In a year when womens' pay has actually gone down relative to men’s, John McCain voted against the Equal Pay bill, which was killed in the senate on Wednesday night. To add insult to injury, he said that what women really needed was “education and training." Tell that to the many woman with strings of letters after their names, that are still getting paid less than their equally, or lesser qualified male counterparts for similar work.
On the up side, listen to Chelsea Clinton's incredibly erudite thoughts on the subject, which she gave in an off-the-cuff response to a tough audience question during an Open Thread campaign appearance in support of her mom at Duke University. Has Hillary sold-out her feminist principles? McCain has certainly sold out his (that's if he ever had any in the first place.) Given the values Hillary’s obviously instilled in her daughter, we think her feminist heart is in the right place.
Real Time host Bill Maher called the Roman Catholic Church "the Bear Stearns of Pedophilia," in the New Rules section of the latest episode of his HBO show (click HERE to view). "If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you Pope. It's like if you can't pay your mortgage, you're a deadbeat, but if you can't pay a million mortgages you're Bear Stearns, and we bail you out."
Certainly, it does seem to be a question of volume. To misquote Joseph Stalin, "one case of child abuse is a tragedy; a million is a statistic." After all, it's hard to explain why the Yearning for Zion Ranch in the Texas was raided, and its leaders arrested for child abuse, while Pope Benedict XVI is set to receive the red carpet treatment on his forthcoming trip to the U.S. .
During a BBC special investigation for the documentary series Panorama, reporters revealed the existence of an updated version of the 1962 document Crimen Sollicitationis (Latin for "The Crime of Solicitation"), which was authored by Pope Benedict XVI in 2001 while he was working under the former Pope John Paul II. In the missive, the then Cardinal, ordered bishops to put the interests of the church above those of the victims, and demanded that they keep quiet about the abuse under threat of excommunication.
In addition, under his policy of "Exclusive Competence," all abuse issues were to be handled directly by Rome, which dealt with the issue by systematically shuffling known perpetrators to fresh dioceses. This means the buck directly stopped at the Pontiff's office. Yet still, we're rolling out the red carpet rather than getting our handcuffs ready.
The Daily Mantra has very mixed feelings about the Beijing Olympic Games. One the one hand, we of course want to support the Tibetan people, and register our displeasure at the atrocious human rights record of the Chinese Government (and are aware that right now, sadly, America is not in a position to cast the first stone in that department). On the other hand, this is a sporting event that should transcend politics in order to celebrate international cooperation and human achievement at its finest.
The Olympic torch's troubled trip around the globe perhaps highlights that fact that the world's trouble spots are the very places that can benefit most from the global spotlight that follows such sporting events. Certainly, we very much hope that the current overwhelming international condemnation of China, that the torch is serving as a catalyst for, will at least result in some benefit for those oppressed by the communist state.
The issue is not an easy one. We certainly can't let China off the hook, simply so everyone can have a jolly good time at the games. Nor do we want to back China into the kind of corner where their only face-saving response will be harsher repression and greater isolation. It is therefore a question of balance, and of the delicate application of both the carrot and the stick.
The need for a little of the ying along with the yang when approaching the issue of China came into focus for me on a recent visit to New York's Guggenheim Museum, which is hosting a major retrospective on the work of Cai Guo-Qiang, a Chinese artist who has been bestowed with the prestigious job of creating a fireworks spectacular for the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
Cai Guo-Qiang, an artist who works in video, and on paper and canvas with gunpowder, has had an interesting relationship with his motherland. Both Cai and China have suffered at each other's hand, but ultimately, in choosing to persevere with their relationship, despite its difficulties, everyone has benefited.
Cai was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, China. His father, who was also an artist, ran a bookstore favored by the party elite. With access to a little privilege, he was able to slip his son the odd forbidden book, such as the iconic Death of a Salesman and Waiting for Godot. Cai moved to Tokyo to study in 1986, and, after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, remained in self-imposed exile in Japan until 1995, when he moved to New York.
In 1999 he attracted the wrath of the Chinese government thanks to his ironic recreation of a famous Maoist work of art, the Rent Collection Courtyard, which celebrates the "People's Revolution" by reminding the viewer of the cruelty of the pre-revolution overlords. A copyright lawsuit ensued, but was subsequently dropped. The artwork also earned Cai the Golden Lion Award at the 48th Venice Biennale for which it was created.
Moving to the West and creating the artistic equivalent of a red flag to China's bull aren't the best ways to court favor with the Communist Party there. But Cai's international fame and success proved to be an irresistible carrot, and he was invited back to China and honored with a solo show at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2002. The show was the first solo exhibition for a contemporary artist in China, and created new opportunities for the nation's growing stable of modern artists.
Of course Cai could have chosen to stay away. To punish China with a personal boycott. But that is not in his nature, or true to his work, which he sees in social terms as a means to break down boundaries and unite people. Such themes are intrinsic to his work. For example, an ancient fishing boat resurrected from the sea, which is filled with shards of the white porcelain it might once have been used to transport, is always installed with the help of the Japanese villagers who originally helped Cai raise it from its watery grave (a team traveled from Japan to New York for the Guggenheim show).
In another conceptual piece yet to be physically realized entitled Project for Extraterrestrials No.6, Cai hopes to gain the cooperation of the Chinese and Japanese governments in order to set off a series of gunpowder footprints that will stomp across the border between the two giant superpowers.
Cai's choice of gunpowder as his primary medium is a nod to the Maoist principle that things must be destroyed before being reformatted or rebuilt in order to wipe the slate clean. So while China's current regime may be in need of such treatment, let Cai's Olympic art speak for itself as it explodes above Beijing. And give China some credit for allowing Cai’s revolutionary voice to burst forth, for that is the carrot that goes with the stick.
The American public is used to getting its Fox News (or Faux News as we like to call it) served up through red-tinted spectacles, a phenomenon that The Daily Show parodied rather excellently in the clip above. But should the country shift into the blue come November, don't be surprised to see Fox bend with the wind of change, indeed there are major signs that it already is.
As we previously reported, in the late 90's there was a significant shift in the editorial slant of Fox owner Rupert Murdoch's British news outlets as Margaret Thatcher and John Major's monetarist (read: right-wing / Republican) empire was being swept aside due to increasing popular support for "New Labour" (akin to our left-leaning Democrats) and its promise of more egalitarian trickle-up economics. Sensing the changing political tide, Murdoch held a come-to-Jesus meeting with Labour leader Tony Blair in Australia in Dec '96, where it was agreed that some of his outlets would switch teams in exchange for future political concessions. In May '97, with Murdoch's support, Blair swept to victory in the General Elections, becoming the first Labour Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in nearly two decades.
It seems that the Murdoch clan may be laying the groundwork for a similar seismic shift here in the U.S.. In an editorial published on Jan 30 of this year the Murdoch/News Corp. owned New York Post endorsed Obama, ironically claiming (given the politics of the paper's mother ship) that, "Obama represents a fresh start."
Now the Murdoch/Obama connection is getting more personal. On April 28 Rupert's daughter Elisabeth is planning a discreet fundraiser for Barack Obama at her London home. Gwyneth Paltrow is one of the event's co-chairs, and VIP tickets are priced at the individual donation limit of $2,300 (see invite below).
The Daily Mantra thinks that people can be judged by the quality of their friends. How do you feel about the ones Obama is getting into bed with?
I love this video pod from Current reporter Karney Hatch, who made his bank pay for the error of their ways (see video). After incurring a spate of outrageous overdraft charges, Hatch took Wells Fargo to small claims court to challenge "the common sense and fairness" of their fees. Rather than waste time and money in court, Wells Fargo decided to settle, rescinding the charges in question and agreeing to pay Hatch's court filing fees. "It was cheaper to give me back my fees rather than pay someone to defend the bank in court," notes Hatch.
A similar thing happened to me about a month ago. My husband and I have three accounts with our bank, two personal and one business. In addition, over the years I've done business management for several other companies, who have all held accounts at the same bank. I've have a relationship with our bank for over ten years, and during that time none of the accounts I've managed had ever gone into the red. With a longtime track record of being a model customer, I was therefore very upset when the bank chose to penalize me with inflated charges when a snafu occurred.
One of our checks was accidentally deposited into the wrong account, which caused it to go overdrawn when checks we had written cleared. Even though we had more than enough money to cover the checks over the three accounts we had with the bank, the bank decided to return three checks, which, if they had cleared would have created an overdraft of less than $250. The bank then charged us $36 per check for the privilege of refusing to honor them. In addition, we faced check return and late payment fees from our car insurance, phone and credit card companies because of the bank's actions.
I was particularly upset that the bank hadn't bothered to call me (which they did regularly to confirm other transactions for the many accounts I supervised), or taken my highly responsible banking record into account before they decided to bounce the three checks. Had they called, the situation could have been resolved instantly with a transfer between accounts. Instead, it seems to me, the bank saw an opportunity to make a quick buck ($108 actually) and took it, charging me fees, and putting my good credit, and car insurance policy, at risk in the process.
My initial complaints fell on officious and intransigent ears. The bank refused to refund the charges, insisting that they "couldn't" rather then "wouldn't" do it. Luckily for me, they'd erroneously mailed someone else's overdraft notice in the same envelope as mine, so with this as leverage, I agreed to do the right thing and hand over "John Doe's" letter on condition that the bank did the right thing and rescinded my fees.
But the episode left a very bitter taste in my mouth, and got me thinking about those less fortunate than myself, for whom the system is particularly unfair. Just one of the three fees the bank had taken from my account, without my permission, was the equivalent to the best part of a day's pay for someone on minimum wage. Put the three together and it's well over half a week's salary for the hard working poor. How can that be fair?
"If you took out a $40 overdraft loan at the prevailing overdraft fee of just over $27, and you paid it back in a week, it would be over three-thousand, five hundred percent interest," said Eric Halperin from the Center For Responsible Lending in an interview with Hatch. How can such extortion even be legal?
"I felt like I was at the bottom of this elaborate pyramid scheme designed to extract money from people who didn't have it to just funnel it up to the CEOs and the higher up in the company," confessed a former Wells Fargo loans collection officer in Hatch's film.
With such sharp practices these banks are no better than loan sharks. And with the economy in crisis, such money generating policies are likely to increase as the banks desperately try to claw back the funds they've been forced to write off due to the mortgage fiasco we're in the midst of right now. Once again the consumer is paying (dearly) for the mistakes fat cat, big business has made.
So what can we do? Certainly it's all our responsibilities to refuse to take such treatment lying down. The banks are only able to charge such outrageous fees because on some level we allow them to get away with it. Next time you get an unfair charge, call the bank on it. You may be able to afford to eat it, but the person standing in line behind you might not, and, as a society, we stand or fall together. If one employee refuses to help, refuse to be brushed off. Ask to see their superior, and if they can't help, ask to see theirs. Threaten to close your account down and take your business elsewhere, and DO IT if they fail to offer an acceptable resolution. Remember, money talks loudly when it walks out the door.
If all else fails, take a leaf out of Hatch's playbook, and take your bank or credit card company to small claims court. As Ralph Nader says, "If a million consumers filed a million small claims court actions a year against the banks, the banks would either try to abolish the small claims court or try to improve their performance." Perhaps it's our responsibility to put that theory to the test. Once we've knocked the banks into shape, my next raison d'être will be local councils and the parking fines they charge. Try paying those on a minimum wage!
The Daily Mantra has very mixed feelings about the Beijing Olympic Games. One the one hand, we of course want to support the Tibetan people, and register our displeasure at the atrocious human rights record of the Chinese Government (and are aware that right now, sadly, America is not in 
In another conceptual piece yet to be physically realized entitled Project for Extraterrestrials No.6, Cai hopes to gain the cooperation of the Chinese and Japanese governments in order to set off a series of gunpowder footprints that will stomp across the border between the two giant superpowers. 
