Number of American Households Receiving Foodstamps Hits All-Time High

While the feds, the Fortune 500 business community, the real estate industry, and their media enablers beat the economic recovery drum, voiceless Americans have another story to tell. According to a post in the financial blog zerohedge.com, the USDA's most recent data on foodstamps showed a 170,000 increase in individual recipients. Further, the number of Americans receiving foodstamps has reached "an all-time high."

Does this sound like a "recovery" to you?

For more perspective on the asymmetrical aspect to the trumpeted "recovery," read a Mercury News feature story on Bay Area families disconnected to Silicon Valley's current gold rush. Of course, these barely franchised families and individuals are not selling aggregated personal information, providing the NSA with Internet and phone call data without legitimate user consent, or having off-camera negotiations with our first Big Data president. They're just, as Mitt Romney so inelegantly put it, "takers."

Meanwhile, the "makers" are very much on the make.

The Tejana Musician Lydia Mendoza

Lydia Mendoza stamp
(Image: USPS.com)

A visit to my local post office led to discover a musician I did not know until today. It all started with a need to purchase first-class stamps. I typically use them for bill payments. I had bills due and precious few stamps in the house, so I went to the PO. I like to buy a mix of small-sized and larger dimension items. Among the latter, available stamps were an edition honoring the late Tejana singer Lydia Mendoza.

I was entirely unfamiliar with her music and her background. Once I returned home, I listened to samples of her songs. I liked them enough to purchase Arhoolie Records' La Alondra de la Frontera con Orquesta Falcon. The simple, heartfelt tunes fit my mood, and I thought the musicianship was more than capable.

Some days, one just gets lucky, and today was one of those days for me. I enjoyed the accidental moment that led me to explore Lydia Mendoza's music. Even better, I appreciated discovering her many late life accolades, including the National Medal of Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Texas Medal of Arts. And I have the Tejana singer's music, proof that lyrical beauty does not require algorithmic wizardry, Madison Avenue hype, or Hollywood glamor.

Oh, yeah, I like the stamps, too.

Southern California Nuke Plant To Permanently Close

San Onofre nuclear power plant,
with Interstate 5 in the middleground
(photo: eastcountymagazine.org)

A long time ago, I drove from Los Angeles to San Diego along Interstate 5. The busy intercity route parallels the Pacific Ocean for a considerable stretch. Along the way, some ominous structures broke the view between the busy highway and the nearby sea. I later discovered they were the San Onofre nuclear power plant.

It seemed a matter of poor judgment that atomic materials were located in a known earthquake zone such as southern California's coastal region. Yet, nuclear power's advocates have rarely shied away from locating the tangible results of their Faustian bargains in seismically active areas. When things go wrong, as they did in Fukushima last year, the catastrophe becomes bad news that only gets worse.

Even though I live at the opposite end of the continent from SoCal, I felt a sense of relief when today's Financial Times reported San Onofre will be "retired." In other words, this Frankenstein of an electrical generation plant will be closed once and for all. The good news? The plant has been shuttered since January 2012. Apparently, other means of creating and delivering energy to the region have, thankfully, been found.

Amazon, Google Sweat During Apple-DOJ Trial

Lost in the flash blast of the NSA data mining revelations was today's Apple-DOJ court case highlights. Witnesses included Google's director of strategic partnerships, whose testimony was cut to ribbons by Apple's lead attorney, according to a story in theverge.com. Today's star, however, was Amazon vice president for Kindle content Russ Grandinetti. Many observers were especially keen to hear what a typically "no comment" senior management Amazon official would say under oath. Also, there was more than a little suspicion about the Seattle company's motives, as this Obama administration darling was widely viewed as the stimulant for the antitrust complaint.

Amazon VP Russ Grandinetti
(photo: engadget.com)

Grandinetti answered all questions except one -- the key one. According to a report that appeared in macdailynews.com, the Amazon VP said he was not "'comfortable discussing the contents of a January 24, 2010 meeting held in Amazon boss' Jeff Bezos' Seattle boathouse. He quickly went from uncomfortable to silent: "Although Grandinetti wouldn't say anything about the meeting in Bezos' boathouse -- not even if Bezos attended it -- documents presented into evidence showed that the next day, Jan. 25, Amazon began developing its own terms for an agency contract. Those terms, as it turns out, were remarkably similar to the ones Apple was negotiating with the publishers...Those terms are among the ones the government has characterized in Apple's contracts as part of an illegal scheme to fix prices."

Jeff Bezos' boathouse
(photo: forbes.com)

One can imagine why Grandinetti was "not comfortable." Had he acknowledged Bezos' attendance, that assertion would have implied the Amazon capo's involvement in this critical meeting. Well, maybe Bezos is the kind of secretive billionaire who indulges his employees and lets them have Sunday meetings at his private boathouse, since Jeff wasn't using it. (Of course, we have to take Bezos' absence on faith, don't we?)  Maybe Bezos will give Russ and friends the keys to his automobiles, a way into the kitchen in case they're hungry, a change of clothes for a swim. Are you buying this story?

Whose idea was to have the meeting at the Amazon CEO's boathouse?

Google Glasses Banned from Atlantic City Casinos

Image: techisdom.com

Casino operators, working hard to stay a step ahead of gambling's legion of aspiring and active cheaters, have targeted Google Glasses as verboten in their establishments. The latest casino oasis to ban the trend-setting specs is Atlantic City. According to a story that originally appeared in The Press of Atlantic City and picked up by siliconvalley.com, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement invoked the ban earlier this week. Why it took this collection of Captain Reynauds until now to discover Google Glasses' potential for unfair gambling advantage is something of a mystery.

Maybe someone put in a timely phone call to the faceless Trenton bureaucrats who represent New Jersey taxpayers. "'Even if (Google Glasses) had not been used for cheating," Gaming Enforcement Division director David Rebuck wrote in a memo to AC casinos, "...'their presence at a gaming table would lead to the perception that something untoward could be occurring, thereby undermining public confidence in the integrity of gaming."

Something "untoward"? In an Atlantic City casino? Perish the thought!

Bob Fletcher, Who Saved Farms of Japanese-Americans During World War II -- RIP

Bob Fletcher
(photo: Randall Benton/Sacramento Bee)

Bob Fletcher, who passed away recently in California at age 101, performed heroics during World War II that should make all people proud. His guts did not take place on a battlefield, but in the Golden State's agricultural fields. According to Fletcher's obituary in the Sacramento Bee, he quit his position as a state agricultural inspector to save farms of Japanese-Americans who were forced into internment camps. He maintained ninety acres on behalf of three imprisoned families until the end of the war. Fletcher returned the farms to their rightful owners, a fate not always shared by other Japanese-Americans.

Fletcher is survived by his wife of 67 years, a son, and a collection of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

NY Hilton to Eliminate Room Service

The New York Hilton
(photo: wikipedia.com)

According to a Reuters story in today's New York Times, the New York Hilton intends to KO its room service feature. The massive hotel chain has asserted the elimination of room service would improve the property's profits.

It's hard to imagine the New York Hilton -- or any major hotel -- losing money on room service. A look at a typical room service menu often reveals outrageous prices for the simplest dishes. Twenty dollars for eggs, toast, juice, and coffee is not unusual. The absurd pricing, designed for expense account travelers, has simply run aground as businesses tighten their spending. However, there are times room service makes sense for a customer. To take that option away, and compel hotel guests to trudge to the lobby for "gourmet take-out," as the New York Hilton intends, cheapens the brand and the experience of staying at a "name" hotel.

The Hilton should go back to drawing board, keep room service, and identify more sensible, customer-friendly ways to increase the hotel's profit margin.

A Brooklyn Restaurant Deconstructs Regional Dishes to Create "Stateless" Cuisine

My wife Amy and I recently dined at a Brooklyn restaurant in tune with the establishment's hipster neighborhood's atmosphere. The Mexican-Thai hybrid, small plate menu included some excellent, imaginative dishes and a roster of sipping tequilas and mezcals. However, while we were dining, a question kept gnawing at me. The various offerings were concepts based upon an independent approach to ingredients rather than one anchored in national, regional, or local cooking. In effect, the restaurant provided stateless cuisine, in which its Mexican and Thai elements were deconstructed and transformed into something quite different from preparations one could reasonably expect to find in, say, Oaxaca or Chiang Mai.

Why stateless? Well, the restaurant's food was disengaged from the psychological and practical motivations that form the foundations of those countries' respective cuisines. What my wife and I enjoyed at the Brooklyn restaurant struck us as unconnected to either country's homestyle cooking, vendor food, or even their internationalized dishes. The people in those nations are disinclined to fiddle with their traditional fare. Their food is the equivalent of their culinary passport, with the name of their country proudly embossed in gold on the document's front cover.

Stateless cuisine, on the other hand, abhors passports. It demands an identity that defies borders and appeals to worldly tastes. In that way, the kitchen wizards at the Brooklyn restaurant share the perspective of those super-rich characterized as "stateless." The term, in this case, means these golden few simply live where they please, have assets where needed, and feel disinclined to anchor their outlook and preferences to a particular region.

Like it or not, we now live in a world where soulless data is often the ultimate, border-free currency. The super-rich are among those riding this conceptual wave. Unconsciously, our tastes (and those of the super-rich) drift into tangible manifestations of this reality. It's not difficult to  envision how the shifting of formerly anchored culinary choices into a suggestion of those sensibilities leads to the development of a supra-national dish --"stateless" cuisine. This food, and its reflection of an unarticulated zeitgeist, seems a smooth fit for the self-conscious hipster community where the Brooklyn restaurant was located. You didn't have to be super-rich to dine there; you just had to engage with an outlook that is at once curious, borderless, confidently self-contained, and disconnected from historical and social context.

Wall Street vs. Bloomberg News

Bloomberg Terminal
(photo: wikipedia.com)

Recently, Bloomberg News acknowledged that some of its reporters used sensitive and presumably restricted data from the eponymous terminals in their journalistic pursuits. Bloomberg terminals, if you're unfamiliar with them, provide essential financial data and are vitually de rigueur on Wall Street. The price of entry into the world of Bloomberg terminals is $20,000 per year. No exceptions, including the Street's giants, as today's New York Times article on the Bloomberg News-Wall Street snafu observed.

The Times' story, released on a slow news Saturday, is a curious one. A key player, if the article is to be taken at face value, is a Goldman Sachs PR exec and managing director named Jake Siewert. His resume includes a stint as an aide to former Treasury secretary Tim Geithner during the Obama administration. He was also White House press secretary during the Clinton Administration. Siewert called his JP Morgan counterpart and they began comparing notes about Bloomberg News leads and activities that aroused suspicions regarding their origin.

Jake Siewert
(photo: The New York Post)

An upset Goldman began to, as the phrase goes, "look into the matter." Keep in mind this is the same firm that employed Chelsea Clinton's husband. Let's just say Goldman, unflatteringly known as "the squid," has many friends in the public, private, and shadow sectors. JP Morgan, meanwhile, was in the middle of Jamie Diamon's very visible fight to retain both his chairmanship and CEO status at the firm. Keeping the media in line, especially a snoopy Bloomberg News, would be in JP Morgan's interest. There's nothing quite like a scandal over news coverage techniques to temporarily diminish a news organization's sharper edges. All Diamon needed was a little time and a little less media curiosity.

According to the Times piece, Siewert or others associated with Goldman Sachs contacted former Bloomberg News reporters for confirmation regarding surreptitious news gathering activity on the Bloomberg terminals. Intriguingly, the anonymous reporters cited in the story worked for Bloomberg News competitor The Wall Street Journal. Now, you'll get extra credit if you can guess which media platform broke the Bloomberg News-Wall Street story. If you said The New York Post, you would be correct. If you're keeping score at home, Rupert Murdoch owns both the Journal and the Post.

Mark DeCambre
(photo: twitter.com)

Among the coincidences in this tale is Post reporter Mark DeCambre's role in the affair. He filed a piece on Goldman's hiring of Siewert in November, 2012, which highlighted his potential fast track path to managing partner (roughly equivalent to landing a place in Wall Street's Olympus). According to today's Times article, he also broke the story about the Bloomberg News-Goldman Sachs flap.

Bloomberg News eventually issued something of a half-hearted mea culpa for its journalistic faux pas. Whether Bloomberg has offered a deal on yearly rates for its terminals was not noted.