MLP

[desh]

Ever see those "Summer Jobs for the Environment" flyers, advertising jobs for groups called PIRGs? I always thought they looked too good to be true. And it turns out they are. (Undated article; seems to be from 2002.) There are quite the horror stories in comments about illegal labor tactics, union busting, 98% of the money raised going to overhead, and just general hypocrisy. Some other good links here, comparing these groups to cults, and giving more horror stories and essays. (Via gutwoman.)

Yeah, I really do love the lefty rhetoric this week. Check out this bit of anti-war justification. After reading enough of this stuff, I'm very close to being pro-draft. Republicans complaining about military enlistment problems? Fine; put your money bodies and your children where your mouth is. (Via The Daily Kos.)

In less weighty news, The Philadelphia Parking Authority has unveiled an online directory of Center City parking garages, complete with prices. They claim this will boost competition and lower prices. They're right, though perhaps not to as big of an extent as they imply. I just tried it, and you have to poke around a bit to get to a full menu of prices. It's also missing some garages, including the two closest ones to my house. But it's at least a bit easier to find out about price gouging now.

Matisyahu is WXPN's Artist To Watch for June. I didn't figure this out until yesterday, because they kept pronouncing his name such that I thought they were saying "Modest Yahoo", like a spin-off of Modest Mouse or something. (Correctly pronounced, the first two syllables have equal weight, and the "I" sounds like the name of the letter "E".) It's neat that he's getting all this publicity, though I still don't like reggae.

It seems that there's a Monopoly-like game based on the realtime GPS-determined positions of real London cabs. I haven't been to the site yet, and it's quite possible that the game sucks, but it's still really neat as proof-of-concept alone. (Via Slashdot.)

Comments

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I worked part time for a PIRG along with two othe jobs one summer. It sucked. Big time. However, at least CalPIRG at the time was upfront with the deal. They billed it as a volunteer position that payed for your carfare to and from your canvasing zone. By the end of that summer, they started misrepresenting with a changing of the guard.

[desh]

Volunteer job, eh? At least they admitted it. It seems like they don't even do that anymore.

You know, I wonder if they can get their 501(c)(3) status revoked. If they even are one to begin with.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Well, in the 1980s PIRGs were the new grassroots thing. I was basically looking on it as volunteer work and so were a lot of the other people, but the whole thing seems to collapsed in on itself and become very self serving. I think a lot of the original PIRG people are probably Greens these days

[flyinbutrs.livejournal.com]

Oy... PIRG... basically, anything that's advertised by posting flyers on every lamppost and stop sign you can find is probably bullshit. Especially herbalife... those guys are fucking crooks. Sounds like PIRG is too.

Also, thanks for turning me onto the DailyKos... I started reading it a few weeks ago. Great site.

[desh]

Isn't it great? I don't think it's healthy for someone like me, who only has a moderate amount of energy for politics, to be this fired up about an election that's 17 months away. But the Kos people talk like it's next week, and they're on the verge of sucking me in.

[sleepsong.livejournal.com]

I almost worked for them one summer. Then I researched them. I changed my mind very quickly.

[desh]

Seems I'm one of the last people to know of them, and know how they work. Better late than never...

[sleepsong.livejournal.com]

Sho'nuff.

[janinedog]

We have a local chapter of MASSPIRG here on campus, and it's been under fire for quite some time. A large portion of the student body doesn't think they should be funded like other student groups are, since a large portion of their money goes off-campus. Also, the people in the group are super-annoying. Every group "tables" in the university center, advertising events and whatever. But when MASSPIRG does it, they actually walk up to you and say "sign this petition!" etc. And you have to walk by them to get to the dining hall. It's annoying. :P

[desh]

Sometimes aggressive petitioning works. I don't fault them for that part of things.

Though yeah, I'd be one of the fastest people walking past them, and not just because they're PIRGs. I hate being sold to, even though I concede it works.

[janinedog]

Yeah, I don't do it because of their message (I mean, they're all for protecting the environment and such, which is good), but I agree--if I'm interested, I'll come up to you. If I want to eat dinner, let me. ;)

[bumonyou.livejournal.com]

Simma Asher and Jeff Kitrosser used to work for them one summer.

My boss back at PEC worked for PennPIRG when he was younger and got attacked by someone's big vicious dog (still has the scars). Then he quit.

I have been pro draft since...2003

[desh]

Isn't 2003 when you left the country, too?

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

That and scary people with guns are the two pitfalls of door to door work. I didn't have any problems canvassing for CalPIRG, but I had this door to door sales jobs and I swear! I had more guns pulled on my twitchty rich folk that one summer than I did in all of high school. And dogs! No scars, but lots of close calls.

[conana.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine did fundraising for MassPIRG for a couple of weeks this summer. She's well rid of them. I guess I'll have to be more snarky the next time they ask me for money.

I would certainly be pro-draft, except I feel hipocritical advocating that solution knowing that I would be dodging it anyway.

[conana.livejournal.com]

Yeah, yeah, I can't spell.

[desh]

Is it necessarily hypocritical to advocate a draft you'd be dodging? What if I think that every non-pacifist out there should have to put in time? Even if I'm bluffing, in a sense, I don't think that necessarily makes it hypocritical. I'd have to think about it more.

[conana.livejournal.com]

Well, I certainly do not mind saying that anyone advocating the war should be willing to enter the draft pool. And I suppose that I would feel better simultaneously advoacating and resisting a draft if I felt that I had done enough to oppose the war in other ways. (s/had done/was doing/) Note also that I'm not a pacifist, and I do respect military service; if I respected my government, I would certainly want to put in a tour of duty. Ultimately, I need to think more about legitimate ways to resist my unjust government.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

The solution is a National Service Commitment in which military service is just one option. There's a lot of work that needs to be done in this country that needs warm bodies and enthusiasm. I kind of fall on the Heinlein side of things where I think the state has every right to demand some kind of service from its citizens as a requirement of citizenship. But, that state had better come through for its citizens in terms of services and in terms of rights.

[desh]

But that doesn't really solve the problem, because all of the chickenhawks out there will do other non-military service stuff. The military will probably still be primarily lower-class minorities.

...chickenhawks? Is that the right word? I'm trying to sound more like a blogosphere blogger. I mean those right-wing people who love the war but don't want anyone they know to actually have to fight in it.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Ther term chickenhawk is usually a slang term for pedophile, specifically an older man who preys on boys. But I like your use. Infact, I like the way it references the older meaning, implying that the the willingness of older elites to send other people kids to their deaths is essentially abusive.

The whole volunteer vs draft thing is tricky. The US military likes what it can do with an all volunteer force. A force of volunteers is much more aggressive and competent because they subscribe to a lot of the ideals(even when they go in to get some skills) as opposed to being compelled as draftees. That's one big reason why we've been able to do so much with such a small force in Iraq. The volunteer force also worked in places like Bosnia where discretion and judgement skills were more important than the shooting skills. So the Pentagon does not want to give up that kind of force. Draftees in Vietnam kind of got into a survival mentality where not only would they not prosecute offensives well, but they got entirely too trigger happy shooting at whatever looked like a threat. The difference is a force that go the extra mile while being shot at vs one that will do the minimum to get by and hunker down til day 365.

Bottom line I think is that citizens will volunteer for causes and governments they believe in. When the government becomes disconnected, the people stay away. And this government is dangerously disconnected from people of the US. This is why I never care for elitist leaders with aggressive foreign policies. The military was one of the only ways to get up and out fromm the place I grew up and most of my graduating class volunteered to get education, benefits, and an income that wasn't derived from selling drugs or flipping burgers. So there's what amounts to a poverty draft. That works during peace time, but there's no way these young people will volunteer to serve a government that gives them nothing during war.

[deled.livejournal.com]

yeah. anna signed up to work for them. then quit...she needed the money to go to israel...it was that miserable, that she was willing to quit even though it might keep her from going. but this all implies that she thought she would get paid for her work. as her reason was not, "they weren't paying me for my work" but rather "it sucked the life out of me."

[jre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the PIRGs' union-busting is sort of notorious, and I think bespeaks a larger unfortunate, very much classed and racialized trend in which some progressive organizations (rightly) argue for a basic minimum standard living for everyone but (wrongly) call on those working to see that standard realized to climb onto the cross and renounce that standard of living for themselves. This is, I think, part of why the left has a way of eating its young and driving proto-organizers off to law school after a year or two. Of course, it's easier to avoid this problem if you're a right wing foundation because chances are greater that you have more money than god.

I think the war in Vietnam would have ended much faster if more war opponents had been willing to go to jail for refusing to be drafted rather than going to Canada or getting doctored doctors' notes.

[desh]

I think the war in Vietnam would have ended much faster if more war opponents had been willing to go to jail for refusing to be drafted...

Why? I don't follow.

[jre.livejournal.com]

I just mean that, though they would have been loathe to admit it, the hawks in DC and the draft-dodgers both had an interest in keeping draft-dodging relatively invisible, the former to mitigate the sense of declining support for the war and the latter to avoid getting in trouble. If instead of gaming the system (by whose more pragmatic elements they were likely seen as more trouble than they were worth as soldiers anyway), tens of thousands of Americans had announced that they would peacefully and publically refuse the draft and instead accept arrest, I think we would have seen a greater and earlier crisis of legitimacy which would have done even more to force the White House to get out of Vietnam than the mere recognition that lots of folks were doing their best not to get drafted did.