2:00PM Water Cooler 4/22/15

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1. Mark P. April 22, 2015 at 2:26 pm

   ‘Carol Kaye is the greatest bass player you never heard of [LA Weekly].’

   Speak for yourself, chum.

   Kaye is the (white) lady who replaced James Jamerson in the Motown studio band when Motown moved to LA; she played on the bass-busy, funky Jacksons’s “I Want You Back,” for instance. Before that, she was part of the Wrecking Crew, the LA studio musicians who are all over a whole bunch of things like the Beach Brothers records and Phil Spector records (as was Leon Russell, for instance).
   1. optimader April 22, 2015 at 4:29 pm

      Carol Kaye is the greatest bass player you never heard of [LA Weekly].
      oddly worded
      I’d say Christian McBride and Jaco Pastroious are the two best (many) people have never heard of. But who’s to say who’s heard of who? I suppose it could be a long list.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_McBride
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaco_Pastorius
      1. Ulysses April 22, 2015 at 6:42 pm

         Let’s not neglect Stanley Clarke!!
         1. Manny Goldstein April 22, 2015 at 7:34 pm

            I still nominate Anthony Jackson.
            1. Sam Kanu April 23, 2015 at 8:48 am

               Greatest bass player people never heard of?
               – Raymond Jackson of Mtume’s 2nd generation lineup
               – Cordel “Boogie” Mosson probably got buried in the group identity:
               http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordell_Mosson
               – Jonathan Maron of Groove Collective played the most otherwordly bass solo that I’ve ever heard live
               http://www.talkbass.com/threads/jon-maron-of-groove-collective.20714/

               Carol Kaye? Certainly a good player, but I think her relatively surprising identity kind of leaks over into her being overblown, as the “best you never heard of”. In fact musical history is littered with underrated – and unheard of – bass players.
         2. Kurt Sperry April 22, 2015 at 8:48 pm

            When I was a kid, you had to choose either Stanley or Jaco. You just did. I was a Jaco, but still in awe of SC.
            1. Ulysses April 23, 2015 at 8:32 am

               I’m in awe of all of them– I was very lucky as a youth to be exposed to all kinds of fantastic music!
      2. optimader April 22, 2015 at 10:23 pm

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wci8y_JZIKM
         Christian McBride upright bass solo

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITplwMnv6W8
         Five Peace Band – Raju

         so good
   2. Lambert Strether Post authorApril 22, 2015 at 9:31 pm

      I was summarizing the article. If I were speaking for myself, I’d have picked Phil Lesh.
      1. optimader April 22, 2015 at 11:13 pm

         Phil Lesh would be a Jaco
         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8q6sR6yZCE
         WR –Birdland
2. sufferin'succotash April 22, 2015 at 2:50 pm

   To say that France’s fermiers généraux were highly unpopular by the time of the French Revolution is something of an understatement. Simply being a shareholder in the ferme could have lethal consequences once the Revolution started.
   http://www.chemistryexplained.com/Kr-Ma/Lavoisier-Antoine.html
3. Paul Tioxon April 22, 2015 at 4:12 pm

   The Pacific Partnership would have greater support for passage if it included this demand: all exports to the USA must include an investment for final assembly in the USA in factories and offices built in Detroit, Michigan until such time that Detroit has ZERO UNEMPLOYMENT and full housing and public services for health and education and all customary municipal services. All job applications must include a mandatory check off for union membership to certify full recognition of union representation once 50.01% of the employees hired have checked off yes for union representation. Other cities can apply for similar status after Detroit is rebuilt. No investment outside of the cities entitled to exclusive rights to foreign investment will be permitted and no exports over a $1Million per annum will be allowed without investments equal to 50% of imports on an annual basis. The minimum wage is to be no less than the medium income of the USA adjusted annually for cost of living increases as determined by union representation.

   Additionally, state owned development banks are to be established to foster cooperative economic development for consumer, worker and housing cooperatives, all funded by import taxes.
   1. Carla April 22, 2015 at 4:39 pm

      The TPP is about robbing people of sovereignty and even the hope of democracy; it is about global domination by multinational corporations; it is about the power to render meaningless all existing legal systems. Job destruction has been going on for decades and will continue, I’m afraid, with or without the TPP and TTIP.
      1. jrs April 22, 2015 at 6:20 pm

         Especially if it’s really true that most of those trade agreements already exist. Trade agreements are mostly very bad, but TPP TPIP are pure unmitigated evil.
   2. different clue April 22, 2015 at 6:20 pm

      That tasty little bone is not a big enough bribe to make me overlook the TPP/TTIP conspiratorial undermining of national, regional and local sovereignties to cement the rule of the Global Corporate Plantation.
4. L Wheatley-Irving April 22, 2015 at 4:46 pm

   File this under: “you can’t make this sHHt up”:

   As an Illlinois resident, I have received multiple email alerts (from Jewish Voice for Peace, US Campaign to end the occupation, American Friends Service Committee) to oppose the following legislation:

   The Illinois House and Senate may vote by Friday, April 24 on HB4011 and SB1761, respectively. These bills would prohibit state agencies and state retirement services from entering into contracts or investing in companies that choose to boycott Israeli businesses because of Israeli human rights violations, including businesses based in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in contravention of international law.

   http://palestinelegalsupport.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ACLU-IL-OPPOSE-SB1761-2.pdf

   It wouldn’t pass a constitutional challenge, so it seems like grandstanding on the part of the bill’s sponsors and supporters. But I phoned my rep and senator today at both offices.

   NB: I am cutting and pasting a paragraph from the preparatory questions for the American citizenship test, which I downloaded from the US gov site:

   #53: What is one promise you make when you become a United States citizen?
   ▪ give up loyalty to other countries
   ▪ defend the Constitution and laws of the United States
   ▪ obey the laws of the United States
   ▪ serve in the U.S. military (if needed)
   ▪ serve (do important work for) the nation (if needed)
   ▪ be loyal to the United States.

   There is no exemption for Israel in this matter. So why are the bill’s sponsors and supporters asking us to accept things that would not be permissible to anyone seeking American citizenship?
   1. Sam Kanu April 23, 2015 at 5:01 pm

      Never mind what is proposed here. Look on the bigger stage: national govt. Congress and the senate already long ago signed into law that US military sales to middle eastern countries must assure Israeli military superiority by restricting the US from selling certain weapons to anyone else in the region.

      In short, your congressman likely voted for a bill that more or less says he works towards the interests of the nation of Israel – regardless of what is good for America. In this light, anti-boycott bills are small stuff.
5. C April 22, 2015 at 4:48 pm

   Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz: “Fast track authority will give lawmakers more say over agreements that are vital for economic growth” [Wall Street Journal, “Putting Congress in Charge on Trade”]. So, Democrats, are you with the Republicans on this, or not? Oh, wait….

   How exactly? By surrendering their ability to affect it?
   1. different clue April 22, 2015 at 6:22 pm

      Ted Cruz went to Haaaah vuhd. So he is smart enough to know that he is lying. Paul Ryan probably believes it. Cruz/Ryan in 2016!
   2. cwaltz April 23, 2015 at 12:33 am

      Mark Warner is with them. Mr “We’re going to save Social Security by selling you out” sells out to corporate America.

      Gee whiz I sure am glad that our state voted for the Democrat it’s making so much of a difference.
6. PlutoniumKun April 22, 2015 at 4:56 pm

   The Saudi Arabian article is depressing. The crazy thing is that its not just wheat they grow, the actually have a large dairy sector. I remember about 20 years ago seeing a TV programme about a huge dairy operation – the cows (not hardy desert cows, actual Fresians) were kept in air conditioned sheds. Completely insane, and obviously unsustainable in every sense of the word. I did wonder why they did that (it must surely have been cheaper to import), but that article implies that it was the power of landowners.

   There are a shocking number of societies dependent directly or indirectly fossil waters in aquifers (i.e. aquifers which contain water from wetter periods in the past). Libya is particularly vulnerable. Its actually quite easy to ‘date’ water, but its rarely done. Sometimes I think the main reason is that those in authority simply don’t want to know the answer. I’m not up to date on current thinking, but I know that in China up to the late 1990’s there was just one specialist (a Professor Gu from Xi’an University) studying groundwater in the vast northern deserts. Despite being a country seemingly ruled by water engineers, that sort of information simply wasn’t valued.
   1. Light a Candle April 24, 2015 at 12:26 am

      The Saudi Arabia article was chilling. Also points out how completely inept governments (corporate states) are and completely fail in managing ground water (and every other issue) and getting the world to sustainability.
      1. jrs April 24, 2015 at 1:05 am

         “California is now threatening restaurants with a $500 fine if they serve drinking water to customers – unless a customer requests the water.”

         it doesn’t actually do any good as far as conserving water …. but it produces a whole bunch more people like restaurant owners slapped with $500 fines, who hate government regulation forever more, who then vote in a bunch of people against regulations who demolish worker safety and the clean air regulations.
7. PlutoniumKun April 22, 2015 at 4:59 pm

   I think the Myanmar article makes a very important point about funding in developing countries. We’ve developed an allergy to supporting ‘bureaucrats’, so much so that we forget that a reasonably uncorrupt bureaucracy is an absolute essential for a modern society. But very few government aid agencies or NGO’s invest in these structures – there is a strong political pressure in being seen to invest in local communities and on the coal-face, not in giving money to local civil servants. But ensuring that civil servants are decently paid is an essential first step to removing corruption.
   1. Lambert Strether Post authorApril 22, 2015 at 9:34 pm

      Yes, and the result of underpaying the civil service is corruption. I don’t think we’ve seen that here at the lower levels, but just wait…
8. Lamb Chop April 22, 2015 at 4:59 pm

   Don’t knock oppo. Oppo will be the only information worth remembering when this rigged election is over. The best oppo is the stuff that gets suppressed. It doesn’t get suppressed because it’s false – the false stuff’s evergreen. The worst of it sheds light on international intelligence community preferment. Last time the touchy bit was Alwaleed bin Talal greasing the mediocre spy brat Obama into Harvard. That opened the kimono on Safari Club hijinks way too much. So it is confined to Wing Nut Daily.

   This year’s equivalent is likely to be Foundation dirt. It won’t be as obvious, because a member of the Clinton Dynasty is an obvious choice for peculation. But some of the baksheesh will of necessity come from standard CIA resources for off-the-books fun and games: Quasha, FMS kickbacks, laundered narcotics money. If it isn’t there, then she cannot win, she hasn’t been anointed.
   1. Lambert Strether Post authorApril 22, 2015 at 9:21 pm

      Ha. Interesting to think of oppo as dogwhistling to corrupt insiders — sorry for the redundancy. “Somebody is trying to send you a message.”

      Still, those bait shop guys, and the whole apparatus funded by Richard Mellon Scaife — a steaming load. And all the more culpable, even if you don’t grant that the opportunity cost of not talking policy, because it turns every Clinton critique on grounds of corruption into a (potential) hairball. Not unassisted by Team Clinton, I grant, but a hairball even if they were sitting on their well-greased palms.
9. albrt April 22, 2015 at 5:05 pm

   Can’t we just have the NSA folks answer the phone calls to the IRS? I mean, they’re on the payroll and they’re already listening to the calls, they might as well do something useful.
   1. Lambert Strether Post authorApril 22, 2015 at 9:36 pm

      Heck, they’ve got the answers too, in the same recordings. So throw the IRS questions against the NSA database….
10. Kim Kaufman April 22, 2015 at 5:49 pm

    “Suddenly, Congress is actually doing things. Making compromises. Passing legislation. Confirming people” [WaPo].”

    “Making compromises” – like passing a human trafficking bill that allowed anti-abortion language. Funny, the Republicans never made compromises – only Dems do that.

    Yes, deadlock is better for us.
11. upstater April 22, 2015 at 6:07 pm

    My daughter lives in Camden UK and I saw the article on the NHS in the Camden New Journal.

    But there was more important news to be found, not unlike the 10T fatberg found in the sewers further down the post under “Class Warfare”:

    Hampstead Heath police plant red flags next to dog poo in warning to pet owners

    My daughter and her fiance are both runners that go to Hampstead Heath often, so I had to warn them to watch where they step!
12. nycTerrierist April 22, 2015 at 7:56 pm

    Great read of Dyson’s hit-piece on Cornel West from Glen Ford at BAR.

    http://www.blackagendareport.com/dyson-attacks-west-4-hillary

    ““The article is a soaring testament to Dyson’s enormous capacity for bloviation.”
    Dyson’s article is as dishonest as it is long and draining. Dyson is not mad at West because the Union Theological Seminary professor has supposedly turned out a “paucity of serious and fresh intellectual work” over the last several years. He was not driven to write a hit piece because his former “friend” is “not quite up to the high scholarly standard West set for himself long ago.” Dyson has resorted to icon assassination because West’s highly visible critique of Obama’s domestic and foreign policy is an embarrassment to the administration, to the Democratic Party as an institution, and to the sycophantic Black Misleadership Class that has been more loyal to Obama than to Black people as a group. Mostly, Dyson is mad because Dr. West called him out, personally. Dyson wrote:

    “It was during an appearance with Tavis Smiley on Democracy Now, shortly after Obama’s reelection. ‘I love Brother Mike Dyson,’ West said. ‘But we’re living in a society where everybody is up for sale. Everything is up for sale. And he and Brother Sharpton and Sister Melissa and others, they have sold their souls for a mess of Obama pottage. And we invite them back to the black prophetic tradition after Obama leaves. But at the moment, they want insider access, and they want to tell those kinds of lies. They want to turn their back to poor and working people. And it’s a sad thing to see them as apologists for the Obama administration in that way, given the kind of critical background that all of them have had at some point.’”
    1. Lambert Strether Post authorApril 22, 2015 at 9:43 pm

       Ha. Massive takedown, as only BAR can do it. tl;dr: Dyson wants to be Hillary’s Sharpton.
       1. nycTerrierist April 22, 2015 at 11:09 pm

          choice bit:
          “Dyson has resorted to icon assassination because West’s highly visible critique of Obama’s domestic and foreign policy is an embarrassment to the administration, to the Democratic Party as an institution, and to the sycophantic Black Misleadership Class that has been more loyal to Obama than to Black people as a group. Mostly, Dyson is mad because Dr. West called him out, personally. “
    2. jrs April 23, 2015 at 2:32 am

       Is it all a game of bait and switch your brains
       And follow your leaders to hell
       Is it all the same vein of insane
       As drinking from a poisoned well
13. Howard Beale IV April 22, 2015 at 8:48 pm

    Pregnant Popeyes worker fired after armed robbery: KHOU (warning: autoplay link)

    Welcome to neofeudal America. The Popeye’s that was robbed was a franchisee (owned by Z&H Foods). Popeye’s corporate flacks published a typical ass-covering defense trying to make sure that the situation gets resolved gracefully (which it won’t) and uses the old ‘we deeply regret the distress this has caused’ trope.
    1. Lambert Strether Post authorApril 22, 2015 at 11:13 pm

       So, “lemme get this straight.”

       A cashier at a Popeyes gets held up at gunpoint, and the franchise owner is trying to make her pay back what the robber took from the till? Can that really be it? Apparently, the owner backed down, but…. wowsers. I mean, that’s carrying “Because markets…” to a new extreme, isn’t it?
       1. ambrit April 23, 2015 at 6:18 am

          “Because markets” means never having to say you’re sorry.
       2. ambrit April 23, 2015 at 6:20 am

          Also, almost every convenience store employee I’ve known says that standard operating procedure for holdups is; “Give the crook everything he wants. Insurance will take care of the rest.”
          1. cwaltz April 24, 2015 at 1:19 am

             It’s the same SOP almost everywhere, including the world’s largest retailer, Walmart.
14. Lambert Strether Post authorApril 23, 2015 at 1:57 am

    Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company NYT. Love the mysterious Russian link. To be fair, the reporting isn’t done by Judy Miller or Jeff Gerth, but derived from Schweitzer’s book (he of the Hoover Institute (funded by Scaife, while he was alive)).

    Odiferous smoke, indeed. As for fire: “Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown.” Of course, we could check State’s emails. Oh, wait….
15. Pepsi April 23, 2015 at 1:19 pm

    “I love Elizabeth.” Obama never stops with the corny little workplace power moves. He’d be terrible to work with.

    Lambert’s? characterization of him as a shallow narcissist is so true.

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