How interesting it is to watch the dynamic play out between two daily newspapers in a small town.
One is a non-local, corporate conglomerate that employs some locals, maintains relationships with heavy-spending advertisers and censors and bans any and all content that is openly critical of either their publications or special ad account holders.
The other is locally owned and operated, continually voted local favorite, banned from the premises of at least one of the special ad account holders that use the other paper and would banish themselves into public stocks in the middle of town if even the thought of interfering with the First Amendment darkened their door.
Lee Mulcahy has been knighted as 'The Julian Assange of Aspen' and given honorary membership in the ranks of some of the best spitwad hurlers mankind has ever known, who also reside in the local demographic these two newspapers cover.
Oh, lordy, lordy! How the slant and rose-colored glasses authorizing the copy up on The Aspen Times tainted in favor of Aspen Skico when Lee was rockin and rollin with his organization 'People 4 a Living Wage'.
If it had not been for that 'other' paper The Aspen Daily News, we would never have known that there were other complaints, besides the Mulcahy complaint, filed with the National Labor Review Board against Aspen Skico.
We also would never have known that there were sanctions placed against the Skico as a result of Lee and his efforts.
How delicious is this morsel off The Aspen Times today!
"Skico designed the system to give instructors a voice without their forming a union..."
Leaking out to the Times, long after the fact, more of the details that vindicate Lee Mulcahy is transparent, totally lacking in class and blatantly obvious as nothing but an attempt at damage control.
A very poor attempt at that.
Congratulations to all future employees of Aspen Skico!
Because of the hard-won efforts of employees who came before you there will now be transparency within the organization.
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20 comments:
Translation:
Aspen Skico, owned by the Crown family had a rebellion on their hands (probably similar to Mulcahy’s rebellion) years ago.
To stop that from forming a union they tucked it all in to giving a few crumbs like the lines of communication to management opening.
The peons didn’t realize (or were too keenly aware at that point that they would be fired from jobs they’d worked for years to build up seniority in) they already had the right to the things they were asking for. By law.
Years later along comes Lee Mulcahy who points out that law and has the guts to go get the law.
After Lee’s social assassination at the hands of the Skico, the Crown family now tries to hide how much it’s going to hurt the bottom line and their crushing labor rules in-house.
I’ll run with Nanny on this one.
This is a delicious morsel of info from the Times is.
What a shame our beautiful place to live has to resort to whistleblowers becoming persecuted so the rich and powerful can become richer and more powerful. I say get rid of the rich and powerful. Who needs them? Seriously.
Thank you Nanny, gws and anon for the words of encouragement.
I'm often asked if "it was worth it?"
2 examples from Slavoj Zizek:
In Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus,” there is an exchange between Spartacus and the pirate who offers help in transporting the slaves across the Adriatic where the pirate inquires to Spartacus if he realizes his struggle on behalf of the little people is doomed and will be crushed by the Roman Army? Why does he, Spartacus, continue to fight to the end, in the face of possible defeat?
Spartacus’s reply is that their struggle is not simply to improve their condition but a principled “rebellion on behalf of freedom, so even if they lose…, their fight will not have been in vain since they will have asserted their unconditional commitment to freedom-in other words, their act of rebellion itself, whatever the outcome, already counts as a success, insofar as it instantiates the immortal idea of freedom.”
When we engage in this struggle , we are following Paul’s surprising definition of it: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against leaders, against authorities, against the world rulers [“kosmokratoras”] of this darkness, against the spiritual wickedness in the heavens [Ephesians 6:12].
Zizek translates it into today’s language: “Our struggle is not against actual corrupt individuals, but against those in power in general, against their authority, against the global order…. To engage in this struggle means to endorse Alain Badiou’s formula: “mieux vaut un desastre qu’un desetre.” In other words, better to take the risk with possible catastrophe, than to “vegetate in the eventiless utilitairian-hedonist survival of what Nietzsche termed the “last men.”
We must reject the liberal ideology of victimhood, with its reduction of politics [Obama] to avoiding the worst “choice,” renouncing all positive projects and taking the “least bad option.” Zizek notes Viennese Arthur Feldman, who bitterly stated that the price we usually pay for survival is our lives.
Once a person feels that knowing that they have to do something, there's no choice left.
Where the fork in the road comes is when the force you're up against comes to the realization that they have a problem on their hands now and must make a choice to engage.
Like a few other things in this Valley, the Skico made the choices they did when they reached that point. From those really poor choices in handling what Mulcahy and others presented it's been the Skico's presence, not Mulcahy's. The minute the censoring, the banning, the class snobbery and the sending out of the Skico soldiers, Paula and Jim Crown showed who and what they really are. The tide turned at that point and victory became Mulcahy's.
Where do you find worth in something that someone else did to you? Mulcahy did not make the Crown's choices for them. That honor is all their own.
Aspen is Lee Mulcahy's home. The mountains are his life blood. I'm impressed with a couple of new things I see on the blog today, Nanny.
What you said directed toward the Glenwood Springs myriad of issues.
"When the only way to silence strong voices is to ban, censor, demand, fail duty and deceive albeit intentional or not; there will be no silencing of strong voices."
and this:
"Truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."
I would say that in the end, Lee Mulcahy's choices will bring him peace.
Jim and Paula Crown's will not.
Then again the Skico still has a lot of choices left to make now don't they? Maybe the influence of all that has come around will help them make better ones in the future.
Will this time be studied as the Great Depression II in 50 years?
When David Cameron jets back from Tuscany to a riot-ravaged London in danger of spreading all over the United Kingdom, all bets are off.
As Roger Cohen states in the NYT, "August aborted this year. The beach lost out to the barricades. A time of outrage is upon us."
The fury in British cities follows huge social unrest in Greece, Spain, and Portugal. Cohen continues:
"The united Europe of today is built on the ashes of successive empires — from the Roman to the British — that ended in one form or other of violent convulsion. Now the American quasi-imperium, and more generally the dominion of the West, is ending, not rapidly but steadily.
Growth, jobs, expansion, excitement — and, yes, possibility — lie in the great non-Western arc from China through India to South Africa and Brazil. Go South! Go East! That’s the dictum of the age but not always practicable in Peckham or Peoria. The world has been turned upside-down. What we are witnessing is how shaken Western societies are by such inversion.
As new powers emerge, globalization has altered the relationship between capital and labor in the former’s favor. Many more cheap workers have become available outside the West as technology has eliminated distance. Returns on capital have proved higher relative to wages. That’s the story of the post-cold-war period. The gap between rich and poor has become a gulf.
The only people who walked away unscathed from the great financial binge that preceded this mess were its main architects and greatest beneficiaries: bankers, financiers and hedge-fund honchos."
Why can't our leaders admit it? The system is broken: Our laws and our foreign policy are written by lobbyist who work for the highest bidder. How do we take the $ out of politics?
We must not lose hope. America has done it before with leaders that were not simply looking towards their reelection: Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and FDR.
There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching it terminal crisis. Slavoj Zizek identifies the four horsemen of this coming apocalypse; the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution and exploding social divisions [Dubai, Quatar, Aspen].
But, Zizek asks, if capitalism’s demise seems to many people to be the “end of the world,” how is the West dealing with life during the end times? Zizek in a fascinating new book argues that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining [pay protests, riots in England], followed by depression and withdrawl.
After passing through this zero-point, we must perceive the crisis as a new beginning.
Or as Mao Zedong put it: “There is great disorder under heaven; the situation is excellent.”
I'll go with Nanny on this one. The damage control effort is not just a poor one, it's hopelessly transparent. Will never fly.
What better time could there be for another push? Think about it.
The Skico fears free Americans as workers. Always has. Because of the specialty needs of the pros and their abilities and talents, they bend over backwards for that class of worker. So, forget about the soldiers and leave them be. For now.
The folks need to work, let them get in there and get a local job.
Plus, major heat is on with a microscopic eye with Udall, ICE, DEA, NLRB, some mainstream media and a lot of independent media all watching little money, big money and everything in-between.
What better time could there be to start a push asking that simple question of 'why all of a sudden for the first time in Aspen's recent history is there a huge opening of available jobs? We all know the answer already. The heat is on. Can't run out and manipulate that Visa system with senators and undercover feds hanging around looking over the shoulder of big money.
Then there's the PR aspect. Got to clean that up. People really are stopping their visits to Aspen. At least Americans are. With public awareness of the heat smoldering out there, probably the best shameless corporate strategy is protect the bottom line.
Let the folks go to work, encourage them to go get a job at Skico for the season.
At the same time, get a website really beefed up and optimized with press releases that show Udall's progress. Interview him, help him. Talk it all up big time. Go get Bob Berwyen who broke this thing on the visa abuses. Go get the Boyd. Leave behind the past and start the next round. Put Mulcahy up as the man behind the change and start to work with the heat and the Skico at the same time.
On that website do some listing of just the facts and use resort and destination abuses from all over the country in your statistics. Branch off into corporate power and the effect it has on the masses. Stick to the facts now because not only will there never be a better time and platform, Ben and Nanny are right. The horses left the barn a long time when Mulcahy started this thing, that's when he really won it. He locked in that win when he let Jim and Paula Crown be themselves. No sense beating a dead horse, it's over on Mulcahy's end.
It's a long ways to go on the Crown's end.
MR is right on this one.
Next push: New Years Day, living wage protest, ... in front of the Little Nell on Durant Avenue, 9am. Bring your picket signs!
Bring in the New Year on the side of social responsiblity in our Valley: 01/01/2012.
Great idea, anon! He is right.
You're doing this with a lot of time to plan so why not do a little searching and see if there's any other groups or org's that are related to the cause. See if they can join in. I'll get online and take a look around for you and put some feelers out.
I hope we have locals or regional folks step up and try to fill some of these jobs. If you're out of work, it is way too low of a wage but it is work and you'd be helping to prove a very good point. There are legal American citizens who want steady work. It is Aspen Skico that's put the stigma on these jobs.
Is there a website for the organization? If there is, please put the link up here on SandBox for everyone. Thanks.
In the Times’ article “Group files suit to stop city effort for hydropower,” the tactics of big$$$ in Aspen are amusing.
Those that prize liberty and Jeffersonian democracy rarely subscribe to the Obama/Mayor Mick “Unlimited Government is THE solution;” however, one cannot escape the irony in the group of limited liablility corporations fighting Mick and the City [read a bunch of billionaires fronted by faceless LLC corporations.]
What is the message of these limited liability corporations? Power to the people? Community?
Aspen visitor Robert F Kennedy in January noted the fact that corporations have the rights of people, without the responsibilities of community: “Last year, the Supreme Court overruled a hundred years of ironclad American precedent with the Citizens United case, and got rid of a law that was passed by Teddy Roosevelt in 1907 that saved democracy from the huge concentrations of wealth …created during the Gilded Age. For the first time since the Gilded Age, we're seeing those kind of economic concentrations return to our country.”
Locally, the Social Irresponsibility in Advertising honor is awarded to billionaires James and Paula Crown’s Skico for their newest marketing campaign: “Before Aspen, mountain was never cosmopolitan. Very few places will you find ski bums sharing cocktails with jet setters..”
All true…unless you happen to work for the Crown Royals that own the company that markets the company town.
When Skico’s The Little Nell took over the Snowmass Club, it quickly removed employees who had previously enjoyed privileges for years from the health club, tennis courts, golf course, and especially the pools and hot-tubs.
The Crown’s hospitality division explained that guests do not want to be in the hot tub next to someone who served them a beer.
On May 17 The Aspen Times reported that SkiCo currently has 485 of the original 600 Snowmass Club memberships available to sell and SkiCo stated “that it will take 54 years to sell all the athletic club memberships.”
As Michael Cleverly reported in the Vile Plutocrat, " at the new high-end restaurant owned by the Skico, announced that none of its employees would be allowed in the restaurant as customers at any time, a notion that would have had the place burned to the ground a few decades earlier."
Community? Or ridiculousness?
Note the steady decline in profits for the Skico when comparing to Vail and Breck. There was a time when Aspen was never dead. Now there are days, weeks and weekends where a place to park is found pretty much everywhere. Hotels without lights on at night in most windows and not always just in off-season.
It does matter what your values are. They may not be the outspoken, the head of the pack but most tourists and returning vacationers do care what their money supports.
When Aspen tried to copy the growing prosperity of other resorts in the region, they went after the money, not the stability. All those luxury fractional time-shares and nothing but the most expensive in retail. All the while getting cocky enough to show their values in how they treat workers and the bums. Old Aspen somehow was determined to be snubbed. That didn't work. Other resorts kept their values, forgot to sell their souls and simply went to work being all they could be.
Aspen and the Skico's next move was to spin off another copycat. Bring in more events and get involved in the community in visible ways. Well, here's the thing. Good deeds are not good deeds when they're done with only a bottom line in mind. Observant people see right through that, they can feel it when they brush up against it. Why spend twice as much on a vacation to come to a place filled with high brow snobs and grumbling common folks? Why bring your family to such a place that you can see all that and watch an illegal coke deal go down at a restaurant table when your impressionable young tweens are watching right alongside you? Even worse to watch a cop in uniform walk right by it all and nod politely to the dealer.
It may only be 1% difference that rises up to 3%, 4% lower than other resorts in the area. It may be boom or bust for tourists, which is a sure sign that all is headed south on that bottom line eventually when you don't have even keel, steady income.
Where we are now is shell shock after the storm. Is it catatonic yet? Probably not. One thing for sure that it is, is a concern. A big one. We face at the very least, major inflation coming up. Coming on top of the people losing nearly everything during the worst recession in history. And what is the Skico and Aspen doing to undermine all the really good marketing things the rest of us have going on? They're putting the gloss on the high brow and cranking up the prices to pay for it.
By heaven, do not let anything make a dent of even a few bucks a day in big money.
Think they'll come and buy?
I don't.
Just thinking about it being a short less than a year ago that we never would have seen such exchanges posted in public over anything Skico and Crown. Unheard of to openly talk about local drug culture and blind eyes. Talk about graffitti in Aspen and gangs in the valley? Never. Listen to really good community chat between grownups instead of trivial ramblings? Impossible. "somethin happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear."
How much the Crowns knew and when they knew it may not be pinned down because they exercise what sociologist Max Weber defined as "charismatic authority" where policy derives from how the leader is perceived by others rather than by instructions or traditions.
The concept of charismatic authority as applied to the Skico empire may be best understood – as a concept, I emphasise, and not a personal comparison – in the use made of Weber's definition by Sir Ian Kershaw, historian of the Third Reich. Kershaw argues that Hitler was not much absorbed by the day-to-day details of Nazi Germany's domestic policy, but was nonetheless a dominant dictator. Kershaw explains the paradox by adopting the phrase of a Prussian civil servant who said the bureaucrats were always "working towards the Fuhrer". They were forever attempting to win favour by guessing what the boss wanted or might applaud but might well not have asked for.
Similarly, in modern day corporations, all of the Skico's far-flung enterprises, the question is not whether this or that is a good idea, but "What will Kaplan/Crowns think?". Skico VP's don’t have to give direct orders. Skico executives act like courtiers, working towards what they perceive to be the Crown’s wishes or might be construed as their wishes. Lower level Skico employees act this way out of of fear, certainly, because executions are so brutal [Paul Cherrett, Julian Gregory, Andy, Fogg, Mulcahy, too many to list….] but the fear also reflects a more rational appreciation of the fact that their "wild" gambles so often turn out to be triumphs lesser mortals could not even imagine, just like the Murdoch empire, as the Guardian pointed out.
the story of Skico/the Crown family is as old as time itself: Greed and Power
it can only result eventually in trajedy
It’s been said numerous times: The Crown family of Chicago is a carpetbagging cancer on our town. The Crowns have chutzpah like no one else. They are a family who wants it all, and doesn't understand anybody telling him they can't have it all. Regard the career pattern of Weems Westfeldt.
He broke federal labor law in regards to freedom of speech, not one time but several [see posting in all Skico break rooms...or email sent out to 3000plus employees] but he was promoted to Ski School Director of Aspen Highlands?
How does that work?
It sends the right message to the troops: OBEY.
Fear doesn't work well long-term; treating your employees in an honorable manner, however, will.
Corporations need to be taught that they are not above the law and to be socially responsible. Especially in my hometown of 7000.
Noteworthy that for the first time in memory, the Crowns and Skico have "record numbers" of openings for local job applicants. They say it's because of the economy and high unemployment.
Who's buying that propaganda?
Not the locals.
The reason the Crown Family and the Skico have job openings is because they've got Senator Mark Udall and a bunch of Feds breathing down their necks over potential immigration abuses. Those J1Visa and H2BVisa handlings all these years are in the public eye. Then there's this little problem with paying a living wage, NLRB and public exposure.
Doesn't matter what the outer wrapping on the marketing package is, the folks aren't buyin.
Apparently, Skico had a big ski school meeting on restructuring yesterday---very contentious---calm had to be asked for....
Times are a'changing...
Like I said.
All roads lead back to Rome.
Senator Harry Reid's office has started an inquiry on my behalf with the Crowns directly.
Today during lunchtime, I round the corner on my bike and low and behold there's the CEO of the Aspen Skiing Company having lunch with a guest on the sidewalk at the ABC.
I say hello to the CEO, and introduce myself to the guest.
Me [to the CEO]: I heard you wrote in my sculpture book.
CEO: Huh?
Me: A friend of mine told me you were writing in the book at my sculpture.
CEO [wants to crawl in a hole]: Yeah.
Friend having lunch: I hope you wrote something nice.
Me: Did you?
CEO: Uhhh...huh?
Me: Did you write something nice?
CEO: Yes, I did.
Me: I hope so. I'm having a topping off party to my house-I'll send you an invitation.
Have a good one.
This is good to hear, Lee. Please think about asking Sen. Reid to look at the other things that have been catalyzed because of your relationship with Skico.
He should be lending a hand to Udall and the visa's probe.
You have his ear to hear the living wage issue.
But mostly, I'm glad to hear that you were able, in your own way without any others coloring who and what you are; to stand directly in front of someone who's willfully hurt your life, look him in the eye and let him know that you're aware of what he is and what he's done.
That gives you some closure.
I think it's very interesting to watch the Universe move all these consequences of their own actions, people and events, toward just what they asked for.
It's always a good feeling to get toward the end of a job well done.
I'll go with some other recent comments in that we are what we choose. So often, people look at the choices of another and rush to conclusion. Little do they understand someone such as yourself who has a lot further to go before anyone can judge the choices you made.
I do believe that the historical review is the best way for all of us to go. Make sure that karma is all out on the table for all sides before conclusions are drawn.
Good luck with your Sen. Reid.
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