general programming. Gabriel Heatter started in radio in its infancy on WOR in New York after spending some time in the Hearst organization as a reporter. In 1934 WOR became the flagship station for the new Mutual Broadcasting network and Heatter was there for the Bruno Hauptmann trial. Hauptmann was convicted of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby. Back in those days Heatter’s two main rivals for air time were Walter Winchell and Edward R. Murrow, so he was hot stuff. In 1939 he gave Alcoholics Anonymous its first national exposure and he was always looking for true and uplifting stories to broadcast. In 1942 when the US was not doing well against Japan in the Pacific the news came in that our naval forces had sunk a Japanese destroyer. Heatter started his program that evening with the iconic phrase “There’s good news tonight” a phrase he would use for the rest of his broadcasting career. It became an instant hit with audiences and Heatter spent the rest of his career making lemonade out of the sour lemons in the news feeds.

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Oh, What A Tangled Web…..

September 30, 2013 by Jerry Waxman 1 Comment

By Jerry Waxman

“Things are not always as they seem…”

Back in April of 2011 I wrote an article called “Watch The Sound Of My Voice (Never Mind What My Hands Are Doing)” in which I alluded to our current president as the best Three Card Monte man or Pea in the Walnut Shell man I’ve ever seen. Why? Because he has the ability to make you believe him. He is a consummate con artist which is not necessarily a bad thing in the right circumstances. Unfortunately, he has never used his prestidigitation abilities to benefit most of us who trusted him and voted for him. Since that time I have not seen any reason to change that assessment. Sure, he has some solid accomplishments under his belt but it feels more like the bait and switch tactics of unscrupulous retailers; you go to buy the advertised product only to find that it is not available but a substitute can be found that won’t match the better quality or lower price of the desired product. Sure, we’ve got health care, but not anything near what we should have or want, and we’ve got something resembling banking reform, which somehow made the banks richer while we got poorer. Sure, we got a stimulus, which worked for some but not for others and was not nearly enough. The fact that he’s allowed Arne Duncan to continue to destroy public education under the guise of “reform” is a crime, but that’s for another article.

To understand this rant let’s go back to the 2008 campaign season. During their frequent debates Barack Obama never let the chance go by to get his claws into Hillary Clinton by mocking President Clinton’s embrace of NAFTA, saying he would not approach trade deals that way. He also took the opportunity to belittle Hillary’s stance on the Iraq War. This was all very calculated as it was strictly to get the support of those progressive Democrats who might have otherwise supported her. He also made a few gaffes that provided insight into his character, especially his God, Guns and Gays speech in rural Pennsylvania and his allusion to Ronald Reagan as a “Transformational President”. But wait! Were they really gaffes, or were they really cold, calculated subliminal hints? His speech in Pennsylvania, which created a big media uproar did not hurt him with the Democrats, and the Alabama/Mississippi sections of Pennsylvania would never vote for him anyway. He also alluded to Ronald Reagan in a positive way. Anytime a Democrat says anything positive about Ronald Reagan you know there has to be an ulterior motive. It was to assure the old Reagan Democrat crowd that they could trust him, and also to assure those independents on the fence that he wasn’t a big city liberal. He also kneecapped Hillary again by adding that Bill was not a transformational figure like Reagan, conveniently forgetting that Bill brought the corporate world into democratic politics in a way that no one before did, and from which candidate Obama benefitted greatly, conveniently forgetting that it was Bill Clinton who implemented NAFTA, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, giving us Fox News and spreading Rush Limbaugh’s influence as well as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 which overturned Glass-Steagall and opened the way for the destruction of our economy and the middle class. Hold these thoughts in mind as I wend my way to the main theme of this essay-President Obama’s embrace of the Trans Pacific Partnership aka the TPP. I’ve written about the TPP several times so I won’t go into its history so much except for historical context. The negotiations actually began during GWB’s second term, but something that big was going to have to transcend administrations the same way that NAFTA did. Clinton did sign the agreement but the negotiations were all done under the previous Bush administration, which tried to fast track it and failed. It took two years to bring about congressional debate which nearly failed. Vice President Al Gore had to cast the deciding vote in the Senate in order for NAFTA to succeed. And NAFTA definitely succeeded in diminishing us as the foremost exporter nation in the world. It was and still is a terrible deal for the average American.

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Central Florida Unions Say No to the TPP

August 19, 2013 by Jerry Waxman Leave a Comment

By Jerry Waxman

Remember that old 1956 movie, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where the giant seed pods were replacing real people with non human things that looked like people as they slept? Remember Kevin McCarthy’s frantic warning (“They’re here already! You’re next!”) as he bounced about in traffic? That movie was a thinly veiled warning against communism which was a very popular sentiment during the McCarthy (no pun intended) years. No need to be alarmed. Communism would never take hold here because we were a free people, free to choose how we lived…….or so we thought. More rightly, the movie has become prophetic because if we substituted the words “Multinational Corporatism” it doesn’t sound so horrible but it accomplishes the same goals. Guess what? Communism was never the enemy; totalitarianism was. We are about to experience totalitarianism of a different kind, a totalitarianism so absolute that even our government, at all levels, will be powerless to stop it. It’s called the Trans Pacific Partnership or TPP and our government wants us to be a part of it.

We’ve been asleep as a nation since Ronald Reagan’s election as president. That was the beginning of trickle down economics, union bashing, privatization and the consolidation of corporate power on a global basis. The economic elites see the billions of our tax dollars pumped into our highways, schools and other government services and they think to themselves that they need a piece of the action. Governments don’t make anything; they contract it out to builders, auto manufacturers, furniture manufacturers, clothing manufacturers, etc. Private industry already supplies the government with everything it needs but these people want more and our elected officials are willing to let them have it because we haven’t been holding them accountable. President Obama even alluded in his State of the Union speech to fast tracking the US efforts to join the TPP. Fast tracking is a method of escaping accountability in the US congress. The method failed on NAFTA during George H. W. Bush’s administration and NAFTA had to have a full hearing during the Clinton administration. The lessons learned from NAFTA and other free trade agreements should steer this country clear of any of those agreements in the future. I’ve written previously on the TPP in two articles, The Enemy Beneath, and You Have been Granted a Rare Privilege, the former about the dangers of the TPP and the latter about a forum in which Congressman Alan Grayson as well as other leaders spoke out. There’s no need to cover it again.

Jim Howe is a man on a mission. I first met him almost two years ago when he moved here from Midland Texas, where he was an activist, at about the same time that Occupy Orlando was starting up. He is a member of the Communications Workers of America local 3108 and his politics are decidedly progressive. He is active in the local Green Party and through his influence and efforts I got to spend a lot of time with the Green Party 2012 candidate for president, Jill Stein, who had a profound effect on me. Jim is a political activist first class and his mission these past 10 months has been to rally union and political opposition to the TPP. His efforts are starting to pay off.

At the recent AFL-CIO Central Labor Council meeting on August 14, during a hotly contested officers election meeting, Jim was able to get everyone to agree to sign on to an opposition resolution showing Central Florida labor’s stance on the TPP, prior to the elections. He also is active in Floridians Against the TPP and works closely with Public Citizen and the Citizens Trade Campaign. The Citizens Trade Campaign has crafted a letter to Congress with support from numerous groups to stop the fast tracking and the TPP itself. The letter itself hasn’t been updated since March, but Central Florida Labor was signatory to it even then.

Although it is not written about by the mainstream press in a large way there are several articles and actions popping up if you care to look for them. Most recently progressive blogger, Jim Hightower, wrote extensively and expressively on the subject. The one question we all ask ourselves is why the secrecy? How come there’s no real outrage? Are we so used to being ignored and abused by our leaders and corporations that we just meekly accept whatever crumbs we receive? Not where Central Florida Labor is concerned. With men like Jim Howe taking leading roles in keeping up the opposition this battle is far from being over. Howe wants everyone to know that the next planning meeting for action against the TPP will be held on Thursday, August 22 at 6:30 pm at CWA union hall, 2220 Edgewater Drive in Orlando. Be there, because if you’re not “you’re next!”

It’s Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature

June 11, 2013 by Jerry Waxman Leave a Comment

It’s Alive!! It’s Alive!!!!!!

By Jerry Waxman

Science does have its drawbacks. One of them is how we view scientists themselves. For several generations, because of science fiction stories, comic books and popular movies there is a perception out there of the “Mad Scientist” such as The Invisible Man, or Captain Marvel’s evil Dr. Sivana, or whatever evil scientists is working for Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon, or any one of hundreds of misguided souls in fiction. We have to admit it is fun watching good vs. evil play out. One of the best sci-fi movies in the 50’s, Them!, dealt with giant ants that were exposed to atomic radiation as a result of atomic testing in the American Southwest. Since the scientists working on the Manhattan Project were only dealing with the immediate needs of WWII, there was no research dealing with the long term effects of radiation. Let’s face it though, there’s nothing mad about science. To deny that technology as a result of scientific research has benefitted us beyond even our founding fathers’ expectations is willful ignorance beyond belief, or just plain stupid.

Scientists by their very nature are looking for ways to improve our lives by coming up with labor saving devices or life saving medications since Ben Franklin experimented with lightning and Isaac Newton and Galileo explained their theories of gravity and the universe, or Louis Pasteur defying the medical wisdom of his day. Scientists do not start out to do evil. How they end up doing so has more to do with human nature than science. Science is only a tool to be used. Unfortunately it has also been usurped by the greed factor in human nature, and it is the one thing about humans that has not changed in the thousands of years we’ve been on the planet.

When John Francis Queeny founded Monsanto in 1901 doing harm was the farthest thing from his mind. He had been in the pharmaceutical industry for three decades and his father in law, Emmanuel Mendes de Monsanto, was a wealthy investor in the Caribbean sugar industry. The result of his first product was the sugar substitute, saccharine. Over the years Monsanto went through a metamorphosis dealing in industrial chemicals, but also pesticides like DDT, which when introduced was looked at as a miracle for farmers. It took generations for the long term harmful effects of DDT to show up resulting in the pesticide being banned in the USA in 1972.

Over the years Monsanto, as a result of both mergers and acquisitions grew and changed its product lines, again, not with evil in mind, and there were some definite winners- L-dopa, a new process for acetic acid, Astroturf and light emitting diodes. There were also those that did as much damage as they did good, Agent Orange being one such product. The analogy about The Manhattan Project is apropos because Charles Allen Thomas, President of Monsanto from 1951-1960, and Chairman of the Board from 1960-1965 was asked by Gen. Leslie Groves to co-direct the project with Robert Oppenheimer. Thomas refused, however he did conduct research on the project from his Monsanto laboratory and did contribute to the making of the atomic bomb. It took several years before the law of unintended consequences caught up with atomic research and the arguments about its good vs. bad are still going on. So it is with Monsanto.

During the decade of the 80’s the Monsanto started selling off its chemical and pharmaceutical businesses and got into biotech research, which had a different business model developed by Genentech. Under this model the biotech company invests heavily in research and development in order to attain biological patents on its products. The investments are recouped through rigid monitoring and enforcement of those who use the patented product. Monsanto elevated this to an art form, especially when you consider that the company either owns or controls most of the crop seed production in the world, and it has been patenting its GMO seeds now for over twenty years. It also produces the herbicide Roundup, which allows farmers to grow more crops in the same space. This is where the current controversy begins.

As a company that does agricultural R&D it has every right to come up with new products which benefit farmers and by extension, us. We, in fact encourage such endeavor. If that research, however, has not looked at the long term effects of product use then that’s a mistake that has to be corrected. It seems, just as in The Manhattan Project, that too many companies, in order to maximize profits, rush products to market without fully testing or disclosing the harmful effects of their products. There’s a reason why the pharmaceutical industry has to disclose lots of information in their advertising about the risks of taking their drugs. There’s no such restriction on Monsanto or any of the food brands that use their GMO seed products. Why? Because Monsanto lobbies very heavily to keep it that way. Monsanto also has the clout to keep reports detrimental to their claims from being published. It doesn’t make sense that all of these food companies who have to label their ingredients with percentages of fats, salt sugar and other things that consumers need to know aren’t willing to add a statement about GMO content in their labeling. It seems that when you’re playing around with nature and creating in essence Frankenfood we should have some say in the matter of whether we should be buying it or not. It should be our choice. Otherwise it creates suspicion and distrust and we don’t need any more of that than we already have.

Dr. Lynn Unruh lecturing on GMO foods

On Saturday, June 8 the First Unitarian Church of Orlando, sponsored by the Florida School of Holistic Living and the Homegrown Local Food Cooperative and the church’s Green Team hosted a lecture, Genetically Modified Foods: From Frankenfoods to Frankenpeople? The lecturer was given by Dr. Lynn Unruh, PhD, a professor of Health Management and Informatics at UCF. Dr. Unruh is also a registered nurse. Through film and a slide presentation, Dr. Unruh discussed the extent of genetically modified food in the American diet, and what is thought to be a risk to human health and future food production. She also discussed policies to curb the presence of genetically modified organisms in our food, such as legislating mandatory labeling of GMO in the state of Florida as well as elsewhere. After discussing the types of plants that have been genetically modified Dr. Unruh held up supermarket products that contain these plants. She also discussed how all the research that supports Monsanto’s position is funded by groups, such as the Hoover Institute that are sympathetic to them. Opposing research is either blocked or ignored by both regulating agencies and food manufacturers. Dr. Unruh then presented a video that interviewed scientists, doctors and farmers who believe that GMO products are a likely contributor to human or animal illnesses.The far reaching effects of Monsanto’s products are also believed to have contributed to crop failures in certain kinds of cotton which bankrupted many farmers, especially in India, and caused many of them to commit suicide. There is also some evidence with many of the chemicals used in Roundup, which are getting into the food supply and into the ground water. This could cause huge environmental problems in the future, and no official agency appears to be involved in figuring things out. The group was especially interested in the campaign for mandatory labeling One of the groups mentioned was Food and Water Watch Here’s the link to their website.

On the consumer end it’s just not that easy to buy non GMO food at your local supermarket. Here’s a partial list of the brands that are regularly using Monsanto products: Aunt Jemima, Aurora Foods, Banquet, Best Foods, Betty Crocker, Bisquick, Cadbury, Campbells, Capri Sun, Carnation, Chef Boyardee, CocaCola, ConAgra, Delicious Brand Cookies, Duncan Hines, Famous Amos, Frito Lay, General Mills, Green Giant, Healthy Choice, Heinz, Hellman’s Hershey’s Nestle, Holsum, Hormel, Hungry Jack, Hunt’s, Interstate Bakeries, Jiffy, K.C. Masterpiece, Keebler/Flowers Industries, Kellogg’s, Kid Cuisine, Knorr, Kool Aid, Kraft/Phillip Morris, Lean Cuisine, Lipton, Loma Linda, Marie Callender, Minute Maid, Morningstar, Mrs. Butterworth, Nabisco, Nature Valley, Ocean Spray, Ore-Ida, Orville Redenbacher , Pasta-Roni, Pepperidge Farms, Pepsi, Pillsbury, Pop Secret, Post Cereals, Power Bar Brand, Prego, Pringles, Procter & Gamble, Quaker, Ragu, Rice-a-Roni, Smart Ones, Stauffers, Schweppes, Tombstone Pizza, Tostinos, Uncle Ben’s, Unilever, V-8.

It is especially disturbing since Unilever is not an American owned company but it owns iconic Brands like Ben & Jerry’s, Breyer’s, Lipton, Hellman’s, Ragu, Knorr, Klondike, Good Humor and Promise among others. These are just the products that have been in the spotlight. Who knows what other brands are involved. Supermarkets are also selling their own brands, and yet we don’t know who is supplying them. What’s worse is that the cooking oils on the shelves, especially those made from soybeans, are not represented on this list, but the owners of those brands, Con Agra Procter & Gamble and others are. The J.M. Smucker company does not appear on the list yet some of their brands do including Pillsbury and Hungry Jack. Crisco is also a Smucker brand. The bottle of Crisco oil in our pantry says that it was made 100% from soybeans. According to Wikipedia, Smucker was a heavy contributor in 2012 to a $46 million dollar political campaign known as “The Coalition Against The Costly Food Labeling Proposition, sponsored by Farmers and Food Producers”. So, what’s up with that? If it’s Smucker’s isn’t it supposed to be good? How do we know if we don’t know what’s in it?

Are we talking evil here? No, we’re not. We’re talking corporate mindset, which protects overhead, inventory and profits over people. Even if they’re wrong in their thinking they’ll protect their profits first, and let’s face it, they buy the best legislators they can for insurance. The law of unintended consequences will produce adverse results in due time. Remember that scene in The Bridge over the River Kwai where Alec Guinness has his “Oh My God, What Have I Done” moment? Perhaps it will happen in corporate America. After all, Victor Frankenstein didn’t intend to create a killer.

Senior Power

June 5, 2013 by Jerry Waxman 1 Comment

By Jerry Waxman

If you’re watching certain TV programs that treat grandma and gramps as doddering old folks then you need to read this. If the TV commercials that tout the new painless lubricated catheters via Chuck Woolery, or Joe Theismann hawking his new prostate pills, or Wilford Brimley with his sundry products, Fred Thompson or Robert Wagner begging you to reverse your mortgage are too much for you to endure, then this is also for you, if only to make you aware that seniors today are not as gullible as marketers would portray them. These new pitchmen are the next generation of senior snake oil salesmen after Art Linkletter and Arthur Godfrey, Joe Weider and Jack LaLanne. Just think what it will be like when Justin Bieber and Angelina Jolie start doing it in 50 years. The pitch won’t change a lot, but the products and their paid shills will. Seniors have always been ripe prey for swindlers and charlatans. Fortunately, there is a cure for this. It’s called factual information.

The Florida Alliance for Retired Americans is located in Wellington, Florida. Its president, Tony Fransetta has built the organization’s membership to 200,000 over the years, and no grass grows under his feet. Fransetta, at age 78, keeps up a pace that people half his age would be envious of. The same goes for his board members, who attended the 2013 Annual Convention and Board meeting on June 3^rd and 4^th in Orlando. The Alliance is made up of mostly retired union members, so they have a united purpose.

Just like any annual board meeting, the agenda called for reports from the president on down through officers, committees and clubs. Old business was discussed and future meetings planned. Since this was a convention of seniors and former union members and activists there were several guest speakers dealing with diverse issues that affect seniors. One of the event sponsors was Humana and their reps Barbara Wagner and Sherri Johnson spoke on health care. Many Central Florida state legislators spoke including State Representatives Linda Stewart Dist. 47, Randolph Bracy, Dist. 45, Victor Torres Dist 48 and Karen Castor Dentel Dist. 30. State Senators included, Darren Soto Dist. 14 and Geraldine Thompson Dist.12. Also speaking was Susannah Randolph, District Director from Congressman Alan Grayson’s office. Notably absent were any officials from either the City of Orlando or Orange County Government. Strange too, because the city operates several senior centers that would greatly benefit from an alliance with FLARA. Well, unrealistic soccer stadiums and creative villages are much more important than playing around with old people. It’s also strange that Property Appraiser Rick Singh didn’t attend either since he publicly announced a month ago at May’s County Watch meeting that he was aggressively reaching out to seniors to notify them of the tax breaks they qualify for and that there were employment positions open for just that purpose.

Featured speakers covered a range of fields including health care management, Social Security and oddly enough, buying American products from American companies plus environmental concerns.

Buy! Oh noble buyer, buy your merchandise from me!

(Bazaar of the Caravans, from Kismet by Wright & Forrest)

Oh, if only it were that simple. Today there are hundreds of retail outlets and thousands of manufacturer brands available. Isn’t the free market wonderful? Sure, if you don’t care where your money goes. American retailers for the most part are not buying from American suppliers, so a large part of their buying power is going to businesses outside the USA. What’s worse is that many American made products are not owned by Americans, which means that the profits don’t stay in the USA; they go into the pockets of foreign owners, which means that those profits are not taxed here. It’s going to get even worse if The United States foolishly signs on to the Trans Pacific Partnership, but that’s another story.

Roger Simmermaker has written two books, My Company ‘Tis of Thee and How Americans Can Buy American, on how to buy things that are made in this country. He regularly sends out e-mail alerts on products. His company is called Consumer Patriot Corporation. Here’s his website, www.howtobuyamerican.com, and you can sign up for his newsletter and buy his books through it. Roger actually is employed by a government contractor and this is not how he makes his living, however, he is passionate about buying American and this is his passion. In his books he cites over 2400 products that are made here and the list is growing. Even this informed audience was shocked to learn that soaps like Lever 2000 are owned by a British and Dutch consortium. Heinz has recently been bought in part by investor Warren Buffet, but 50% of Heinz is foreign owned. Who knows what will happen there. Do you like Budweiser, Coors or Miller beers? That’s nice. Busch Brewing, Miller and Coors are now owned by a Belgian Multinational and a couple of Brazilian billionaires. As Simmermaker explains, if all the foreign owned American companies were actually paying taxes on their profits we would not have the revenue and debt problems we now have.

When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame, one hasn’t got time for the waiting game.

(September Song, from Knickerbocker Holiday by Kurt Weil and Maxwell Anderson)

The most compelling speaker at the event was Laura J. Feldman, Grassroots Manager of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare. She has a great sense of humor and knows her subject intimately. It’s almost impossible to blurb or sound byte what she said, so here’s the video of her presentation. Unfortunately, people kept bumping into the tripod so the video is a little shaky. What Ms. Feldman pointed out is that what you don’t know can definitely hurt you.

The shadows sway and seem to say tonight we pray for water, Cool water. And way up there He’ll hear our prayer and show us where there’s water, Cool Water.

(Cool Water by Bob Nolan with the Sons of the Pioneers)

Adrienne Katz from the Orange County League of Women Voters gave a presentation on the water crisis that’s facing Florida. The League is right now working on a petition drive to preserve Florida’s water and land conservation heritage. Katz gave a brand new audio-visual presentation on how fragile our eco-system and especially water really is. Seniors need to know these things because the quality of our drinking water affects their health.

What came out during these presentations is that too many seniors pay too little attention to issues that affect them. They accept what the corporate media tells them and once these myths are in their minds it’s awfully hard to get them to see the truth. A group such as the Alliance, which has millions of members nationwide is constantly striving, through lobbying and information sharing, but they need to get more members who will be involved. After all, who is going to protect us from Pat Boone?

“You Have Been Granted A Rare Privilege”

May 22, 2013 by Jerry Waxman 2 Comments

By Jerry Waxman

“You don’t tug on Superman’s cape
You don’t spit into the wind
You don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger
And you don’t mess around with HIM”

Secretary: “The directors of the Thatcher Memorial Library have asked me again to remind you Mr. Thompson,”

Reporter: “Yes, but……”

Secretary: “of the conditions under which you may inspect certain portions of Mr. Thatcher’s unabridged memoirs.”

Reporter: “I know, but…….”

Secretary: (into phone) “I’ll bring him right in. Under no circumstances are direct quotations from his manuscript to be used by you.”

Reporter: “I’m just looking for one…….”

Secretary: Mr. Thompson, you will be required to leave this room at 12:30 promptly. You will confine yourself, it is our understanding, to the chapters in Mr. Thatcher’s manuscript regarding Mr. Kane.

This little scene from Citizen Kane, largely overlooked, is a frightening reminder of the power that certain people have to restrict information from being put out to the general population. Information that can be vitally important yet reveal secrets that can be embarrassing.

On Saturday, May 18 Floridians Against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, along with Central Florida AFL-CIO and the Communication Workers of America held a forum to discuss the negative impact that the TPP would have across the region as well as the rest of the country and it’s not pretty. In my last article on the TPP, The Enemy Beneath, These dangers were well spelled out along with some compelling videos of speakers at the last gathering in Tampa. I need not repeat them here since the several speakers did an excellent job of representing their positions.

Lorraine Tuliano, head of Central Florida’s Central Labor Council for the AFL-CIO explained how the middle class and working families are affected by these “Investor State” trade deals. Marjorie Holt of the Sierra Club spoke about the effect that “Fracking” and other procedures would have on our fragile environment. Steve Wisniewski, President of CWA Local 3108 spoke about the lowering of standards that the TPP would allow for. Activists Jim Howe and Cherie Faircloth presented a statement from Public Citizen Global Trade Watch stating how harmful the TPP is as it is shaping up. Tim Murray of Organize now was a featured speaker admonishing the assembled group to become active because our elected officials need to hear from us constantly.

Special guest speaker of the evening was Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida’s 9^th district, who is one of but a handful of legislators that are aware of the TPP and its potential damage as well as the Trans Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. He spoke off the cuff without notes for about twenty minutes in a very relaxed erudite manner about what is happening with these FTAs and what he and others are doing about it. That little scene at the Thatcher Memorial Library is a grim reminder of what he had to go through after several attempts were made by other members of Congress including Sen. Jeff Merkley to see documents referring to the TPP and were denied access. Grayson was successful in getting permission to see exactly one document in his office in early June with the provision that no one on his staff can be there and that he can’t take any notes and he only has a limited time in which to view the document. Obviously these people don’t know who they are dealing with. He is a fierce debater and doesn’t suffer fools at all. This was not the “Don’t get sick” bombastic Alan Grayson. This was the scholarly, surgical Alan Grayson that completely eviscerated conservative pundit P.J. O’Rourke nationally on Bill Maher’s Real Time.. He can also dust it up with the best of them. At a health care rally several years ago I witnessed him go head to head with a Tea Party activist who wisely chose not to duke it out physically. Good thing too because besides being deceptively tall he has an enormous reach that most heavyweight boxers would love to have. Here’s the complete video of his anti TPP speech. After the speeches there was a question and answer period where several of the topics discussed were more fully covered.

The sixteenth round of talks is underway in Lima, Peru going on from May 15 through May 24. It is too late to do anything about the current talks; however there will be more talks in the future. At the moment Japan is negotiating to join and my sources (who for the moment must remain unnamed) tell me that too many unions are leaning towards accepting the TPP. There are some political benefits to be had in the short term, so they are sacrificing the American worker and America’s loss of sovereignty for some selfish gains. That’s unconscionable.

Dewey Defeats Truman

May 17, 2013 by Jerry Waxman 2 Comments

( Pigging Out With Koch)

By Jerry Waxman

In case you haven’t heard the news, the Chicago Tribune reported that headline the day that Truman won the election in 1948. Their track record has been about as accurate ever since that date. The great and iconic columnist Mike Royko went to work for them in 1984 only after Rupert Murdoch bought the Chicago Sun Times. Some of Royko’s choicest criticisms against Murdoch were “No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in a Murdoch paper” and “His goal is not quality journalism. His goal is vast power for Rupert Murdoch, political power”. It’s amazing how something said 30 years ago is still relevant today. Current Tribune ownership couldn’t possibly be more right wing than Murdoch so why is Chicago still in the hands of the Democrats? Could it be that Murdoch’s and Sam Zell’s message just sucks? That may not be a scholarly treatise but you can bet that it’s pretty accurate. Cities like Philadelphia have recently witnessed the demise of a formerly great newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, bought by Moses Annenberg in 1930 to take advantage of his racing sheet empire, but elevated by his son, Walter and again by the Knight organization over the years. McClatchy bought it from the Knights and then sold it to a group of conservative businessmen who in their own Charles Foster Kane egos thought it would be “fun to own a newspaper.” P.S. They are in receivership.

So, let’s say that you had a couple of billion dollars just lying around and your candidates nationally had just been whupped in the 2012 elections after you and your allies had spent a gazillion dollars trying to get them elected. What would you do? Well, it might be “fun to own a media empire”, especially at fire sale rates; after all, the price mentioned is approximately 15% of what Sam Zell originally paid for it. For Charles and David Koch the sale is mere pocket change. They wouldn’t even miss it if the enterprise failed, and they would make more money by giving it to Mitt Romney to liquidate. Business people look at bottom lines. Forgetting what it costs to buy, the day to day costs of running that media empire would be dear. It would take years to make things profitable if that’s even possible. They are better off just buying out all the advertising space in all of the enterprises and spreading their message that way. No muss, no fuss, plenty of coverage.

Many people in Central Florida are very concerned about this because the Tribune Corp owns the Orlando Sentinel, the region’s only print daily, and fear that a Koch takeover could spell doom and gloom in the region and cancel any hope of objective journalism in Central Florida, yet the conservative element is hoping and praying that they will. Upon hearing the news blogger Tom Tillison posted on his Facebook page “Be still my beating heart!” Yet, West Orlando News Online publisher Keith Longmore, a true progressive, thinks that this could be the best thing to happen for his publication.

Florida Watch Action head, Amy Ritter, is quite upset about the possibility of a Koch Bros. takeover and organized a protest Thursday afternoon, May 15, at the offices of the Orlando Sentinel. Approximately 30 protesters waving signs showed up. Prior to the organized protest several members of the Sentinel staff came out to say hello, but were completely silent on the issue. Similar demonstrations have taken place in cities like Allentown, Pa., Chicago and Los Angeles where Tribune papers are. In Los Angeles, many staff members threatened to quit if the sale went through, but L.A. is a big media town with many more opportunities than Orlando. This is an extremely small media market, and you don’t want to lose your job here. We did manage to espy Scott Maxwell, Mark Schlueb and Dave Damron, but they were nowhere to be found once the protest started. Other members of the press were there and recorded the event, however, no broadcast or cable stations were present. As far as I am aware the only videos taken were by yours truly and Tom Tillison.

(Left to right Tom Tillison, BizPac Review, Billy Manes, Orlando Weekly, Mark Schlueb and Scott Maxwell of the Sentinel)

Ritter addressed the crowd of about fifty voicing her concerns about the Sentinal turning into a propaganda machine for the Koch Bros narrow Tea Party type views Other speakers included Sue Casterline, a subscriber for over 30 years, who will cancel her subscription if the Koch’s buy the paper, Holly Fussell, a Rollins College student, who uses the Sentinel for research and she fears that her information will be tainted by Koch ownership and Melissa, another concerned student who echoed Casterline’s and Fussell’s concerns. Ritter then ended the gathering with a chant and encouraged everyone to wave signs at rush hour traffic.

Ritter states that there will be other actions and that the community at large needs to know what’s happening. The Sentinel can’t comment on it and the Koch Bros. will not comment on a pending sale. A spokesman for the Kochs said that they invest in a lot of business opportunities and that the Tribune Company is just one. That’s all well and good, but I don’t want to wake up one morning and find out that Dewey won in 2014. Do you?

THE ENEMY BENEATH

April 17, 2013 by Jerry Waxman Leave a Comment

By Jerry Waxman

Ship’s Captain: “Bring her around hard aport 220 with a hard rudder amidships”

Bosun: “What’s that, Captain?”

Ship’s Captain: “MAKE A LEFT! MAKE A LEFT!

U-Boat Captain “Hmmm…He brought her around hard aport 220 with a hard rudder amidships.”

1^st mate: “ Vas, Herr Hauptmann?”

U-Boat Captain: “HE MADE A LEFT! HE MADE A LEFT!”

With apologies to Charlie Manna’s War at Sea from his best-selling comedy album Manna Overboard.

The late Charlie Manna’s War at Sea routine was a send up of the classic WWII movie, The Enemy Below in which an American Destroyer captain and a German U-Boat captain play a cat and mouse game with each other, anticipating each other’s every move and countering each other’s offensives. It was a taut, tense drama with a not fully satisfying ending. Manna’s routine was very funny, but nothing is funny about the newest threat to our country which is traveling well below our radar, and we only know about it because of a few well isolated pings on our Sonar. We everyday Americans are at sea cruising while the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), running as silently as possible, has us in its periscope sights and the eleven or twelve member wolf pack is ready to draw blood.

To fully understand what’s happening we have to go back about twenty years ago to the early 1990’s when the Bush 41 administration had finalized NAFTA talks and was trying to “fast track” the agreement into action. NAFTA was a free trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada which was supposed to promote more and better trade between the three countries as well as open up more jobs. Most of us don’t read these things because they are voluminous beyond our attention spans and filled with words beyond our comprehension, but rest assured that giant corporations have more to do with the formation of these agreements than governments do and these corporations will do anything they can to create and protect their perceived future profits under these FTA agreements. We the people don’t really matter to them. Bush 41 wasn’t able to fast track the agreement before time ran out and Bill Clinton came into office. Clinton, the ultimate corporate Democrat had to renegotiate the agreement to assure some worker protections, which ultimately led to its passage. Clinton signed the document on Jan. 1, 1994. Clinton was quoted as saying. “NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t support this agreement.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time”

So did Prohibition, at the time. The trouble is that when you research these things from other that a human nature perspective Murphy’s Law kicks in full force and something bad is bound to happen. In the almost twenty years since the enactment of NAFTA American jobs have yet to make any kind of impact, Mexico’s farm communities have been devastated and Canada isn’t so happy with it either. The only people it has benefitted are the actual corporations who are doing the trading. In fact, it’s even worse than that. Buried somewhere in these agreements are regulations that supersede actual laws of the countries involved. In other words if something a corporate entity does is considered to be illegal by a country or a state it can be overruled by the terms of the agreement. The agreement allows for NAFTA to pick its own arbiters, usually corporate lawyers to determine the outcome, even over and above a Supreme Court ruling. One case in point is The Canadian Parliament banning the use of MMT, a gasoline additive in 1997. Ethyl Corp., based in Virginia, notified the government of Canada of its intent to sue under NAFTA’s Investment chapter. Ridiculous, right? Nope! The Corporate lawyer NAFTA panel rejected Canada’s argument and a year later Canada was compelled to reverse its decision on MMT and to add insult to injury Canada also had to pay out $13 million in fines and corporate profit losses. In 2012 Canada was again in the gunsights of the Eli Lilly Company because of Canada’s restrictions on granting medical patents to Lilly. Lilly filed for $100million in the NAFTA investor court. So far, over $365,000,000 has been paid out on submitted claims and there are 19 other actions under review worth 14 billion dollars. The worst part of this is that this has nothing to do with trade issues; this has to do with environmental and public health issues.

I remember discussing NAFTA with my son’s friend, Morgan who was an AFL-CIO organizer in South Florida back in the mid Nineties. At the time I was not against NAFTA because I believed that Clinton was sincere about how NAFTA would work. Morgan took the opposite view and said that it’s the worst thing that could happen to American labor. I pointed out the worker protection clauses that Clinton had inserted, and Morgan just said “that’s just never going to happen. It’s a ruse.” As it turns out Morgan was right. NAFTA is an unmitigated disaster unless you are the corporations doing the business, and there’s nothing that our government can or will do about it.

“If at first you don’t succeed”

So, what do you do when you see NAFTA is not working out? That’s easy. You expand it to include Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic making it more dangerous that before, after all, why shouldn’t some of our Latin American and Caribbean friends feel our pain as well. This was the work of the neocons in 2005 in the Bush 43 administration. There was a lot of contention in congress over CAFTA and it was only ratified by one vote in the House of Representatives. Again workers lost protection and American jobs were sent overseas. Environmental and health concerns were overlooked and the corporations made a fortune. Combining that with the Bush Tax Cuts we were screwed again.

“Try, try again.”

Not satisfied with enriching their corporate friends and damaging the average taxpayer more than ever, the Bush 43 people entered into talks to create a Pacific Basin partnership originally encompassing nine countries, including The United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The US entered the negotiations in March of 2008 which places it during the Bush 43 administration. Since that time other countries have expressed interest including Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, The Philippines, Japan, Colombia, Laos and Costa Rica. The US is aggressively pushing South Korea to join. Since the original meeting back in 2004 there have been 16 rounds of talks, the last one taking place in Singapore back in March 4-16^th of this year. A seventeenth round is scheduled from May 15-24 in Lima, Peru.

Having experienced the difficulties in both NAFTA and CAFTA the US participation in these talks has gone covert. No one talks about it. There is almost a 100% blackout of information in the corporately controlled news media, and what information is available has been gotten through leaks and whistleblowers, and you know what happens with whistleblowers. There is no transparency in these negotiations and from what we can ascertain only 2 chapters of the agreement actually have something to do with trade itself. Much of it has to do with intellectual property, and a lot of it has to do with circumventing labor, environmental and public health issues. What we do know is that the Obama Administration has embraced the TPP and is doing what it can to fast track it. On April 15, Secretary of State John Kerry was in Japan and gave a speech at Tokyo Tech waxing eloquently about the advantages of the TPP. Activist Cherie Faircloth, a contributor to WONO actually called the White House and got through to Robert Spitzer, Senior Trade Policy Advisor with the USDA. In her conversation with Spitzer, he admitted that there were too few corporate agricultural advisors in Florida and he was looking for more. Her article appeared on Feb. 26, 2013.

Back in Early March a group of activists attended an anti TPP rally in the Ybor city section of Tampa. You can find the links to the videos Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. The message is pretty clear. We’re in Submarine Alley and all those torpedoes are set to fire on us. Since we know about it we can do something about it. Even though many politicians will deny that they have knowledge of it there are some who are aware of it including Senator Bill Nelson of Florida. Action needs to be taken in the congress to not allow the fast track and to ultimately defeat the US participation in the TPP. You can get more involved by researching the TPP and going to Public Citizen. Org. Maybe we can avoid the torpedoes. Just watch out for the minefields.