Harold Meyerson at The Washington Post declares Market Basket isn’t just a company, it’s a community:
Who is a company? If we speak of the men and women of Boeing, say, or Wal-Mart or Market Basket, a supermarket chain in New England, where this question is being posed most emphatically of late, are we referring to the company’s employees? Its founders? Its founders’ grandchildren, even if they play no role in the company’s endeavors? Its shareholders, even if they hold the company’s stock just for a few months or, in the case of high-frequency trading, a fraction of a second?[...]
So who is Market Basket? The chain appears to have been that rarest of companies in contemporary American capitalism: a community of sorts, in which management has respected and rewarded its workers and consumers no less than its owners. If the Arthur S. wing sells its stake to the Arthur T. side of the family, this community might be preserved. But is there any way to turn the vast majority of U.S. companies into this kind of community, too? The one major nation in which employer-employee community is standardized is Germany, where seats on corporate boards are split between worker and management representatives and where managers are required to work out issues with their employees.
Jessica Valenti at
The Guardian writes
Feminism makes women 'victims'? I think you've mistaken us for the sexists:
An old canard about feminists is that, in addition to being hirsute bra-burners, we want to turn all women into “victims” – and thanks to “Women Against Feminism”, this particular accusation has gained some moderately mainstream traction in recent weeks.
But feminism doesn’t make women victims. Sexism does.
That inconvenient truth hasn’t stopped conservatives and anti-feminists from using this supposed victimization to bash a movement that won women the rights to vote, have credit cards, not be legally raped by their husbands, use birth control and generally be considered people instead of property, among other things.
Admittedly, to those unfamiliar with stereotypes of the women’s movement, the #WomenAgainstFeminism meme may look more like a parody than anything of serious concern. Many of its participants show a baffling level of ignorance about what feminism actually is – signs reading “I don’t need feminism because my boyfriend treats me right” or “I like men looking at me” are cringe-inducing, for instance. And I’m skeptical of how many new “women’s” Twitter accounts suddenly popped up in the days surrounding the meme’s creation.
But all the cringing and skepticism in the world hasn’t stopped the idea of “Women Against Feminism” from being taken seriously by at least some in the media.
You will find more pundit excerpts below the fold.
Nicholas Kristof at The New York Times writes Our Blind Spot About Guns:
If we had the same auto fatality rate today that we had in 1921, by my calculations we would have 715,000 Americans dying annually in vehicle accidents.
Instead, we’ve reduced the fatality rate by more than 95 percent — not by confiscating cars, but by regulating them and their drivers sensibly.
We could have said, “Cars don’t kill people. People kill people,” and there would have been an element of truth to that. Many accidents are a result of alcohol consumption, speeding, road rage or driver distraction. Or we could have said, “It’s pointless because even if you regulate cars, then people will just run each other down with bicycles,” and that, too, would have been partly true.
Yet, instead, we built a system that protects us from ourselves. This saves hundreds of thousands of lives a year and is a model of what we should do with guns in America.
David Wasserman at
The Washington Post writes
The most frightening candidate I’ve met in seven years interviewing congressional hopefuls:
As a House analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, I’ve personally interviewed over 300 congressional candidates over the course of seven years, both to get to know them and evaluate their chances of winning. I’ve been impressed by just as many Republicans as Democrats, and underwhelmed by equal numbers, too. Most are accustomed to tough questions.
But never have I met any candidate quite as frightening or fact-averse as Louisiana state Rep. Lenar Whitney, 55, who visited my office last Wednesday. It’s tough to decide which party’s worst nightmare she would be.
Doyle McManus at the
Los Angeles Times writes
Is global chaos the new normal?:
It's a chaotic world out there. But we'd better get used to it; this may be the new normal. [...]
Big governments and conventional armies could once command obedience around the world; in the 19th century, five British warships compelled the sultan of Zanzibar to surrender after only 38 minutes of artillery fire. The great powers don't enjoy that kind of military superiority anymore. The United States spent more than a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan but couldn't fully pacify either country.
The reason isn't that the great powers are no longer powerful; the difference is that their opponents—balky local governments, insurrectionists and jihadists alike — are more potent than they used to be. They're better equipped, better funded and more skilled at guerrilla warfare.
At the same time, outside powers like the United States have lost their appetite for fighting long counterinsurgency wars. It's become harder and more costly to keep a lid on the developing world's disorders, so we're more reluctant to try.
The Editorial Board at
The Miami Herald says
Right issue, wrong response on children at the border:
The current situation on the border is unacceptable. It encourages children to make a hazardous trek from Central America to the U.S. border, crossing Mexico with no guarantee of being able to stay in this country. It taxes the resources of the Border Patrol and the entire immigration system. It distracts border agents from the job of stopping real criminals and dope smugglers.
But replacing the orderly system of determining which children might actually have a legal right to remain in this country under current law with a hastily erected process of quickie justice, or allowing border agents to make on-the-spot decisions, is not the answer.
Nor is it right to change the law to eliminate rights bestowed in the bill passed by Congress in 2008—and signed by President Bush—in an effort to deter child sex trafficking and other crimes that victimize young people.
The Republican proposal would also deploy National Guard troops to the border to assist in the care of unaccompanied children coming across. That’s no solution, either.
Dave Zirin at
The Nation writes
At Least My Hospital Isn’t Being Bombed:
I’m in the hospital as I write this, getting ready to be cut open for some kind of intestinal surgery. I feel stressed, a little scared, yet given the news in the world, oddly grateful. I’m grateful that this clean facility, and its overworked but exceptionally kind staff, is not in the process of being bombed by the Israeli Defense Forces.
It is a sick sign of our times that human beings throughout the world cannot take for granted the concept that your hospital will not have a bullseye on its roof, but this is exactly where President Benjamin Netanyahu has dragged us. He is not the first, and he will not be the last, to take this tactic as a legitimate means of war. But defending these actions by saying, “George W. Bush has done it!” or “Assad does it, too!” is only an argument the morally bankrupt could possibly make.
Patrick Cockburn at
The Independent writes
Israel's propaganda machine is finally starting to misfire:
To many readers the New York Times coverage of the war in Gaza comes across as neutered or as having a pro-Israeli bias. But not to Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador in Washington, who lambasts the paper for failing “to mention that a million Israelis were in bomb shelters yesterday as 100 rockets were fired at our civilian population.”
Mr Dermer is considered so close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he has been called “Bibi’s brain”. He is also a former student and employee of Frank Luntz, the Republican strategist who produced a confidential booklet in 2009, promptly leaked, advising Israeli spokesmen how best to manipulate American and European public opinion. “Don’t confuse messages with facts,” Dr Luntz advises the spokesmen as he explains how facts should be selected and best presented to make Israel’s case.
It is a sophisticated document based on wide-ranging opinion polls, suggesting, for instance, that the removal of Israeli settlements from the West Bank should be denounced as “a kind of ethnic cleansing”. Dr Luntz stresses that spokesmen must demonise Hamas, but above all emphasise that they feel for the sufferings of Palestinians as well as Israelis.