The People's Advocate

According to Charles Payne, host of the FOX Business programme "Making Money," income inequality & poverty are serious problems in the United States. Several graphics on the screen appeared supporting his position. Next, a list of what the host called 'the typical prescriptions' for this problem: minimum wage increases & mandatory pre-kindergarten classes. According to the host, increased wages & earlier education for poor students actually *increases* poverty. Beyond mention of higher wages 'killing jobs,' it is not entirely clear how this is supposed to come about. Payne & his FOX colleagues contend that government efforts are simply impeding what capital would do naturally and automatically. 

Charles Payne appeared as a FOX News contributor before his debut as host of "Making Money"

Payne's ideas, while typical for American Neo-Conservatives, are not usually laid-out so bluntly. While I cannot project into a future where pre-kindergarten may or may not not 'kill' jobs, I can opine on the past, bringing some historical context on where we have been, & what it would mean should the government leave our welfare to the will of capital:

The first attempts to legislate a minimum wage which Americans must be paid emerged from the economic morass of the post-1929 era. Capitalism was undergoing one of its periodic depressions, & this particular 'bust' of the boom-&-bust cycle had certainly left its mark. Millions of people, from Canada to Australia & everywhere in-between were flung into poverty. The international Capitalist system, in 'correcting,' had harmed workers as their national economies went the way of the United States. 1929 unleashed latent revolutionary social unrest. In the United States, Liberalism struggled to contain calls for social reform. In Italy & the Weimar Republic, Nationalism-Fascism became more insistent. The economic depression seemingly did not touch the Soviet Union, increasing support for Communism, & particularly Stalinism, in the United States & Europe. 

During this international tragedy, working Americans suffered as some employers went out of business & others were under no obligation to pay them a 'living wage.' With jobs becoming so scarce, wages were depressed, & people were desperate for any work they could find. In 1933, the National Industrial Recovery Act included a stipulation that would establish a minimum wage. However, just 2 years later, the minimum wage in the United States would disappear when the Supreme Court case Schecter Poultry v. The United States invalidated the law in 1935. In some of the earliest, most difficult years of what is called 'The Great Depression,' American workers had no guarantee from the Bourgeoisie that they would be paid enough to live. Contrary to what Charles Payne says, Capitalism & Capitalists are under no compulsion of logic or self-interest to pay employees any particular amount with government acting as the People's Advocate and forcing them to. It is an easy assertion to make today, with the government guaranteeing some sort of standard for wages, but Payne's Neo-Conservative ideology would have been laughable in the Depression, when people were literally living & dying at the mercy of the Market. Government is the only structure powerful enough to serve as the People's Advocate. 

And we only have to look at the position of the peasant-like American working-class of the Gilded Age to answer whether the Capitalist is impelled to provide education & a 'fair' wage to workers. Neo-Liberalism, Economic Liberalism, Neo-Conservatism-- Whatever name it may go under is a fantasy that has only ever existed in the realm of ideological philosophy. If Capitalism was left to its own devices, it would create squalor across wide swathes of the United States (& it has already done that, to a lesser extent, *with* regulation). The only force that is slowing down the concentration of wealth is government legislation, enforcement, & intervention in the economy. If this were lifted, & government-mandated wages & government-funded schools were repealed, the true decimatory nature of our economic system would be revealed. We would be under no illusions -- The variety of which we have the luxury to indulge in today. 

Neo-Conservatives know very well that it is Capital's imperative and interest to create more capital. The idea that in the struggle for more wealth, that corporations would 'create' minimum wages & schooling on their own, is an ideological myth. It is an ideologically-driven myth that is created and maintained by the Bourgeoisie to justify the transfer of wealth upward in society. Workers must wrest this power away from them, & use it for our own ends. When one looks at the Market, its functions & motivations, human welfare does not enter the equation. Nor should we really expect it to. It is not private capital's responsibility to aid us, nor should it be. We must shed our illusions of the generosity of the Bourgeoisie, and take command of the government, working through it as the People's Advocate. 

Minimum wages without government mandate is a fantasy more idealistic than any utopian Marxist could conceive of.

☭Jakob☭

For more on "Making Money With Charles Payne"

For more on Schecter Poultry v. The United States 

For information about current minimum wages in the United States

"Earning A Degree Can Sometimes Prove Deadly": Campus Nightmares

The American cable channel Lifetime: Television For Women, founded in 1984 & controlled by media conglomerate Hearst, has debuted a new entry in its' documentary programming. It is called "Campus Nightmares," & is produced by Indigo Films, which describes the series as "A new one-hour recreation series (?)...From dorm room encounters gone awry to teacher-student relationships gone bad, earning a degree can sometimes prove deadly." In the few episodes that have aired already are "undergraduate faculty with murder in their hearts, (who) will do anything to preserve their dark secrets...first-hand accounts of the perpetrators behind America's most shocking campus murders"

With material like this, "Campus Nightmares", will likely touch upon some salacious stories of real-life university-related transgression. However, I have no idea what 'recreation television' could mean, other than perhaps the latest euphemism for 'reality show'. ('docu-drama was en vogue just weeks ago)

On the website of the Lifetime: Television For Women family, which includes Lifetime Movie Network & Lifetime Real Women, the channel states it is "committed to offering the highest-quality entertainment & information programming & advocating a wide-range of issues affecting women & their families." 

Institutions of higher learning in the United States have been the site of armed violence since 1892 (at the very least): Shootings have occurred @ Kansas University (1892, 2 shot), Cambridge Commercial College (1906, 2 shot), New York University (1908, 1 shot), Negro Normal School (1918, 1 shot), University of California (1919, 3 shot), Syracuse (1921, 2 shot), School of Dental & Oral Surgery (1931, 4 shot), Ohio State (1949, 1 shot), & Penn State College (1950, 3 shot)...& that is only counting those incidents which occurred prior to the year 1951. As those of the bold, new millennium, we live with university & school shooting as a seasonal, if-not-monthly phenomenon.

"Campus Nightmares" will have a pool of material from the deadly incidents of the type mentioned above, to more banal sexual misdeeds & hazing. All stories will apparently be linked by the terror experienced by participants whose learning institutions were disrupted by violence, deceit, or destruction. 

On of the early episodes of this programme highlights the Chico State Hazing Incident (1 fatality), which occured when students "...decide to join a fraternity & begin their grueling month-long initiation process...the two friends had no idea what they were getting themselves into until it would be too late." Sounds like a unifying sentiment for all those who experience "Campus Nightmares"-- whether one is shot, raped, or spanked with a paddle.

For more on Lifetime: Television For Women

For more on The Chico State Hazing Incident

For more on Hazing......er, 'whoops' Hazing

"If It Was Good, It Was On The Radio"

Today (4th August 2014) I was watching an infomercial on TV. The presenters were Mormon teen idol Donny Osmond and some un-named woman. The product they were hawking was a seemingly-enormous set of CD's that purported to contain every radio hit of the 1970's. In between the stilted, somewhat-awkward dialogue of the presenters, video & performance clips of the artists played in the background. Someone who had lived through the era certainly would have felt their nostalgia heart-strings tugged. That is perfectly understandable & legitimate. 

What is undefendable, & actually plain wrong in this information was a statement made by Mr. Osmond (or rather, his script-writers). Analyzing an infomercial is ridiculous, I know. But I am a social scientist & my thirst for material is insatiable! The content is illustrative and allows me to make a point. "If it was good, it was on the radio," Mr. Osmond said in between clips of Bread & other stars of the 1970's musick industry. Beyond ontologically-messy questions of what constitutes 'good musick' in a post-modern world, I believe this statement deserves analysis. The dark truth of the musick industry behind this statement, unforeseen & unseeable to those who remember is the real nature of 'Golden Age' AM radio. 

During the 1970's decade, the record industry began to achieve parity with other segments of the entertainment industry. Hitherto, recorded musick had been understood as a lesser arena, to films (& even television). From 1970-1979, sales increased in the sector, & recorded musick achieved a new status of prominence in entertainment. The modern incarnation of the corporate, worldwide 'Rock Star,' who indulges in a life of sex, drugs, and disorderly conduct dates from here. On the business side, the process of corporate consolidation accelerated. 

As the number of independent record labels fell, and sales increased, the competitive tactics of the business reached a level of seediness, illegality, & brutality that Hollywood could only dream of. I hate to burst the bubble of those who lived & loved the era, but it is simply not true that "If it was good, it was on the radio." In fact, notions of quality often-times did not even enter the picture at all.

Radio hits were often made in this period by bribes, if not in money, than in drugs ('drugola'). Cocaine seems to have been the 'drugola' of choice for most of those tasked with the promotion of new singles. Don't believe me? Take these examples from Fredric Dannen's "Hit Men" as an illustration:

"Asher (a CBS records executive in the 1970's) wanted to see whether it was possible to break a single on Top 40 without paying large sums of money to a handful of men known as independent promoters...CBS Records was out of control...No one was accountable...It now ran you as much as a hundred grand to hire a top promoter for one Pop song...This network (A clique of highly-paid newcomers to the record/radio business, starting in the 1970's, were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by labels to get playlisted @ radio stations by any means necessary) business was something new, yet disturbingly familiar at the same time...Payola, a contraction of 'pay' & 'Victrola'...It was rampant again in the early seventies...Cash, cocaine, expensive gifts, & hookers" were all involved in the promotion of the 'golden age' of AM radio. (Pgs 5-14)

More from "Hit Men"- "...he did not rule out the possibility of mob involvement...The industry is spending $40 million or $50 million a year, that's sizable enough, to attract organized crime" (Pg 26)

"Roulette (Records) had been a way station for heroin trafficking" (Pg 53)

"Allegations began to surface in the press that CBS Records had bribed back radio stations & done business with an organized crime figure...'drugola'...a word someone coined to describe the use of cocaine as a payoff" (Pg 86-103)

If a favourite song of yours was receiving heavy rotation on radio in the 1970's, more often than not it wasn't because the DJ hand-selected the song as being objectively 'better' than others, but because paid song pluggers made sure he was receiving crates of blow & hookers when he wanted them. 

Take that nostalgia!