Beware those who don't heed history's lessons: A review of HBO's Triangle: Remembering the Fire

By Edward Copeland

"People forget the Triangle fire at their peril... If people want to know what deregulated industry would look like, look at the bodies on the sidewalk outside the Triangle building."
Leigh Benin, Adelphi University labor historian

With big corporations seeking to gain more and more power by using bought-and-paid-for politicians to strip away regulations and weaken workers' rights, there couldn't be a better time to look back at the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, which killed 146 people 100 years ago March 25 and brought about the reforms and labor movements billionaires and the historically ignorant seek to dismantle today. A well-done and brief primer on the fire and the events leading up to it and its aftermath premieres on HBO tonight. Triangle: Remembering the Fire debuts at 9 p.m. EDT and PDT / 8 p.m. CDT.

For those unfamiliar with the story of the Triangle fire, this 45-minute documentary gives you almost all you need to know about the 100-year-old tragedy and offers lessons needed for today as it seems we risk the rise of a new Gilded Age where tycoons value profits over the safety of their workers and the government at both the state and national level seems to be more-than-willing co-conspirators with its push to deregulate anything and everything. If one wants to look for modern examples of this, they need looks no further than the lack of safety enforcement at various coal mines that have cost many miners their lives, the BP Gulf disaster which killed their own workers and destroyed an ecosystem and the "fracking" techniques used in the search for natural gas that has been linked to poisoned water sources, cancer deaths and possibly even earthquakes, all of which exploration companies were exempted from environmental laws under the Bush Administration. This doesn't even take into account how the blind eye of regulators allowed financial speculators to cause the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and a housing bubble that sparked a foreclosure debacle. Just last week, both parties in Congress, led by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., all still doing the bidding of the big banks, sought to delay the huge fees the banks collect on debit card transactions for another two years, weakening already toothless financial reform legislation. Obama's Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner also is rumored to further water down the reform by exempting currency derivatives from transparency requirements in the legislation. Yes, government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations shall not perish from the United States it seems.

In 1911, out of the ashes of the tragedy of the Triangle fire came reforms for workers, first in the state of New York, that laid the groundwork for FDR's New Deal when he became president 22 years later, reforms that politicians backed by rich businessmen seek to dismantle today as we've seen in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio with more on the way.

Tovah Feldshuh narrates Triangle: Remembering the Fire and her calm voice serves perfectly as an invisible teacher. The Triangle Waistshirt Company was one of many businesses associated with the garment industry in the early part of the 20th century in New York. Co-owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris had hit upon a new trend in ladies' fashion: basically, the blouse. For the first time, women were wearing separate tops just as men did. It made them rich and their company occupied the top three floors of one of downtown Manhattan's newest skyscrapers, the 10-story Asch Building at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street. The building, now known as the Brown Building and part of the NYU campus, still stands and has been registered a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark.

With the huge demand for their product, the Triangle company workers tended to be on the job seven days a week for long hours and little pay and the people willing to be exploited this way did so because they had no other choice. They tended to be newly arrived European immigrants who had been fleeing famine and persecution. Not only did they not find the American dream in their work situation, most could only find living arrangements in tenements on the lower eastside. In the case of the garment industry, most of these virtual slaves were women, especially young women, some not even teenagers yet. To get as much production going as possible, the ninth floor of the Asch Building had been stacked to capacity with 300 sewing machines, leaving barely any elbow room for the workers inside. About a year and a half before the Triangle fire in November 1909, The International Ladies Garment Union Workers Union staged a massive strike demanding better working conditions for women. The 20,000 female strikers who took to the streets was unprecedented — and this was taking place more than a decade before women had the right to vote in the United States. It really was the first head-on clash between the tycoons of The Gilded Age and their corrupt political minions ensconced in Tammany Hall and the growing progressive movement. The strikers may have been women, but it didn't prevent Tammany from sending out police and hired thugs to arrest them and get rough. By the time the strike ended, the workers at Triangle returned to their sewing machines without any union recognition.

As we see today when the gap between what company CEOs make and the wages given to their average workers have reached startling disparities, similar differences existed at the time between company owners and the average Americans. For example, Triangle co-owner Max Blanck surrounded himself with servants and spent more than $100,000 to renovate his home, quite a contrast when the average American in 1911 only made $300 to $600 a year. Yet Blanck and other company heads didn't want to spring for the readily available sprinkler systems for new buildings or follow the recommendation of New York Fire Chief Ed Croker who, after a similarly tragic fire at a Newark, N.J., factory a mere four months before the Triangle fire had killed 25 workers, again mostly women, had suggested that buildings routinely practice fire drills. Company owners, always focusing on the bottom line, felt drills would affect work productivity and since no government regulations existed to enforce the sprinklers or the drills, they had no one twisting their arms to do the right thing.

What's so compelling about Triangle: Remembering the Fire is not just recounting all that missteps that led to the tragedy and can anger you a century later even when the event occurred long before you were born, but also the interviews with people related to both survivors and victims of the blaze. The filmmakers interview Suzanne Pred Bass who had two great-aunts who were in the fire, one who survived, one who didn't, presumably because they lost sight of each other in the smoke that quickly enveloped the ninth floor.

The cause of the fire has never been clear, but most believe a still-burning cigarette tossed into a trash can on the eighth floor quickly consumed the three floors. The switchboard operator on eight notified the 10th floor and the fire department immediately but in her haste, forgot to tell the ninth floor. Though the documentary doesn't confirm it as fact or legend, the story goes that of the two fire escapes on the ninth floor, they kept one locked so that when workers left for the day, they could be searched to make certain that they weren't stealing anything. Those who did survive from the ninth did so thanks to the heroics of elevator operator Joseph Zito who kept overloading his vehicle to get as many out as he could until it finally collapsed under the weight of the panicked who leaped down the elevator shaft to escape the flames. Most of the people on 10 were able to flee thanks to people in a neighboring building who got ladders across the space between the two buildings. Even though the fire department arrived two minutes after receiving the call, once they got to the Asch Building, the ladder trucks only reached to the sixth floor. Many of those who died were killed jumping to their deaths. At first, some bystanders thought they were tossing bundles of clothes out the windows to save them until they spotted the legs, arms and faces beneath them. Some hit the pavement so hard they crashed through glass plates on the sidewalk. In all, 146 died, 129 women and girls and 17 men. The blaze consumed all three floors in just 18 minutes from the time the blaze started and that 18 minute mark was when the last body hit the ground. Of the 146 deaths, 90 leaped to escape the flames.

The horror of what happened led Al Smith, a Democrat thick in Tammany Hall politics who would later lose the presidency to Herbert Hoover, to shake off the cronyism and lead the fight for reforms. New York led the way for proper workweeks and pay and, most importantly, safety conditions for its citizens. It even began to set up a pension system for those too old to work any longer, all ideas that Franklin Roosevelt would bring nationwide in the New Deal. The tragedy showed the need for strong unions and for the government to be for the people, not the corporations, and it is frightening to see the backpedaling that is happening today. Blanck and Harris eventually did face criminal charges for the deaths of their workers, but they were acquitted by an all-male jury and since they had lots of insurance, the fire didn't do much damage to them at all. Because many of the bodies were charred so badly, six couldn't be positively identified but in a separate feature, Triangle: The Unidentified, available only on HBO OnDemand, co-producer and historian Michael Hirsch uses research and genealogical techniques unavailable 100 years ago to give names for the first time to those resting in a mass grave in the Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn so now when the names of the dead are ready every year, those unidentified six can now join the other 140.

Triangle: Remembering the Fire premieres tonight at 9 p.m. EDT and PDT / 8 p.m CDT. You owe it to yourself to watch.

The United States of Goldman Sachs

By Edward Copeland 

In 2007, Charles Ferguson directed the great documentary No End in Sight. Last year, he helmed another that told the story of an entirely different type of destruction, Inside Job, only this time the war wasn't against another country, it was against the world's financial system and instead of only those actually in Iraq and their families paying a price, we all suffered for Wall Street's greed and Washington's malfeasance.

As Ferguson did in No End in Sight, he makes a very complicated subject easier to understand through his masterful presentation of the facts and history of the situation (narrated by Matt Damon here) and interviews with key subjects. It's not an easy task in Inside Job because trying to explain the mechanics of financial derivatives and its role in the economic collapse is nowhere near as easy to do as it was to show all the mistakes and blunders involved in the Iraq war.

Not surprisingly, most of the key figures such as Alan Greenspan, Timothy Geithner, etc., refused to be interviewed for the film, but what's shocking is that Wall Street and financial service figures who do give interviews feel completely at ease showing their arrogance and defending the industry's actions.

Inside Job, briskly edited by Chad Beck and Adam Bolt, shows how decades of deregulation under presidents of both parties led to one crisis after another, each bigger than the last, with seemingly no one in Washington learning any lessons.

The film also provides fascinating tidbits such as the fact that as recently as the early 1970s bond traders' salaries were low enough, that some had to take second jobs to make ends meet. It also tells how employees of various financial firms engaged in cocaine-fueled parties with prostitutes which were billed to the companies as things such as computer supplies.

The handful of firms who would tell their clients a purchase was good while betting on its failure behind their back is staggering, though not as staggering as the refusal of regulators to do any regulating or the number of former top Goldman Sachs executives who end up serving in presidential administrations of both parties. (When Hank Paulson stepped down as Goldman CEO to be Dubya's treasury secretary, he had to sell $450 million in Goldman Sachs stock but thanks to a law signed by the first Bush, he paid exactly zero taxes on it and some say the rich are taxed too much?)

Ferguson's No End in Sight proved to be not only informative, but to provoke outrage at all of the things that were and weren't done prior to the Iraq war. Inside Job does just the same for the history of the financial collapse, especially when you see all of the names who profited from Wall Street's greed that have populated the Obama Administration, not that he invented the problem.

It began with Reagan, got worse with the first Bush, declined further under Clinton and took the big nosedive under the second Bush. Now, Obama's advisers come from the same group and Congress passes reforms without teeth because Wall Street controls what happens. Inside Job tells this infuriating story in great detail and it tells it well.

(Cross-posted at Edward Copeland on Film.)

This is what Jon Stewart was talking about

By Edward Copeland

To paraphrase the old Clinton campaign battle cry, "It's the media, stupid."

When the whole TSA media explosion began, it was one of those rare stories where all sides of the political spectrum seemed to agree from the likes of Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake to an assortment of conservative talking heads. It even had its own variation of "Don't tase me, bro" with "If you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested" before true horror stories came out of passengers who had colostomy bags broken and urine collection bags ruptured, women who had their prosthetic breasts which they got after cancer surgery moved around as if they were puzzle pieces, etc. (Read Capt. Fogg's post for some of the examples.) It all pointed to improper training. Well, cable can't stand something like that, so they had to find political sides.

Suddenly, the left decided the whole issue was raised by neocons and the right to try to use racial profiling, even though days earlier they agreed with some of the ridiculousness of the system that still doesn't really add to protecting our skies nine years after 9/11. What makes this completely nonsensical and infuriating is that there is real news going on.

North Korea attacks a South Korean island in the most serious engagement between the two countries since 1953 in the same week we learn that North Korea has built another uranium enrichment facility. Do cable news shows want to discuss the serious implications of this? They could even put a political spin on it, if they wanted, as Jon Kyl continues to oppose the latest START treaty for no apparent reason.

I just watched Ed Schultz throwing a conniption fit about racial profiling and the TSA and Rush Limbaugh and I just couldn't take it anymore and I did what I do more and more when I need reasonable news coverage: I watched PBS' the NewsHour. They, of course, had in-depth coverage of the Korean situation as well as the fake Taliban negotiator, a promising drug that might actually prevent HIV infection and details of the financial reform. In fact, they went an entire hour without mentioning the TSA or what the cable channels would have you believe is today's other story of monumental importance: Prince William and Kate Middleton have set a wedding date!

Of course, I'm not even mentioning MSNBC's corporate synergy with NBC by using its nonstop coverage of the TSA imbroglio to play the Saturday Night Live skit about it from last weekend about it (which they do every time there is a new SNL on) as if it's an essential part of illustrating the story. Chris Matthews went as far as calling it the greatest SNL sketch ever. It aired on Olbermann, Maddow and O'Donnell last night and Morning Joe, Hardball and Schultz today.

Politico's Mike Allen had a funny tweet earlier today pointing out that Good Morning America actually did lead with the North Korean situation, but the Today show actually chose to go with the wedding date. As Fran Lebowitz said in the wonderful documentary about her that premiered on HBO last night, Public Speaking, I remember when news used to mean information.

It's like Jon Stewart said during his interview with Rachel Maddow. Was the Juan Williams story really as important as cable news made it out to be? No, but it fit their narrative and their template. There are far too many important things going on both domestically and overseas to waste our times on this nonsense anymore. Our "leaders" in D.C. can play politics, but they've lost the ability and the interest to govern and none of the talking heads on either side have any role in governance. Enough.

Standing up to Wall Street and the GOP on financial reform

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From our friends at the Senate Democratic Policy Committee:

Senate Democrats Are on Your Side: Standing Up to Republican Obstructionism on Wall Street Reform

Republicans have yet again put their political interests ahead of the well-being of the American people. By refusing to allow debate on Wall Street reform, they have sent a clear message: Senate Republicans are on the side of big banks and Wall Street CEOs. This disingenuous, obstructionist attitude was set in motion last month after Senate Republicans met behind closed doors with the CEOs of big banks. They returned and promptly started trying to water down legislation that would rein in corporate greed and excess on Wall Street.

Senate Democrats want to restore accountability and transparency to Wall Street, and have brought forward historic reform legislation to protect American consumers, investors and businesses from the greed and recklessness that brought our economy to the brink of collapse. The Restoring American Financial Stability Act puts in place the strongest consumer financial protections ever and will help put a stop to the reckless behavior that cost Americans over 8 million jobs and trillions of dollars in savings. 

By choosing to side with Wall Street over the American people, Republicans have voted against legislation that will:

·     End Taxpayer Bailouts.  As long as giant financial firms believe the government will bail them out if they get into trouble, they only have the incentive to get larger and take bigger risks. This bill guarantees that taxpayers will never again be forced to bail out reckless Wall Street firms by creating a safe orderly liquidation mechanism for the FDIC to unwind failing significant financial companies; shareholders and unsecured creditors will bear losses; and management will be removed.

·     End "Too Big To Fail." The bill provides for strict new capital, leverage, liquidity, risk management and other requirements as companies grow in size and complexity, with significant requirements on companies that pose risks to the financial system. The Federal Reserve will be authorized, as a last resort, to require a large complex company, to divest some of its holdings if it poses a grave threat to the financial stability of the United States. 

·    Put a New Cop on The Beat. The bill establishes the Financial Stability Oversight Council to focus on identifying, monitoring and addressing systemic risks posed by large, complex financial firms as well as products and activities that spread risk across firms. 

·    Bring Sunlight and Transparency to Shadowy Markets. The legislation eliminates loopholes that allow risky and abusive practices to go unnoticed and unregulated – including loopholes for over-the-counter derivatives, asset-backed securities, hedge funds, mortgage brokers and payday lenders.

·    Guarantee Clear Information in Plain English. The bill creates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will have the sole job of protecting American consumers from unfair, deceptive and abusive financial products and practices and will ensure people get the clear information they need on loans and other financial products from credit card companies, mortgage brokers, banks and others.

·    Protect Against Bernie Madoff-Type Scams. The SEC has failed to perform aggressive oversight and is unable to understand some of the very companies it is supposed to regulate. This bill creates a program within the SEC to encourage people to report securities violations and mandates an annual assessment of the SEC's internal supervisory controls. The bill also establishes a new Office of Credit Rating Agencies at the SEC to strengthen regulation of credit rating agencies, many of which failed in the past to warn people about risks hidden throughout layers of complex structures.

MJWS: It's good for the American people, good for the American economy, and good for anything and everything other than the Wall Street oligarchy. No wonder Republicans are against it.

GOP ready for FinReg cave

By Creature

It may not be today, but it will be soon. Kudos to Harry Reid for forcing these votes. Now, I can't help but think if the Dems had forced votes on health care reform last summer the ugly over the bill would never had time to percolate. Oh well, live and learn.

Update: The cave is today. Wow. Let the debate begin.

Ben Nelson votes with GOP on FinReg

By Creature

It's shit like this that pisses me off to no end about Democrats. If you going to put a (D) after your name then there are times when you must vote with your party. This vote was procedural. It was supposed to keep the GOP off balance. Now, not so much. Suddenly blocking FinReg is a bipartisan affair. Way to go.

Truth in Comics

By Creature


If it's Sunday, it's Truth in Comics.

[Via Cagle]

The progressive FinReg fight

By Creature

I really don't like the direction FinReg is going. If a bipartisan bill means no floor vote on the Brown-Kaufman SAFE Banking Act then, as usual, screw bipartisanship. Enough of this watered-down crap. The progressive fight is Brown-Kaufman. Let's have an up-or-down vote. Please.

Quote of the Day

By Creature

"Sorry, Lucy. Looks like Charlie Brown just told you to go fuck yourself." -- commenter sherifffruitfly at TPM on Harry Reid's decision to move forward with the FinReg vote.

Boehner: Reform Is 'TARP Forever'

By Creature

Someone needs to ask John Boehner what he would like done to regulate Wall Street. If he's against the Wall-Street-funded liquidation pool then what is he for? Breaking up too-big-to-fail? It's the only other option, but that would put him on the hippie side of the argument and that's never gonna happen.

Of course, Boehner's real aim is to Luntz the whole bill, hence the answer to the question "what would he like done" is rhetorical in the end.

FinReg

By Creature

Ezra boils it down:

What matters here is whether they think the politics of fighting the bill are better than the politics of supporting it. That, and not policy disputes, is what's driving this process.

And, it seems, today the GOP has decided that the politics of fighting the bill are not on their side. Tomorrow, who knows. Dems, be prepared.

Financial Reform

By Creature

I still have hope that the White House and Congress will get their shit together and pass strong financial reforms, but with the GOP using the Frank Luntz's, up-is-down talking point that the proposed regulations will make future bailouts more, not less, likely I fear the GOP will control a message that should clearly be on the Democrats side.

While I don't think the GOP's Luntzing of financial reform will succeed (and kudos to the White House for pushing back already), I do think it will lead to a protracted fight and a glum electorate (which I assume is the GOP's plan) and this is something the Democrats cannot afford after the long health-care reform fight.

Update: Dodd's on the case. He calls out McConnell's lie, waves Luntz memo. Love it.

Game, set, and (almost) match

By Carl 

With a victory on healthcare firmly in his back pocket, and embarassing the crap out of the GOP who thought they had it lock, stock, and barrel, wither Barack Obama?

For one thing, despite our grousing about Congress and the Democratic leadership, he owes a few chits from the healthcare reform battle, and he will have to mend a few fences for Congresscritters back home, but the news for Dems this year is looking better and better.

That said, there are landmines out there:

1) Justice John Paul Stevens - Republicans have already made it clear they will be obstructionist... gee, what a shock! An avowed and confirmed liberal is leaving the bench and rather than give it a pass, the Republicans have decided to try to move the court further to the Fascist, errr, I mean, right! While Stevens hasn't given a date certain beyond 2012, the sense between the lines is that this retirement may come as early as this summer. Before the midterm elections, forcing a Senatorial spectacle, something Obama really doesn't need. His options would be limited: either fight a nasty fight over an avowed liberal to replace Stevens' ideology, or choose a warm body that Republicans can't put up that much of a fuss over.

I have a suggestion that solves both aspects: Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo. It would be hard to pin him as a true-blue liberal when he is personally pro-life (altho supporting choice for women,) but he's old enough (nearing 80) that his service to the bench would be short in duration.

2) Immigration reform - This is the real trap for Obama, but one he can sidestep in the short term. Immigration reform is the most polarizing issue on the national political landscape after healthcare reform. The Teabaggers are licking their lips... er, maybe that's an image you don't need... in anticipation of letting the racist-freak flag fly. Democrats are running scared because on the one hand, a significant bloc of their new-found strength is the Hispanic vote and on the other, immigration reform that doesn't include strong penalties for illegal immigration will rally Teabaggers and allies, as well as some normally perfectly liberal people who see immigration as yet another pool of people taking advantage of a bountiful society.

My suggestion: duck and weave. This is not a fight you need to take on until after November, despite the gathering momentum. If you could delay healthcare for over a year, as unfair as this may be, you can delay taking up immigration until the end of this year. John McCain needs this issue, so maybe throwing him a bone in exchange for his help on the Teabaggers would make a little sense, but don't risk your Congressional majority over this. Not until you run for re-election and can take the heat off them in 2012.

3) Jobs - There was desperate good news on jobs last week, in that the jobs report was very positive, based on the hiring of temporary census workers. Obama needs momentum in this direction, and while he's actually lost fewer jobs in his first year than Reagan did in his, the perception is strong that bankers came first. Obama needs a big win here.

Fortunately, Obama has a little political cover on this one: no one wants to see unemployed Americans, no matter how desperate they are for power.

4) Financial reforms - This, I think, will be Obama's next stump speech topic. He can paint any opposition as anathemic to the American people, and simultaneously distance himself from the dance he had to do after Bush's bailout in 2008. The GOP will be painted into a corner, and he picks up an easy win.

Come November, the American people will want to see a government that works. They are less concerned with ideology so long as they see legislators earning their pay and keeping the problems of Americans front and center. We're an adventurous group when the chips are down, and I suspect that if Obama can reel off a few wins in a row this spring and summer, the 2010 elections will be seen less as a referendum on the direction the country is going and more as an endorsement of how fast its getting there. 

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)