EFTA00695057.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 5/15/2016 Date: Sun, 15 May 2016 07:18:55 +0000 Attachments: Lenny_Bruce_bio.docx; Gato_Barbieri_bio.docx Inline-Images: image.png; image(I).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(14).png; image(I5).png; image(16).png; image(I7).png; image(18).png; image(19).png DEAR FRIEND Lenny Bruce Long before there was a Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Bill Cosby, the voice of open, free-style and critical form of comedy which integrated satire, politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity that was the life blood of the counter-culture of the 1950s and 6os was that of Lenny Bruce — American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, and screenwriter — and truly one of the greatest that ever was.... as well as someone who inspired me coming of age in the early 1960s.... Leonard Alfred Schneider was born on October 13, 1925 in Mineola, New York, grew up in nearby Bellmore, and attended Wellington C. Mepham High School. His parents divorced when he was five EFTA00695057 years old (the documentary Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth claims he was eight years old), and Lenny lived with various relatives over the next decade. His British-born father, Myron (Mickey) Schneider, was a shoe clerk and Lenny saw him very infrequently. Mickey later moved to Arcadia, California and became a podiatrist. Bruce's mother, Sally Man• (real name Sadie Schneider, born Sadie Kitchenberg), was a stage performer and had an enormous influence on Bruce's career. After spending time working on a farm, Bruce joined the United States Navy at the age of 16 in 1942, and saw active duty during World War II aboard the USS Brooklyn (CL-40) fighting in Northern Africa, Palermo, Italy in 1943 and Anzio, Italy in 1944. In May 1945, after a comedic performance for his ship-mates in which he was dressed in drag, his commanding officers became upset. He defiantly convinced his ship's medical officer that he was experiencing homosexual urges. This led to his Dishonorable Discharge in July 1945. However, he had not admitted to or been found guilty of any breach of naval regulations and successfully applied to have his discharge changed to "Under Honorable Conditions ... by reason of unsuitability for the naval service". In 1959, while taping the first episode of Hugh Hefner's Playboy's Penthouse, Bruce talked about his Navy experience and showed a tattoo he received in Malta in 1942. After a short stint in California spent living with his father, Bruce settled in New York City, hoping to establish himself as a comedian. However, he found it difficult to differentiate himself from the thousands of other show business hopefuls who populated the city. One locale where they congregated was Hanson's, the diner where Bruce first met the comedian Joe Ancis, who had a profound influence on his approach to comedy. Many of Bruce's later routines reflected his meticulous schooling at the hands of Ancis. According to Bruce's biographer, Albert Goldman, Ancis' humor involved stream-of- consciousness sexual fantasies and references to jazz. Lenny took the stage as "Lenny Marsalle" one evening at the Victory Club, as a stand-in master of ceremonies for one of his mother's shows. His ad-libs earned him some laughs. Soon afterward, in 1947, just after changing his last name to Bruce, he earned $12 and a free spaghetti dinner for his first stand-up performance in Brooklyn, New York. He was later a guest — and was introduced by his mother, who called herself "Sally Bruce" — on the Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio program, doing a Sid Caesar-inspired bit "The Bavarian Mimic" featuring impressions of American movie stars (e.g., Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson). Bruce's early comedy career included writing the screenplays for Dance Hall Racket in 1953, which featured Bruce, his wife, Honey Harlow, and mother, Sally Marr, in roles; Dream Follies in 1954, a low-budget burlesque romp; and a children's film, The Rocket Man, in 1954. He also released four albums of original material on Berkeley-based Fantasy Records, with rants, comic routines, and satirical interviews on the themes that made him famous: jazz, moral philosophy, politics, patriotism, religion, law, race, abortion, drugs, the Ku Klux Klan, and Jewishness. These albums were later compiled and re-released as The Lenny Bruce Originals. Two later records were produced and sold by Bruce himself, including a 10-inch album of the 1961 San Francisco performances that started his legal troubles. Starting in the late 195os, other unissued Bruce material was released by Alan Douglas, Frank Zappa and Phil Spector, as well as Fantasy. Bruce developed the complexity and tone of his material in Enrico Banducci's North Beach nightclub, "The hungry 4" where Mort Sahl had earlier made a name for himself. EFTA00695058 Branded a "sick comic" - though it was the perceived "sickness" of modern society that he was railing about — Lenny was essentially blacklisted from television, On February 3, 1961, in the midst of a severe blizzard, he gave a famous performance at Carnegie Hall in New York. It was recorded and later released as a three-disc set, titled The Carnegie Hall Concert. In the liner notes, Albert Goldman described it as follows: This was the moment that an obscure yet rapidly rising young comedian named Lenny Bruce chose to give one of the greatest performances of his career.... The performance contained in this album is that of a child of the jazz age. Lenny worshiped the gods of Spontaneity, Candor and Free Association. He fancied himself an oral jazzman. His ideal was to walk out there like Charlie Parker, take that mike in his hand like a horn and blow, blow, blow everything that came into his head just as it came into his head with nothing censored, nothing translated, nothing mediated, until he was pure mind, pure head sending out brainwaves like radio waves into the heads of every man and woman seated in that vast hall. Sending, sending, sending, he would finally reach a point of clairvoyance where he was no longer a performer but rather a medium transmitting messages that just came to him from out there — from recall, fantasy, prophecy. A point at which, like the practitioners of automatic writing, his tongue would outrun his mind and he would be saying things he didn't plan to say, things that surprised, delighted him, cracked him up — as if he were a spectator at his own performance Bruce was known for his legendary legal battle, including one for fraud, most notable was the Brother Mathias Foundation scam, which resulted in Bruce's arrest in Miami, Florida later that year for impersonating a priest. He had been soliciting donations for a leper colony in British Guiana (now Guyana) under the auspices of the "Brother Mathias Foundation", which he had legally chartered — the name was his own invention, but possibly referred to the actual Brother Matthias who had befriended Babe Ruth at the Baltimore orphanage to which Ruth had been confined as a child. Bruce had stolen several priests' clergy shirts and a clerical collar while posing as a laundry man. He was found not guilty because of the legality of the New York state-chartered foundation, the actual existence of the Guiana leper colony, and the inability of the local clergy to expose him as an impostor. Later, in his semi-fictional autobiography How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, Bruce revealed that he had made about $8,000 in three weeks, sending $2,500 to the leper colony and keeping the rest. But what really endeared him to the counter-culture was his obscenity arrests — where on October 4, 1961, Bruce was arrested for obscenity at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco; he had used the word cocksucker and riffed that "to is a preposition, come is a verb", that the sexual context of come is so common that it bears no weight, and that if someone hearing it becomes upset, he "probably can't come". Although the jury acquitted him, other law enforcement agencies began monitoring his appearances, resulting in frequent arrests under charges of obscenity. Bruce was arrested again in 1961, in Philadelphia, for drug possession and again in Los Angeles, California, two years later. The Los Angeles arrest took place in then-unincorporated West Hollywood, and the arresting officer was a young deputy named Sherman Block, who would later become County Sheriff. The specification this time was that the comedian had used the word schmuck, an insulting Yiddish term that is an obscene term for penis. EFTA00695059 On December 5, 1962, Bruce was arrested at the legendary Gate of Horn folk club in Chicago. The same year he played at Peter Cook's The Establishment Club in London, and a year later in April, he was barred from entering England by the Home Office as an "undesirable alien". In April 1964, he appeared twice at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village with undercover police detectives in the audience. He was arrested along with the club owners, Howard and Elly Solomon, who were arrested for allowing an obscene performance to take place. On both occasions, he was arrested after leaving the stage, the complaints again pertaining to his use of various obscenities. A three-juslg2 panel presided over his widely publicized six-month trial, prosecuted by Manhattan Assistant M. Richard Kuh, with Ephraim London and Martin Garbus as the defense attorneys. Bruce and club owner Howard Solomon were both found guilty of obscenity on November 4, 1964. The conviction was announced despite positive testimony and petitions of support from — among other artists, writers and educators — Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Jules Feiffer, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, William Styron, and James Baldwin, and Manhattan journalist and television personality Dorothy Kilgallen and sociologist Herbert Gans. Bruce was sentenced, on December 21, 1964, to four months in a workhouse; he was set free on bail during the appeals process and died before the appeal was decided. Solomon later saw his conviction overturned; Bruce, who died before the decision, never had his conviction stricken. Bruce later received a full posthumous gubernatorial pardon. Despite his prominence as a comedian, Bruce appeared on network television only six times in his life. In his later club performances Bruce was known for relating the details of his encounters with the police directly in his comedy routine. These performances often included rants about his court battles over obscenity charges, tirades against fascism and complaints that he was being denied his right to freedom of speech. He was banned outright from several U.S. cities, and in 1962 an interview he was scheduled to give on Australian television was banned in advance by the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Increasing drug use also affected his health. By 1966 he had been blacklisted by nearly every nightclub in the United States, as owners feared prosecution for obscenity. Bruce did give a famous performance at the Berkeley Community Theatre in December 1965. It was recorded and became his last live album, titled "The Berkeley Concern his performance here has been described as lucid, clear and calm, and one of his best. His last performance took place on June 25, 1966, at The Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, on a bill with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. The performance was not remembered fondly by Bill Graham, whose memoir describes Bruce as "whacked out on amphetamine"; Graham thought that Bruce finished his set emotionally disturbed. Zappa asked Bruce to sign his draft card, but the suspicious Bruce refused. At the request of Hugh Hefner and with the aid of Paul Krassner, Bruce wrote an autobiography. Serialized in Playboy in 1964 and 1965, this material was later published as the book How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. Hefner had long assisted Bruce's career, featuring him in the television debut of Playboy's Penthouse in October 1959. During this time, Bruce also contributed a number of articles to Paul ICrassner's satirical magazine The Realist. EFTA00695060 On August 3, 1966, a bearded Lenny Bruce was found dead in the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home at 8825 W. Hollywood Blvd. The official photo, taken at the scene, showed Bruce lying naked on the floor, a syringe and burned bottle cap nearby, along with various other narcotics paraphernalia. According to legend, a policeman at the scene said, 'There is nothing sadder than an aging hipster", which itself was possibly one of Bruce's lines. Record producer Phil Spector, a friend of Bruce's, bought the negatives of the photographs to keep them from the press. The official cause of death was "acute morphine poisoning caused by an accidental overdose." His remains were interred in Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Mission Hills, California, but an unconventional memorial on August 21 was controversial enough to keep his name in the spotlight. The service saw over 500 people pay their respects, led by Spector. Cemetery officials had tried to block the ceremony after advertisements for the event encouraged attendees to bring box lunches and noisemakers. Dick Schaap eulogized Bruce in Playboy, with the memorable last line: "One lastfour- letter wordfor Lenny: Dead. Atforty. That's obscene." His epitaph reads: "Belovedfather — devoted son/Peace at last" On December 23, 2003, 37 years after his death, New York Governor George Pataki granted Bruce a posthumous pardon for his obscenity conviction. Bruce was the subject of the 1974 biographical film Lenny directed by Bob Fosse and starring Dustin Hoffman (in an Academy Award-nominated Best Actor role), and based on the Broadway stage play of the same name written by Julian Barry and starring Cliff Gorman in his 1972 Tony Award winning role. The documentary Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth, directed by Robert B. Weide and narrated by Robert De Niro, was released in 1998. In 2004, Comedy Central listed Bruce at number three on its list of the1cao Greatest Stand-Ups ofAll-Time, placing above Woody Allen (4th) and below Richard Pryor (1st) and George Carlin (2nd.) Most importantly Lenny Bruce paved the way for future outspoken counterculture-era comedians, and his trial for obscenity is seen as a landmark for freedom of speech in the United States — Making Lenny Bruce one of the greatest that ever was.... So True EFTA00695061  EVER1190 DI DIE S ****** Why The Mainstream Media Don't Get Middle America's Anger No one could I am amused when people in the media say that the Mainstream Media somehow missed, (or to be more precise), did not see the rise and resilience of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. In the Age of Blame, it is easy to say that they are disconnected and why they don't get Middle America. A recent example is Atlantic Magazine's Neal Gabler who wrote — "That is no small thing when you consider those two are the big stories this campaign season. It's like a weatherman missing a Category Five hurricane. Of course, if a weatherman had blown that call, he probably would be fired. With pundits, getting it wrong never seems to matter." EFTA00695062 To their everlasting discredit, most of the MSM Big Feet, which is what the late journalist Richard Ben Cramer labeled the self-important, pontificating political reporters and pundits who dominate our press, got it all wrong about Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. To their credit, a few of those Big Feet have fessed up to their errors. New York Times columnist David Brooks, one of the most contrite, admitted that he realized he had been living in a bubble and had to get out in the country a bit more — "change the way I do my job," is how he put it — to understand the American psyche. The typical U.S. journalist is a 41 year-old white male, according to a 2006 report by the Pew Research Center. And when that report was updated in 2013, that typical journalist had become a 47 year-old white male, and the median age had risen not only at newspapers, where one might expect journalists to be aging along with their institution, but also at TV and radio stations and even online news sites. Gabler: As for the "white" part, journalists are overwhelmingly white in a nation that is increasingly diverse. Roughly 37 percent of Americans are minorities — a number that is growing rapidly. But by one study, minorities possessed only 22 percent of television journalism jobs, 13 percent of radio jobs and 13 percent of daily newspaper jobs. Another study, by Indiana University, puts the percentage of minority-held journalism jobs much lower: 8.5 percent in 2013. And as for the "male" part, while the number of women in journalism has been increasing ever so gradually, only one-third or so of full-time journalists are women — a fraction that has held more or less steady since the 1980s. Gabler: So here is the situation — A country that is increasingly younger, darker and half female is being reported on by a press corps that is older, whiter and more male. A gaping demographic gulf separates the press from the people — a gulf that undoubtedly affects the kinds of stories chosen and the way in which they are covered. And there are other dredges that widen the gulf. Although journalists are obviously scattered throughout the country, they are not geographically apportioned equally. As one might expect, the news centers are New York, Washington and, to a lesser extent, Los Angeles. Of the 40,000 journalists in America, nearly a quarter live in these three areas, which is staggering when you think about it, and which certainly skews the news coverage. It also seems to confirm the familiar. Gerbler again: And there are other dredges that widen the gulf. Although journalists are obviously scattered throughout the country, they are not geographically apportioned equally. As one might expect, the news centers are New York, Washington and, to a lesser extent, Los Angeles. Of the 40,000 journalists in America, nearly a quarter live in these three areas, which is staggering when you think about it, and which certainly skews the news coverage. It also seems to confirm the familiar gripe of Middle America that media elites consider most of the country a fly-over from LA to NYC. Raised in New York, living in Los Angeles and sort of fond of Washington, (and although these three are not microcosms of America), what Gabler doesn't understand is that the people who live in these centers come from all over the country as well as the rest of the world. And yes the news anchors and pundits on cable are easily members of the 196, but most people in media, even those in the Big 3 Media Centers, come across the country and diverse backgrounds. While Shan Hannidy and Bill O'Reiley were born in New York City and Liz Claman in Beverly Hills — The great Walter Cronkite was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri. Bill Moyers was born in Hugo, Oklahoma. Scott Pelley was born in San Antonio and grew up in Lubbock, Texas. Paula Zahn was born EFTA00695063 in Omaha, Nebraska. Chris Matthews was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ann Curry was born in Guam, lived in Japan for several years as a child and moved to Ashland, Oregon, where she graduated from Ashland High School and then the University of Oregon. Lesley Stahl was born in Lynn, Massachusetts. Diane Sawyer was born in Glasgow, Kentucky, Brian Williams. Ridgeway, N. J. and Lora Logan Durban, South Africa. On top of this all three rank highly among American cities in a rubric of racial and ethnic diversity, as determined in a study by Wallethub.com (NYC at #6; LA at #54 and DC at #78), even though their income dive rsity (DC at #86; NYC at #157; LA at #183) is toward the bottom, it doesn't mean that they live in the upper income strata. The average reporter or correspondent doesn't make very much money, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in May 2015 — a little less than $50,000. By comparison, the mean household income in the US generally is just about $52,000. But remember those BLS figures include all reporters and correspondents in the country, including folks in the boondocks where salaries are low. If you focus on the Big Three cities, the picture is somewhat different. The mean annual wage for a reporter in NY is $69,000, in the metro DC area $75,000, and in LA $48,000, actually under the general mean, which suggests how much the major news media outlets are really concentrated in the East. Of course, the big names get the big bucks. But if you live or work in Los Angeles, New York or in D.C., you still have to deal with traffic, crime and pollution. Your children, even those in private schools, have friends on scholarship whose families live paycheck to paycheck. So if you chose not to live in a bubble, no matter how big, you can hide behind sun glasses and a big hats to bike, take the subway or dine at your favorite greasy spoon restaurant in a sketchy neighborhood from your poverty days that is no longer sketchy as a result of gentrification. But the reason why these journalist and pundits didn't foresee the rise of Trump and Sanders, is because they aren't clairvoyant. Yes, you could easily envision the Tea Bag Movement, turning on the Republican Establishment, who were thrilled when their rallies were in opposition to the Obama Administration. And yes, this is the same anger that Donald Trump has tapped into and mirrored by Sanders supporters on the left. But like weather forecasting, which uses the latest satellite imagery and computer simulations and still get gets it wrong — most journalism is about recording history, not predicting it. I believe today, we often expect too much, that somehow Hillary Clinton should have been able to save the life of ambassador who was under fire six thousand miles away. Or that having arm guards in public schools would have prevented the Sandy Hook massacre. Sometimes in life, shit just happens. The truth is that David Brooks and other moderates who haven't drank the anger Kool Aid are soul searching because the institution that they fell in love with has somehow turned into a Frankenstein terrorizing everyone and everything around it. And "no" Mr. Gabler, David Brooks doesn't have to give up his home, salary, friends, comfort or even sense of privilege, to comprehend, the pain and anger that is at the heart of this strange campaign year. All that he has to do is use common sense. FDR, JFK and LBJ were all rich and privileged, yet because of common sense and not ideology, not only did they understand the pain of the common man/woman they fought for and implemented laws, programs and solutions to address their needs. When you put the emphasis of the health of business in front of workers and even profits before that, no one should be surprised that there is little to nothing left for those at the bottom. Today's EFTA00695064 Republicans are still selling trickle-down economics of the Reagan era. Not because they worked, but because it is a message that still sells to the unenlightened, especially when there are others to blame; welfare mothers, illegal immigrants, minorities, unions or China. The second biggest welfare program in America is military spending, with the largest, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. Think about it, this is what both Trump and Sanders are saying. So if David Brooks, Chris Matthews and others really want to understand — use common sense and forget the horse race, as one is about substance while the other is just about numbers. To Neal Gabler, if the MSM are to be blamed about anything, it is not that they feel the pain of the masses. The supporters of Trump and Sanders have both bought into the anger of blame and the promises that the election of one man will somehow change their lot in life. This is Benito Mussolini and Eva Peron territory, not America. Nostradamus couldn't have predicted this. We should remember that it was Paddy Chayefsky who in his award-winning movie, the 1976 American satirical black comedy-drama, Network, foresaw that one day television journalism would morph into entertainment. In today's primary season, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are both playing the Howard Beale role and his "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore" is their message. So when the primaries are being presented to the public as "a horse race" and "did you see this" it is unrealistic to expect this entertainment to have depth and understanding when ratings, circulation and page views are the evaluation metric qualifier. Your Company is Failing and Still You Get a Pay Raise How is this possible and what about the workers I read an article last week in the Huffington Post by Robert Reich that actually angered me — about Marissa Mayer Mayer who is CEO of Yahoo. While Yahoo's stock lost about a third of its value EFTA00695065 last year, as the company went from making $7.5 billion in 2014 to losing $4.4 billion in 2015, its CEO Mayer raked in $36 million in compensation. And even if Yahoo's board fires her, her contract stipulates she gets $54.9 million in severance. In other words, Mayer can't lose. Although I appreciate his message, I am not a supporter of Bernie Sanders, but with examples like this it is easy to understand why Americans are so angry, and why anti-establishment fury has become the biggest single force in American politics today. It's another example of no-lose socialism for the rich — winning big regardless of what you do. Meyer is not alone as the average Fortune 50o CEO in the United States makes more than $12 million per year, which is nearly five million dollars more than the amount for top CEOs in Switzerland, where the second highest paid CEOs live, more than twice that for those in Germany, where the third highest paid CEOs live, and more than twenty one times that for those in Poland. In 1965 top CEOs only made on average 20 x more than the typical worker in their industries. In 2013 the top CEOs made 296 x more than their workers. While the typical male worker is making $783 less than they did 42 years ago when adjusted for inflation and the typical female worker is making $1337 less she did in 1970. And although the piece is about worker economic inequality, we need to realize that the riches 15 people in America wealth increased by $170 billion in just the last two years. To put that number in prospective, $170 billion is more wealth that is owned by the bottom 40% and double what this country spends on nutrition programs for 4o million Americans. The United States was not always the most powerful nation on Earth. It was only with the end of World War II, with the rest of the developed world in smoldering ruins that America emerged as the free world's leader. This coincided with the expansion of the U.S. middle class. With the other war combatants trying to recover from the destruction of the war, America became the supermarket, hardware store and auto dealership to the world. Markets for American products abounded and opportunity was everywhere for American workers of all economic means to get ahead. America had a virtual monopoly on rebuilding the world. Combined with the G.I. Bill of 1944, which provided money for returning veterans to go to college, and government loans to buy houses and start businesses, the middle class in America boomed, as did American power, wealth and prestige. Between 1946 and 1973, productivity in America grew by 104 percent. Unions led the way in assuring wages for workers grew by an equal amount. The 1970s, however, brought a screeching halt to the expansion of the American middle class. The Arab oil embargo in 1973 marked the end of cheap oil and the beginning of the middle-class decline. The Iranian Revolution in 1979, with more resultant oil instability, combined with the rise of Ronald Reagan's conservative revolution at home, accelerated the long and painful contraction of the middle class. Cuts in corporate taxes, stagnant worker wage growth, the right-wing war on unions, and corporate outsourcing of work overseas greased the wheels of the middle-class decline and the upper-class elevation. Cuts in taxes on the wealthy, under the guise of trickle-down economics, have resulted in lower government revenue and cuts to all kinds of services. All of which has led to today, an era of national and international inequality unparalleled since the days of the Roaring '20s. EFTA00695066 Think About This 1. In 81 percent of American counties, the median income, about $52,000, is less than it was 15 years ago. This is despite the fact that the economy has grown 83 percent in the past quarter- century and corporate profits have doubled. American workers produce twice the amount of goods and services as 25 years ago, but get less of the pie. 2. The amount of money that was given out in bonuses on Wall Street last year is twice the amount all minimum-wage workers earned in the country combined. 3. The average wealth of an American adult is in the range of $250,000-$300,000. But that average number includes incomprehensibly wealthy people like Bill Gates. Imagine 10 people in a bar. When Bill Gates walks in, the average wealth in the bar increases unbelievably, but that number doesn't make the other 10 people in the bar richer. The median per adult number is only about $39,000, placing the U.S. about 27th among the world's nations, behind Australia, most of Europe and even small countries like New Zealand, Ireland and Kuwait. 4. CEOs in 1965 earned about 24 times the amount of the average worker. In 1980 they earned 42 times as much. Today, CEOs earn 325 times the average worker 5. More locally, the poorest half of the US owns 2.5% of the country's wealth. The top 1% owns 35% of it. 6. The slice of the national income pie going to the wealthiest 1% of Americans has doubled since 1979. 7. The 1% also takes home 20% of the income. This figure is the most since the 1920s era of laissez faire government (under Republicans Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover). 8. The top 196 of America owns so% of investment assets (stocks, bonds, mutual funds). The poorest half of America owns just .5% of the investments. 9. The poorest Americans do come out ahead in one statistic: the bottom 90% of America owns 73% of the debt. EFTA00695067  to. Since 1990, CEO compensation has increased by 300%. Corporate profits have doubled. The average worker's salary has increased 4%. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage has actually decreased. Italians, Belgians and Japanese citizens are wealthier than Americans. I don't want to pick on Ms. Mayer or the managers of the funds that invest in Yahoo. They're typical of the no-lose system in which America's corporate and financial elite now operate. But the rest of America works in a different system. Theirs is cutthroat hyper-capitalism — in which wages are shrinking, median household income continues to drop, workers are fired without warning, two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck, and employees are being classified as "independent contractors" without any labor protections at all. Why is there no-lose socialism for the rich and cutthroat hyper-capitalism for everyone else? Because the rules of the game — including labor laws, pension laws, corporate laws, and tax laws — have been crafted by those at the top, and the lawyers and lobbyists who work for them. Does that mean we have to await Bernie Sanders's "political revolution" (or, perish the thought, Donald Trump's authoritarian populism) before any of this is likely to change? Before we go to the barricades, you should know about another CEO named Hamdi Ulukaya, who's developing a third model — neither no-lose socialism for the rich nor hyper-capitalism for everyone else. Ulukaya is the Turkish-born founder and CEO of Chobani, the upstart Greek yogurt maker recently valued at as much as $5 billion. In April Ulukaya announced he's giving all his 2,000 full-time workers shares of stock worth up to 10 percent of the privately held company's value when it's sold or goes public, based on each employee's tenure and role at the company. If the company ends up being valued at $3 billion, for example, the average employee payout could be $150,000. Some long-tenured employees will get more than $r million. Ulukaya's announcement raised eyebrows all over corporate America. Many are viewing it as an act of charity (Forbes Magazine calls it one of "the most selfless corporate acts of the year"). In reality, Mr. Ulukaya's decision is just good business. Employees who are partners become even more dedicated to increasing a company's value. Which is why research shows that employee-owned companies — even those with workers holding only a minority stake — tend to out-perform the competition. Mr. Ulukaya just increased the odds that Chobani will be valued at more than $5 billion when it's sold or its shares of stock are available to the public. Which will make him, as well as his employees, far wealthier. As Ulukaya wrote to his workers, the award isn't a gift but "a mutual promise to work together with a shared purpose and responsibility." A handful of other companies are inching their way in a similar direction. EFTA00695068 Apple decided last October it would award shares not just to executives or engineers but to hourly paid workers as well. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is giving a third of his Twitter stock (about 1 percent of the company) "to our employee equity pool to reinvest directly in our people." Employee stock ownership plans, which have been around for years, are lately seeing a bit of a comeback. But the vast majority of American companies are still locked in the old hyper-capitalist model that views workers as costs to be cut rather than as partners to share in success. That's largely because Wall Street still looks unfavorably on such collaboration (remember, Chobani is still privately held). Robert Reich - The Street remains obsessed with short-term stock performance, and its analysts don't believe hourly workers have much to contribute to the bottom line. But they're prepared to lavish unprecedented rewards on CEOs who don't deserve squat. Let them compare Yahoo with Chobani in a few years, and see which model works best. If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Greek yoghurt. And I'd bet on a model of capitalism that's neither no-lose socialism for the rich nor cruel hyper-capitalism for the rest, but share-the-gains capitalism for everyone. The Ultimate Trophey for a Racist Bidding in an online auction for the pistol George Zimmerman used in the 2012 shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin topped $65 million on Friday. On February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. Martin, a black teenager dressed in a hoodie, was unarmed when Zimmerman killed him. All the boy carried were Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea, items that became symbols as the world reacted to the delayed arrest of Zimmerman. A petition on Change.org calling for his arrest gained more than 2 million signatures, and a rally in New York calling for the arrest of Zimmerman attracted hundreds. Zimmerman was eventually arrested and charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter. On July 13, 2013, he was acquitted by a Florida jury. The country responded to the verdict with nationwide rallies. In fact, his legal troubles go back to 2005, when he was arrested twice. First in a EFTA00695069 domestic dispute that ended with a broken engagement and a restraining order filed against him. Then, for the battery of an officer after he shoved an undercover agent who was arresting Zimmerman's underage friend for being in a bar. Throughout (and even after) his trial, a multitude of comparisons between O.J. Simpson and Zimmerman — and their trials — cropped up. As a result, everyone in America should be outraged at George Zimmerman who is selling the gun he says he used to kill Trayvon Martin as a trophy. He finally found a website where he could do it, and the gun has gotten a lot of bids. Two were for $65 million. It seems likely that the bidding on UnitedGunGroup.com has been taken over by bogus buyers. The first $65 million bid was made by "Racist McShootFace," according to the Associated Press. It has since been taken down. Zimmerman struggled to find a gun seller that would auction the 9mm pistol. He listed the Kel-Tec PF- 9 on UnitedGunGroup.com on Thursday after another website, GunBroker.com, pulled out, saying it wanted "no part" in the sale of a firearm whose use in the fatal 2012 shooting sparked a nationwide debate over race relations and "stand your ground" laws. "We reserve the right to reject listings at our sole discretion, and have done so with the Zimmerman listing," a Gunbroker.com statement read. "We want no part in the listing on our web site or in any of the publicity it is receiving." UnitedGunGroup.com accepted the controversial auction soon after. George Zimmerman's Gun used 2/26/12 Posted by George Zimmerman Thu at 12:47 PM Bid history: 1019 Bids I Latest Bidder: Craig Bryant Deal Ends In 4d 21:07:06 Starting Price Buy It Now Price Current Price 55.000.00 N/A 65,039,000.00 Your Max Bid (Enter 565,039,100.00 or up to $65,044,000.00 Although the listing was taken down Thursday night, the auction was active on Friday and had received slightly more than 1,000 bids. In the listing, Zimmerman said he would use money from the sale to counter violence against law enforcement officers by Black Lives Matter, a movement that grew out of Martin's shooting. Proceeds would also go toward fighting Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's "anti-firearm rhetoric," Zimmerman said. The listing closed with a Latin phrase, "Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum," that translates to "if you wish peace, prepare for war." But this is not the first time that Zimmerman has done something ugly and reprehensible. The most blatant example of this came last October when he retweeted a photograph of Trayvon Martin's slain body. The original tweet read "Z-man is a one-man army." Following media outrage, Zimmerman claimed he wasn't aware the tweet included a photograph. Racial conflict and firearms appear to be a EFTA00695070 recurring theme for Zimmerman. Last August, he teamed up with Florida Gun Supply — a gun store that had publicly declared itself a "Muslim-free zone" — to sell prints of a painting by Zimmerman depicting a Confederate battle flag and the inscription, "The 2nd protects our 1st." Controversy seems to follow Zimmerman so doggedly that this isn't even his first controversial auction. In December 2013, he sold a painting of an American flag for $100,099.99, despite critics' claims that it was "very primitive" and a "desperate cry for attention," Time reported. His follow-up painting, named "Angie" after Angela Corey, the special prosecutor who was appointed by Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) to investigate the death of Trayvon Martin, didn't fare so well. It depicted Corey with her fingers pressed against her thumbs and a caption reading, "I have this much respect for the American judicial system." But he wasn't allowed to sell it because it was an exact replica of an Associated Press photograph, the USA Today reported. He's also been back in the courtroom several times since the Martin trial. Less than a month after his acquittal, Zimmerman was pulled over for speeding, CNN reported. According to dashcam footage, he allegedly had a gun on him and the officer said, "Don't play with your firearm, OK?" Later in 2013, he was arrested and charged with felony aggravated assault for allegedly pointing a shotgun at his girlfriend. The case was later dropped. Two years later, he was arrested again — this time for charges of domestic aggravated assault for allegedly throwing a bottle of wine at his girlfriend — and again the charges were later dropped. Finally, last May, Zimmerman was shot, receiving minor injuries, during a dispute with a motorist named Matthew Apperson. In 2014, Apperson had called the police in a different dispute, saying Zimmerman had allegedly threatened him by saying, "Do you know who I am?" and "I'llf—ing kill you," according to Vox. In August 2015 George Zimmerman went on a racist homophobic Twitter Tirade in the wake of the double homicide of two Virginia reporters. He called the president "a baboon" in another tweet, threatens violence against others, and called some users names like "cupcake." And for those who were on the fence about whether or not Zimmerman was actually a racist, his Twitter feeds cleared up any confusion, as well as he apparently hates gays too. But for him to auction the gun that he used to murder an innocent 17 year-old black child as a trophy is one of the ugliest things that I have ever witnessed. And if you don't think so — how would you feel if O.J. Simpson was proudly auctioning a knife that he claimed he used to killed Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman as a trophy? and this is my rant of the week.... WEEK's READINGS Politics and social media: Chaos theory How are social media changing democracy? EFTA00695071  This is so sudden 4.441xebcot — !mite Cumulative percentage of messages on social media ttMibeerovm 8 tack livesManet 1lEricGamer 100 100 75 75 50 25 25 0 0 2014 2015 2014 2015 2014 2015 iferguson 1114andsUpDontShoot 1117-mitineath00 ,..,.. _ 100 100 75 7S 50 SO 25 0 0 2074 2015 2014 2015 2014 2015 Son tom cal batuirce Has kcal *duShape Caws. Amon. by I. Yawn, re d (con< 1:.(0111 Political scientists have long pointed out that social media make it easier for interests to organize: they give voice and power to people who have neither. But research into another effect has only just begun: social media are also making politics and collective action more "chaotic". Politics in this era is thus better understood by chaos theory than by conventional social science, Donald Trump may be unfit to be America's president, but he clearly is a master of social media. His often outrageous tweets have earned the real-estate magnate-turned-politician more than 7m followers on Twitter and the number is rising by about 50,000 every day. Additionally, most messages are seen by millions more because they are forwarded thousands of times and get extensive coverage in mainstream media. Mr. Trump's campaign is thus proof of how important social media have become to politics and all kinds of collective action. How is this changing democracy? And if he does win the Republican nomination, it will be hard to tune him out. "How do youfight millions of dollars offraudulent commercials pushingfor crooked politicians?" he tweeted in early March. "I will be using Facebook & Twitter. Watch!" If Ted Cruz, his fellow Republican, were to clinch the nomination, the campaign for America's presidency would be quieter — but no less digital. Mr. Cruz's victory in the Iowa primaries was based on effective number-crunching. He bombarded potential supporters with highly targeted ads on Facebook, and used algorithms to label voters as "stoic traditionalists", "temperamental conservatives" or "true believers" to give campaign volunteers something to go on. He also sent official-looking "shaming" letters to potential supporters who had previously abstained from voting. Under the headline "Voting Violation", the letters reminded recipients of their failure to do their civic duty at the polls and compared their voting records with those of their neighbors. Mobilization often explodes, seemingly at random, according to the authors, most of whom work at the Oxford Internet Institute. Most online petitions, for instance, attract only a small number of supporters. Surress does not depend on the subject matter — similar ones often fare quite differently EFTA00695072 — but the personality of potential participants. Extroverts, for instance, are more likely to act because they are sensitive to "social information": seeing that others have already signed and knowing that their endorsement will be seen too. As a result, if a petition's initial audience includes enough people with the right mindset, it can quickly take off (see above chart). Politics in the age of social media are thus better understood by chaos theory than by conventional social science. Collective action online is a bit like the weather: small events can have a big impact. The book's intriguing conclusion: social media are making democracies more "pluralistic", but not in the conventional sense of the word, involving diverse but stable groups. Instead, the authors see the emergence of a "chaotic pluralism", in which mobilizations spring from the bottom up. One day, say the authors, it will be possible to predict, and perhaps even trigger such social-media surges, in the same way that meteorologists have become good at forecasting the weather. The big question is: who will be the political weathermen? Only two groups of actors are sure to have good access to social-media data and enough resources to develop software to sift through them: one is online giants, such as Facebook and Google, the other governments. So social media, like other forms of technology, will cut both ways in politics: they are making societies more democratic, but will also provide those in p