Today In Labor History: April 6

April 6, 1712 - New York City saw its first slave revolt, which occurred just north of Wall Street, in response to the execution of twenty-one blacks for killing nine whites. Conditions were ideal for a revolt, as black slaves and freemen worked in proximity to each other, making communication and planning easier. In the aftermath of the revolt, 70 black men were jailed, with six “committing suicide” in custody. Twenty of those arrested were executed by burning and one was executed on the “breaking wheel.” New regulations were also put into place, prohibiting black men from meeting in groups larger than three or carrying firearms. Free men were also denied the right to own property. (From Workday Minnesota and Wikipedia)

Tupac Amaru

 April 6, 1781—Tupac Amaru was captured in Peru after being denounced by a turncoat. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 6, 1919—Bavarian Raterepublik was declared, with novelist B. Traven (e.g., Death Ship, Treasure of the Sierra Madre) serving on its Central Council of Workers, Soldiers and Farmers. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 6, 1968—Oakland police attacked the Black Panthers headquarters and assassinated an unarmed teenager, Bobby Hutton. (From the Daily Bleed)

UC’s Secret Lover. . . Wall Street . . . Students and Employees Get Screwed

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

California voters recently approved Proposition 30, which would temporarily raise taxes slightly on the wealthiest state residents while also imposing a regressive sales tax hike on the poorest residents. The measure is expected to help close California’s current $16 billion deficit, but not to restore the tens of billions in revenues that have been slashed over the past few years.

I recently wrote that despite the increased revenues from Prop 30, both of the state’s major university systems (CSU and UC) will be increasing fees and tuition for some students. In the case of UC, tuition for certain graduate programs could increase as much as 35%.

It is not simply that Prop 30 doesn’t come close to restoring pre-recession funding levels. It doesn’t. There is a deeper, institutional problem that Prop 30 merely covers up and plays into: The tax system and the political system are both designed to maximize the profits and bolster the economic interests of the employing class. Consider that Prop 30 did not touch capital gains, inheritance, corporate or property taxes. It did nothing to bring oil royalties up to the fairly low rates charged by Texas and Alaska. It essentially left the filthy rich filthy rich and the moderately rich still comfortably rich.

Even some of the increased revenues from Prop 30 that are earmarked for education will go directly into the hands of Wall Street bankers, rather than toward tuition reductions, increased course offerings or raises for professors. According to a recent report by UC Berkeley researchers, the UC Board of regents has made risky deals with Wall Street banks over the past decade known as interest rate swaps. They supposedly did this as a hedge against rising interest rates on variable rate bonds, but the swaps turned out to be a losing bet because interest rates dropped in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown and have remained low since then.

These swap deals have already cost UC almost $57 million, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. However, another $200 million in losses are anticipated over the next 30 years (the university is currently paying Wall Street close to $750,000 per month according to the Nation). UC is expected to receive $250 million from Prop 30, which is not even enough to cover its Wall Street debts, let alone provide any financial relief for its students or employees.  Nevertheless, the university plans on spending $10 million a year from Prop 30 to service its Wall Street debt, leaving little for tuition relief, increased course offerings, student services or wage increases for employees. Tuition has tripled over the past few years, while salaries for professors and other employees have remained stagnant. Indeed, the regents are warning of more cuts and tuition increases, despite Prop 30, including a 24% across-the-board tuition hike over the next four years.

One might reasonably wonder how the regents made such a blunder. After all, it is well known among gamblers that, in the end, the House always comes out on top. But this wasn’t simply a matter of some naïve regents making a bad gamble. Rather, the regents ARE Wall Street insiders. They not only knew exactly what they were doing, but likely did it to enrich themselves and their cronies at the expense of taxpayers, students and employees. For example, the regent’s chief financial officer, Peter Taylor, came from Lehman Bros, where he had been managing director for public finance at a time when Lehman Bros. had been hired to help expand UC's debt load. Taylor continued to work for Lehman Bros while he was a regent. UC’s interest rate swap with Lehman ultimately cost the university over $23 million.

Similarly, UC Regent Monica Lozano has earned $1.5 million serving on the Board of Bank of America at the same time the university negotiated interest rate swaps with BofA worth a potential $28 million in profits to the bank. UC Executive Vice President Nathan Brostrom—a former managing director for public finance at JP Morgan—worked on financing for UC at a time when his former company was hired as a bond broker and swap counterparty for the UC Davis Medical Center, a deal in which the university ultimately lost $22.5 million. And UC Regent Russell Gould, who chaired the finance committee from 2008 to 2009 and the full board from 2009 to 2010, was receiving a salary from Wachovia/Wells Fargo from 1996 to 2009. (The regents’ biographies have been excerpted from the UC report)

The UC Berkeley report notes that the university obtained the interest rate swaps in order to finance the development of medical centers on three of its campuses (UCLA, UCD and UCSF). Since the medical centers are money-making enterprises for the university and since student tuition was used as collateral for the interest rate swaps, there was a financial incentive for the regents to jack up tuition. However, the university never had a chance to win on its gambles as the interest rate swaps were all based on rates determined by LIBOR, rates that were rigged in one of the largest banking scandals in history. (BofA is one of the banks currently under investigation in the LIBOR scandal).

Some have argued that the swaps made sense at the time and that the regents, despite the conflict of interest, had the university’s best interests in mind. However, if this was true, one might expect them to re-negotiate their loans or sue the banks, as have many other large institutions that have been screwed by similar deals. So far, they have made no indication that either plan is in the works. On the contrary, some regents are arguing that the swaps are still good deals, since the bonds don’t mature until 2047.

Meanwhile, the university will continue to transfer three quarters of a million dollars per month from the taxpayers to Wall Street banks to service their loans, thus keeping the bankers comfortable and their employees and students ever more stretched.

America’s Class War Against Youth

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

If the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement accomplished anything it was to focus public anger on America’s extreme and growing wealth gap, portraying it as the product of the greed and selfishness of the richest 1%.

This overly simplistic view obscures the actual socioeconomic relationships that are responsible for the transfer of wealth from the majority to the few, as well as who comprises this “few.”

The wealth gap is actually the by-product and goal of capitalism and the sociopolitical institutions that bolster it. All bosses in private businesses, regardless of how rich they may be, make their profits by paying their employees less than the value of their labor and pocketing this surplus value as profits (i.e., exploitation). The owner and employer classes transfer additional wealth to themselves through a taxation system that allows them to pay a lower effective tax rate than their employees pay, and through a legislative and legal system that facilitates their acquisition of more capital, sometimes even if it injures, sickens or kills others.

Exploitation of workers is the primary source of the wealth gap, particularly between employers and employees and the source of the so-called obscene wealth we see among the “1%.” However, wealth is also transferred from the young to the old, resulting in a growing wealth gap between older Americans and the young.

The wealth gap between younger and older Americans is currently the widest on record. In 1984 Americans who were sixty-five and over made ten times as much as those under the age of thirty-five. By 2008, older Americans were earning nearly forty-seven times as much as the younger age group. (For more, see the following articles in Esquire and Newsweek).

This wealth gap is not small, either. The median net worth of households headed by someone 65 or older has increased 42% since 1984, to a comfortable $170,494, while the median net worth for younger households has declined 68% to a desperate $3,662, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Pew study attributes some of the wealth transfer to timing: The older generation benefited from living and working in a strong economy and a long rise in housing prices. Conversely, older Americans have suffered far less under the current recession, with the median net worth of those under 35 falling 37% between 2005 and 2010, while falling only 13% for those over the age of 65. The recession has also forced many older Americans to continue working longer than they would have in the past, squeezing many younger workers out of jobs. The percentage of the workforce under the age of 25 has declined 13.2% since 2008, while rising 7.6% for those over 55.

However, the trend began decades before the current recession and has been facilitated by changes in government policy, which have been promoted by an aging politician class (today’s Congress is the oldest since World War II). For example, the federal government now spends $480 billion on Medicare, but only $68 billion on education, according to the Esquire article. As a whole, the U.S. government spends 7 times as much on its seniors as it does on its children, per capita, according to a 2009 Brookings Institution study. Mike Males writes that younger workers are currently contributing 15% of their payroll income to pay for Social Security and Medicare payments for seniors, since Congress gutted the Social Security Trust Fund (originally designed to cover future generation’s benefits) to pay for current government needs.

The transfer of wealth from young to old has been a hallmark of the Republican Party and would have been taken to new extremes under the Ryan tax plan. According to Males, younger Americans would have suffered under this plan in direct proportion to how young they are. Virtually every federal program designed to benefit the young and the poor would have been gutted or eliminated, including food stamps, Medicaid and job training. Federal spending on education would have been slashed by one-third. But Social Security and Medicare for today’s seniors would have been preserved. At the same time, median-income households headed by people 55-65 would have received tax breaks of roughly $1,200, while median-income households headed by people under 25 would have lost hundreds of dollars.

However, the Democrats have also contributed to the generational wealth transfer. Under Obama’s 2012 budget, for example, Medicare and Social Security were left alone, while the Adolescent Family Life Program and the Career Pathways Innovation Fund were ended. Likewise, the AmeriCorps program was slashed and had to turn away 75% of applicants last year, while recent changes to the Pell grant program will cost students an estimated $100 billion over the next ten years, according to the Esquire article. Similarly, Obama’s plan for avoiding the “fiscal cliff” involves raising the age of eligibility for Medicare benefits and cutting benefits for future recipients of Medicare and Social Security. In other words, the benefits of today’s seniors would be preserved and subsidized on the backs of today’s youth.

So far I have only discussed the tangible, present-day ways younger Americans have been screwed. They have also been saddled with an enormous debt they will be paying well into the future through higher taxes, reduced benefits and services, and delayed retirement (or no retirement). The per capita debt in the U.S. is now $50,000, with much of it going toward paying for the longest wars in U.S. history (i.e., Iraq and Afghanistan) and huge tax breaks for the wealthy. Yet, the average student also owes $12,700 to the credit card companies and will owe $27,000 to college loans creditors, according to the Newsweek article. And despite incurring all this debt, college graduates’ income has dropped 11% over the last decade for men and 7.6% for women.

While some of this wealth transfer has merely helped middle class baby boomers live comfortable middle class retirements, much of it is really about helping banks, Wall Street investors, and large businesses reap ever larger profits on the backs of youths. Skyrocketing student debt, for example, contributes to the poverty of younger Americans. Yet, Obama’s student debt repayment plan may actually increase debt payments for many students, while his plan to cut spending on higher education by $10 billion could increase student need for loans, thus increasing profits for lenders and the hedge funds that trade students loans.

Charter School Enrollment Rising Rapidly

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Between the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years, the number of students enrolled in charter schools rose by nearly 13%, to just over two million students nationwide, according to a new report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. 110 school districts across the nation have at least 10% of their students enrolled in charter schools, 16 more than last year.

New Orleans leads the nation with 70% of its students enrolled in charter schools, the New York Times reported last week. Detroit, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis, each have more than 30% of their public school students attending charter schools. New York City saw a 24% jump in charter school enrollment over the past year. California currently has the highest total number of charter schools, according to the WSWS.

The rise of charter schools has come primarily as a result of a highly effective and well-funded PR campaign financed by billionaires like Bill Gates, the Waltons, Eli Broad and others, that has painted the entire traditional public school system as a complete failure and charter schools as their best salvation. They have spent millions of dollars propping up fledgling charters that could not possibly have survived or thrived without private donations. They have bought politicians and initiatives in many states, resulting in laws that facilitate the creation of new charter schools and that defund traditional schools (like NCLB and Parent Trigger laws, which have been used to foist charter schools upon communities). Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers have also jumped into the charter school circus, recognizing the large profits to be made in public education (see here and here).

Proponents have even created their own reality with bogus studies that “prove” that charter schools are far more effective than they actually are. In reality, charter schools are no better than traditional public schools. A national study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford found that while 17% of charter schools produced better results than neighborhood public schools, 37% were significantly worse, and the rest were no different. Also, many of the studies that have found superior outcomes at charter schools were based on dubious or misinterpreted data.

Furthermore, charter schools are far more segregated than traditional public schools. 70% of black charter school students attend schools with 90-100% minority students, 75% of whom are also black, yet black students make up only one-third of all charter school students. Half of Latino charter students also attend racially isolated minority schools. Charter schools are also segregated by class. While, poor students make up 40% of public school students, they make up only 17% of private religious and 10% of private secular school students. (For more on charter school segregation (see here, here and here.) Additionally, many push out or block special education students and English Language Learners from enrolling. In contrast, traditional public schools must accept all students, regardless of socioeconomic status, ethnicity or physical or mental ability.

Today In Labor History: April 6

April 6, 1712 - New York City saw its first slave revolt, which occurred just north of Wall Street, in response to the execution of twenty-one blacks for killing nine whites. Conditions were ideal for a revolt, as black slaves and freemen worked in proximity to each other, making communication and planning easier. In the aftermath of the revolt, 70 black men were jailed, with six “committing suicide” in custody. Twenty of those arrested were executed by burning and one was executed on the “breaking wheel.” New regulations were also put into place, prohibiting black men from meeting in groups larger than three or carrying firearms. Free men were also denied the right to own property. (From Workday Minnesota and Wikipedia)

Tupac Amaru

 April 6, 1781—Tupac Amaru was captured in Peru after being denounced by a turncoat. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 6, 1919—Bavarian Raterepublik was declared, with novelist B. Traven (e.g., Death Ship, Treasure of the Sierra Madre) serving on its Central Council of Workers, Soldiers and Farmers. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 6, 1968—Oakland police attacked the Black Panthers headquarters and assassinated an unarmed teenager, Bobby Hutton. (From the Daily Bleed)

Is The OWS Movement Too Nice?

OWS Poster (Image from Flickr, by Takomabibelot)

Aside from the few allegations of protesters throwing paint, smashing windows, or spray painting buildings, the tactics of the OWS have been pretty peaceful, mellow and nice. Sure, it troubles some that they have persistently tried to live outdoors in public where their frustration and anger are clearly visible to all, or that they have shut down a few terminals of a few ports for a few hours, costing a few companies a few million dollars. But let’s be honest, when compared with protests of the past, particularly those occurring during the Great Depression and the numerous violent mining and train strikes between 1870s and 1920s, the OWS movement has been pretty damned pleasant and nonthreatening. Consider the following historical examples:

The Great Upheaval of 1877

“There was a time in the history of France when the poor found themselves oppressed to such an extent that forbearance ceased to be a virtue, and hundreds of heads tumbled into the basket. That time may have arrived with us.”

These words were spoken by a cooper to a crowd of 10,000 workers in St. Louis, armed with lathes and clubs, participating in the national wave of strikes known as the Great Upheaval.  Other speakers in St. Louis openly called for the use of arms and violence, not only to defend themselves against the violence of the militias and police hired by the bosses to suppress the Great Strike, but for outright revolutionary aims:

“All you have to do. . .” said one speaker, “is to unite on one idea—that the workingmen shall rule this country. What man makes, belongs to him, and the workingmen made this country.”

St. Louis Commune, 1877 Great Upheaval

The Great Upheaval began in the fourth year of the nation’s worst depression in history. It came in the wake of great accumulation and concentration of wealth by a few major capitalists, particularly the railroad owners. In 1862, Congress granted them huge swaths of land. In 1863, they passed the National Banking Act, which greatly increased the wealth and power of financial capitalists.

The Great Upheaval began in Martinsburg, WV, on July 16, 1877, when the B&O (Baltimore and Ohio) Railroad slashed wages by 10%. The train crews refused to work, drove out the police and occupied the rail yards. Local townspeople backed the strikers. When the militia was sent in to run the trains, the strikers and their supporters derailed the trains and guarded the switches at gunpoint. While they halted all freight movement, they continued to move mail and passengers, thus maintaining public support. When militia reinforcements were sent in, most mutinied or refused to fight, as they were sympathetic to the workers. (For more, see here, here and here).

1892    Frisco Mine was dynamited by striking Coeur D’Alene miners after they discovered they had been infiltrated by Pinkertons and after one of their members had been shot. Prior to this, the mine owners had increased work hours, decreased pay and brought in a bunch of scabs to replace striking workers. Ultimately, over 600 striking miners were imprisoned without charge by the military in order to crush the strike. (Sources: Wikipedia; Fire in the Hole)

1899    Bunker Hill: Bloody strikes had been going on at this and other Idaho mines over the course of the 1890s. The mine owners had been using scabs, Pinkertons, armed goons, soldiers, lock-outs and other tactics to squeeze the workers and crush their union. In retaliation, the miners loaded a train with dynamite and delivered it to the Bunker Hill mine in 1899, killing one scab and one WFM member. (Sources: Laborers.org; Wikipedia)

1920    Matewan Battle: Ten people were killed when coal company officials in Matewan, West Virginia, tried to remove striking union workers from company housing, sending agents from the Baldwin-Felts detective agency. Sheriff Hatfield, who supported the miners’ right to organize, tried to arrest the detectives who, in turn, tried to arrest Hatfield. Unbeknownst to the detectives, they had been surrounded by miners. When the smoke had cleared, there were 7 dead detectives (including Albert and Lee Felts) and 4 dead townspeople. In the time leading up to the Battle of Matewan, numerous miners had been assassinated by vigilantes, goons or detectives. (From Workday Minnesota, Wikipedia, Daily Bleed and Matewanwv.com)

Miners with Bomb Dropped by U.S.

1921    the Battle of Blair Mountain: 20,000 coal miners marched to the anti-union stronghold Logan County to overthrow Sheriff Dan Chaffin, the coal company tyrant who murdered miners with impunity. The Battle of Blair Mountain was one of the largest civil uprisings in U.S. history and the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War, lasting 5 days and involving 10,000-15,000 coal miners confronting an army of scabs and police. The battle began after Sheriff Sid Hatfield (an ally of the miners and hero from the Battle of Matewan) was assassinated by Baldwin-Felts agents. Much of the region was still under martial law as a result of the Battle of Matewan. Miners began to leave the mountains armed and ready for battle. Mother Jones tried to dissuade them from marching into Logan and Mingo Counties, fearing a bloodbath. Many accused her of losing her nerve. The miners ignored her and a battle ensued between miners and cops, private detectives, scabs and eventually the U.S. military. The uprising was quashed after aerial bombardment by the U.S. government. (From Workday Minnesota, Wikipedia and the Daily Bleed) (From the Daily Bleed)

January 3, 1931 Roughly 500 farmers marched into the business section of England, Arkansas, to demand food for their starving families after their crops were ruined by a long drought. The farmers threatened to take the food by force if it was not freely provided to them, one of scores of such incidents that occurred during the Great Depression (and surprisingly have not happened more frequently during the current one). (From Workday Minnesota)

January 4, 1933 – Angered by increasing farm foreclosures, members of Iowa's Farmers Holiday Association threatened to lynch banking representatives and law officials who instituted foreclosure proceedings for the duration of the Depression. In April, 600 farmers battled the sheriff and his deputies to prevent a foreclosure. A group of farmers dragged a district judge from his chair, put a rope around his neck, and threaten to hang him unless he promised not to issue any more eviction notices. That same month, state officers in Crawford County were beaten, prompting the Iowa governor to declare martial law in three counties and send in the National Guard. (From the Daily Bleed)

Pragmatism Beats Out Occupy and Bunga Bunga for Word of Year

Merriam-Webster is calling “pragmatic” the word of the year, saying there were more searches for this one word in 2011 than any other word, including “occupy,” according to the Daily Mail.

Congressional Super Committe (by DonkeyHotey)

 Searches for the term “pragmatic” spiked this past year when Congress voted to increase the debt ceiling and when its super committee tried to slash the deficit. This I found curious considering that the word “pragmatic” is far more useful, comprehensible and, one would think, more well-known than the words “deficit” or “debt ceiling.” But maybe Americans’ attention and curiosity glazed over once they got past the “pragmatism” that was being imposed on them by their rulers. Perhaps that was all they needed to know, that those who truly understand these things were simply creating a logical solution to incomprehensible problems, and that was good enough!

That “pragmatic” beat out “occupy” will surely be a disappointment to the 99%, who are certain that they truly are the 99% and that their favorite tactic, ”occupying” should therefore have received 99% of the votes, while “pragmatic,” which is clearly what the 1% want the 99% to be, should have only received 1% of the votes. This paradox may best be explained by the 99%’s confidence that they all know what they’re talking about already when they say they are “occupying” this and that. Therefore, the 99% don’t need to look up the word “occupy.” In contrast, as members of the 99% who are subject to the “pragmatism” being imposed by the 1%, they felt inclined to do a little homework and make sure that this “pragmatism” business really was in their best interests.

(Image from Flickr, Boris.rasin)

 While the 99% are all certain that everyone understands the term “Occupy,” and are now using the term for most anything they want to change—Wall Street, Wal-Mart, Department of Education, internet, Republican minds, couches, Sesame Street—they seem to forget that their own government—which is to say, the 1%—has been “occupying” Iraq and Afghanistan for the past decade, not to mention Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Samoa for much longer. So, if we add together the occupations being carried out in the name of the 99% and those being carried out by the 1%, it would seem that everyone is occupying or being occupied.

Apropos (which, alas, was not one of the contenders this year) to ending military and imperialist occupations, two of my favorite pieces of political graffiti from the 1980s were: “U.S. out of America,” and the variant “U.S. out of my reproductive organs.” There were, of course, some nationalistic feminists in those days, one of whom spray-painted the following on a San Francisco wall: “Free Tampons, Not Kuwait.” Inspired by these retro-slogans, I would like to suggest some new slogans for the 2010s like: “Free Time, Not Markets!” or “In A Classless Society We Are All the 50%!”

This double use of the term “occupy” to mean something good that “the people” do to resist the “bad governments” that “occupy” other nations for “bad reasons,” reminds me of the term “collaborate,” which is supposedly a good thing that good teachers do to help their students, even though it is also a terrible thing that the Vichy government did to help the Nazis. Both “occupation” and “collaboration” can lead to repression, brutality and death for innocent people. In fact, the terms are quite connected in that occupiers rely on collaborators to help them achieve their goals. The Palestinian Authority has acted as a collaborator with the Israeli government in the suppression of the Palestinian people. The mainstream trade unions have acted as collaborators with the capitalists to ensure that working people stay on the job and accept compromises and take-backs that keep profits high and salaries low. Scabs collaborate with bosses to undermine strikes. Spies and informants collaborate with the police and military to undermine activist groups like OWS.

Teacher “collaboration” is a funny thing. The notion of a bunch of professionals sitting down together to brainstorm solutions to educational problems, develop innovative curriculum, and discuss the issues and needs of shared students certainly makes a lot of sense and seems worthwhile. However, the term “collaboration” in the context of education is a fraught, poorly defined and often abused term. It is commonly used to mean “embrace what I say and what I’m doing and graciously assist in it, whether or not you agree.” Teachers who ask too many questions, who point out logical inconsistencies or who critique reforms and policies are often accused of being “bad collaborators.” Teacher evaluations generally include how well they “collaborate,” a subjective observation that can be used to punish teachers who aren’t cheerleaders for the reform du jour.

Charlie Sheen Has Tigers Blood (image from Flickr, by Ssoosay)

 Speaking of collaboration, what could be a greater collaboration than that between Hollywood and the public? Hollywood provides billions of dollars’ worth of mindless garbage for our consumption and we not only consume it hungrily, but stalk their stars’ every move, no matter how pitiful. Take “Tiger’s Blood,” another top contender for word of the year—a term I had no idea was now in the popular vernacular. I had to look this one up, being the out-of-touch OG (old guy) that I am and was delighted to discover that it came from a Tweet by Charlie Sheen. Tiger’s Blood, it seems, is what runs through his veins, somehow making him impervious to addiction (and likely contributing to both his inflated ego and his stupidity). The fact that this word went viral and was even considered for word of the year is testament to how desperate the American people are for a distraction to their miseries. Wetting oneself over royal weddings and scandals is pathetic enough, but following every ridiculous tweet by drunken Hollywood bottom feeders like Charlie Sheen??? Come on, people, get a life!

Speaking of getting a life, I would like to humbly (or humblebragly) request that those esteemed billionaires who seem to know so much about how to do my job, kindly eat feces and die. Yes, “humblebrag” was another top contender. According to Urban Dictionary, it means to subtly let other people know how fantastic you are by doing it in a self-deprecating manner, or self-promotion of the most despicable and loathsome sort, generally delivered via social media. An example of a “humblebrag” would be if I posted the following to my blog or Twitter feed: ”As everybody knows, teachers all come from the bottom one-third of their graduating classes. So the 4.0 GPA I earned was nothing compared with the 12.0 GPA’s earned by the overachievers at my university.”

Would Anyone Care To Bunga Bunga? (Berlusconi caricature by DonkeyHotey, flickr)

 My vote for the word of the year, however, has to go to an antiquated, but very evocative term that made a recent comeback. “Bunga bunga” dates back to 1910 or earlier, according to Wikipedia. However, it grew in popularity last year when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi used it to refer to his infamous orgies. Wikipedia says that “bunga bunga” may mean an underwater orgy, an African-style ritual performed by naked women for male spectators, with pole dancing and competitive stripteases by women dressed as nurses and cops. My guess is the term is a variation on bung or bunghole, as in having one’s head in the bung or “Whoops, Silvio’s stuck his tongue in the bung again.” Or, as Gargantua recited to Grangousier at the tender young age of five (In Rabelais’ political satire): 

Thy Bung

Hath Flung

Some Dung

                --On us