Jim: It's roundtable time. Topics we hope to include are Guantanamo, censorship, Cabinet nominees and more -- including TV. Remember our new e-mail address is thethirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com.
Please note that is a change. Participating our roundtable are The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, and me, Jim; Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude; Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man; C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review; Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills); Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix; Mike of Mikey Likes It!; Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz); Ruth of Ruth's Report; Trina of Trina's Kitchen; Wally of The Daily Jot; Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ; Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends; Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub. Betty's kids did the
illustration. You are reading a rush transcript.
Jim (Con't): Let's start with Guantanamo. In the community, C.I. offered "The American Concentration Camp," Ann offered "Time of death for the rule of law?" and "The ACLU comes off like a trained seal," and Kat offered "Guantanamo." In addition, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights both issued statements. Let's start there because, Ann, you weren't impressed with the ACLU. Why?
Jim (Con't): Let's start with Guantanamo. In the community, C.I. offered "The American Concentration Camp," Ann offered "Time of death for the rule of law?" and "The ACLU comes off like a trained seal," and Kat offered "Guantanamo." In addition, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights both issued statements. Let's start there because, Ann, you weren't impressed with the ACLU. Why?
Ann: A few remarks from Barack Obama and the ACLU's willing to forget that he promised to close Guantanamo when he was campaigning for president in 2008 and made it through the first term -- when the second wasn't guaranteed -- never closing it. Did Barack announce that he was closing Guantanamo? No. He just said it should be. Yeah, no disagreement there Barack so why the hell don't you do it. I'm not the mood for the ACLU acting like loaves of bread just fell from heaven. Kat wrote on a related topic Friday.
Kat: Alan MacLeod's "Is Obama's Gitmo Statement Merely a PR Stunt?" went up at CounterPunch Thursday -- or Friday, see my post -- and the attitude in the piece is similar to Ann's and also C.I.'s earlier in the week. Which is? Words are easy, actions matter. Why are we applauding Mr. Pretty Words for yet more words when action should have been taken long ago? It's an important point. I read Ann's piece about the ACLU being a trained seal at the start of the week and that's so correct. You close it or you don't. And those goes to C.I.'s point and Barack and Bush and their supporters. Finger pointing and whining it's the others fault. Like C.I., I don't give a damn, I don't want to hear the squabbles. Barack's run it for four years, it's his problem too, it's his crime too and it needs to be shut down immediately. People have been destroyed in that prison. And it destroys us all as well. It destroys what we stand for, how we see ourselves and sinks us further down, pulling the rest of the world down lower with us, that was point C.I. was making and I support that 100%.
Ann: Which, and I'm sorry, I know we're all planning to move quickly to try to address a number of topics, but which is why you don't pull an ACLU and go, "Wow thank you , Barack! Love you! You're so wonderful to say those words!" Empty words. The country and the world have suffered enough.
Jim: But, his supporters insist, Congress blocks him.
Jess: Bulls**t. As The Miami Herald's Carole Rosenberg pointed out on NPR's Morning Edition, Congress said anyone could leave, Barack just has to get the Secretary of Defense to sign off on it. In the meantime, Congress spends $900,000 of US taxpayer dollars on each prisoner, each year. At a time when we're supposed to be 'fiscal' and Barack's trying to gut the safety net, you'd think the money issue would sway a few people.
Jim: Alright. So there really are no excuses. I didn't think so either, I was just playing devil's advocate. C.I. covers Iraq every day. In addition to that, last week in the community we saw the following posts at community sites: "Good for Reuters," "Where are the left publications?," "The slaughter in Hawija," "Iraq gets worse (so does Women's Media Center)," "Iraq," "Why can't Policy Mic handle the topic of rape?," "He needs to be voted out of office," "Why does Christian Sciene Monitor keep lying about Iraq?," "What's the aversion to discussing rape?," "Remember who kicked off the violence," "Oh, Phyllis Bennis, are you really that dumb? Really?," "I'm sick of Daniel Ellsberg lying," "The violence never ends," "A film, violence in Iraq, etc" and "Iraq, Isaiah, Kat, Kim." This echos last week where we saw something similar. Betty. you're among those who've started blogging about Iraq several times a week. What's going on?
Betty: Nouri al-Maliki is a thug and a tyrant who is turning on the Iraqi people. Two weeks ago, you've got Nouri's forces attacking a sit-in. Killing at least 50 people, wounding 110 more. Now UNICEF informs us that 8 of the dead were children. Let me repeat it, 8 of the dead were children. That thug needs to go. The US government needs to stop supporting him, needs to stop providing him with weapons and needs to demand some change takes place. This is ridiculous. And Elaine wrote about this a few weeks back before the sit-in. About how we all let C.I. do all the heavy work. And she can. And she manages to. But if we're not thrilled with the US media silence about Iraq, either we do something different or we're as bad as they are. Ruth?
Ruth: Thank you. Betty and I started talking about this after Elaine's piece went up a few weeks back. We noticed a real shift when it wasn't just C.I. calling out the press on a lie but it was Elaine and Mike as well. Betty, C.I. and I are supporting a line from Reuters on Friday for a Truest. It is about how the ministries in Iraq, government ministries, repeatedly give an undercount. C.I. has made that point forever. And she is right. But if Mike and Elaine hadn't joined her in hitting hard on that last month would it have been noted this month? I have never seen the press admit that the ministries give an undercount. So Betty and I were talking about effects like that and we both agreed that we could do what Elaine had said she was going to do, make at least one post a week about Iraq. In addition to C.I.'s work, we all work on an article about Iraq here and between that and all of us resposting the Iraq snapshot, I think we sometimes have an attitude of, "It is covered." And that would be true, if the US media was still covering Iraq. But they are not.
Betty: Right. It is Ned Parker of The Los Angeles Times, who I have been highlighting at my site, Tim Arango of The New York Times, Mohammed Tawfeeq for CNN and the AP. Those are the entire US news outlets reporting on Iraq. With all the channels and all the papers and the websites, that is it.
Jim: Elaine, I had planned to bring you in on another topic but you keep getting mentioned for this one.
Elaine: Sure, I can jump in. Last week, I called out Phyllis Bennis and Mike called out Daniel Ellsberg. These are supposedly strong left voices. But they're two cowards who need to shut up if they don't have something truthful to say. Both lied on broadcasts that all US troops were out of Iraq. No. All US troops never left Iraq. I chose Bennis because, if you look at some of her 2012 writing, you will find her admitting that. Sometimes she tells the truth, sometimes she doesn't. C.I. doesn't have that option. She has to tell the truth and every time someone like Phyllis Bennis or Daniel Ellsberg lies or whores, it makes it that much harder for the real truth tellers. Last week, C.I. made a point to quote from the US Congressional Research Service report by Kenneth Katzman "Iraq: Politics, Governance, and Human Rights." She shouldn't have had to. She quoted Katzman, in his report to the US Congress, explaining about US troops still in Iraq. She quoted him explaining The Erbil Agreement. These are two of things that she has to repeatedly go over -- in depth -- because people will insist she's lying. 'There are no US troops still in Iraq!' Or 'Nouri wouldn't be prime minister if he didn't get elected to a second term!' Well, in fact, C.I.'s told you the truth repeatedly. It's the whores who've lied. So read the report by Katzman and grasp it's Daniel Ellsberg who's lying, it's Phyllis Bennis who's lying. I think by grabbing Iraq once a week, we can take a lot of pressure off C.I. because she's the truth teller and she stands all alone. She takes all the heat for it and, yes, all the hate for it. She is America's Cassandra.
Jim: Cassandra, the Greek beauty who had the gift of prophecy but was cursed by Apollo never to be believed. Okay, Isaiah, I want to bring you in as well. You did "The Bride of Iran" -- any idea how controversial it would become?
Isaiah: Not a bit. My only goal there was to hold Nouri's feet to the fire and for many of the reasons that Betty, Ruth and Elaine have already spoken of. The Hawija massacre is something that the world should have stopped. Having failed to do so, the world owed to the dead to at least pay attention. As for the flack I got? I can live with it.
Jim: And we've got an article on that elsewhere in the edition, so I'll move on. Penny Pritzker. The corporate crook has just been nominated by Barack for Secretary of Commerce. In "Americans lost their homes because of her," "THIS JUST IN! CORPORTAE WELFARE FOR SUBPRIME LOAN QUEEN!" and "Foreclosure Queen Penny buys a Cabinet seat," Cedric, Wally and Mike covered the nomination.
Wally: Right and Cedric and I noted Ruth's "Bad Penny Pritzker" from Februrary 2011.
Jim: Right. Trina's a part of this discussion. Elaine was supposed to be but I pulled her out for Iraq. Trina, tell us about Penny.
Trina: I think the article in The Chicago Tribune Thursday told us about Penny. Her hometown newspaper delicately put it, "Pritzker is on the board of Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her wealthy family and has had rocky relations with labor unions. Her nomination, which still needs Senate confirmation, also could bring up questions about the failure of a bank partly owned by her family." Rocky relationships with labor. And she's going to be commerce secretary? Before we get in to the issue of the subprime or even the scandals from Hyatt's nursing homes, that's troubling enough.
Dona: And if I can jump in, no one needed NOW issuing their crappy statement "NOW to President Obama: Penny Pritzker Appointment is Good, But Still Not Good Enough; More Women Should be in the Cabinet." Women are workers. If you're not a friend to labor, you're not a friend to women workers. NOW has embarrassed itself yet again. It's getting as bad as it was in Kim Gandy's final years.
Cedric: Wally and I decided to do something different. I want to use my time to read this into the record. It's from Greg Palast's "Billionaire Bankster Penny Pritzker Breaks into Obama's Cabinet:"
Pritzker's net worth is listed in Forbes as $1.8 billion, which is one hell of a heavy magic wand in the world of politics. Her wand would have been heavier, and her net worth higher, except that in 2001, the federal government fined her and her family $460 million for the predatory, deceitful, racist tactics and practices of Superior, the bank-and-loan-shark operation she ran on the South Side of Chicago.
Superior was the first of the deregulated go-go banks to go bust - at the time, the costliest failure ever. US taxpayers lost nearly half a billion dollars. Superior's depositors lost millions and poor folk in Sen. Obama's South Side district lost their homes.
Penny did not like paying $460 million. No, not one bit. What she needed was someone to give her Hope and Change. She hoped someone would change the banking regulators and the Commerce Department so she could get away with this crap.
Pritzker introduced Obama, the neophyte state senator, to the Ladies Who Lunch (that's really what they call themselves) on Chicago's Gold Coast. Obama got lunch, gold and better - an introduction to Robert Rubin. Rubin is a former Secretary of the Treasury, former chairman of Goldman Sachs and former co-chairman of Citibank. Even atheists recognized Rubin as the Supreme Deity of Wall Street.
Rubin opened the doors to finance industry vaults for Obama. Extraordinarily for a Democrat, Obama in 2008 raised three times as much from bankers as his Republican opponent.
Wally: Cedric and I talked about this and if the topic was late in the roundtable, we agreed that instead of a discussion, we'd each just read something into the record. This is George N. Schmidt reporting on Penny Pritzker last July at Substance News:
The story manages to leave out the main work Penny Pritzker has been doing to bust unions during the past 14 months. Given how much can be accumulated by any reporter using Google, it's a tour de force that Jodi Kantor and Hicholas Confessore manage to leave out Penny's role in pushing Rahm Emanuel's agenda against the largest teacher union between the east and west coasts — and the strike that is now looming!
A "news" story in The New York Times discusses problems between Penny Pritzker and "labor" and leaves out the biggest confrontation of all between Penny Pritzker and unions in Chicago: her role as one of seven voting members of the Chicago Board of Education, appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel one year ago, or her ongoing role in the teacher bashing and union busting agenda of the former White House Chief of Staff that will come to a major confrontation in the next eight weeks. Yet that lengthy New York Times story manages to miss the elephant farting in the Times's pup ten: Chicago Public Schools and the Pritzker agenda against real public schools, and on behalf of massive privatization, union busting, charter schools, and vastly expanded outsourcing, including in public education administration.
Penny Pritzker's role as one of the seven members of the Chicago Board of Education has been prominent since Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed her in May 2011. As one of her first acts on the school board, she spoke in favor of the controversial (and since proved mendacious) decision by the Board of Education to vote that it was facing a "fiscal crisis" and therefore did not have to honor the fifth year of the labor contract with the school system's unions. That vote rescinded the four percent raise that the unions had negotiated four years earlier with the previous school board. Two months after that vote, Pritzker voted quietly to transfer an additional $70 million to the City of Chicago for police services in the schools, a scandal that has lately been exposed by researchers (including this reporter) at the Chicago Teachers Union. The school system had a valid contract with the city requiring it to pay $8 million per year for police services, but after breaking the unions' contracts, the members of the Board voted to transfer the additional money to Rahm Emanuel's city budget. As with most decisions of the Board since Pritzker became a member, the action was taken in August 2011 without discussion or debate.
Jim: Alright, that's fine. We have Rebecca, Marcia, Mike, Stan and Ty still to go -- maybe Ava and C.I. as well. And the topic is TV. Rebecca, you cover three shows. As the season ends, your thoughts on them?
Rebcca: I cover Scandal and Revenge on ABC and Community on NBC. The breakout hit of this season has been Scandal. If you miss it, you're missing out on the conversation because this is a "I didn't see that coming!" next day kind of show. In fact, it's what Revenge was last season. Revenge isn't what it was. Firing the show runner was the smartest thing ABC did but it took too damn long.
Jim: What was the problem?
Rebecca: The first season was about Amanda Clarke posing as Emily Thorne and returning to the Hamptons to get revenge for the liars who framed her father for terrorism and destroyed his life. That especially includes Victoria Grayson who was having an affair with David Clarke, would have his daughter, Charlotte, but turned on David to back her husband Conrad Grayson. Season two? There have been episodes where Victoria had one scene. Instead of us following Emily's storyling, we spent far too much time on brand new character Aidan and his trashy sister that we never saw before and didn't care about. It was Aiden, Aiden, Aiden. Now the show runner, he may have fallen in love with Aiden. But America didn't, the fans complained and the ratings sank. While Revenge imploded, Community came back with its finest season. This was a great season and I would hope NBC would renew it based on that. I've argued at my blog that it should be paired with Whitney because both shows cover stories -- unlike the Parks and Recreation shows which are spoof shows of a documentary being made about the show.
Marcia: I could see that. The two got strong ratings when they shared a night before. They really are the only two on the schedule that match up. Go On, the Matthew Perry show, is another one of NBC's sitcoms for people who don't like sitcoms.
Jim: Revolution?
Marcia: Airs on NBC. Most improved show of the season. I'm into sci-fi so I watched from the start. The show never lived up to what it promised. Then, as Christmas season approached, it took a lengthy hiatus. When it came back on? Boom-boom-boom. The show moves so quickly and it is everything you could want it to be. It's just this huge improvement. I actually tried to stop blogging about it at one point. But the readers wouldn't let me. And back then, before the hiatus, it was a real struggle to watch. Now I can't wait for each new episode.
Jim: Stan, you've got two shows.
Stan: Three.
Jim: Sorry, three.
Stan: The Good Wife. I don't ever worry about that show getting the axe. It has an audience. I never check for news about it -- with the exception of the start of this season when they started trying to put Kalinda into that masochistic relationship. But that's really it. For example, last Monday when I wrote about the show, I didn't note it was the season finale because I didn't know it was. I only learned that after people e-mailed me to tell me it. Body of Proof. ABC. Awful show. They've gotten rid of three cast members, they've reduced Ethan and Curtis to the point where they do nothing. They decided we wanted to spend time with Mark Valley and brought him on and shoved him down our throats. And Megan's just a pain in the ass. Dana Delaney's character. It's really a tired show.
Ty: I think the point here is one Ty made last month which is when the highest rated episode of the season is the one that revolves around Jeri Ryan's character and not Dana Delaney's, that's the tip that the audience is tired of Megan Hunt.
Stan: Thank you. The third show is Arrow. Ava and C.I. told me I would like that show. I wasn't going to watch. I love the super hero shows but they always get the axe. Like The Cape, I loved The Cape. But Ava and C.I. said I'd like it and they were right. The only thing I don't like is Roy. In the comics, the teeny bopper becomes Speedy -- Kid Arrow! Who needs it? He drags the show down and not just because he can't keep his shirt on.
Jim: And Arrow was The CW's hit for this season. Mike, you cover Nikita on The CW.
Mike: There are two more new episodes left before the season wraps up, airs Fridays on The CW. It's a great show, the season has been wonderful. You really don't want to miss it. Division is no more. Amanda's teamed with The Shop. Things are going crazy. A great show.
Jim: For five years, you blogged about a show on Fox. And that show wrapped up this season.
Mike: Right. Fringe. I miss it. I actually like Touch, I know some people don't. If Touch were on another night, I'd blog about it. But it's on Fridays and I'm already blogging on Saturdays to cover Nikita. But Fringe is a show that's truly missed. Stan noted it was on Netflix. Got to be honest here, I've already seen every episode, blogged about them in real time. After I read Stan, I went to Netflix and started streaming. Fringe was a great show -- just first four seasons at Netflix. Need to add that so no one gets mad and says, "Why didn't you tell me they didn't have season five!"
Jim: Okay, we're wrapping up but there was an e-mail late Saturday wondering why C.I. would be tired after she and Ava had done the research work for their TV piece this edition? "So they watched five episodes and called people with the show and who left the show, that's really going to wear you out?" That was the question from Walter.
Ava: I'll grab. Saturday, we flew across the country. On the plane back, we were going through a ton of things and also talking about a piece we're writing -- besides the TV piece --and outlining that. We were reviewing things for our TV piece because we hadn't decided yet and there are always people asking us to note their project. We get back and immediately launch into an article about censorship. Everyone worked on that and we got it through two drafts. We also spent 30 minutes debating the images that would run with it and how to present them. Forget that C.I.'s already written every day at The Common Ills. Her being tired wasn't surprising.
Jim: I agree. C.I. what sort of other things did you review?
C.I.: Honestly, we cover One Life To Live. That wasn't planned. That was sold to us and the pitch was the best pitch to appeal to us. Once we heard the pitch, we were hooked. Prior to that? We were considering All My Children, Sarah Chalke's new sitcom, a SyFy show, a documentary on aborigines in Australia which was a really great one that included discussions of Oodgeroo Noonuccal, the poet who is also known as Kath Walker. It talked about the 1967 vote on aborigines rights, the May 27, 1967 vote and how it was possible, some argued, because Australia was doing so great economically at that time and felt proud of itself. Which would make you wonder the implications of when a country's not doing well economically. And we discussed how that could be paired with Making Contact, a public radio program, and a recent discussion on empathy. There was the book discussion on Great Gatsby that the Leonard Lopate Show will broadcast tomorrow. I believe they're broadcasting it Monday. All of those things are things that Ava and I went through on Saturday before we decided on One Life To Live and watched the first five episodes. And that's how it goes every week.
Ava: Long gone are the early days when Sunday rolled around and we'd say, "What do you want to write about?" There are people who plead for reviews for their show even if it's going to be negative because it gets the show out there.
Jim: Okay. Well that's going to wrap it up. This is a rush transcript.
Betty: Nouri al-Maliki is a thug and a tyrant who is turning on the Iraqi people. Two weeks ago, you've got Nouri's forces attacking a sit-in. Killing at least 50 people, wounding 110 more. Now UNICEF informs us that 8 of the dead were children. Let me repeat it, 8 of the dead were children. That thug needs to go. The US government needs to stop supporting him, needs to stop providing him with weapons and needs to demand some change takes place. This is ridiculous. And Elaine wrote about this a few weeks back before the sit-in. About how we all let C.I. do all the heavy work. And she can. And she manages to. But if we're not thrilled with the US media silence about Iraq, either we do something different or we're as bad as they are. Ruth?
Ruth: Thank you. Betty and I started talking about this after Elaine's piece went up a few weeks back. We noticed a real shift when it wasn't just C.I. calling out the press on a lie but it was Elaine and Mike as well. Betty, C.I. and I are supporting a line from Reuters on Friday for a Truest. It is about how the ministries in Iraq, government ministries, repeatedly give an undercount. C.I. has made that point forever. And she is right. But if Mike and Elaine hadn't joined her in hitting hard on that last month would it have been noted this month? I have never seen the press admit that the ministries give an undercount. So Betty and I were talking about effects like that and we both agreed that we could do what Elaine had said she was going to do, make at least one post a week about Iraq. In addition to C.I.'s work, we all work on an article about Iraq here and between that and all of us resposting the Iraq snapshot, I think we sometimes have an attitude of, "It is covered." And that would be true, if the US media was still covering Iraq. But they are not.
Betty: Right. It is Ned Parker of The Los Angeles Times, who I have been highlighting at my site, Tim Arango of The New York Times, Mohammed Tawfeeq for CNN and the AP. Those are the entire US news outlets reporting on Iraq. With all the channels and all the papers and the websites, that is it.
Jim: Elaine, I had planned to bring you in on another topic but you keep getting mentioned for this one.
Elaine: Sure, I can jump in. Last week, I called out Phyllis Bennis and Mike called out Daniel Ellsberg. These are supposedly strong left voices. But they're two cowards who need to shut up if they don't have something truthful to say. Both lied on broadcasts that all US troops were out of Iraq. No. All US troops never left Iraq. I chose Bennis because, if you look at some of her 2012 writing, you will find her admitting that. Sometimes she tells the truth, sometimes she doesn't. C.I. doesn't have that option. She has to tell the truth and every time someone like Phyllis Bennis or Daniel Ellsberg lies or whores, it makes it that much harder for the real truth tellers. Last week, C.I. made a point to quote from the US Congressional Research Service report by Kenneth Katzman "Iraq: Politics, Governance, and Human Rights." She shouldn't have had to. She quoted Katzman, in his report to the US Congress, explaining about US troops still in Iraq. She quoted him explaining The Erbil Agreement. These are two of things that she has to repeatedly go over -- in depth -- because people will insist she's lying. 'There are no US troops still in Iraq!' Or 'Nouri wouldn't be prime minister if he didn't get elected to a second term!' Well, in fact, C.I.'s told you the truth repeatedly. It's the whores who've lied. So read the report by Katzman and grasp it's Daniel Ellsberg who's lying, it's Phyllis Bennis who's lying. I think by grabbing Iraq once a week, we can take a lot of pressure off C.I. because she's the truth teller and she stands all alone. She takes all the heat for it and, yes, all the hate for it. She is America's Cassandra.
Jim: Cassandra, the Greek beauty who had the gift of prophecy but was cursed by Apollo never to be believed. Okay, Isaiah, I want to bring you in as well. You did "The Bride of Iran" -- any idea how controversial it would become?
Isaiah: Not a bit. My only goal there was to hold Nouri's feet to the fire and for many of the reasons that Betty, Ruth and Elaine have already spoken of. The Hawija massacre is something that the world should have stopped. Having failed to do so, the world owed to the dead to at least pay attention. As for the flack I got? I can live with it.
Jim: And we've got an article on that elsewhere in the edition, so I'll move on. Penny Pritzker. The corporate crook has just been nominated by Barack for Secretary of Commerce. In "Americans lost their homes because of her," "THIS JUST IN! CORPORTAE WELFARE FOR SUBPRIME LOAN QUEEN!" and "Foreclosure Queen Penny buys a Cabinet seat," Cedric, Wally and Mike covered the nomination.
Wally: Right and Cedric and I noted Ruth's "Bad Penny Pritzker" from Februrary 2011.
Jim: Right. Trina's a part of this discussion. Elaine was supposed to be but I pulled her out for Iraq. Trina, tell us about Penny.
Trina: I think the article in The Chicago Tribune Thursday told us about Penny. Her hometown newspaper delicately put it, "Pritzker is on the board of Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her wealthy family and has had rocky relations with labor unions. Her nomination, which still needs Senate confirmation, also could bring up questions about the failure of a bank partly owned by her family." Rocky relationships with labor. And she's going to be commerce secretary? Before we get in to the issue of the subprime or even the scandals from Hyatt's nursing homes, that's troubling enough.
Dona: And if I can jump in, no one needed NOW issuing their crappy statement "NOW to President Obama: Penny Pritzker Appointment is Good, But Still Not Good Enough; More Women Should be in the Cabinet." Women are workers. If you're not a friend to labor, you're not a friend to women workers. NOW has embarrassed itself yet again. It's getting as bad as it was in Kim Gandy's final years.
Cedric: Wally and I decided to do something different. I want to use my time to read this into the record. It's from Greg Palast's "Billionaire Bankster Penny Pritzker Breaks into Obama's Cabinet:"
Pritzker's net worth is listed in Forbes as $1.8 billion, which is one hell of a heavy magic wand in the world of politics. Her wand would have been heavier, and her net worth higher, except that in 2001, the federal government fined her and her family $460 million for the predatory, deceitful, racist tactics and practices of Superior, the bank-and-loan-shark operation she ran on the South Side of Chicago.
Superior was the first of the deregulated go-go banks to go bust - at the time, the costliest failure ever. US taxpayers lost nearly half a billion dollars. Superior's depositors lost millions and poor folk in Sen. Obama's South Side district lost their homes.
Penny did not like paying $460 million. No, not one bit. What she needed was someone to give her Hope and Change. She hoped someone would change the banking regulators and the Commerce Department so she could get away with this crap.
Pritzker introduced Obama, the neophyte state senator, to the Ladies Who Lunch (that's really what they call themselves) on Chicago's Gold Coast. Obama got lunch, gold and better - an introduction to Robert Rubin. Rubin is a former Secretary of the Treasury, former chairman of Goldman Sachs and former co-chairman of Citibank. Even atheists recognized Rubin as the Supreme Deity of Wall Street.
Rubin opened the doors to finance industry vaults for Obama. Extraordinarily for a Democrat, Obama in 2008 raised three times as much from bankers as his Republican opponent.
Wally: Cedric and I talked about this and if the topic was late in the roundtable, we agreed that instead of a discussion, we'd each just read something into the record. This is George N. Schmidt reporting on Penny Pritzker last July at Substance News:
The story manages to leave out the main work Penny Pritzker has been doing to bust unions during the past 14 months. Given how much can be accumulated by any reporter using Google, it's a tour de force that Jodi Kantor and Hicholas Confessore manage to leave out Penny's role in pushing Rahm Emanuel's agenda against the largest teacher union between the east and west coasts — and the strike that is now looming!
A "news" story in The New York Times discusses problems between Penny Pritzker and "labor" and leaves out the biggest confrontation of all between Penny Pritzker and unions in Chicago: her role as one of seven voting members of the Chicago Board of Education, appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel one year ago, or her ongoing role in the teacher bashing and union busting agenda of the former White House Chief of Staff that will come to a major confrontation in the next eight weeks. Yet that lengthy New York Times story manages to miss the elephant farting in the Times's pup ten: Chicago Public Schools and the Pritzker agenda against real public schools, and on behalf of massive privatization, union busting, charter schools, and vastly expanded outsourcing, including in public education administration.
Penny Pritzker's role as one of the seven members of the Chicago Board of Education has been prominent since Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed her in May 2011. As one of her first acts on the school board, she spoke in favor of the controversial (and since proved mendacious) decision by the Board of Education to vote that it was facing a "fiscal crisis" and therefore did not have to honor the fifth year of the labor contract with the school system's unions. That vote rescinded the four percent raise that the unions had negotiated four years earlier with the previous school board. Two months after that vote, Pritzker voted quietly to transfer an additional $70 million to the City of Chicago for police services in the schools, a scandal that has lately been exposed by researchers (including this reporter) at the Chicago Teachers Union. The school system had a valid contract with the city requiring it to pay $8 million per year for police services, but after breaking the unions' contracts, the members of the Board voted to transfer the additional money to Rahm Emanuel's city budget. As with most decisions of the Board since Pritzker became a member, the action was taken in August 2011 without discussion or debate.
Jim: Alright, that's fine. We have Rebecca, Marcia, Mike, Stan and Ty still to go -- maybe Ava and C.I. as well. And the topic is TV. Rebecca, you cover three shows. As the season ends, your thoughts on them?
Rebcca: I cover Scandal and Revenge on ABC and Community on NBC. The breakout hit of this season has been Scandal. If you miss it, you're missing out on the conversation because this is a "I didn't see that coming!" next day kind of show. In fact, it's what Revenge was last season. Revenge isn't what it was. Firing the show runner was the smartest thing ABC did but it took too damn long.
Jim: What was the problem?
Rebecca: The first season was about Amanda Clarke posing as Emily Thorne and returning to the Hamptons to get revenge for the liars who framed her father for terrorism and destroyed his life. That especially includes Victoria Grayson who was having an affair with David Clarke, would have his daughter, Charlotte, but turned on David to back her husband Conrad Grayson. Season two? There have been episodes where Victoria had one scene. Instead of us following Emily's storyling, we spent far too much time on brand new character Aidan and his trashy sister that we never saw before and didn't care about. It was Aiden, Aiden, Aiden. Now the show runner, he may have fallen in love with Aiden. But America didn't, the fans complained and the ratings sank. While Revenge imploded, Community came back with its finest season. This was a great season and I would hope NBC would renew it based on that. I've argued at my blog that it should be paired with Whitney because both shows cover stories -- unlike the Parks and Recreation shows which are spoof shows of a documentary being made about the show.
Marcia: I could see that. The two got strong ratings when they shared a night before. They really are the only two on the schedule that match up. Go On, the Matthew Perry show, is another one of NBC's sitcoms for people who don't like sitcoms.
Jim: Revolution?
Marcia: Airs on NBC. Most improved show of the season. I'm into sci-fi so I watched from the start. The show never lived up to what it promised. Then, as Christmas season approached, it took a lengthy hiatus. When it came back on? Boom-boom-boom. The show moves so quickly and it is everything you could want it to be. It's just this huge improvement. I actually tried to stop blogging about it at one point. But the readers wouldn't let me. And back then, before the hiatus, it was a real struggle to watch. Now I can't wait for each new episode.
Jim: Stan, you've got two shows.
Stan: Three.
Jim: Sorry, three.
Stan: The Good Wife. I don't ever worry about that show getting the axe. It has an audience. I never check for news about it -- with the exception of the start of this season when they started trying to put Kalinda into that masochistic relationship. But that's really it. For example, last Monday when I wrote about the show, I didn't note it was the season finale because I didn't know it was. I only learned that after people e-mailed me to tell me it. Body of Proof. ABC. Awful show. They've gotten rid of three cast members, they've reduced Ethan and Curtis to the point where they do nothing. They decided we wanted to spend time with Mark Valley and brought him on and shoved him down our throats. And Megan's just a pain in the ass. Dana Delaney's character. It's really a tired show.
Ty: I think the point here is one Ty made last month which is when the highest rated episode of the season is the one that revolves around Jeri Ryan's character and not Dana Delaney's, that's the tip that the audience is tired of Megan Hunt.
Stan: Thank you. The third show is Arrow. Ava and C.I. told me I would like that show. I wasn't going to watch. I love the super hero shows but they always get the axe. Like The Cape, I loved The Cape. But Ava and C.I. said I'd like it and they were right. The only thing I don't like is Roy. In the comics, the teeny bopper becomes Speedy -- Kid Arrow! Who needs it? He drags the show down and not just because he can't keep his shirt on.
Jim: And Arrow was The CW's hit for this season. Mike, you cover Nikita on The CW.
Mike: There are two more new episodes left before the season wraps up, airs Fridays on The CW. It's a great show, the season has been wonderful. You really don't want to miss it. Division is no more. Amanda's teamed with The Shop. Things are going crazy. A great show.
Jim: For five years, you blogged about a show on Fox. And that show wrapped up this season.
Mike: Right. Fringe. I miss it. I actually like Touch, I know some people don't. If Touch were on another night, I'd blog about it. But it's on Fridays and I'm already blogging on Saturdays to cover Nikita. But Fringe is a show that's truly missed. Stan noted it was on Netflix. Got to be honest here, I've already seen every episode, blogged about them in real time. After I read Stan, I went to Netflix and started streaming. Fringe was a great show -- just first four seasons at Netflix. Need to add that so no one gets mad and says, "Why didn't you tell me they didn't have season five!"
Jim: Okay, we're wrapping up but there was an e-mail late Saturday wondering why C.I. would be tired after she and Ava had done the research work for their TV piece this edition? "So they watched five episodes and called people with the show and who left the show, that's really going to wear you out?" That was the question from Walter.
Ava: I'll grab. Saturday, we flew across the country. On the plane back, we were going through a ton of things and also talking about a piece we're writing -- besides the TV piece --and outlining that. We were reviewing things for our TV piece because we hadn't decided yet and there are always people asking us to note their project. We get back and immediately launch into an article about censorship. Everyone worked on that and we got it through two drafts. We also spent 30 minutes debating the images that would run with it and how to present them. Forget that C.I.'s already written every day at The Common Ills. Her being tired wasn't surprising.
Jim: I agree. C.I. what sort of other things did you review?
C.I.: Honestly, we cover One Life To Live. That wasn't planned. That was sold to us and the pitch was the best pitch to appeal to us. Once we heard the pitch, we were hooked. Prior to that? We were considering All My Children, Sarah Chalke's new sitcom, a SyFy show, a documentary on aborigines in Australia which was a really great one that included discussions of Oodgeroo Noonuccal, the poet who is also known as Kath Walker. It talked about the 1967 vote on aborigines rights, the May 27, 1967 vote and how it was possible, some argued, because Australia was doing so great economically at that time and felt proud of itself. Which would make you wonder the implications of when a country's not doing well economically. And we discussed how that could be paired with Making Contact, a public radio program, and a recent discussion on empathy. There was the book discussion on Great Gatsby that the Leonard Lopate Show will broadcast tomorrow. I believe they're broadcasting it Monday. All of those things are things that Ava and I went through on Saturday before we decided on One Life To Live and watched the first five episodes. And that's how it goes every week.
Ava: Long gone are the early days when Sunday rolled around and we'd say, "What do you want to write about?" There are people who plead for reviews for their show even if it's going to be negative because it gets the show out there.
Jim: Okay. Well that's going to wrap it up. This is a rush transcript.
