Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

It’s an Unfair Rap

Posted on September 9, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Musically, George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People (mp3) is a real catchy bit of rappy pop. [Warning: lots and lots of ‘bad’ words.] And the feeling is raw and real, and I always appreciate that in my music.

But politically, the title, and a good part of the content, is an unfair rap. The Bush administration has an admirable record of appointing African-Americans to top posts. And despite the occasional strange incident, I don’t think it is a racist administration. Rather, it’s thoroughly classist. Kleptocratic even.

For as far as I can tell, what George Bush — and his team — don’t care about is poor people. All poor people. No sympathy (in the sense of a sympathetic or shared understanding) at all.

[Spotted via Boing Boing, which has full details on this remix (“by The Legendary K.O, Words by Big Mon and Damien a/k/a Dem Knock-Out Boyz”) of the Kanye West single “Gold Digger” — it’s a mash in of his unscripted comment on an NBC special, which NBC then censored when it provided a delayed broadcast to the west coast.]

Posted in Kultcha | 20 Comments

Nice Neighborhood

Posted on September 9, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

ophelia20L-sm.jpg

Ophelia is drifting very very slowly northeast for now, which is away from us but less away from the Carolinas. The latest forecast is that in 36 hours it will be a major hurricane. And then where it goes is anyone’s guess, although as of this writing the least unlikely landfall would be well north of here. But, as the National Hurricane Center puts it,

THE PROXIMITY OF THIS CYCLONE TO THE COAST AND THE WEAK STEERING CURRENTS DICTATES THAT INTERESTS FROM FLORIDA THROUGH THE CAROLINAS WILL NEED TO MONITOR OPHELIA FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS.

Posted in Miami | 2 Comments

Another $50 Billion Disaster Waiting to Happen

Posted on September 8, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Connect these dots:

1) FEMA does a bad job, so let’s reward it. Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall:

Fully $50 billion of those recovery and reconstruction funds passed by Congress today are going to FEMA. FEMA is going to administer those funds. That is just friggin’ crazy.

Even if FEMA were still a model government agency, as it was by most accounts in the 1990s, this would still be a really, really bad decision. As the title says, FEMA is an emergency management agency, not a reconstruction agency. It doesn’t have the organizational structure or competence to run the economy of a significant chunk of the United States for the foreseeable future, which is what this amounts to.

The fact that FEMA is stuffed with GOP cronies, and has functioned as a patronage piggy bank for the last few years, may not be irrelevant here either.

2) And then there’s this: in the ultimate in arrogance and destruction of democracy, the GOP allowed only 40 minutes “debate” in the House — and no amendments. It’s unclear if the Democrats were even allowed to see the text of the bill in advance of the vote; Raw Story says that as of yesterday at least, “Democrats said no one had even seen a copy of the legislation.”

Thus, I disagree with Daily Kos’s claim that a vote against this bill was necessarily “horrible”. Depending on the reason it may have been real patriotism. In a way it’s a pity that our representatives are so cowed that they more of them didn’t vote against it just to slow things down for a day or two until more bugs (and invitations to massive waste) could have been removed.

Posted in Politics: The Party of Sleaze | 1 Comment

Denver Post’s Disturbing Story on FEMA Camp

Posted on September 8, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

DenverPost.com reporter Diane Carman’s story — a reliable source — begins like this:

If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought I was peering through the fence at a concentration camp.

The conditions of the camps where Katrina’s victims are being herded is, or should be, a matter of pressing concern.

Posted in Unspeakably Awful (Katrina) | 2 Comments

A Drug Company That’s Not Utterly Heartless

Posted on September 8, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Escapable Logic points to an impressive offer from Pfizer:

Victims of Hurricane Katrina who have lost access to their Pfizer medications can receive an emergency supply at any Walgreens, Rite Aid, Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club or CVS pharmacy.

From now until September 16th, Pfizer and these pharmacies are helping survivors obtain their Pfizer medicines. No matter where patients may be residing, if they are from the affected areas, they can go to any Walgreens, Rite Aid, Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club or CVS pharmacy and ask the pharmacist for help. Many independent community pharmacies will also be participating.

Patients without prescription drug coverage will get their medicines for free.

And it seems to be a genuine offer. Nice.

Posted in Unspeakably Awful (Katrina) | 1 Comment

SIMS Does Good Seminars

Posted on September 8, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Berkeley’s SIMS is offering what sounds like an interesting seminar. Xiao Qiang and Howard Rheingold will be leading a seminar in “Participatory Media”:

The purpose of this seminar course is to become familiar with the latest developments in information and communication technologies in regard to their potentials to enable political collective action and reshape patterns and structures of power in the physical world. In addition to analytic readings, the class will directly engage in collective knowledge-gathering and construction of a public good. Students will engage in social bookmarking and collectively construct a resource wiki on class topics. Students will start from a pool of potential resources via the smartmobs.com blog and smartmobs del.icio.us tag, and will be encouraged to find and tag new resources that are not already in that pool. Students will post links and brief descriptions of their selections on the wiki, explaining in the first comment attached to the wiki page why this entry is valid and useful; others can comment subsequently, and edit the page if necessary. By permission of instructors, participants who are not physically present at class sessions can participate online. At the end of the semester, the wiki will be open to reading and writing by the public.

If I just had the time, I’d find out if they’d have me…

Meanwhile there’s an intriguing syllabus.

Posted in Internet | 1 Comment