Month: March 2016

Friday, March 18, 2016
WASHINGTON, March 18 – Sen. Bernie Sanders urged Secretary Jack Lew in a letter today to use the Department of the Treasury’s untapped authority to prevent Pfizer’s planned maneuver to dodge taxes in the United States.
If allowed to proceed, Pfizer will use its planned merger with Ireland-based Allergan to identify as an Irish corporation for tax purposes but will continue to reap the benefits of being an American-based corporation. Preventing the merger could save as much as $35 billion in revenue, according to a recent study from Americans for Tax Fairness.
“The stakes are high,” Sanders wrote. “I find it ironic that some of my Republican colleagues, in their internal budget negotiations, claim that $30 billion in deficit-reduction is required for the coming fiscal year. Preventing the inversion planned by just one company, Pfizer, could produce more deficit-reduction than the cuts they are demanding.”
Sanders introduced the Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act last year to prevent offshore corporate tax avoidance schemes, including inversions.
Several respected legal scholars have concluded that until such legislation is enacted the Treasury Department has the authority to block the tax dodging techniques that will become available to Pfizer if the proposed merger with Allergan is completed.
Pfizer has consistently overcharged Americans for prescription drugs. Since 2014, the pharmaceutical company has hiked the prices of seven of its top selling drugs by an average of 39 percent. Pfizer also charges 12 times as much in the U.S. under Medicare for these drugs as it charges in Ireland, where it’s claiming a new address for tax purposes.
“Enough is enough,” Sanders said. “Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies cannot be allowed evade taxes and rip off American patients who already pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.”
To download Sanders’ letter, click here.

Riveting  Congressional hearing on Michigan’s governor poisoning the people of Flint!
HEY! What about the rest of the country?

The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas’ev, Volume II. Edited by Jack V. Haney. 2015. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 555 pages. ISBN: 978-1-4968-0274-3 (hard cover).
Reviewed by Christine Goldberg, University of California, Los Angeles   [Word count: 912 words]
Volume 1 of this set was reviewed here in May 2015.[1] Rather than
extend those remarks about the great importance of the Afanas’ev
collection for folktale research, the present review will concentrate
on why and how the tales, particularly those here in Volume 2, will
appeal to readers.
By definition, traditional tales exist in variants. This
characteristic is the basis of comparative folktale research but it
remains extremely difficult to convey to readers. The Complete
Folktales of A. N. Afanas’ev is, of any English-language folktale
book I know, the most suited to this purpose. Texts are presented
adjacent to other variants of the same tale type, sometimes in groups
of four or five. Although the sequence of events in several texts
will thus be similar, their style is varied enough that each version
can be distinctly remembered.
Volume 2 starts out with tales that feature a splendid, magic horse
(comparable to the Hungarian táltos horse) who helps an unpromising
hero win his bride. In tales 179 and 180, the youngest brother takes
the place of his two elder siblings watching overnight at their
father’s grave, and thereby wins a spectacular horse that lets him
win the hand of a princess. He goes incognito to three balls and is
recognized at last (the story arc is quite similar to that of
Cinderella). All the sections are trebled: the grave watch, the
jumping contest, and the balls. In tale 181 the three brothers each
watch for one night at the grave; there are three jumps but only one
feast. In tale 182 the youngest brother watches at the grave for all
three nights, there are three jumps but only one feast.
Tales 182 through 184 add a second section. After the hero and the
princess are married, the hero and his brothers-in-law are sent on
quests for wonderful game animals. The brothers-in-law claim to have
hunted the animals but, because they actually bought them from the
hero in exchange for joints from their fingers, they are shown to be
liars. In tale 184, the youngest brother watches on all three nights
and receives magic bridles that allow him to control three horses
which help him win the princess; in the quest part of the tale, he
uses the same bridles to energize three nags. The horse’s name in
tales 179, 182, and 183 is Sivko-Burko or something similar. The
princess recognizes the winner of the jumping contest by a mark on
his forehead (no. 184), the brilliant forehead that is exposed when
he removes a covering cloth (no. 182), or a piece of cloth he grabbed
when his horse made the winning jump (no. 179). In tale 183,
Sivka-Burka first appears only in the middle, but we can use the
grave-watch episode of the other variants to understand why such a
horse would want to assist the hero. Tales 295 and 296 present
another unpromising hero who, with the help of a magic horse,
successfully fights a war.
Such descriptions may seem uninteresting or even confusing, but when
a careful reader visualizes what happens in each variant, the
different possibilities — longer or shorter descriptions, another
way to cover an episode, a different beginning or ending, etc. —
reverberate to produce an ideal or mental form of the tale type(s),
with numerous possibilities for different elaborations or for
succinctness, that is much more interesting than any single variant.
Among the 140 texts in Volume 2, there are at least eighteen such
clusters of three or more interrelated variants, plus many more tale
types represented by a pair of variants. Volume 1, with eight
variants of the firebird tale ATU 551, resonates in the same way.
Because of the arrangement of the whole collection — animal tales,
then wondertales, then non-magical tales and humorous anecdotes —
there are more magic tales in Volume 2.
Characters prominent in Volume 2 include various magicians, helpful
magical animals, and beautiful women whose accomplishments save their
sweethearts or husbands from danger. There are treacherous women —
sisters or stepsisters and stepmothers who scheme to do in the
protagonist (male or female) — and many female victims who have been
cast out, maimed, turned into animals, or otherwise abused. Beginning
around tale no. 300, the flamboyant magic fades out, and most of the
remaining tales are about good and bad luck, fate, or trickery.
In addition to identifying AT type numbers and sometimes Grimm KHM
analogs, Jack Haney’s brief notes are packed with useful information
about the geographic extent of the tale types represented, important
printed sources, and influence from other genres such as epic songs
(byliny). The notes to tales 283 to 289, for example, reveal two or
three different forms of AT 707, The Three Golden Sons. In two
variants, similar to those throughout Europe, the mother, falsely
accused of having given birth to animals, is immured in a building
and her children are sent on life-threatening quests. Four other
variants represent an East Slavic form in which the unfortunate
mother is set adrift with one of her sons in a barrel and the
marvelous children set up an impressive establishment that comes to
the attention of their royal father. And in one variant, the sons,
buried, return in the form of trees, then of lambs, and finally are
reborn from their mother, as themselves.
Volume 3 is scheduled to complete the set. Sadly, Jack Haney, the
editor and translator, also the editor and translator of The Complete
Russian Folktale (7 vols., 1998-2007), passed away last year.
Note
[1] See http://www.indiana.edu/~jfr/review.php?id=1864.

The Show Must Go On!: Popular Song in Britain During the First World War
by John Mullen 2015. Ashgate Publishing. ISBN: 978-1-4724-4159-1 (hard cover).

Reviewed by Jean Freedman [Word count: 624 words]

John Mullen’s The Show Must Go on! Popular Song in Britain during the First World War is part of the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series. Mullen discusses a variety of musical genres – including musical comedy, hymns, socialist choirs, and folk song – but his primary emphasis is on music hall, then in its heyday, though it would soon be eclipsed by records, film, and radio. Mullen’s research gives us a fascinating glimpse into a particular moment in British popular culture, the last time when live performance was the primary form of entertainment for the British working class. His book is packed with information about virtually every aspect of music hall: organization, working conditions, song lyrics, artists, artisans, and impresarios, as well as the massive changes wrought on this form by the First World War. For the scholar of popular music, Mullen provides a treasure trove of material.

The book is divided into six chapters interspersed with four brief portraits of music hall stars (Harry Lauder, Vesta Tilley, Marie Lloyd, and Harry Champion) and a brief conclusion at the end. Chapter 1, “Portrait of an Industry,” provides a general introduction to the world of popular music during the First World War, with sections describing the history, organization, ideology, workers, and audience for a variety of musical activities. Chapter 2 describes the many musical genres that were available on the stage during this era. Chapter 3 takes a detailed look at the songs themselves. Chapter 4 examines relations between the sexes, both in the songs and on the music hall stage, and in society at large where wartime allowed an expansion of women’s roles and first-wave feminists were agitating for birth control and the vote. Chapter 5 looks at songs written specifically for the war. Chapter 6 looks at forms of music other than music hall: hymns, folk songs, and soldiers’ songs. Mullen provides a bracing discussion of the political context and meanings of the songs, particularly in chapters 4 and 5.

The Show Must Go on! breaks no new theoretical ground, and the theoretical research that it cites is scant and not always up-to-date. The book’s great achievement lies in the massive amount of information it provides on the tightly focused subject of popular music, and particularly music hall, during the First World War. Scholars of music hall and of the popular culture of World War I will find this book invaluable. It will also appeal to scholars with a more general interest in British popular music or twentieth-century working-class culture. However, this narrow focus may also be the book’s greatest weakness. Because of its detailed examination of a relatively narrow topic, it is unlikely to engage readers who do not already have an interest in the subject. There are a few mistakes. For example, Mullen includes the song title “I Want to Go Back to Michigan” in a list of pseudo-“Dixie” songs. His section on folk songs relies almost entirely on the work of Cecil Sharp, yet he leaves the reader with the erroneous impression that Sharp’s English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians was based on fieldwork done in Canada. The folklorist may also take issue with Mullen’s assertion that music hall songs could change in response to the changes of the war years, while folk songs could not. Finally, I wish that the brief interludes about music hall stars were longer and more detailed; in some ways, they are the most compelling parts of the book. Mullen’s extensive research covers so many diverse topics that the human element – the experience of music hall performers and audience members – is frequently given short shrift. He gives free reign to this element in the interludes, and I found myself wanting more.