Scott Martelle

Well, there's less than two weeks to go before the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which I mentioned before, but I've been remiss in passing along details of my appearance.

The panel is called "History: Democracy and its Discontents," and will be at 2 p.m. May 1 in Room 101 Taper Hall. Since my book is a narrative retelling of the trial of the leaders of the American Communist Party, I'm taking the May Day schedule as a good omen.

If you've never been, the Festival of Books is a great two-day literary orgy. This year it moves to the University of Southern California campus (used to be at UCLA), so I don't know what to expect in terms of fresh logistical challenges. But it is a great chance to spend time with a lot of authors and fellow book lovers. I'll be hanging around both days, and signing books after our panel. So look me up. Read More 

There aren't very many independent bookstores in Orange County, California, where I live, so I was sad to get an e-newsletter earlier this week from Tom Ahern, owner of Latitude 33 Bookshop in Laguna Beach, that he is planning to retire, which casts the future of his great little bookshop in some doubt. But he's hoping to find a buyer.

The store is a couple of blocks from the beach itself, a welcome part of the mix of art galleries, clothing boutiques and other high-end retail shops in downtown Laguna. It's just a bit too far from my house to be a regular stop, but when I've been in there the staff has been friendly and helpful. And while the size of the store limits the breadth of the offerings, it is pleasantly diverse.

All communities need a good (independent) bookstore, and a place like Laguna Beach, with it's upper-income households and artistic bent, should be able to support the place. I hope someone comes forward to buy it. If writing books about obscure moments in history paid a little better, I'd consider it myself.

From Ahern's newsletter announcing his pending retirement:

My reasons: I turn seventy this year and my wife has health problems that require more attention than I can give while still running the store. I don't want to shut the doors: hopefully, a book lover or group of book lovers will take over and keep Latitude 33 running.

I have the best staff ever: two former Barnes & Noble branch managers and three incredible book lovers. A new owner will be able to take over the portion of the store now occupied by Silver Images. There is a future for service-intensive independent bookstores, as the megastore chains decline. Much can be done to help Latitude 33 do even better, but recently, I have not had the time and energy to implement them.

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In the end, it turns out, the budget showdown last week was about wolves. At least that's the conclusion we can draw by the sleazy attachment of a rider on the budget resolution that, according to environmentalists, marks the first time Congress has directly intervened in determining what animals are on the Endangered Species list.

With moves like this - and the attack on Planned Parenthood, and NPR - it's no wonder the American body politic holds elected officials in such low disdain. If you're going to debate a budget, debate a budget. If you're going to challenge programs, challenge programs. Don't mix the two and pervert the political process by holding one issue hostage to advance the other.

You can be excused for missing the issue here, since it was done quietly - and we should always distrust quiet political maneuvers. The recent budget bill hammered out by Congress included a last-minute rider by Sen. Jon Tester (R-Montana) and Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) that drops "endangered species" status for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies.

I'm not going to get into the merits/demerits of the size of the wolf packs in the Rockies because that's not the issue here (and I readily admit I'm no expert). The issue is the congressional predilection - by both parties - to attach unrelated riders to significant bills like the budget to pass items that otherwise would not make it through the legislative process. This is not deliberative, and consensus, politics, it is the hijacking of the common good by the few. And in this case, the few are political actors doing an end run around the decisions that should be made by expert environmentalists. So Tester and Simpson have not only perverted the legislative process, they have forced non-scientific views into what should be a scientific process.

This is sleazy, and anti-democratic. The process of legislating, and governing, is broken. And it has been broken by the people whose responsibility is to fix it. In the end, what we get is more fuel for cynicism about our governmental processes. And, in this case, a bunch of dead wolves. Read More 

The California State Senate on Thursday approved a bill that would allow agriculture workers in California - whose working conditions are as grueling as they come - to organize into a union if a majority of the workers at a site fill out membership cards that are certified by state labor officials. The process would replace one that requires the filing of a petition, and then a workplace referendum, which union organizers say has left the workers open to intimidation by managers, from threats of dismissal to warnings that their names would be passed to immigration officials.

Without diving into the the minefield of immigration policy, this is a good move for workers, no matter their legal status. Even illegal immigrants are entitled to working conditions that do not imperil their lives. As the story points out, 15 workers have died in the fields in the last six years despite state regulations requiring shade, water and other defenses against the oppressive summer heat in places like Imperial County and the Central Valley. A robust union - in this case, another set of watchdog eyes - would save lives.

The Legislature has passed similar bills in the past, followed by the Assembly, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has refused to sign them. With Jerry Brown as governor, chances are better that the legislation will become law (he hasn't tipped his hand yet).

Given the 1920s mood in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and elsewhere, where anti-union politicians are trying to destroy the last vestiges of the collective bargaining system that helped create the American middle class, the move by the California Senate is welcome. It's a disgusting turn that political leaders are using the battered private sector as a weapon against public sector workers. Instead of fighting to bring public-sector wages, benefits and job protections down to the abased level of private sector jobs, political leaders should be fighting to elevate the quality of life of all.

With luck, the move here in California could be the next step, after the Wisconsin protests, in a broad national pushback against those who would drive more American workers into a downward economic spiral.

And the move by the legislature reminds me of one of the first stories I wrote for the Los Angeles Times back in April 1997, after spending a day working in a strawberry field. The top of the story is below. The full story can be found here.

This time of day, this time of year, Saddleback Mountain begins the dawn in close, hovering, then slowly draws back as darkness seeps out of the sky. For a few moments, the peak seems to glow, back lit in the soft morning haze as the sun rises for its daily assault.

And it is an assault, a relentless battering of energy that takes rather than gives, leaving you drained and parched, weak and dizzy.

Strawberry pickers know that. So they prepare for it as they gather just after 6 a.m. to begin work in a Western Marketing Co. field off Alton Parkway and Jeffrey Road.

The wardrobe is a trick of the trade, knowledge gained in many instances through years of experience. Some of the workers wear hats. Some wear bandannas. A few wear a combination of both, red and blue kerchiefs tied around baseball caps. And loose, long-sleeved shirts that guard against the chill now and the sun later on.

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Well, at least I have. Came home to find in the mail a copy from the advance shipment of The Fear Within: Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial. Handsome little bugger, if I do say so myself. And the folks at Rutgers University Press tell me that the books are on their way to distributing warehouses, so should start showing up in stores (and fulfilling advance orders) in a few weeks.

At the same time, the manuscript for Detroit: A Biography, gets shipped off in the next few days (cleaning up a couple of details, but it's for all intents and purposes done). I'm looking forward to a taking a couple of weeks to catch up with some freelance articles and then start forming the next project. I have a couple of things I'm looking into, but am a long way from committing - or getting a commitment.

Oh, and it's a beautiful 80 degrees here today with a brilliant washed blue sky. I suspect a beer on the patio will be in my near future.  Read More 

I teach an introductory journalism course to college students here in Southern California, and one of the tenets I drill into them during our examination of ethics is that just because you have a legal right to do something doesn't mean you have a moral right to do it. It's a lesson conservative political agitators in Wisconsin and Michigan ought to learn.

Over the past week or so conservatives have filed Freedom of Information Act requests on public university professors seeking emails that mention the Wisconsin labor showdown. There are laws precluding use of public property for political purposes, a sound policy aimed at separating politics from governance (it keeps government workers from using government supplies and property to engage in poltiical activities). But the intent here is purely opportunistic, with anti-labor Republicans seeking to conjure up a "gotcha" moment for university professors sympathetic to labor issues.

The gambit began with requests for emails from the University of Wisconsin-Madison account of highly respected history professor William Cronon. It has moved onto the labor history professors at three public Michigan universities, according to Talking Point Memo, which first reported the Michigan requests (one was received by my longtime friend, M.L. Liebler who teaches at Wayne State University):

An employee at the think tank requesting the emails tells TPM they're part of an investigation into what labor studies professors at state schools in Michigan are saying about the situation in Madison, Wisc., the epicenter of the clashes between unions and Republican-run state governments across the Midwest.

One professor subject to the FOIA described it as anti-union advocates "going after folks they don't agree with."

I'm a firm believer in the Freedom of Information Act, and in open government/open records. But there is also a crushing need for academics to do their work without fear of reprisals. Such protections, including tenure, aim to keep politics -- think the McCarthy era, in which academics, professionals and others were hounded from their occupations by braying condemnations of their political beliefs -- from poisoning academic pursuits. These FOIA requests are nothing more than fishing expeditions that serve no public good, and, in fact, are a detriment because of the chilling effect on academic freedom.

These anti-labor anglers have a legal right to seek the information because these professors are public employees. Pro-labor people have an equal right to ferret out emails by business, economic and political professors, university administrators and others, to see if they, too, have weighed in on the assault on labor from the other side of the argument.

But to do so crosses a moral line. This isn't an act of public enlightenment. It is an act of intimidation. And it should be denounced from the left, right and center. Assuming, of course, that we are indeed a better nation than this. And that we have, indeed, learned from our own ugly past.
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The 2010 Census counts for Michigan were released last week, and it showed the City of Detroit with 714,000 residents, some 100,000 less than most predictions and 1.1 million fewer people than its peak of 1.8 million in 1950.

That collapse of Detroit is the subject of the current book project, which I'm sending off to the publisher in a few days (it's done, just have a couple of bits to clean up). But I took a break last week to write an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times about Detroit, touching on some of the grand pressures that have made it what it is. From the article:

"The collapse of Detroit has roots in intentional de-industrialization by the Big Three automakers, which in the 1950s began aggressively spider-webbing operations across the nation to produce cars closer to regional markets, and to reduce labor costs by investing in less labor-friendly places than union-heavy Detroit. Their flight was augmented by government policies that, in the 1970s and 1980s particularly, forced municipalities and states to compete with each other for jobs by offering corporate tax breaks and other inducements to keep or draw business investments, a bit of whipsawing that helped companies profit at the expense of communities.

"Racism plays a significant role too. Detroit's white flight exploded in the 1950s and '60s, after courts struck down local and federal policies that had allowed segregated housing. That was followed by middle-class flight on the part of blacks and whites as crime endemic to high-poverty, high-unemployment neighborhoods began spreading. It's significant to note that Detroit's inner-ring suburbs have been picking up African American populations as young Detroit families seek safety, stability and more reliable schools. As they run out of the city, its vast socioeconomic problems become even more distilled, more pronounced."

I encourage you to read the whole piece in this morning's LA Times. It really is a national disgrace, and a national indictment, to see what we have let Detroit become. Read More 

The Los Angeles Times today carries a review I wrote of its former foreign correspondent Stanley Meisler's history of the Peace Corps. The book is When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years, and as I say in the review it's a pretty good overview. Look at it as taking a survey course in the history of the institution.

From my review:

Despite his clear affinity for the Corps, Meisler doesn't gloss over the problems, from ineffective volunteers to wrong-headed staffing goals and policies. His final chapter asks, "Does the Peace Corps Do Any Good?," and it's a good question to ponder. Statistically, much of the work done by volunteers has had limited effect on making broad changes in the quality of life for the world's impoverished.

But, as Meisler argues, some gains can't be measured by a bureaucrat's spreadsheet. And in many ways, the Peace Corps' gains might have come to the U.S., as legions of former volunteers used their experiences as springboards to public service careers, including such political figures as former Sen. Christopher Dodd, Carol Bellamy (who went from New York City politics to lead the agency for a time) and Donna Shalala, the former secretary of Health and Human Services.

I should note that while Meisler and I both worked at the Times, we've never met. Read More 

The Sacramento Bee today carries an op-ed I wrote about the policy implications of the Japanese nuclear catastrophe, and looking at the assurances we are given that nuclear energy is safe - a response to the natural question embedded in the plume of dispersed radiation predicted to waft over Southern California today.

But we're asking the wrong question. We shouldn't be wondering whether it is safe; we should be wondering whether the risk is worth the benefit. I say, no. From the article:

Most of California is blessed with an enviable climate that promises intense, harnessable, sunshine nearly every day of the year. There is no environmental risk to capturing solar energy, and it is indefensible that the state does not require all new buildings include solar panels on the roofs. (The state already is making strides toward tapping wind power, though more could be done). ... sometimes the solution to problems moves beyond dollars and has to be weighed against risk. Requiring solar panels to all new construction, including building additions, would add relative pennies to the cost of buildings that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This is something state energy policy officials should be pursuing with vigor, while the rest of us begin to shake loose of our assumptions of what is safe, and what is sustainable.

We need to start asking ourselves the right questions.

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There are many churning emotions involved in watching from afar the events unfolding in Japan. The earthquake and tsunami, coming just a few years after similar events obliterated hundreds of thousands of lives in Indonesia and around the Indian Ocean, defy words. And a volcano in southern Japan has suddenly roared back to life.

The natural disasters are bad enough. Now we watch nervously as Japanese power workers struggle to keep the cores in nuclear power plants from melting down and adding yet another layer of catastrophe to the natural disasters. At this moment, they seem to be failing - the workers were evacuated as another explosion rocked the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

The most chilling part of all of this comes in the news that today's catastrophe was due to human error. From the Los Angeles Times:

Engineers had begun using fire hoses to pump seawater into the reactor — the third reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 complex to receive the last-ditch treatment — after the plant's emergency cooling system failed. Company officials said workers were not paying sufficient attention to the process, however, and let the pump run out of fuel, allowing the fuel rods to become partially exposed to the air.

Once the pump was restarted and water flow was restored, another worker inadvertently closed a valve that was designed to vent steam from the containment vessel. As pressure built up inside the vessel, the pumps could no longer force water into it and the fuel rods were once more exposed.

Workers failed to check the fuel gauge on a pump. Another worker simply shut a valve. And now a manmade nuclear disaster looms. We are told constantly by the people who want to build these things that nuclear power is safe, that all safeguards are taken, that experts are in control. Obviously not. And increasing nuclear energy production in the U.S. is part of the Obama administration's approach to reducing our reliance on foreign oil sources for our energy. It's a policy that flirts with disaster, and that is based on a failure to imagine the excesses of nature, and of human incompetence.

I don't see the logic in risking mass deaths and an uninhabitable environment for the sake of cheaper light bills or lower factory production costs. Nuclear power generation is not safe. Even low-level nuclear waste creates massive disposal problems in a world with finite resources, and finite places to store such things. Add in the human propensity to do the unimaginably stupid - not watching a fuel gauge on a crucial power generator qualifies - and we are creating our own recipe for self-annihilation. Maybe nuclear energy can be produced safely. But that safety can't be guaranteed, as we're seeing. Why would we accept this risk, given the potential damage from failure?

Nuclear energy is not safe. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the West Valley Project, Hanford and other examples have all shown us that. Our power companies cannot be trusted to safeguard our well-being. These power sources need to be abandoned. This is a monster that we have created. It is a monster we need to curtail. Better a worldwide economic depression because of lack of energy, than a worldwide catastrophe because, in our hubris and our thirst for wealth, we think we can control the uncontrollable.


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