Gotta Love the Free Market

I just read that the U.S. lags behind other many other developed nations in terms of broadband access and speed. That according to the FCC, which, as we all know, is not exactly a market-neutral entity, as most recently evidenced by the so quick the revolving door gave me whiplash career change for Meredith Baker, who just a few months ago voted for the monopolistic merger of Comcast and NBC, only to have announced last week she'll be working as a lobbyist for Comcast.

Every day I read something that infuriates me, that makes the case that "we, the people," no longer are. Whether it's Net Neutrality, the wives of investment bankers getting bailout money, or the sale of our infrastructure to foreign interests, monied interests are not looking out for you and me...they're looking out for themselves, but have convinced many of us that it's government that's the problem, that taxes are awful, and that the free market can solve anything.

It's as though there never was a Great Depression, trust busting, or any ability in our minds to understand how credit inexorably links Wall Street to Main Street. Or that if we cede control over legislation and regulation to business, they come out on top at our expense.

We blame Obama (not entirely blameless), rather than remembering what he inherited. We refuse to pay for our wars by raising taxes, and believe ridiculousness like 90% of funding to Planned Parenthood is for abortion, 15% of our budget funds the NEA, and that foreign aid accounts for a quarter of our spending.

The "government is evil" bunch hasn't got it entirely wrong, but that's only because government is in so deep with big business that I believe this picture says a thousand words.

Gotta Love the Free Market

Grumbly in my Tumbly?

I heard from my new editor at Heroes & Heartbreakers this morning about the second piece I sent her. She would like for pieces of this type to be my focus for now. Again, I can't reveal what type of piece it is because it will be the first of its kind, but that's not what I want to talk about here. No, I want to talk about something else, something that didn't even occur to me until bedtime last night. Once the thought struck, my stomach went to a very bad place for a few hours...hence my reference to grumbly in the tumbly. It's not related to a hungry stomach, just an angsty one.

This is the reason for my angst: Have I, or will people think that I've sold out by writing for and being paid to write for a blog sponsored by a publisher? Does this go against everything I stood for during my time at TRR and AAR?

At this point in my career, I consider myself a free-lance writer, one who focuses on mass market and other fiction. I occasionally pen pieces for the National Association of Book Critics, get paid to review books for Publishers Weekly, and when offered the opportunity to add another freelance job to my resume, I took it. Although the site is funded by a publisher, I take them at their word that they are "publisher-neutral in our selection of books, authors and materials for coverage and discussion." Indeed, my focus will likely include books published by the various Macmillan imprints only every so often; most of my energy will be spent writing about books released by other publishers.

I took this job because of the people involved in it. Megan Frampton, who heads up the blog team, once reviewed for me at AAR. She's now my editor and boss. Myretta Robens and Cheryl Sneed are both long-time online friends whom I've often turned to for advice. If the three of us sat in a room together rather than on a telephone, it would be a good, old-fashioned hen party, with lots of gossip, laughter, and most likely, liberal amounts of alcohol. Myretta and Cheryl help run The Republic of Pemberley. Myretta and Megan both published trad Regencies before the sub-genre went into that good night and Cheryl, who reviewed at AAR for quite awhile and also headed up the massive data entry project corresponding to the site's review database way back when, also writes at Rakehell.

I have a personal relationship with these women, none of whom have any difficulty differentiating between good fiction and bad. As my brief for joining H&H was all-inclusive where thumbs up or thumbs down are concerned, this looked like a win-win for me. I would be able to write again online where an actual audience could find me, I'd be paid for it, and could laud a book or criticize it at my discretion.

As I said, that was my thought process until last night, when the "Have I sold out?" thoughts began to niggle, then shout within my head. I don't think I have. What I'll be doing is no different from what I've always done, whether at TRR, AAR, Publishers Weekly, Amazon, my old blog, or this "new" one. I will continue to share my unbiased opinions, but won't act, as I did at AAR, as a reporter (although I may here on my personal blog). The only difference as far as I'm concerned is who's paying for the real estate.

I hope that doesn't make me a sell-out. I don't think it does. Do you?

Grumbly in my Tumbly?

Griftopia by Matt Taibbi

Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

Matt Taibbi

Grade: B+

"Follow the money" has long been my mantra, and Matt Taibbi's cogent reporting does the best job describing various economic crises of the last fifteen years of any that I've read, peeling away each level of complexity in a way that the layman reader can easily understand our world turned upside down as a result of greedy financiers and their collusion with the government. He details the creation and bursting of the dot.com bubble, the 2004 energy crisis, and the 2008 economic collapse, and like the prosecutor in a Mafia trial, lays out a scathing indictment of Wall Street and those who set monetary policy in the U.S., starting with Alan Greenspan, whose Ayn Randian views continue to pervade economic policy long after her death in the early 1980s.

Read this Amazon Vine review in its entirety at Amazon.

Griftopia by Matt Taibbi

We Are Becoming Wylie E. Coyote

John Avlon writes in today's Daily Beast something I've long suspected given that I started working at Barnes and Noble almost immediately after the 2008 presidential election: Anti-Obama screeds fill our shelves in unprecedented numbers.

According to Avlon's article, at this point in Bush's presidency, just five anti-Bush books had hit the shelves. So far the tally for anti-Obama books stands at a whopping 42.

Let that sink in...and think about it. For a country led around by a liberal media, how is this conceivable?

That's not really the point, though...and I'll cop to it being a bit of a cheap shot. Avlon's actual point is that these "fear-mongering" books written for "personal and partisan profit" won't end with this election cycle. He argues that because politics tends to follow "the lines of physics - every action creates an equal an opposite reaction," welcome to the "new normal."

I'm going to take Avlon's argument further than he does, though, especially after viewing the actual book titles he lists. I've shelved them all at the bookstore and watched our conservative readership gobble them up during the past nearly two years, but seeing them listed one after another takes things to an altogether new level of crazy. Because we live in the Information Age, as these (please, please, please follow the money) screeds become the new normal, we risk inciting ourselves out of our "can-do" spirit and into a nation of cartoonish behavior wherein we become the Wylie E. Coyote of the First World, always searching for ways to "get" the metaphorical Roadrunner, but being unable to accomplish that - let alone doing the things that really matter - out of impotence. If you're looking for something to be scared about, I suggest worrying about this instead of a secretly Muslim, socialist president who wants to send our kids to the gulag.

We Are Becoming Wylie E. Coyote

Gay Marriage

It may be hard to believe, but sometimes I actually get fired up about something as a result of watching a show like The Real Housewives...

I turned on Thursday's episode of the D.C. series earlier this evening and watched Stacie and her husband struggle with the idea that gay people should have the right to marry because their religion teaches them that marriage is between a man and a woman. When the gay marriage issue became a big deal as a result of the California proposition, I asked my husband what he thought of gay marriage. He answered that he had no problem with civil unions, but that marriage should be unique to a man and a woman. I don't recall that he had a particularly stellar argument to back up his belief, but he's entitled to his opinions.

I have no problem whatsoever with gay people marrying like straight people do. Two consenting adults should be allowed to marry if that is what they so desire. What interests me is the vehemence against this simple, straightforward, democratic concept. My question to those who decry the concept of gays marrying is this: "How does the marriage of two men or two women hurt you?" Since, obviously, it doesn't do anything real other than perhaps offending sensibilities, why does it matter so very, very much?

We don't live in a theocracy; I'm allowed to be a Jew just as my neighbor is allowed to be a Christian, so why should somebody's religious beliefs effect somebody else's rights and liberties? If you believe a marriage should only be between a man and a woman, that's fine, but why should your beliefs take precedence over other people's beliefs if laws are not being broken, nobody is being hurt, and there is consent? If two adult men want to marry, why is it anyone else's concern? Mind your own business, I say. Or, if you must, turn the other cheek.

This is no slippery slope; two men or two women who agree as adults to enter into marriage does not mean that next year it'll be chill for the guy at the CVS to marry a goat...or a minor. Marriage isn't doing so great as an institution these days with only straight people allowed to partake that somehow gay people will "ruin" it. It's not as though we force divorced people who have broken God's Holy Sacrament to wear scarlet embroidered "D's" on their clothing, nor do we force childless couples to break up because they're not pro-creating.

Just because something is a tradition doesn't make it right. Separate but equal never works, and there's always discrimination behind it.

Gay Marriage

Damn, I'm Pissed!

How ridiculous is the person who, after I post reviews at Amazon, immediately swings by to vote "not helpful?" I thought it was particularly hilarious this last time as the book won't even be released until next month, and given that it's among the launch books for a new fiction imprint for a publisher previously best known for the Chicken Soup books, it's not as though readers the world over have been holding their collective breath for reviews to surface.

Speaking of ridiculous, that's the term I'd apply to yesterday's Glenn Beck march. Beck chose the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech to ask that his Tea Party followers "turn back to God," and focus on what we've accomplished in this country as opposed to our failures. Ironic much?

I was in a foul mood for most of yesterday, but it wasn't until dinner that I realized my mood was based on this march. Watching video clips of person upon person upon person decry how the U.S. has become socialist and that we need to "take back" this country, I wanted to shout at all of them, "You are nothing but a puppet on a string!"

How did we get to a place where so many people believe "We're socialist because Obama wants to spread the wealth"...ah, I think I understand now.

We can start with Rupert Murdock, who has used his Fox News Network (and I use the term very loosely), to promulgate his far-right agenda. I'm not name-calling here; I'm not particularly happy with anyone at end of the political spectrum. But even if you are not among those who believe the "news" they see on Fox is "fair and balanced," you may not know about the brothers Koch. Their combined wealth is surpassed only by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in the U.S., and they have quietly bankrolled the "grass-roots" effort of the Tea Party by spending $100,000,000 so far to convince people that our president wants to destroy our way of life. Their efforts are not benign, and they most assuredly are not out to help the "little guy," whose strings they are silently pulling. In other words, moneyed interests, once again, have somehow managed to set themselves up as the champion of the working class when their true agenda is more basic: It's my money, and I will do anything to keep it. I don't want you to have any of it, but I'll do whatever must be done to convince you that I'm out to protect your interests.

The Koch brothers are particularly dangerous in that they combine greed with down-right scary beliefs, such as the abolition of public schools, the FBI and CIA, federal regulatory agencies - such as the EPA - and Social Security. Why? Because funding any of this causes them to pay taxes...or limits their business profits. For instance, they are working to prevent the EPA from classifying one of their products - formaldehyde - as a "known carcinogen."

The view that government is the root of all evil and business is the natural protectorate of the people has gained a great deal of traction since George Bush became president. It's as though the world turned upside down and we forgot what led us into the financial crisis we see today.

The Koch brothers don't like paying taxes, they don't like government impinging on their bottom line, and they think government regulations and safety nets are for pussies. Who needs unemployment protection? If you give somebody unemployment protection, he'll stop looking for work. Public health? I pay my own way...why the hell shouldn't you, even if you earn a subsistence wage? Global warming? Believe us when we yell Poppycock...even though we're in the fossil-fuel business! And so on and so on.

People with such one-sided belief systems used to be known as the "fringe." Not so anymore, if you consider the popularity of Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, that nut-job Sharron Angle, not to mention the perpetually orange John Boehner, who once handed out money on the floor of the House from tobacco lobbyists. No spending because it'll increase the deficit...but by golly, let's cut taxes. No more money for the unemployed, even though the "official" unemployment rate stands at 10% and doesn't include those who have been unemployed so long they've given up looking for work, the bums! Hold BP accountable for the mess in the Gulf of Mexico? So sorry, I apologize for so much as thinking of it.

Were the Koch's to have their way, those such as the man directly implicated in the recent outbreak of salmonella poisoning, long considered a habitual violator and forced to pay fines in the millions of dollars over the years, would go blithely unchecked.

I can't wait to see what they'll come up with next...abolishing child labor laws, perhaps?

NYT columnist Frank Rich writes that the brothers Koch "must be laughing all the way to the bank knowing that working Americans are aiding and abetting their selfish interests." He doesn't let Murdoch get away unscathed, though. While his network lambastes the "Ground Zero Mosque" and points fingers at a Saudi Prince said to be contributing to it, that same prince is "not only the biggest non-Murdoch shareholder in Fox News' parent company (he owns 7 percent of News Corp.) and the recipient of Murdoch mammoth investments in Saudi Arabia but also the subject of lionization elsewhere on Fox." As I like to say:

Just
follow
the
money.

Before I sign off, just one more depressing item in the news. The Republicans, who smell victory in November, are preparing to launch a series of investigations against the White House similar to those which occupied most of the Clinton presidency. An aide to one of the congressman overseeing the groundwork has already mentioned impeachment. In a nation where 41% of Republicans believe Obama was "probably or definitely born outside the country" and roughly one-third think that Obama is a Muslim (so what if he is, and I ask this as a Jew?), anything's possible.

Damn, I'm Pissed!

Congolese Conflict...in a Different Way

For those who think diamonds are the only mineral causing conflict, death, and destruction in the Congo, check out today's Op-Ed piece by Nicholas Kristof in the NYT.

Then, after you read his article, watch the new video referenced therein. It's an eye opener - at least it was for me.

Congolese Conflict...in a Different Way

Business as Usual?

In another sign that our nation is veering headlong into corporate facism, both the FCC and Congress are engaging in closed-door meetings with ISP's to re-write telecom law, most likely to limit effects of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality, for those of you who have heard the term but are uncertain as to its meaning, is precisely what it says: that there be no restrictions used by those who provide the "pipes" for the Internet. In other words, An ISP must be neutral in allowing content through its pipes and cannot slow down access to or prevent users from access to online content.

Let me give you some personal, historical perspective. Years ago when AOL was still preeminent, AAR was not available to all of AOL's users. There was nothing as a content provider I could do about it. Indeed, I remember being stunned after speaking with somebody at AOL who told me, "We are not required to provide access to all websites online." Several years later, when a router in the Mid-West broke, AAR became unavailable for a good chunk of the country and the company that provided that router was not required to fix the break. Instead I was forced to pay AAR's host to create a fix around the break, and in the interim weeks, we lost untold thousands of users temporarily...and the number of users who simply thought we'd gone offline permanently remains unknown.

Let's jump to the future now, where Time/Warner exists and NBC and Comcast may be merging. Without Net Neutrality, when owners of the pipes that bring us content also own companies that generate large amounts of content, they can, quite legally, either slow down or stop the competition. In a case brought by Comcast against the FCC earlier this year, a federal appeals court stated that the FCC lacked the authority to require Net Neutrality, leading both the FCC and Congress scrambling to create some level of authority by regulation or law.

As public agencies do when preparing to enact regulatory changes, the FCC asked for public comment regarding Net Neutrality. Although 85% of respondents asked for Net Neutrality, these closed-door meetings signal yet another Obama administration deal limiting real change. Similar opaque, revolving-door meetings on Capital Hill - where nearly 3/4 of telecom lobbyists are former federal employees - are yet another sign of business as usual.

While I understand that changes are incremental and evolutionary rather than revolutionary, it pains me to say that Barack Obama's efforts to avoid conflict and create compromise too often benefit the industries in need to regulation. It's one thing to hold meetings with telecom companies, but closed-door meetings stink of back-room deals.

Where's the sunshine?

Business as Usual?

Blogging Barnes and Noble

For the last two nights we've been slammed at the bookstore, which is a good thing. And last night was particularly fun in that, right off the bat I sold the Phoenix Chronicles quartet, and not much later, convinced a woman already buying Leila Meacham's Roses into adding Mary Alice Monroe's Sweetgrass to her purchase.

Later on, though, I was presented with a dilemma: A returning customer asked me to look at what she planned to buy and give her my advice. I went through her stack after she added Sebastian Junger's War at my suggestion, and in it I noticed Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil, which to my knowledge has not been well-received by critics.

I never say a word or so much as change facial expressions when customers buy right wing screed after right wing screed. I don't know if it's just our location in conservative Plano, Texas, but it never ceases to surprise me when I walk through our Current Affairs section to see all the far right books from authors including that 15-year-old "wunderkind" Jonathan Krohn, Michelle Malkin, and multiples by Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly. I'm going out on a limb here, but unless liberals start hammering out books by the dozen, they will never be able to counteract what's floating around out there.

But I digress...

The point I'd begun to make before rudely interrupting myself is that while I'm easily able to suggest additional books for customers to buy, I try to refrain from comment when it comes to books they're already planning to buy. I will admit that some months ago I convinced a guy not to buy that Diana Palmer bargain hardcover - he had no idea what it was, and I could tell that he didn't - but we're a bookstore, we're here to sell books in order to make money, and telling people not to buy books doesn't accomplish that.

There's a gray area, though, when it comes to providing what I think is good advice and strong customer service. If a customer comes up to me as cashier with a $30 hardcover when I know we also sell a $15 trade paperback, I'll ask them if they know they have a choice. Sometimes they do...they just prefer hardcovers...but when they don't and they're amenable, I arrange for them to buy the cheaper version. I don't know what a manager would say if witnessing me do this, but I figure that the customer will remember we saved them money and treated them well and will return because of it. Sometimes it even allows me to sell more, as with the woman not long ago who planned to buy three of the four Twilight books. She didn't realize that two of them were available as mass market releases as opposed to the trade paperbacks in her hands. I convinced her to switch those two out and add the fourth, hardcover-only book, and she walked out a happy customer. She'd spent oh-so-slightly more than originally planned, but left with the entire series in her hands rather than settling for part of it.

So the question for me was: Do I tell my returning customer that I've read only ho-hum or downright negative reviews of Beatrice and Virgil or do I tell her I haven't read it and can't advise her one way or the other? Because she'd asked for my opinion due to a level of trust we'd built in previous transactions, I decided to tell her what I'd heard. She did not buy Martel's book as a result. On the one hand, the store made more money on Junger's book than it would have on Martel's and I don't think she would have bought both, but on the other, I talked a customer out of a book she'd considered buying. In the end I'm not sure I made the right choice, but I think I did.

I asked my husband about it this morning, and this was his response: "Suppose you went to the butcher and bought an expensive cut of meat and told him you planned to boil it. What if he didn't say anything and you actually boiled it? Wouldn't you be angry that the butcher didn't stop you?" While I'm not quite sure that's the same thing, he and I are obviously on the same page...but then, he doesn't work retail.

Blogging Barnes and Noble

A Rant of Major Proportions

My husband graduated UT with an honor's degree in government. My undergraduate degree is a B.S. in political science. He has a law degree from SMU, which is where I earned my master's degree in public administration. Needless to say, we are both too knowledgeable for our own good when it comes to the world of politics and government, and when the Tea Party started becoming popular, it prompted a series of "what if?" conversations at our dinner table. They always become undone, however, by my need to erase history versus his insistence that we begin in the here and now and move forward. Let me explain.

My argument derives from the fact that for many a Tea Partier, our government should never have grown or changed since it began. Okay...I actually "give" them the first ten amendments to our Constitution, then stop. He doesn't. He doesn't believe we need to remove the Civil War or woman's suffrage and instead can defeat them simply if we start from 2010 and move forward, mostly because none of us are used to paying the true price for anything, be it milk or gasoline, and that if the federal government wasn't providing those subsidies, we'd experience such a lowering to our standard of living that either we'd be begging for increased federal input or the Tea Partiers would next set their sights on their individual state governments, which would have had to have increased taxes to make up the losses.

If the argument is that the federal government exists solely to provide for the public defense, they get a "gimme" in the national highway system; the impetus President Eisenhower gave for their creation of our interstates is the movement of troops. Of course, given the post WW-II migration from urban areas to the suburbs, that wasn't his only reason, but I'm feeling generous this afternoon.

That's because I have the New Deal on my side. I know it's become fashionable on the far right to decry FDR's New Deal as a bad thing, and, yes, I realize that it was a combination of the New Deal and WWII that lifted us out of the Great Depression, but even forgetting such New Deal creations as the FDIC, which today we hold as sacrosanct and which equally obviously does not contribute to our nation's defense, what about WWII itself? In my view, we would have entered into a war with Japan after Pearl Harbor, but would not have joined the Allies in Europe. And had we not stormed Normandy and taken part in battles across Europe, the Germans probably would have won, and as a Jew, I might not actually be alive today to blog about this.

I could go on and on...our dinner table discussions do, after all, but my point, and there is one, is that recent statements by Rand Paul, along with the Texas Board of Education's attempts to rewrite history through textbook changes, allow me to focus my ire. On the one hand, Rand Paul states that he likes the Civil Rights Act. And yet he then makes a statement that the federal government has overreached. How does somebody argue both and disconnect them as he attempts to do? Without federal involvement the South would not have been forced to desegregate as those at the forefront of maintaining the status quo - of segregated drinking fountains, lunch counters, and Jim Crow laws in general - were elected state and local officials. Of course, if there were no 14th Amendment to the Constitution, there would be no equal protection clause, and no reason to undo a century of "separate but equal." So is it the 14th Amendment or the CRA that featured federal overreaching?

And how about those textbook changes...wasn't it bad enough that the Virginia Governor "forgot" to include a mention of slavery in his Civil War proclamation? Should our textbooks be changed so that the Slave Trade becomes the "Atlantic Triangular Trade?" Should students study Jefferson Davis's inaugural as President of the Confederate States of America because they already study Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural? The board member who fought that argument won, and if the changes go through, you can look for Davis highlights in the future.

Did Phyllis Schlafly impact the U.S. as much or more so than Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whom the same board member wanted excised from textbooks altogether? That last one gets my dander up because I once actually heard Schlafly speak in person and my impression was that she only became as famous as she did because of the old "dancing dog" syndrome. In other words, because she was a woman with beliefs vastly different than other famous women, she was trotted out to dance. One could easily argue - and easily win, I think - that without Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Singer, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinham, and Bella Abzug, there would have been no Phyllis Schlafly, that without radical women forcing progress, women like Schlafly would never have been allowed to vote, let alone earned the chance to attend law school and become a darling of the right. Of course, if we took it back to the beginning, there would have been no 19th Amendment, and Barbara Cargill would likely not be sitting on the Texas Board of Education at all.

IIRC, no historians make up the elected Texas Board of Education, which meets today for a final vote on the proposed changes. Will this be yet another embarrassment for those of us who are thinking citizens of the state of Texas? And will Rand Paul's GOP nomination implode because logic demands it?

A Rant of Major Proportions

Byotch

Last night at work a young woman wearing a bright pink t-shirt with the word "BYOTCH" emblazoned on the back tried to return an expensive hardcover book - a cookbook, design book, or gardening book - without a receipt. I asked why she wanted to return it and she immediately got defensive. I explained that because she didn't have a receipt I would need to have something to go to my manager with, but she interrupted me to ask why she just couldn't get a store credit, and when I finished what I'd begun to say, she turned on her heels and stomped out of the store.

My first impulse was to blame myself for doing something wrong, but then I thought about it for a moment, realized I had done nothing rude, and that in fact, her actions had been suspicious. Without a receipt there's no way to know where she bought the book...where somebody bought the book for her...or if the book had been bought at all. After several years spent listening to irate taxpapers when I worked for the City of Dallas as manager in two tax collection areas, I learned that for many people, the best defense is a strong offense. In other words, when attempting to pull a fast one, some people become intimidating human bulldozers and try to put the other side on the defensive in order to get their - wrong - way. In the end I decided that's what the byotch had tried to do with me.

The byotch wasn't the only horrendous customer of the week. There was also a woman I'm convinced is some sort of scam artist. She came to me with a bagful of books and a receipt. She looked familiar and I realized I'd been her cashier the first time out - and that she'd had some sort of story then as well. She was outside of the 14-day return policy, and when I asked why she was returning five books, she said, "I found them cheaper on e-Bay." Way to go, lady. At least come up with a story guaranteed not to insult me and my employer.

I called a manager up front to deal with her, and eventually she got what she wanted...mostly...even though it would have been well within the manager's rights to just say no. In a retail environment "the customer is always right" must always be considered, even when we know they're not. Although outside of the return period, the manager allowed her a partial return. Later in the evening I heard the manager on the phone with the woman; her new story was that there was a missing book that she hadn't gotten "credit" for. The manager could not find the "missing" book. I believe there was no such book to be found, that she didn't get everything she wanted earlier, and was now trying another tact to screw the store. I told the manager of my suspicions and she detailed the entire episode in her notes that are presumably shared upon high.

Sidebar: She was brazen, but in a different way from those teachers who use their educator cards to buy personal items, then lie straight to my face when I remind them of our "classroom only" policy. In those instances as well, I can only question them about the policy without in any way being accusatory, but instead try to get them to own up to what's right. See, when they sign up for the educator's card they are told how they can use it - 20% discount on items for the classroom except during teacher appreciation periods when they get a 25% personal discount - but we aren't allowed to enforce the policy. So when teachers' kids hand me a stack of books clearly meant for them, then mom or dad whips out their educator card, I politely ask if the books are for classroom use. I don't tell them to put away their card since they're violating the policy, but hope that forcing them to lie to me will make them feel bad enough to not do it again.

Why was I so suspicious about this woman? Intuition. Something about her...and her stories...just wasn't right. And it reminded me of what happened about a year ago. I'd seen a woman walk from one side of the store to the other holding a large, coffee-table sized book. For some reason I felt I needed to keep watching her, and a few moments later as she walked down the middle aisle toward the exit, I didn't see the book. Yes, she could have put it down somewhere, but I grabbed a manager and told her I thought the woman was trying to steal, and as soon as I watched her side-step the walk-through security device by the front exit, I knew I was right. Texas law is very bizarre as regards shop-lifters and how stores are allowed to deal with them, so the best the manager could do was write down her car's license plate number, report it, and share it, along with a still photo made out of security tapes, with other B&N's in our district. The next weekend I heard they'd caught her at another store before she could steal again.

I don't know why I knew the woman last year was a thief...but I did. Just as I know the woman last night was a scam artist...and that the angry byotch's behavior wasn't kosher either. Ah, the seedy side to retail.

Byotch

Weasel-Shit of Romance

For those following the saga of the stolen reviews as detailed in Oh, the Mendacity!, Blogger and Google took action at some point in the last couple of days and removed from the blog of the Queen of Romance Bimbo of Romance the reviews she stole from AAR.

She calls herself the Queen of Romance. I first called her the Bimbo of Romance based on her actions, but as her blog remains un-updated by her hand since April 18th, I have re-dubbed her yet again. She is now the Weasel-Shit of Romance...not only unethical but a coward as well, at least IMHO. I can't imagine her continuing the venture but then, her thought processes never really made much sense to me. The point of a blog is to share your personal thoughts...why bother if they don't even belong to you? BTW, I've discovered that sharing your thoughts when very few people read them is actually more empowering than you might imagine.

As for my own reviews, Amazon just published my latest for the Vine program. If you're interested, click here to read about Aspergirls: Empowering Females with Asperger Syndrome.

Weasel-Shit of Romance

Oh, the Mendacity!

The more I look into the theft of intellectual property perpetrated by the "Queen of Romance" at - not KristieJ's - Ramblings on Romance, the more pissed off I get. After posting once to AAR's News blog, then emailing the "Queen" "Bimbo" herself, I posted my email on the AAR News blog. And then I investigated a bit further and discovered she pretty much "borrowed" the sensuality ratings system I set up over a decade ago...and called it her "personal" system (hers and AAR's). And then, just for fun, I searched and found a review she "borrowed" from me as well.

I then attached side-by-side comparisons of both the ratings and the review to Blythe and Lynn in an email...the review, btw, is for Marjorie Liu's The Wild Road (hers and mine). By doing so TPTB at AAR now have proof of her ethical lapse in case it is needed - ie, if she tries to weezle-shit out of it. I thought about posting the proof here as well, but it's not my place to do so. And yet, if anyone cares to see them, I guess I can always email the two comparison pages.

I think it's time to go do something physical as I need to blow off the steam that's pouring from the top of my head.

P.S. Lynn emailed me back and I read her original blog entry more closely...the "personal" ratings system used by the Bimbo of Romance was referenced in Lynn's blogging. Indeed, the Bimbo subsequently went back and retroactively credited AAR. What remains unfortunate is that the reviews she also "borrowed" feature AAR's grades...and the same AAR sensuality ratings. Gee, it's almost as though she basically lifted them and changed a few words to avoid getting caught. Say it ain't so!

Oh, the Mendacity!

Prices...They Have A Changed

Although via Gail Carriger's publisher I have a (now cherished) manuscript version of Changeless, yesterday I bought and downloaded for my Kindle the digital version. I did so knowing that I paid the exact same amount as somebody who walks into a bookstore and walks out with a print copy. And, had I walked into the B&N where I have a membership (forgetting my employee discount), I would have paid less than I paid for my digital copy. I'm not at all happy about it, but I support the authors I adore, plain and simple.

For weeks now, if not longer, I've been bitching about how Steve Jobs has mucked up the digital playing field. I've noted that when iTunes was born, he forced the music industry into the 21st century but that when it came to iBooks, because of Kindle competition, he did not. I moaned about how the agency model would only truly be reasonable to consumers if release formats were staggered but prices didn't rise. I complained when this did not happen, when I noticed delayed releases of new print hardcovers into digital format also included increased prices. And I wondered what would happen to paperback-only releases.

And now I know...I think. In checking my Kindle purchases for the last several months, I noticed that I generally paid 20% less for my digital copy than I would have for a print copy. Instead of paying $7.99 for a paperback-only release, I most often paid $6.37, although occasionally - very occasionally - $6.99.

I re-tweeted myself when I noted that increased competition most often leads to reduced prices for consumers, but that with the release of the iPad and creation of iBooks, we've seen the opposite. I love my Kindle, love having a thousand books at my disposal in a package that is the size of a paperback yet weighs even less. I love being able to download in the middle of the night, at an airport, or after reading a review while waiting in a doctor's office. But let's face it...a digital copy, as great as it is, is not the same as a print copy. No trees were killed in the making of it, no ink used, no machines or human beings paid to secure a print run. And I can't lend a digital copy to a friend...it's even illegal for me to reformat a book so I can read it without Kindle software. And yet now I'm being asked to pay exactly the same price as I would for a print copy.

Essentially both the publisher and the consumer reap the benefit of convenience as far as digital books are concerned. They don't have to pay any printing costs and I am able to access books 24/7, and save space in my house at the same time. They continue to reap the benefit. They still have no printing costs to pay, but now they want us to pay 20% more for - nothing. The price of creating digital copies did not increase overnight. "That does not compute, Will Robinson." My little brain simply cannot grasp the logic of a 20% price increase when no additional costs have been incurred.

I think what publishers fail to consider is this: Not all of us are that "buys one or two books a year" reader. Genre readers tend to read a lot...I know I do...and to spend a lot of money to feed our habits. This month alone, even with all the reviewing I do, I bought several urban fantasies and romance novels. But now I'll be thinking twice about those Kindle purchases and will most likely buy one, probably two, fewer books a month to make up the difference. And I'll do it grudgingly, knowing that I'm being over-charged, but in the hopes that the inequity is rectified soon.

Hard-core readers need to read and we've been left entirely out of the equation. That's right - those of us who shore up the publishing industry are being screwed by it. It sucks. We are paying the price for publishers who don't understand our loyalty, or that their business has changed, as evidenced by the statistic in my last entry, that e-book sales grew at a rate of more than 175% last year. Somehow I knew this was going to happen. Damn.

P.S. I believe I've shot my wad on this topic and don't plan to write about it again...unless something changes in a big way.

P.P.S. And so I don't leave you entire with a bad taste in your month, let me share a link to a video trailer for Soulless that Gail Carriger mentioned; click here and enjoy.

Prices...They Have A Changed

The Ethicist Agrees

Last week a reader sent in an interesting question to the NYT Ethicist, Randy Cohen. Until just now Cohen's background was a mystery to me; now I know that he answered ethical questions from listeners to NPR's All Things Considered for several years...and now you do as well.

Anyway, the reader asked whether or not it was "okay" that after having bought the print version of a book, he then found a pirated version online and downloaded it to his e-reader. The Ethicist responded: "An illegal download is — to use an ugly word — illegal. But in this case, it is not unethical. Author and publisher are entitled to be paid for their work, and by purchasing the hardcover, you did so," comparing the action to "buying a CD, then copying it to your iPod."

In his response to the reader, he shares the view of his friend, the publisher of Grand Central Publishing, which is that anyone downloading pirated material has stolen intellectual property and is a thief. But Cohen takes issue with the publisher's point, arguing that "it is a curious sort of theft that involves actually paying for a book."

The Ethicist's view has long been my own - I just don't see why I should have to pay for a book two times. I realize many consider this a rather sketchy position. Frankly, I feel better knowing somebody who thinks about ethical questions daily came to the same conclusion.

Finally, and apropos of nothing, really, yesterday it was reported that in 2009 e-book sales grew at the astonishing rate of 176% while overall book sales were flat at best.

The Ethicist Agrees

The Church

Over the past several years all of us have gotten used to reports of child sexual abuse at the hands of priests within the Catholic Church. We've read about stories of cover-ups, lawsuits filed years later, and of monies awarded that required the sale of Church property. And for years the rest of the world sort of hung back, sure that the abuse was simply a "U.S. problem." We've shaken our heads, gotten angry, then forgot about it until the next cycle.

And then...and then reports began to surface about similar abuse throughout Europe. As reports began to multiply, the Church began to lash back at the media reporting the abuse. Last week things came to a head when a spokesman at the Vatican compared all the negative reporting to the persecution endured by Jews during the Holocaust.

As a student of organizational behavior, this tone deafness didn't surprise me. As organizations age, they become insular and concerned with protecting the status quo. Even though the Catholic Church is a religious organization, it is also close to two thousand years old. Then too, one gets the sneaking suspicion that for some in the hierarchy, this sort of abuse is undoubtedly built in; it's happened for so long that it may not be considered sex...or abuse, but something boys experience as they grow up. About that last I have no proof, but it seems a reasonable proposition, so I'm stating it.

The reason I'm writing about this today? Another in a series of articles, this one about a priest who'd served in an American diocese, been accused of sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl, who'd returned to his native India where he's effectually been given sanctuary against the charges. What struck me about this particular article was a set of comments made by the area's bishop. Though the Vatican has known about the accusations for at least three years, the bishop's response is simple: "We cannot simply throw out the priest...he says he is innocent. What else can we do?" Not "Whether the priest is innocent or guilty, we believe in the rule of law and have sent him back to face the charges against him."

The Vatican's fall-back position seems to be that nothing in Church directives prevents bishops from heeding local authorities, but because the Pope hasn't issued any guidelines requiring them to do so, they can use that lack as a loophole, throw up their hands, and declare, "What can we do?"

Nowhere in this are the thousands of abused children taken into account, just protection of the priests and their higher-ups. Now that this corruption has reached the highest levels - the Pope himself - and is not simply an American problem, the shit is really hitting the fan. And yet all we've heard is more of the same shifting of blame onto the media. One report I read yesterday blamed the "New York Jewish lobby" (aka The New York Times) for smearing the Pope.

One wonders where it will all end now that the scandal has gone global. The circle the wagons mentality, the tone deaf attitude continues to grow. If Jesus threw out the money lenders, what do you suppose he would do here?

The Church

No Time Like the Present

What better time to talk about health care reform than when I'm home sick?

I just re-read Frank Rich's terrific op-ed piece from Sunday's NYT, and it drove home my own views on all the angry "pitchfork people," as I like to call the angry mobs of sheeple populists.

What concerns me about how the health care upheaval played out is this: People have bought into the belief that the less fortunate are morally inferior and don't deserve health care. How else to explain the reaction gone viral of a mob harassing a man with Parkinson's who was engaged in an act of non-violence? Even though they likely know somebody - an extended member of the family, colleague at work, or neighbor - in debt after a life-threatening illness, they don't realize that they themselves are, as one Harvard MD says, "One illness away from financial ruin." Indeed, more than 60% of bankruptcies filed in the U.S. are the result of medical bills.

Elsewhere in the developed world, health care is something its citizens share. Here in the U.S. it is something we horde. They see it as a basic human right...we see it as privilege. An article in Salon said it well: "[The sheeple] tend to believe healthcare reform helped 'other people,' not themselves."

A Canadian friend of mine recently told me that when Canada adopted universal health care, people assumed the sky was falling. Now the father of Canadian health care is considered the nation's greatest citizen. I can only hope that the polls trending upward since the passage last week of health care reform continues and that the hostility will die down. Actual signs, though, indicate the initial blip was just that...initial. And even more recent polling indicates that people believe Democrats are to blame for the violence perpetrated against its members in Congress post passage.

But I worry a low-level of hatred will remain, because for many, it all comes down to black. There's this "other," see, in the White House; an uppity, scarily-named, "intellectual" with a preternatural calm. And he signals a rising up of all the other "others" - is it any surprise that Newt Gingrich compared health care reform to passage of the Civil Rights Act as regards possible fall-out? Maybe he's just speaking a hard political truth, but his harsh, cynical view negates the actual purpose and result of civil rights laws. And that's the difference Bill Maher pointed to [again] on Friday night when he defined patriotism as doing what's right for the country as opposed to doing what's right for any particular political party.

Nobody's thrilled with the final health care reform bill; that million dollars a day spent by healthcare interests (insurance, medical, hospital, and pharmaceutical companies) to effect the outcome in their favor made sure that of that. But I sleep a little better at night knowing that as a nation we are trying to live up to a moral responsibility.

No Time Like the Present