If I Were King

When anyone speaks to the press, it’s a good idea for that person, or any spokesman for an organization or another person, to actually think about what they’re saying. I understand that there may be some pressure to say something ‘right now’ rather than think about it, which means you’d better think about the questions before you get the call. I came across a stunning example of this last week in Sides Form Over Threat to Saturday Mail Service by Yeganeh June Torbati (New York Times, 5 July 2010).

There is some weakness in the article in that, as far as we can divine from the text, the “sides” aren’t balanced. Against the change are postal employees wanting to preserve current work schedules, credit card issuers and insurance companies not wanting to miss a single opportunity to send you a bill, and health care networks hoping to reduce costs by mailing prescriptions. On the other side, nameless businesses that have kept some national organizations from coming down solidly against the change with no reasons given and Netflix preferring the cut to even the smallest of rate increases. Come on, shouldn’t the writer have done a little more to flesh this out? And aren’t we all pretty used to the occasional rate increases for what is, in daily use, an excellent service?

The article quotes Andy Rendich of Netflix (Chief Service and DVD Fulfillment Officer) in support: “Big rate increases will absolutely squash business and will absolutely slow growth for a company like Netflix.” The article did make fairly clear the interests of those opposed to the cut, but let Netflix completely off the hook. A journalist has some obligation to make the issues clear: Had I been writing this piece, I would have called bullshit. (In a most dignified and regal way, of course.) Netflix’s motivation is the same as a landlord campaigning for a switch to thirteen months from twelve in the year. Their costs are absolutely tied to the number of days their shipping facilities are open, their income is absolutely tied to the passage of months. On average, this cut will reduce every operating expense the company incurs by at least 15%: wages, DVD purchases, and postage. It won’t have any affect on executive salaries or rent, but everything else is driven by the number of mail days. Are they ready to lower their subscription rates by 15%? I doubt it.

There has been a case of landlord’s benefiting from a reduction in the length of a month, but it was a one-time gain in every country when it switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Netflix would make out like bandits every month. Until their subscribers woke up and noticed they were getting screwed.

In terms of public relations, perhaps Netflix should be all in favor of this change, being careful never to let a soul know about it. In actuality, Netflix is a major part of keeping the postal service afloat, along with eBay, as most correspondence moves to e-mail. The six-days-per-week delivery of DVDs is their primary competitive advantage over their competition. If they think that moving from physical delivery of DVDs to streaming the same content over the internet is to their advantage, I wish they’d share what they’re smoking. Their only advantage in the online-delivery arena is their pool of dedicated subscribers. Crap on those subscribers, which their support of dropping Saturday delivery does, and their days are numbered.

The Times should have done a better job of laying this out, Netflix should have been more intelligent about revealing their motivations, and Netflix really needs to think about where their interest lies. The Empress Larkin and I are satisfied Netflix patrons (standard two DVD plan), but we’re not likely to ignore changes that run counter to the royal viewing needs.

President Obama has cashiered General Stanley McChrystal because of comments made by him and his staff while Michael Hastings was “embedded” with them for a Rolling Stone store run in the 8 July 2010 issue: The Runaway General. Obama blew it.

The story is a detailed account of the operation of McChrystal’s command but focuses on their personalities and styles. Hastings would certainly not have been allowed to print a story detailing battle plans, and this glimpse into the characters that are leading the war in Afghanistan is rather more helpful to the American polity anyway. These men are tough, experienced fighters, trained to kill and inured to the risk of being killed, and they sound very real. At the same time they clearly accept the mission that has been handed to them by their civilian leaders, they just don’t always admire the individuals involved.

I had a lot of problems with that growing up. I felt respect was something that was earned, my mother insisted that it was something that was owed to people based on their position and age. In this era of transparency, it should come as no surprise that working soldiers don’t treat with respect those that haven’t earned their respect, even in a culture where crisp salutes for superiors is the normal rule. In barracks, or in a bar, soldiers respect the leaders that lead well. Period. Welcome to the meritocracy of today’s Army.

Tom Lehrer introduced one of his great songs with this: “One of the many fine things one has to admire is the way the Army has carried the American democratic ideal to its logical conclusion, in the sense that not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed, and color, but also on the grounds of ability.” That seems to have changed. Even in this testosterone-laden environment, McChrystal’s staff respects a woman as Secretary of State, appreciates the contributions of the pencil-necked geek sitting in a corner in front of a dozen screens, and has no use at all for Karl Eikenberry, a former general that used to be McChrystal’s boss and apparently can’t deal with his erstwhile subordinate’s rise. This team judges the players based on whether or not they are contributing to the common goal, and apparently a good number of the civilians involved aren’t.

I assume that McChrystal can live comfortably on his pension, although I worry a little that someone that operates at his level of energy is going to have serious issues adjusting to the pace of retired civilian life. I’m not convinced that Obama’s course in Afghanistan is the right one. However, if this is the path that Obama and Congress want to follow, it’s hard to imagine a better leader on the ground to implement it.

The problem lies in the conflicting and conflicted civilian management. Yes, McChrystal has said things in public that might seem to undermine some of the players, but Eikenberry’s critical memo, attacking McChrystal’s strategy and Afghan president Karzai, shouldn’t have been leaked to the press if Eikenberry wants all this to be kept under wraps. McChrystal, his staff, and the president seem to be in synch, it’s the rest of the civilian team that needs work. Joe Biden’s a big boy, he can get over the occasional barb. Eikenberry, apparently, can’t.

This is not Big Mac refusing to accept Truman’s strategy in Korea, this is a strong military leader doing exactly what he has been instructed to do, loyally doing the right thing if occasionally grumbling about the details. If I Were King, I’d stick with McChrystal and find a civilian team worthy of the roles they have to play.

On Wednesday night, as the whole world knows by now, Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga pitched a perfect game against the Cleveland Indians, which is a rare accomplishment. Alas, first-base umpire Jim Joyce blew a call at first base, turning the rare no-hitter into a pedestrian one-hit win. Despite the fact that just about everyone who has watched the replay agrees that the runner, Jason Donald, was out, commissioner Bud Selig allowed the ruling to stand. The principals all handled the kerfuffle with remarkable grace, and there was never any doubt that Galarraga and Detroit won the game. It gives the baseball fans something to talk about for a few days.

On Thursday, America’s largest auto maker grabbed the chance to make a grand gesture. They drove a brand new shiny cherry-red Corvette onto the field and handed Galarraga the keys just before the game. Smooth move, GM is getting ink and pixels from coast to coast.

Today, the New York Times’ Nick Bunkley tells us that the move had detractors. (G.M.’s Gift of a Luxury Car Stuns a Few) The story names a Republican congresscriter from California with the bad form to challenge G.M.’s largesse on the grounds that as long as the American taxpayer is stuck owning the company, they shouldn’t do anything other than work to cash out the government investment. First, of course, either Galarraga will be paying a hefty bit of income tax on the car or GM will be paying a gift tax, so the Treasury sees some immediate return. But mostly, assuming they paid a few thousand bucks for miscellaneous costs in making the presentation, they’re getting a huge return in positive attention and good will for peanuts. You have to promote your brand to sell products. In fact, given the high cost of television and magazine advertising, it would have been a criminal offense against the public to not take advantage of this event. No, they shouldn’t do it every day, there would be no media interest and no reward. But it was the right thing to do, from every vantage point, in this case. If I Were King, you would quickly see one of the many advantages of a monarchy: no Congress, and no morons elected to sit there.

It generally falls to the Empress Larkin to select video entertainment here. Someone suggested to her that the Showtime series Dexter would be of interest to us, so she put the first season on the Netflix queue. As it turned out, when the first disk arrived she was out of town, so I watched it. It’s an interesting concept, to say the least, in which a police “blood-splatter analyst” turns out to be a serial killer on his own time, and the audience is expected to approve. Given that Dexter is a vigilante out to eliminate some of the most dangerous and vicious criminals that have somehow eluded the criminal justice system, it’s quite possible. Popular response, as gauged by Nielsen, says they pulled it off. However, I decided that this was not something we wanted to add to our regular viewing.

One of the well-understood issues in writing fiction is maintaining the reader’s, or viewer’s, “willing suspension of disbelief”. We read The Count of Monte Cristo and happily go along with Edmond Dantes finding a staggering treasure, then returning first to Marseilles and then Paris, living his grand life while only one of those who knew him as a poor sailor recognize him. Or we watch Burn Notice, knowing that you can’t actually wreak such havoc with a few household chemicals and an endless supply of cheap cell phones. (We know this because in real life, even well-planned terrorist attacks seem to rarely work as well as if Michael and Fiona were behind them.) The opposite problem is true with Dexter. It’s way too easy to believe that the quiet neighbor across the street, the one that seems to rarely be at home, is calmly eliminating unwanted members of the community.

As is my wont after seeing something new, I went straight to Wikipedia’s coverage. I was annoyed to learn that Parents Television Council protested the decision by CBS to air the first season during the writers’ strike, on the grounds that a show that aroused empathy for a killer would lead to additional violence in society. Well, that’s nonsense, the media doesn’t have that kind of impact. Television is full of comedy, yet our society is hardly mirthful and more little boys want to grow up to be firemen than comics. Radio is full of pop music, which is rife with “Silly Love Songs” as Sir Paul sang. We would be facing incredible population growth if radio guided life, everyone would be making babies at a rate not seen in history.

The next night I watched a movie that I had been meaning to see for a long time: Silkwood. Yes, Meryl Streep is great. The issue of violence in the media suddenly made sense. Here’s a movie that does inspire violence. You see how Kerr-McGee, the corporation that Karen Silkwood worked for, was probably responsible for killing and silencing her. It makes you want to get back at them, but it was long ago and far away so you can’t. But you can watch an episode of Burn Notice and see Fiona detonating bad guys, or get out an old episode of Walker: Texas Ranger and watch Cordell kick some bad guys until they stay down. (Bad guys on that show stupidly kept getting up to get whacked again.) Or reread Dumas and vicariously participate in Edmond’s revenge. Or, if you aren’t troubled by nightmares, you can watch Dexter.  Violence on screen, or in a book, does not drive us to acting out violently in real life. Quite the opposite, it satisfies our need for a dramatic response to the frustration we encounter.

If I Were King, Parents Television Council would still be able to petition networks to change their schedules. I’m fundamentally against limiting free speech and morons have rights.

The Empress Larkin is an accomplished and internationally-known art quilter, and by extension a teacher. (Pretty much all of the great art quilters work at it full time, and in order to do that most of them have to teach.) I’m not a quilter, but I’m pretty connected in the quilt world. Today I heard from an art quilter and teacher, also of great renown, a woman that both Larkin and I respect and admire. She related that she was recently en route to teach a class and was stopped at the border. It happens that this particular art quilter resides north of the old 49th and was teaching to the south, as opposed to Larkin who resides south and is delighted when she has the chance to teach north. Apparently the “logic” involved was that the Canadian teacher was taking work away from American citizens.

Yeah, right. First of all, students respond better if the teacher comes from far away. Quilters in Esquimault or Alberni or even White Rock respond more eagerly if they know the teacher is coming in from “the states”, and the reverse is true as well. This isn’t a recent development, Jesus commented on the phenomenon in the first century. As long as teachers from both sides of the line are allowed to teach on both sides of the line, nobody loses.

In fact, everybody gains. American quilters are in international competition, up against the best Kiwi quilters, the best from Oz, the best from Israel, the best from France, and for those readers that aren’t up on the realm of art quilts, that’s serious competition. If the goons on America’s border are keeping out the best foreign teachers, it’s American artists that lose. Sure, they could travel north for classes, but in these times it’s imperative that we conserve resources: Which makes more sense, for twenty Yanks to drive north to take a class or for one Canuck to drive south to teach it?

It’s not like internationally-known teachers are going to come to the US and become a drain on our schools and health care facilities; unless they’re from Somalia they have better health care waiting for them at home. They just want to share their ideas and get a check big enough to go home and get back to their art. In a country where upwards of 99% of the shoes are imported, to suddenly become protectionist in response to a handful of teachers is moronic. I don’t know the answers to the immigration question, but If I Were King the borders would absolutely be open to the best ideas from the rest of the world.

In solidarity with Latinos and foreign nationals in professional basketball and Latinos in their home state of Arizona, the Phoenix basketball team suited up for their NBA playoff game against the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday (Cinco de Mayo, no less) in jerseys proclaiming them “Los Suns”. Bravo!

I’ve been sorely disappointed by most of the commentary related to Arizona’s lamentable immigration bill. There has been a great hue and cry over the potential for racial profiling and procedural abuse by Arizona law enforcement. These are real issues, and I don’t begrudge spilling a little ink on them, but it’s certainly not the central issue. What, pray tell, is that central issue? I’m so glad you asked. The central issue is the relationship between law enforcement officers and the communities they are sworn to protect. I’m not a cop, but it’s obvious that a police force cannot serve a community without trust between the cops and the populace. The chance of a cop in Arizona getting an important tip from an illegal immigrant, probably not that high to begin with, just dropped to zero. Worse, many families include both legal and illegal immigrants, the chance of a legal immigrant with an illegal family member volunteering information to a cop, presumably much higher, also dropped to zero. The threshold of illegal activity that will be needed to get anyone in these communities to dial 9-1-1 has to have gone up everywhere outside Maricopa County, where the fanatic sheriff Joe Arpaio has made a point of alienating anyone with Mexican ties, humanity, or intelligence.

Let’s make this very clear: The responsibility of the local constabulary is community safety. Even if bouncing current illegals is a national goal, If I Were King I would not allow local police to be involved. Their work is far too important and giving them this additional task is far too divisive. Safety in our communities must trump any minor financial gain from deporting a handful of illegals.

Goldman Sachs and their “Abacus 2007-AC1″ product were the subject of a Senate hearing yesterday. Unlike embarrassed johns appearing in court over the years, the “Looters in Loafers” (Paul Krugman’s term) made no attempt to cover their faces, despite having done much more damage to the community. Comments about the advantages of dealing with Las Vegas casinos over buying securities from Goldman Sachs were raised, leading Maureen Dowd to snip “You know you’re ethically compromised when Senator John Ensign scolds you about ethics.”. The bankers from Goldman Sachs were on the wrong side here, and it appears a vain hope that they will own up to it.

The perps argue that they’re just brokers, making markets in products in which both bulls and bears will be on opposite sides of each trade. That works just fine when we’re talking about Treasury bills or General Electric bonds or Microsoft common stock. It doesn’t work when the “broker” is actually cooking up the product in the back room. Legitimate investments are analyzed and discussed by numerous pundits, these were blessed by the “independent” rating agencies. As the rating agencies are paid by the sponsors of the toxic derivitives, their vaunted independence is about as amusing and as credible as the dead baby jokes we traded in grade school. In this case, it turns out that one player was directing that the worst-possible loans that the rating agencies would swallow were assembled for sale.

I seriously doubt that Goldman was alone on this, and this wasn’t the only product they cooked up. (You don’t need a product code with a year and a three-character identifier if it’s a one-time deal.) There should be some serious slapping of wrists and some disgorgement of profits, plus damages, and the rules need to change so it can’t happen again without someone doing time. If I Were King, it simply wouldn’t be allowed for a securities firm to make up their own securities to screw investors with.

I’ve seen any number of references to “birthers” in the press over the last few years, that being a group of individuals who claim that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the US and thus not eligible to serve as president. I’m not saying that I didn’t believe that such people existed, but it does seem farfetched. I was having lunch in a Chinese restaurant at Port Angeles yesterday when a person walked in, sat down, and started chatting with a group at another table. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, but I couldn’t help overhear his assertion “You know, he isn’t actually a citizen.” in reference to President Obama. I was stunned. His knuckles didn’t drag on the ground when he came in and he seemed to have sufficient intelligence to operate a fork, but somehow he had fallen for this absurdity. I wanted to ask him if he was a citizen, and since he clearly doesn’t accept state birth registrations as evidence, how he intended to prove it. But he was a big guy and it doesn’t take any intelligence at all for a big guy to stomp an old slow guy.

During his recent campaign for the Texas governor’s mansion, Kinky Friedman was asked for his stance on the death penalty. His answer was pretty sensible for a politician in the American state most active in executions: “I am not anti-death penalty, but I’m damned sure anti-the-wrong-guy-getting-executed.” That makes sense, given the human longing for revenge and the simple fact that you can’t release a wrongly-convicted felon after lethal injection. But it doesn’t satisfy one crucial logical element.

Thomas Jefferson, among many other wise and sensible things, said “It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.”. In the history of government I see three sources of power. First is simply the power of power, the logic of the absolute dictator. Second is the divine right of kings, in which earthly rulers were presumed to have been granted power over their subjects by a god. And finally come the democratic forms, first appearing in pure form in the United States, in which the source of power and authority is the will of the governed.

In other words, the power of a republican government comes only from the citizens. As an American citizen has no authority to take life outside constrained circumstances, such as self defense, he can’t delegate that authority to the central government. He doesn’t have it to delegate. It necessarily follows that the government has no such authority.

The power of a community, including a republican state, to defend itself is, on the other hand, a power that can be delegated by the people. An individual may defend his bodily self, his family, and his home. It follows that the individuals comprising a community can delegate that power to the community. The rules of war have been evolving over human history and formally enumerated as Jus Ad Bellum and Jus In Bello starting with Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century.

But for a community to decide, even with all the trappings of Miranda warnings, formal charges, grand juries, skilled representation of the accused, and a verdict of peers, that a person should be killed by agents of the state? It’s simply not logically possible.

Google’s challenge to China yesterday was big news here, barely a whisper in China. According to Andrew Jacobs in Google’s Threat Echoed Everywhere, Except China in today’s NYT, the Great Firewall hid almost every trace of the uproar from the Chinese public. Imagine that! They even censor news about their censorship, about which nobody is in the dark.