This is the best political reporting I have seen in quite a spell. It defines the problem this nation faces with the Congress, once called the greatest deliberative body in the world. It cannot be called that today. The reporter, Tim Dickinson, was interviewed today on Fresh Air. Here is the article from Rolling Stone.

The difference between a Cuban and a Mexican in these United States is that the moment a Cuban sets foot on American soil, he or she receives refugee status; the Mexican who lands on American soil automatically qualifies as a deportee. Thus the Cuban gets a green card and can pursue citizenship. The Mexican gets durance vile. The difference, of course, is that Cuban-Americans have the wherewithal to buy prostitutes disguised as senators and congresspersons.

As for Trump’s solution to undocumented Mexicans, we’ve been here before. You might say that Trump is 80 years after his time, which explains the calcification of his brain. You can hear Guthrie’s son sing this song here.

Deportee

(also known as “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos”)

Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Martin Hoffman

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott’ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They’re flying ’em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be “deportees”

My father’s own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract’s out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died ‘neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, “They are just deportees”

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except “deportees”?

 

Here are two passages from “Youth, A Narrative” by Joseph Conrad, a story told in a bar many years after the fact by the second mate on an ill-fated ship. Much power in these words written by a man who knew not a word of English before he was 20. Many of Conrad’s stories are in the public domain and available on the net.

 “The coal-dust suspended in the air of the hold had glowed dull-red at the moment of the explosion. In the twinkling of an eye, in an infinitesimal fraction of a second since the first tilt of the bench, I was sprawling full length on the cargo. I picked myself up and scrambled out. It was quick like a rebound. The deck was a wilderness of smashed timber, lying crosswise like trees in a wood after a hurricane; an immense curtain of soiled rags waved gently before me—it was the mainsail blown to strips. I thought, The masts will be toppling over directly; and to get out of the way bolted on all-fours towards the poop-ladder. The first person I saw was Mahon, with eyes like saucers, his mouth open, and the long white hair standing straight on end round his head like a silver halo. He was just about to go down when the sight of the main-deck stirring, heaving up, and changing into splinters before his eyes, petrified him on the top step. I stared at him in unbelief, and he stared at me with a queer kind of shocked curiosity. I did not know that I had no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, that my young moustache was burnt off, that my face was black, one cheek laid open, my nose cut, and my chin bleeding. I had lost my cap, one of my slippers, and my shirt was torn to rags. Of all this I was not aware. I was amazed to see the ship still afloat, the poop-deck whole—and, most of all, to see anybody alive. Also the peace of the sky and the serenity of the sea were distinctly surprising. I suppose I expected to see them convulsed with horror…. Pass the bottle.”

__________

 “And then I saw the men of the East—they were looking at me. The whole length of the jetty was full of people. I saw brown, bronze, yellow faces, the black eyes, the glitter, the colour of an Eastern crowd. And all these beings stared without a murmur, without a sigh, without a movement. They stared down at the boats, at the sleeping men who at night had come to them from the sea. Nothing moved. The fronds of palms stood still against the sky. Not a branch stirred along the shore, and the brown roofs of hidden houses peeped through the green foliage, through the big leaves that hung shining and still like leaves forged of heavy metal. This was the East of the ancient navigators, so old, so mysterious, resplendent and somber, living and unchanged, full of danger and promise. And these were the men. I sat up suddenly. A wave of movement passed through the crowd from end to end, passed along the heads, swayed the bodies, ran along the jetty like a ripple on the water, like a breath of wind on a field—and all was still again. I see it now—the wide sweep of the bay, the glittering sands, the wealth of green infinite and varied, the sea blue like the sea of a dream, the crowd of attentive faces, the blaze of vivid colour—the water reflecting it all, the curve of the shore, the jetty, the high-sterned outlandish craft floating still, and the three boats with tired men from the West sleeping unconscious of the land and the people and of the violence of sunshine. They slept thrown across the thwarts, curled on bottom-boards, in the careless attitudes of death. The head of the old skipper, leaning back in the stern of the long-boat, had fallen on his breast, and he looked as though he would never wake. Farther out old Mahon’s face was upturned to the sky, with the long white beard spread out on his breast, as though he had been shot where he sat at the tiller; and a man, all in a heap in the bows of the boat, slept with both arms embracing the stem-head and with his cheek laid on the gunwale. The East looked at them without a sound.

The grapefruit are beginning to change color. Won’t be long before they will be ready. The grapevines have been infested by white flies since August and despite copious applications of insecticide, they remain, obscenely and wantonly chewing up grape leaves, creating havoc and despair. They remind me of Putin who reminds me of Cream (click here) — “I’m so Vlad/I’m so Vlad/I’m glad/I’m Vlad/I’m Vlad.”

The roses also also have run amok. They’ve been left on their own because my lower back and I had a severe disagreement more than two weeks ago. The roses grew merry during the Big Wet of about a month ago. (For the first time in nearly four decades, Edie complained of gray skies and rain.) The canes shot skyward and produced abundant blossoms. Today, they have faded much in the manner of Jed Bush’s presidential prospects. Just think: He has more than a hundred million dollars and Trump has successfully portrayed him as a fool and a wimp. Así botan las pelotas (or lack thereof).

The weeds went whacko during the Big Wet, off their rocker not unlike Republican congressman Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, he of the Bengazi rant. The House Republicans have spent $14 million trying to crucify Hillary Clinton on the Bengazi cross. They won’t stop. They are much like an infestation of white flies.

The New York Times reports that Sotheby’s first auction of the late A. Alfred Taubman’s art collection will be Nov. 4. Christie’s tried to win the auction rights, but lost. It would have looked bad if Christie’s had won. Taubman was Sotheby’s “principal owner” for 22 years. The collection is expected to generate a raft of money, perhaps $500 million, possibly the biggest private haul ever. There are big names in it — Rothko, Raphael, Picasso and Modigliani.

The Times noted that Taubman died in April at the age of 91, and that he was a philanthropist and shopping mall magnate. I did not know Taubman, but I have reason to dislike him. It has nothing to do with the fact that he wound up in the slammer for nine and a half months for price fixing while in charge of Sotheby’s. He was convicted in a U.S. court while his Christie’s counterpart, also accused of bilking buyers, was in England, above and beyond extradition.

In the 1980s, awash in cash, Taubman decided he fancied the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a relatively modest family enterprise owned by the descendants of Joseph Pulitzer, journalism’s giant and pioneer. Besides the Post, the family owned broadcast properties, The Arizona Daily Star and some small publications. I worked for, and reported directly to, Joseph Pulitzer’s grandson, Michael Edgar Pulitzer, who then served as editor and publisher of the Star. Michael’s half-brother, Joseph Pulitzer III, was editor and publisher of the Post-Dispatch.

Taubman’s assault on Pulitzer publishing involved a segment of the family that was not satisfied with dividends and was unable according to the trust to cash in its shares at market value. Thus Taubman offered $500 million for the company with the dissenting family members offering 43 percent of the company. The dissidents were paid off when the Joseph and Michael and the rest of the majority shareholders decided to take the business public. The initial public offering (IPO) generated enough cash to pay off the dissidents.

But the nature and character of the enterprise changed drastically. It became public corporation with a singular responsibility to serve shareholder interests above all. As a family company, it had paternal bent, and money was not the be all and end all.

Thus, Taubman’s hostile takeover effort came to naught. Instead, Pulitzer Inc. was born. It died in 2005 with the sale of the company to Lee Enterprises. By then, Joseph Pulitzer III was long dead and Michael Pulitzer headed the company and guided the sale. The company had tripled in value over Taubman’s offer. The sale took place at the peak of the company’s value. Two years later and the value of the company probably would not have been half. Lee Enterprises carries today a market cap value of $112 million and still owes $745 milliion from its Pulitzer purchase 10 years ago. The debt from that purchase has been an enormous yoke.

I cannot dislike Taubman a lot. The corporatization of newspapers was a trend long before he asserted himself into the takeover fray. If I wax nostalgic, so be it. Newspapers became great when they were owned by individuals whose families considered it wise and necessary to uphold tradition, at least until love of money got in the way. The only way I see for them to rediscover greatness again is with that same ownership by individuals who love newspapering and the excitement it creates serving the public good and its First Amendment responsibility.

 

said Richard F. Hohlt, a Republican donor and lobbyist.”

From today’s (9/20) New York Times, page one

Republicans planning for unintended consequences sounds about right.

The big story in today’s (Sunday, 9/13) Arizona Daily Star was the headline:

“Million-dollar home market

roars back to life in Tucson”

It plumb tickles me to death (apologies to Howdy Lewis*) that we in the Old Pueblo have a rip-roaring million-dollar housing market. It warms the cockles of my profit-loving heart to know the Geoffrey Gotrocks of the world are spreading welcome wampum around this (presently) very wet desert.

I’m just going to set down ratchere next to my favorite 50-cent prickly pear, hold out my tin cup and wait for all that moolah to trickle down.

 

 

*See The Rounders, a motion picture (1965).

Isn’t Diane Douglas just adorable?

The lady has stepped in more fresh political cow pies than any AZ politician since Evan Mecham. She hasn’t just stepped in them. She’s stomped those pies so the splatter factor has been REALLY BIG. If you have forgotten or never knew about the infamous Gov. Mecham, see this “60 Minutes” interview with Morley Safer from the time of the covered wagons. (Notice how uncomfortable Safer is.)

Douglas was elected superintendent of public instruction, but acts as though she were crowned Queen of Pedagogy. She therefore believes she is sovereign over all the education she surveys, a notion a court recently rejected.

It seems unlikely that Ms Douglas will be satisfied with the court’s decision and will appeal, thus spending more public money on lawyers who charge a few hundred quid an hour. As queen, she is something of a bulldog, and she seems determined to visit all the cow pies this state has to offer.

And that, as they say in the land of double negatives, is not insignificant.

After reading “Final Cut” by Steven Bach, I had to watch “Heaven’s Gate,” the movie that occupies the book and a significant amount of territory in the history of motion pictures. Bach headed United Artists, the studio that essentially gave Michael Cimino carte blanche to make the movie. He was still basking in success of “The Deer Hunter.” The book is very readable tells a good — if greatly padded — story. I just watched a YouTube video that claims the movie bankrupted United Artists. This is untrue. The movie prompted Transamerica, an insurance company that decided to stick its stinking toe in movie waters, to sell UA to Kirk Kerkorian who also owned MGM. The United Artists name lasted a short time thereafter and then was combined with MGM.

The death of United Artists was (and still is) accompanied by much hand wringing and nostalgic mourning. It had a long tradition. It was created in 1919 by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin. They wanted to wrest control of their work from the studios and thus founded their own.

“Final Cut” covers in great detail Cimino’s disregard for the initial $12 million budget. He spent $44 million and overran the production schedule by about a year. In 1980 — when the film was finally released — that was a powerful pile of cash. One version of its release was more than five hours long. Bach and Co pared it, but the movie was a bust. It put Hollywood off Westerns, damnit. It’s sad. One can watch “The Searchers” only so many times.

This movie is so bad, Netflix does not have it. I rented it from Casa Video. I watched the first hour and decided to watch an hour a night. Wednesday night I sat for the second hour. After about 20 minutes I could take no more. Every scene in this move is about three times longer than it should be. There is a plethora of dust and smoke in this film, enough to clog and fog three or four movies.  Some — many actually — of the scenes are beautiful and creative. Clearly, Cimino took his eye off the story and crafted a series of beautiful 20-minute videos. The roller skating scene is breathtaking.

One good thing came out of this movie: Hollywood became kinder to animals. The American Humane Association accused Cimino of killing four horses, disemboweling cattle, decapitating a chicken and staging actual cockfights. The AHA also claimed a horse and rider were accidentally blown up with dynamite. The horse died.

You can search YouTube for the trailer and other stuff.