Tensegrities

It’s official: this month we have FINALLY finished paying off my student loans. I graduated with my first degree in 1985, and my second degree in 1992. (My third one — PhD — didn’t require student loans.) Whew.

Terri at SnakeCharmer’sWife has an ELCA response and ways to be involved.

Kelly Fryer’s approving take on the new ELCA website.

Does anyone out there know if this policy statement makes any sense? I want to believe that it does, but I’m a total neophyte when it comes to economics (my econ class was actually the only time I got anything lower than a B in college).

Last week — which kind of makes me wonder how I missed it in my local paper? — the ICE (immigration and customs enforcement agency) — conducted the biggest workplace raid in US history. You know, it’s gotten to the point that I think I’m not going to be shocked by something our government does intentionally, and then something like this occurs. Conditions in this plant were horrible:

“In this case, as in many others like it, many of the workers appear to have been seriously exploited. The AP reported that the plant’s management “improperly withheld money from employees’ paychecks for ‘immigration fees,’ didn’t allow workers to use the restroom during 10-hour shifts, physically abused workers and didn’t compensate them for overtime work.”

According to MSNBC, workers at the plant were routinely started at $5 per hour for their first three or four months on the job and then raised to $6, still well below Iowa’s minimum wage of $7.25.”

But that doesn’t mean the federal government was there investigating workplace violations by the employers, or even that the employers will face any sanctions. It DOES mean that kids were left for hours with childcare workers when their parents were grabbed up in the raid, and it also means that a serious labor organizing drive was disrupted:

Agriprocessor’s management must have been pleased with the timing of the raid. Not only did it put at least a crimp in the ongoing investigations of serious allegations of abuse by the company, it also derailed an effort by UFCW to organize the plants’ workers and give them a shot at bargaining with management for better working conditions.

Argh. I’d ask “what is this country coming to?” — only that’s getting to be such a repetitive question that it has no meaning anymore.

Here’s a fascinating reflection on the ways in which “the fourth wall” (think the curtain on a stage, or the unspoken boundary between people within television programs and those watching) is starting to break down in our media culture. The writer uses some examples from recent political media kerfuffles, but I think the larger point is very valid.