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IndieBound as Alternative as Amazon Cuts Affiliates. No. 7.1.2009. 92.

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009


Amazon’s moves are the latest in a fight involving states trying to get out-of-state companies that perform commerce largely online with their residents but have little or no physical presence in the state to collect taxes.

An Alternative for Ex-Amazon Affiliates

The following “open condolence letter to former Amazon affiliates” comes from Kristen McLean, executive director of the Association of Booksellers for Children:

Boy, it sure sucks to be dumped.

There you are, doing a great job of recommending awesome books, handing Amazon the sales, and they just up and leave the party.

To add injury to insult, I’m sure it didn’t feel good to hear from the Wall Street Journal that collective sales from your sites only “account for a relatively small slice of Amazon’s traffic, so the move isn’t likely to cause major damage to the company’s business.”

It’s like the morning after the prom, when in wrinkled dress and wilting corsage you realize they’re just not that into you. At least, not when they may have to collect millions in state sales tax that could help fix bridges, keep schools open and fund libraries at a time when your states are truly suffering.
And they seemed so nice.
Well, I want to invite you to the indie party. While the flashy prom has been happening at the country club, we’ve been holding our own get-together in the gym. What we lack in glamour, we make up for in charm.
Like you, we love to recommend books. We think it’s cool that you’re recommending books, and with us there’s no such thing as too small. We won’t marginalize you. And we all pay our local taxes. Best of all we have an affiliate program too! It’s called IndieBound, and we’d love to have you be a part of it. You’ll get a reward for using it, your readers can keep getting their books off your site, and your state will benefit in the end. Everyone wins.
Again, we’re sorry that you lost your date. (We never really liked them
anyway.) We promise we won’t leave you hanging.

Posted in books, capitalism | No Comments »

Monopoly Populism. No. 3.17.2009. 42.

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

A new model for Readers’ Advising?

“Individual diversity and cultural homogeneity coexisting in what we might call monopoly populism”– in the post, “Online Monoculture and the End of the Niche” by Tom Slee commenting on the paper, “Blockbuster Culture’s Next Rise or Fall: The Impact of Recommender Systems on Sales Diversity” by Daniel M.Fleder and Kartik Hosanagar. [NET Institute Working Paper No. #07-10.] Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=955984

Posted in capitalism | No Comments »

Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library

Monday, November 13th, 2006

Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library:
How Postmodern Consumer Capitalism Threatens Democracy, Civil Education and the Public Good

By Ed D’Angelo
November 2006.
139. paperback. $18
ISBN 978-0-9778617-1-2

Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library is a philosophical and historical analysis of how the rise of consumerism has led to the decline of the original mission of public libraries to sustain and promote democracy through civic education. Through a reading of historical figures such as Plato, Helvetius, Rousseau, and John Stuart Mill, the book shows how democracy and even capitalism were originally believed to depend upon the moral and political education that public libraries (and other institutions of rational public discourse) could provide. But as capitalism developed in the 20th century it evolved into a postmodern consumerism that replaced democracy with consumerism and education with entertainment. Public libraries have mistakenly tried to remain relevant by shadowing the rise of consumerism, but have instead contributed to the rise of a new barbarism and the decline of democracy.

Praise from Henry Giroux:

“We live in dangerous times as a relentless war is being waged by market fundamentalists, political extremists, and religious zealots against all those public spheres guided by democratic values and ideals. Ed D’Angelo’s book is a brilliant recounting of public memory and a spirited defense of one of the nation’s most important public goods, the public library. Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library is a riveting example of the language of critique and recovery, critical engagement and possibility. It is a must read for anyone who takes democracy seriously, is willing to fight for one of the country’s most important democratic public spheres, and at the same time learn something about the history and importance of the democratic function of public libraries in America. Everyone should read this book.”

Order Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library through your book jobber or buy it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Contact:
Rory Litwin
Library Juice Press, LLC
rory@llibraryjuicepress.com

Posted in capitalism, progressive, public libraries, social justice | Comments Off

Charter Schools Have Been a Myth All Along. In Florida Bush v. Holmes Was Right. 8.27.2006. No. 177.

Sunday, August 27th, 2006

Writing of the conservative take-over of education Michael W. Apple has observed that charter schools schools are permitted to opt out of state requirements and bend to the wishes of their clientele (Educating the “Right” Way: Markets, Standards, God, and Inequality. 2nd Routledge, 2006).

The New York Times reports on 8/27/2006: ‘A federal study showing that fourth graders in charter schools score worse in reading and math than their public school counterparts should cause some soul-searching in Congress. Too many lawmakers seem to believe that the only thing wrong with American education is the public school system, and that converting lagging schools to charter schools would cause them to magically improve.’

In Florida, under Jeb Bush, many charter schools–an idea he has aggressively pushed– have become part of a corporate mentality. The Florida Supreme Court ensured that Bush did lose his drive to enact the country’s first state-wide voucher program- in Bush v. Holmes.
People for the American Way report that on August 16, 2004, the Florida Court of Appeal upheld the circuit court’s ruling in a 2-1 decision. As the majority held, the “no aid” provision of the Florida Constitution clearly prohibits the state from using public funds directly or indirectly to aid religious institutions, as happens under the voucher program. In an 8-6 en banc ruling issued on November 12, 2004, the majority of the full Court of Appeals similarly held that the voucher law violates the “no aid” provision on the state Constitution. The court certified the case to the Florida Supreme Court as one involving a question of “great public importance.” The state appealed to the Florida Supreme Court on January 5, 2006. That Court, in a 5-2 ruling, struck down the voucher law on the ground that it violates the Education Clause of the Florida Constitution.

Charter schools are just another way for Barbara Bush and her son Neil Bush to use the public good for their own financial betterment. Mrs. Bush I donated to her son Neil’s company for software for a charter school as her idea of “hurricane relief.” The motives behind charetr schools may have been pure to some participants but the politicians ramming them through had many less pure motives…like Mrs. Bush I lining Neil Bush’s pockets. There is just no bottom to the Bush family’s greed.

Posted in Jeb Bush, capitalism, children, politicians, schools | Comments Off

Social Capital and Neo-Liberal Voluntarism. No. 7.25.2006. No. 153.

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

I was quite taken with the idea of social capital after reading Robert Putnam’s essay “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital” (1995) in the Journal of Democracy. I even included a bit about it in my book, A Place at the Table (2000).

However, civic engagement changed as the Bush administration gained power. The various boards and community groups on which I served took on a different tenor. Control of peoples’ behavior or at least re-directing it in sanctioned ways was increasingly a focus. I ran into the public suppression of any question about voluntarism in the U.S. on a higher education discussion list. Why should there be such censorship of questions?
Now Alex Law and Gerry Mooney have written an analysis that gives word to my misgivings. This is their killer observation:

“Social capitalists as mangers of dissent and protest remain concerned to moderate and divert voluntary but oppositional movements from below.”

Alex Law and Gerry Mooney write in the summer 2006 issue of Variant on Social Capital and Neo-Liberal Voluntarism.

–Notwithstanding the near hegemonic use of the neologism, in its very vacuity lies the widespread ideological appeal of social capital. In providing a highly circumscribed way to think and act in terms of social and political mobilisation, its dominance has had, and is having, worldwide repercussions.

A longer version will appear later in Critique.

Posted in KdlPMcC, capitalism, community building, economic justice, poverty | Comments Off

A Critical Primer on Postmodernism: Lessons from Educational Scholarship for Librarianship. No. 7.24.2006. No. 152.

Monday, July 24th, 2006
John Buschman, author of Dismantling the Public Sphere, has a new article (with Richard A. Broscio).
A Critical Primer on Postmodernism: Lessons from Educational Scholarship for Librarianship. Journal of Academic Librarianship 32 (July 2006): 408-418 .
John Buschman and Richard A. Brosio

Postmodernism is still the subject of vigorous ongoing debate in a variety of fields like education and anthropology and has now arrived in the literature of librarianship. Prior conflicts generated over postmodernism remain—including academic areas where it has been declared passé. This paper summarizes postmodernism and its intellectual contributions, and then highlights its shortcomings via critical educational scholarship utilizing that field as a framework of analysis for librarianship. This is undertaken to relate both strengths of and problems with postmodernist theories for current work among scholars in librarianship. We do so to learn from the course of debate in another field and to challenge postmodern research trends in librarianship that do not account for the cultural and economic effects of capitalism.

Posted in capitalism, librarians, progressive, public sphere, socialism | Comments Off

Textual Scholarship and Upton Sinclair. No.6.29.2006-120.

Thursday, June 29th, 2006

Mr. D.C. Greetham, author of Textual Scholarship, teaches “Theory and Practice of Literary Scholarship and Criticism” at the CUNY Graduate Center. The seminar “organizes the various practical methods in archival research (enumeration, description, transcription, production, and so on) within a recognition that historical moment, ideological position, gendered identity and other personal and cultural “markers” will influence the apparently objective, positivist assumptions of “strict and pure” bibliography.”

A debate on textual scholarship is taking place about Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Mr. Christopher Phelps, an editor of a new edition of The Jungle (2005) has examined and critiqued an edition edited by Mr. Earl Lee (2003).
Mr. Christopher Phelps is editor a new editon (2005) of The Jungle that includes the report of the two inspectors that President Theodore Roosevelt sent to Chicago to discern whether Sinclair’s charges were true, a bibliography of writings on the novel and Sinclair, a chronology of Sinclair’s life, questions to facilitate discussion, an annotated text, and a comprehensive new introduction.

Mr. Phelps has just published (6-26-06) “The Fictitious Suppression of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle” at the History News Network.

Just one problem: none of the sensational claims made on behalf of the See Sharp edition is true. The Jungle was not censored. Sinclair did not revise the text to meet the coercive demands of a commercial publisher. He never wanted the 1905 serial version to become the standard edition. And the novel, as eventually published in book form, has a political message that is perfectly clear.

Mr. Earl Lee, is editor of The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition (2003).

He has an essay on the website of his publisher, See Sharp Press.

Of late, certain academics invested in the commercial edition of The Jungle have been making aspersions against the original, much more pointed version published by See Sharp Press: The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition. Earl Lee, who wrote the Foreword to The Uncensored Original Edition, answers these critics in his Defense of The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition.

And who said bibliography wasn’t fun?

Posted in authors, books, capitalism, socialism | Comments Off

Manufactured Drumbeat Against Universities. No. 6.16.2006-106.

Friday, June 16th, 2006

The Federalist Society [members include:Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, Samuel Alito, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and Kenneth Starr] is a powerful force for reshaping American jurisprudence in support of a larger neoconservative agenda….
It is a telling marker of the ideological cohesiveness and extremism of this core group of philanthropies that three of the five founding members, Joseph Coors, David Koch and Harry Bradley, were members and financial supporters of the John Birch Society.
Olin Foundation supports Ann Coulter.

Bradley Foundation supports Marvin Olasky.

Castle Rock supports Paul Weyrich- “key strategist for the secular and religious right.”

The absence of formal organizational linkages between the entities within these networks creates an illusion of independent analytical voices reaching similar conclusions about strategic policy issues, a technique known in the public relations industry as “astroturfing.”

Posted in capitalism, disinformation | Comments Off

Gravity’s Rainbow as illustrated by Zak Smith. No. 5.29.2006-82.

Monday, May 29th, 2006

Gravity’s Rainbow as illustrated by Zak Smith.

Creon Upton on Zak Smith’s illustrations of Gravity’s Rainbow:

Smith’s ink drawings, as with the face of death on the final page, contain evocative details of tactile mechanics and movement. Page 412 depicts a grisly, industrial monster, a response to the novel’s tirade against capitalist consumption. The creature is fused to the earth’s resources, a mass of organic materials. It consumes these and releases from its great claw ordered parcels: a limited supply of products and services whose real cost is unaccounted for in their market value.

Page Index.

Posted in books, capitalism, environment, literature | Comments Off

Under GOP the I.R.S. Hurts the Poor; Defends the Rich by Omission. No.1.12.2006-5.

Thursday, January 12th, 2006

I.R.S. Move Said to Hurt the Poor
Tax refunds sought by 1.6 million poor Americans over the last five years were frozen and their returns labeled fraudulent, although the vast majority appear to have done nothing wrong, the Internal Revenue Service’s taxpayer advocate told Congress yesterday.

A computer program identified the refund requests as suspect and automatically flagged the taxpayers for extra scrutiny for years to come, the advocate said in her annual report to Congress. These taxpayers were not told that the I.R.S. criminal investigation division suspected fraud.

The advocate, Nina Olson, said the I.R.S. devoted vastly more resources to pursuing questionable refunds sought by the poor – which under the highest estimate is $9 billion – than to the $100 billion in taxes not paid each year by people who work for cash and either fail to file tax returns or understate their income.
=======

Public Citizzen:
In violation of a longstanding court order, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has knowingly stopped providing a widely recognized data expert with detailed statistics about how the agency enforces the nation’s tax laws, according to a motion filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.

The legal challenge was brought by Susan B. Long, a professor of Management Information and Decision Sciences at Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management. Long has used the IRS’s own data to document its performance for more than 30 years. Since 1989 she also has been co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data research organization that provides the public with detailed information about the operation of hundreds of federal agencies, including the IRS.

Long obtained a court order on July 23, 1976, from Judge Walter McGovern in connection with Long’s studies of the agency while she was pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of Washington. The order requires the IRS to provide her statistical data on an ongoing basis about its audit, collection and other enforcement activities.

For many years, the IRS largely abided by McGovern’s order. Since mid-2004, however, the agency has refused to comply even while acknowledging the existence of the court order and of statistical material collected by the agency that is covered by the order. The agency has not offered an explanation for its refusal to provide the information. The motion filed today asks the court to compel compliance with the order.

For more than 10 years, TRAC has used the IRS’s own data to produce a regular series of reports about the performance of what is today one of the nation’s largest and most powerful agencies. The reports are posted on TRAC’s Web site, http://trac.syr.edu. For example:

● TRAC’s April 2000 IRS report cited data showing that Clinton administration tax collectors were auditing poor people at a higher rate than rich people.

● TRAC’s April 2004 report found that business and corporate audits were substantially down and that criminal enforcement of the tax laws was at an all-time low.

● TRAC’s April 2005 report cited agency data showing that while the largest corporations controlled 90 percent of all corporate assets and 87 percent of all corporate income in FY 2004, only one in three of the corporations had been audited that year.

“It should come as no surprise that none of these findings were announced by either the IRS or the administrations in power at the time of their publication,” Long said. “Furthermore, all of these and many other similar findings were based on the kinds of data that the IRS has been unlawfully withholding from TRAC and the American people since 2004.”

TRAC’s motion in Washington state is separate from its still-pending April 14 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C., brought under the Freedom of Information Act. In that action, TRAC said the IRS was illegally withholding selected information about its operations and claiming without substantiation that some of the requested material would compromise homeland security.

TRAC also has Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suits pending against the Justice Department’s Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys and the Office of Personnel Management. In addition, TRAC has administrative FOIA requests seeking data and other information from the Justice Department’s Civil Division and its Environmental and Natural Resources Division, its immigration courts and several agencies within the Department of Homeland Security.

Scott Nelson, with Public Citizen in Washington, D.C., and Eric M. Stahl and Michele Earl-Hubbard, with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Seattle, are representing TRAC on a pro bono basis in the most recent filing.

A copy of the motion is available here.

Posted in capitalism, economic justice | No Comments »

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