let them eat...caviar.

This might seem like a stretch, but I am thinking that the Brazilian Mafia and Lilly Ledbetter (well, technically Goodyear, the company she worked for) have something in common. I'm no Mother Theresa, but truly there are very few people in my life that I don't like. I may stand on my soap box about things people do that annoy, frustrate or downright piss me off, but I've also been known to find something I can learn from in just about anyone. But (a big "but" here)...if you mess with my livelihood, you are on The List, possibly for life.

A person's ability to provide for themselves and their families is a core issue and value for me, passed down from...you guessed it, my beloved mother. Both from a work ethic standpoint, as well as the right, when showing a hard work ethic, to reap the benefit of that hard work. Don't mess with a hard working, diligent, purposeful person who is doing what they can and need to to provide for themselves and those they love. Period.

Stop shaking your head. I know.

This value has almost no real-life application. People are always messing with our ability to provide for ourselves. Someone's always jonesing for your job, even if indirectly. Greed, economics, skill development, technology, group dynamics, the "bottom line"...there are many, many things working against us. Some stories, however, go way, way beyond all of that.

I was sitting with an old friend and his dad last night. We were telling fun old stories involving mutual friends and experiences, when my friend's dad drew me into this incredible story about how the Brazilian Mafia took his father down. Big money, agriculture, alcohol and international trade. Mind-bending details like volleyball-sized bowls of smuggled caviar, Rolex watches, private jets, getting waved through at international checkpoints due to the influence with/from the highest levels of government and commerce. Much of that actually came after the Brazilian Mafia incident, but it best illustrates the blood in the water. My friend's grandfather was encouraged to accept an offer to sell his distributorship. He responded to this encouragement by climbing over the desk and grabbing the Brazilian by the throat. I suspect this didn't go over very well with the guys down south. He endured movie-script-worthy retaliation and bugged his own office á la Watergate with, what I imagine in my head, a bright red button under the lip of his desk to initiate a recording device. It didn't matter. They eventually won. There were rumors of untimely deaths and he, while not losing his life, lost his livelihood. His son (my friend's father) still ended up in the same industry and he, my friend and his brother would many, many years later be sitting at a table eating Russian caviar like it was salsa. Some small retribution I guess, but his father died having lost his life's work.

Lilly Ledbetter, according to an interview with her on NPR today, had her finest moment one year ago on Jan 29, 2009 when Obama signed the Fair Pay Act. Interestingly, this was his first real piece of legislation as President. For Lilly, that moment was roughly 30 years after she received her first paycheck as a supervisor in an Alabama tire factory. A paycheck that was considerably lower than her male counterparts. She did not know that she was being paid less until almost 20 years later. Her lower pay rate affected all of her compensation: retirement benefits, which are based on a percentage of pay, over-time pay and stock. She had a classic middle-class job and was short-changed significantly year after year. It affected the level of education she could afford for her children, health care, housing and food - her livelihood. She officially complained and suffered egregious retribution. She sued and she won. A jury awarded her $3.3 million dollars, which was immediately cut down to $300,000 due to a law that capped damages. Then the Supreme Court overturned it altogether saying she was entitled to ZERO because she filed the lawsuit more than 180 days after receiving the first discriminatory paycheck. The bill signed in January of 2009 essentially means you can sue up to 180 days after receipt of any discriminatory paycheck. Some small retribution, maybe even bigger than small, but Lilly, at age 71, lives paycheck to paycheck. Maybe her caviar is the Fair Pay Act, but I say...let's hope she gets a book deal.

http://www.makelillyright.com/Make_Lilly_Right/Make_Lilly_Right.html

the smoking gun.

Ok - so here's my attempt at being relevant and timely: Obama is a smoker?! What the...?!

This little gem has been revealed in the past but maybe it's a slow news day because it's EVERYWHERE right now and this might actually increase his popularity. Well, maybe with the ironic, Beatnik'ish, liberal-type crowd. Wait, they already like him. Maybe he will attract the "we still smoke in dark films where we are honing our craft" Hollywood types. Well, pretty sure he's got that crowd locked-and-loaded as well. Teenagers that are trying to buck the system? Didn't vote in the last election. There's still the post-swing shift workers taking the edge off with a cigarette and an icy beer, or the nurses, the musicians, the college kids trying to look cool, the yuppies and gen x'ers who picked it back up after the dot com bubble burst, the ex-pats and their hangers on, David Duchovny on break from a sex addiction session...oh the list is long. Smoking is alive and well in the good ol' US of A. Is it possible that this closet-smoking side of our Commander in Chief makes him more accessible? More "man-next-door"? Joe Cool 2.0?

How many of us watched the now-infamous tobacco execs testify in front of Congress? If not on C-Span, or 60 Minutes, maybe in the Oscar-nominated film starring Russell Crowe "The Insider"? Isn't the ENTIRE state of California smoke-free in public places? Washington State is looking at banning smoking even in public parks. Hasn't the Truth Project (http://www.thetruth.com) stopped many of us in our tracks with their prolific messaging? According to the Centers for Disease Control, smoking has gone down from about 42% of the general adult population in 1965 to just under 20% in 2007 and yet, that still means that something like 44 million adult Americans smoke. Add in high school students (also 20% of them are smokers according to the CDC) and it's probably pretty close to the total number of people who voted for John McCain in the last election (58 million and some change). This is not an insignificant number. Clearly some messages (and the hit on the pocketbook with increased tobacco taxes) are working, thus the declining numbers, but what does it mean when a wildly popular President reveals that yes, he shares this vice?

I don't know, but I find this whole thing fascinating. I think this past summer he may have signed an anti-smoking bill giving unprecedented control over tobacco to the FDA, and yet maybe he's not unlike many, many Americans craving a drag when stressing about, oh I don't know...the unemployment rate, the state of the economy, Ahmadinejad, the decline of American car companies, North Korea? Can't you picture Obama, huddled outside the kitchen door to the White House, taking long drags, blowing smoke up into the night sky, muttering about the state of the Union? I can. It's maybe not the most confident of visuals, but it's a real one. The media is once again going nuts over throwing this in Obama's face, but I say, light 'em if you got 'em I guess.