Today

Happening now, after work, and, well, as long as it needs to.

Losing Control

This year's election day was fairly anti-climactic in a lot of ways. No big national contests or anything. But there were a few important items if you were paying attention.

First, some of the good stuff:

The one that got the most press as far as I could tell was a ballot initiative in Mississippi that defined human life as beginning at 'fertilization.' Turns out that was a bridge too far even in a place so devoted to ending abortion, maybe because the wording could be interpreted as making certain forms of birth control illegal. And in vitro fertalization. And chemo for pregnant women. And forcing a woman to carry her rapist's baby might be too much even in Mississippi. And it was voted down.

Then, in Ohio, the voters decided it is actually not a very good idea to prohibit your public workers' unions from collective bargaining, and they rolled back a bill that had taken that right away from them. We can only hope that that trend catches some traction in Wisconsin, New Jersey, and other places dear to me.

But in a sad and upsetting turn of event in my own city, Hoboken had a disaster of a referendum, replete with the most demoralizing kind of municipal bullying and buying of political power.

The basic sitch: a landlords' lobbying group succeeded in getting the Hoboken City Council to pass an amendment to the Rent Control law in my city. It's not the worst amendment they could have come up with, but... one thing I think everyone should be able to agree on is that if a landlords' advocacy group supports an amendment, the amendment benefits landlords; and if a tenants' advocacy group opposes that amendment, the amendment benefits landlords. In this case, it would seem to benefit the mostly absentee landlords who have sponsored (some would say forced through, by means of the threat of an expensive class-action law suit) an amendment to weaken rent control protection in Hoboken, and at the very least make it easier for landlords to get away with bullying long-term residents into vacating their apartments so they can 'deliver vacant' (with raised rents, of course), and make it harder for tenants to fight back, while reducing the amount of time the tenants can take to figure out the best way to do it.

So a repeal of the amendment was put on the ballot as a referendum. I figured that putting this in the hands of the voters was a fairly decent way to put the matter to rest and stop the attempted erosion of tenants' rights. If you vote "yes," you support tenant's rights; if you vote "no," you support additional protection for landlords. Straightforward: it's your right to have either opinion and vote your convictions.

What stopped me in my tracks after I voted and sent me straight to my computer to write letters to local papers and websites was when I ran into an activist canvasing for "no" and when I asked her why, she said she was there to protect rent control, and had a pile of fliers that claimed as much (though the flier didn't do a very good job if you bothered to read it). Not only were they trying to make it easier for landlords to skirt rent control laws, they're trying to make it look like it's good for tenants. I probably shouldn't be surprised. It's even confusing how it was put on the ballot - all the dancing around with double negatives - if you want them NOT to change Rent Control, vote YES; if you DO want them to change Rent Control, vote NO.

Never was I so envious of my friends who have jobs that give them election day off. Never have I had such an impulse to make a homemade sign and wave it around in front of a polling place. I scarcely have to tell you the result of the vote: the amendment-supporting "NO" won. In a landslide.

I know that I spend a lot of my life and work in New York City, to the extent that my handle on this site is "nycmick," but I've been a proud Hoboken resident for enough years now that I feel no shame calling myself an LTR. But I feel a lot of shame around the way the city government and local media let this play out.

Reminded of a quote from Howard Zinn's You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train, appropriate to the situation, and even more so to what's happening around the Occupy movements.

The state and its police were not neutral referees. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it, and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you. From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country—something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new President, or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society—cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.

Take from that what you will.

Meanwhile, just to round out the day, here's something a PAC of Herman Cain supporters put up on their home page, but evidently took down quickly when people started to notice:

From A to Z

Well, yeah. That's pretty much it.

Got this little compare-and-contrast from Mike Daisey, via his blog. Worth a look, as Mike's work always is.

Speaking of that, if you live anywhere near New York you should make a trip to the Public to see The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, Daisey's current monologue, which toggles back and forth among his personal history of semi-obsessive interaction with computers (especially Apple products), Steve Jobs' biography (which includes the rise-fall-and-rise of Apple, of course), and the progression of Apple's/America's involvement with electronics manufacturing in China, as viewed through the lense of Daisey's research visit to Shenzhen. It is amazing, alive, and astonishingly powerful. And it's been extended through December 4.

Seriously, go see it.

If you want to read up on the subject beforehand, there's plenty out there on the internets about the show and about the earlier incarnations that Daisey developed over the last year or so in various locations, none of it hard to track down. To give you a boost, here's the piece he wrote for the Times in the immediate wake of Jobs' death.

Topics for Discussion

Well, the Cherry Orchard has been chopped down.

Could this have been avoided? Or was it the inevitable result of the end of a pseudo-feudal aristocracy and the rise of market capitalism? Why or why not?

Discuss.

*Extra credit for references to Occupy (fill in your city's name here)

Irresistible

If the internets are to be believed, this is a screen shot of Bill O'Reilly telling Tavis Smiley and Cornel West that Wall Street has committed no crime.



Stunt? Maybe. But - worth how many words?

Reveling in Excess

That phrase has a couple different meanings for me this week. On a personal level, I've had a big week for music - made a visit to my local shop in Hoboken and got some fun stuff, including the Feelies new album (their first in just about forever), a really good Buddy Holly tribute album, a Peter Greenaway/Louis Andriessen opera that I haven't had a chance to listen to yet, and Volume 2 from the Baseball Project, just in time for the Sox/Yanks series.

Not only that, but I have been slowly but steadily collecting Bach music in various forms, well, forever, but in an intensified manner since reading Eric Siblin's The Cello Suites, which I recommend fiercely. Highest marks, for real.

And then the thing that made it borderline excessive was when I went back to my place a couple days later to find a package from my friend Scott in Rochester, who had texted me to let me know that he was sending me a thank you for a few CDs I'd sent him a long time ago. This "thank you" turned out to be an insane amount of music. I believe the technical term is "a sh*t ton." An embarrassment of riches (much of which I haven't heard in years, and plenty of which I have never heard at all). Had some fun exploring that, and will enjoy many more hours delving into this music.

So that's the good part, on a personal level.

But you couldn't be blamed for thinking that when I title a post "Reveling in Excess" in August of 2011 that I might be referring to some of the more depressing recent news items. That perhaps I was alluding to something like, oh, I don't know, the nonsense surrounding the recently-put-on-hold-but-hardly-put-to-rest debt ceiling debate; or the hit the U.S. credit rating took the other day; or the anemic nature of the "good news" about unemployment numbers; or the perverse-and-getting-worse disparity between the rich and poor in this country - the stat that seems to come up a lot lately mentions that the richest 400 people in America control more wealth than the poorest half of all Americans, i.e. more than 150 million people. [Read a fact check here by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, scarcely a liberal mouthpiece.] You'd think that the disconnect would get some real attention from people holding elected office in a time of serious financial crisis.

But it doesn't.

And you might have noticed an article this week about a distinct uptick in spending on high-end luxury items. Embarrassment of riches takes on a whole other meaning.

I will leave you for now with an excerpt from Drew Westen's very good opinion piece in today's Times. I encourage you to click on the link and read the whole story, but for this quote, Westen envisions Obama's Inauguration Day, in the wake of brutal political discord, questionable military policy, and especially the devastated economy. Here's what he thinks the American people wanted, or maybe even needed, to hear Obama say on that day:

“I know you’re scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn’t work out. And it didn’t work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods, with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can’t promise that we won’t make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that your government has your back again."

Yeah, something like that would have been nice. It still would.

More Fun with Economics

Would it be curmudgeonly, in this era of Celebrating Reagan's Centennary, to remind people that his so-called Economic Theories were big steaming piles of (oh, let's be kind) error? I say 'so-called' to modify the word 'his' in that sentence, because I remain unconvinced that the Gipper himself ever did so much as pay attention through an extended, detailed economic discussion, much less come up with any actual theory, even one as elementally flawed as Trickle-Down. [He sure was good at selling those bullet points, though, wasn't he?] The term 'so-called' also applies to the word "theories" in that sentence too, because I think what we're talking about as far as Reaganomics is concernes is more of a Sales Pitch. Or maybe a Snow Job. Or a really really BIG Big Con.

You see, a real live scientific theory is based on logic, evidence and/or applicable principles, is proveable and repeatable. Trickle Down is based on made-up logic, has no evidence backing it up, and counts on specious principles involving an impulse among profit-driven corporations to share with each other and with the workforce out of the goodness of their hearts, or maybe some sense of patriotic responsibility. (I know, I know - but a lot of people bought it then, and buy it now.) And what's been proved, repeatedly, is that these sorts of policies lead, not to increased job creation, but to increased poverty, and to a big increase in the gap between rich and poor.

Along these lines, read this piece by Robert Reich. It doesn't mention our dear departed national treasure by name, but it does paint a picture of the indelicate balance between Reaganomics and what's starting to look like Obamanomics.

...I've been watching (and occasionally trying to deal with) the Chamber [of Commerce] for years, and all I know is it has a deep, abiding belief in cutting taxes on the wealthy, eroding regulations that constrain Wall Street, cutting back on rules that promote worker health and safety, getting rid of the minimum wage, repealing the new health-care law, fighting unions, cutting back Medicare and Social Security, reducing or eliminating corporate taxes, and, in general, taking the nation back to the days before the New Deal.

There's no secret to creating lots of jobs by reducing the median wage, slashing benefits, compromising health and safety at the workplace, and, effectively, reducing the standard of living of millions of Americans. We've been doing it for years.

Those people who consider this situation to be perhaps less-than-ideal should pay extra-special attention to policy developments that are presented as 'victories.'

And, oh yes, no disrespect meant toward the Great Communicator who restored everyone's faith in Democracy and made people Believe in America (all rights reserved) again. National Treasure, American Hero, God rest and keep him safe in Mary's bosom.

(Not much of an actor, though...)

But Mama Grizzly Says It's a Good Thing!

Paul Krugman on preserving the Bush tax cuts.

It’s a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.

In the short run, those state and local cutbacks are a major drag on the economy, perpetuating devastatingly high unemployment.

It’s crucial to keep state and local government in mind when you hear people ranting about runaway government spending under President Obama. Yes, the federal government is spending more, although not as much as you might think. But state and local governments are cutting back. And if you add them together, it turns out that the only big spending increases have been in safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, which have soared in cost thanks to the severity of the slump...

The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud — to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.

Ok, yes, I threw in some emphasis. I'm not sure how to put it any simpler other than to say it's a very, very bad idea.

In case you're keeping score, my opinion is that we need to roll back the cuts on more than just the top 2%.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Perspective

Speaking of things you don't have control over...



While it's tempting to use this image of a bank in Haiti as an illustration of the financial system in general, it's too palpable an illustration of too immediate a disaster.

Please send thoughts, prayers, wishes, dances and songs of goodwill, whatever you can muster. And maybe click here for some ideas of more concrete things you can do.

Happy Halloween

The Hoboken version of Halloween Parade (an extremely child-friendly event) has pretty much happened by now. Very cute stuff.

But Halloween is about scares too, and I just heard a scary thing on TV. I'm watching an interview with Carlton Fisk, and they discussed how he made $11,500 in his rookie season in 1972. That's eleven thousand bucks, people, not one hundred eleven thousand. Then, after he won the AL Rookie of the Year, he had to fight for an extra 5 grand.

Carlton Fisk?!?! The Carlton Fisk - one of the great catchers of all time, the guy whose signed photo is framed on my living room wall, maybe the best catcher the Red Sox ever had (sorry Jason, but I'm guessing even you would agree with that.)

Yes, that was before free agency. And yes, I know that there's an argument out there that pro athletes get too much money. But holy crap - that's less money than you'd have made working in a gas station in 1972.

Alright, you been waiting for me to post it... here it is: Harry Cabluck's iconic shot of Fisk waving that fly ball fair over the Green Monster in the 12th inning of game 6 in 1975

One Economic Perspective

Paul Krugman can be a curmudgeon, but I think the points he makes sometimes deserve a lot more widespread attention and discussion than they receive at the decision-making level.

...But the wizards were frauds, whether they knew it or not, and their magic turned out to be no more than a collection of cheap stage tricks. Above all, the key promise of securitization — that it would make the financial system more robust by spreading risk more widely — turned out to be a lie. Banks used securitization to increase their risk, not reduce it, and in the process they made the economy more, not less, vulnerable to financial disruption...

Much discussion of the toxic-asset plan has focused on the details and the arithmetic, and rightly so. Beyond that, however, what’s striking is the vision expressed both in the content of the financial plan and in statements by administration officials. In essence, the administration seems to believe that once investors calm down, securitization — and the business of finance — can resume where it left off a year or two ago...

Something Bad Is Happening

Something very Bad is happening.

Maybe there is something lunar going on. Just too much is too weird for this all to be ok.

The Zipper Factory Theater closed suddenly, and without warning. Such a good space with good adventurous shows. Very sad.

For Round Two: the U.S. Supreme Court has dealt a dirty blow to due process, by cutting off the Exclusionary Rule, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, at the knees. An odd addendum here is that the first article I saw on this in the Times was by David Stout and had a very glib tone - making it seem that this ruling was a-ok if you prefer not to see the bad guys get off on technicalities. But then on Thursday the Times had this article, by Adam Liptak, which is much better and more circumspect, and looks into the ramifications more. And - this is the weird part - that first article is now nowhere to be found. I'll print it at the bottom of this entry, because I think it's important to acknowledge these sorts of media events, especially in publications as influential as the Times. Not to be all conspiracy theory about it, but - what do you suppose is going on there?

No matter how you slice it, the ruling is bad news. And the fact that it's not being treated as BIG news is a little scary.

Next, we have the Metropolitan Opera facing huge cuts. Check out some of the specifics there: their endowment has dropped by a third, to the tune of $100 million dollars. That's 100 million dollars less than they had a couple years ago. This kind of detail is what causes me to go nuts at the notion of it being some big 'victory' when NEA funding increases by 20 or 50 million bucks. It's just not to scale with the problems, and shows that the arts are literally devalued. Or, if you prefer, undervalued. In any case, it seems to me that our policy-makers are missing the point in a fundamental, not incremental, way.

It's an old and well-worn point, but by way of comparison, bear in mind that NEA budget was $144.4 million in 2008 (and the Bush administration even tried to cut that); and the budget for U.S. Military Bands was $168 million - in 1997. They stopped releasing those numbers (as people started noticing things like this?), but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they haven't gone down.

And then - why should those things be enough? - a plane crashes in the Hudson River.

What the heck is going on, people?

But there was a seriously sunny side in the fact that no one died or was even too badly hurt in that crash. SO - soon I'll be posting an entry with some things that feel more like good news.

Meanwhile, here's that first article I saw about Wednesday's Supreme Court Ruling, which appears to have been pulled by the Times.

By DAVID STOUT

Published: January 14, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the conviction of an Alabama man on drug and weapons charges, emphasizing that the exclusionary rule, which generally bars prosecutors from using evidence obtained by the police through improper searches, is far from absolute.

In a 5-to-4 opinion, the court upheld the federal conviction of Bennie Dean Herring, who from the court records appears to have been very unlucky as well as felonious in his conduct. In upholding the conviction, the court’s majority came to a conclusion that will most likely please those who complain about criminals going free on “technicalities” and alarm those who fear that the high court is looking for ways to narrow the reach of the exclusionary rule.

Mr. Herring had gone to the Coffee County, Ala., sheriff’s department on July 7, 2004, to retrieve something from his truck, which had been impounded. “Herring was no stranger to law enforcement,” as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. observed dryly in his opinion for the court.

And he was no stranger to Mark Anderson, an investigator for the sheriff’s department, who asked a Coffee County clerk if there were any outstanding warrants for Mr. Herring.

No, Mr. Anderson was told. So he asked the clerk to check with her counterpart in neighboring Dale County, who turned up a warrant against Mr. Herring for failing to appear in court on a felony charge.

Mr. Anderson and a deputy following Mr. Herring as he left the impound lot pulled him over and arrested him. A search turned up methamphetamine in his pocket and a pistol, which Mr. Herring could not legally possess because of an earlier felony conviction, in his truck.

Within minutes, however, the Dale County clerk discovered that the warrant against Mr. Herring had been withdrawn five months earlier and had been left in the computer system by mistake. The clerk immediately called Mr. Anderson, but Mr. Herring had already been taken into custody.

Was Mr. Herring entitled to go free because the officers lacked probable cause and there was no dispute that both the arrest and subsequent search were unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment? No, the Supreme Court ruled.

“When police mistakes leading to an unlawful search are the result of isolated negligence attenuated from the search, rather than systemic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements, the exclusionary rule does not apply,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in an opinion joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

“We do not suggest that all recordkeeping errors by the police are immune from the exclusionary rule,” the majority noted. But the justices said the official errors in the Herring case do not compare with the kind of egregious and deliberate police misconduct that gave rise to the exclusionary rule in the first place.

Deciding when to throw out evidence under the exclusionary rule is a balancing act, the majority said. Is the official misconduct serious enough that the evidence should be disallowed to deter future misconduct, even if criminals sometimes go free?

Not in Mr. Herring’s case, the majority ruled, upholding findings by a federal district court and the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer dissented. “In my view, the court’s opinion underestimates the need for a forceful exclusionary rule and the gravity of recordkeeping errors in the law enforcement,” Justice Ginsburg wrote.

But in the majority opinion, the chief justice wrote that the exclusionary rule “is not an individual right and applies only where its deterrent effect outweighs the substantial cost of letting guilty
and possibly dangerous defendants go free.”

At another point, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that “the very phrase ‘probable cause’ confirms that the Fourth Amendment does not demand all possible precision.”

The dissenters were unpersuaded, however. “Negligent recordkeeping errors by law enforcement threaten individual liberty, are susceptible to deterrence by the exclusionary rule, and cannot be remedied effectively through other means,” Justice Ginsburg wrote.