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

[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.