I hope no one missed The New York Times brief today in which “Gov. Jeb Bush will appeal a judge’s denial of his request to dismiss a lawsuit challenging his intervention in the case of a brain-damaged woman.” Very important story.
If anyone can figure out what’s actually going on from that lead, let me know.
(Seriously, why not something like: “Gov. Jeb Bush persists in intervening in a right-to-die case, asking an appeals court yesterday to stop a husband from suing him for intervening in the first place. A lower court had sided with the husband, who seeks to let his brain-damaged wife die.”)
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Monday, November 10, 2003
SOURCES SAY
Why do all gossip sources sound the same? This has been nagging at me, but recent readings of the imdb.com gossip report has shoved the issue to the absolute top of my concerns.
Whether they’re talking to Britain’s Daily Star, Britain’s Now magazine, the Page Six Web site or direct to the World Entertainment News Network (source of imdb.com’s sleaze), all third-party sources, named or unnamed:
Tend to use names instead of pronouns -- but, oddly, only if the names haven’t been used yet in that item (“the 500 people, including Philip Seymour Hoffman and Steve Cojocaru, scrambled about”);
Show preternatural insight (“He wants to be out there and she’s more reflective”; ”Cuddly nights in with big piles of junk food are just not for him”);
And speak in odd, overly distinct phraseology (“She’s been sharing the happy news with select friends”; “It looks like it’s all over for Renee and Jack -- and this time for good”).
Although it’s most likely that it’s the gossip writers who have a formula, not the sources, I’m enjoying the possibility that after so many years of gossip permeating our society, those who pay attention to such things -- I guess I’d have to include myself now -- have learned what’s required for when they turn snitch. They can rattle off the perfect dirty detail, in perfect form.
Or, although it’s obviously unlikely, maybe there’s only one source for all the gossip, one incredibly well-connected fink, and when Ben and J. Lo and Meg and Ashton and Bruce and Demi and Russell and Sean and the rest catch on as to who it is ...
Whether they’re talking to Britain’s Daily Star, Britain’s Now magazine, the Page Six Web site or direct to the World Entertainment News Network (source of imdb.com’s sleaze), all third-party sources, named or unnamed:
Tend to use names instead of pronouns -- but, oddly, only if the names haven’t been used yet in that item (“the 500 people, including Philip Seymour Hoffman and Steve Cojocaru, scrambled about”);
Show preternatural insight (“He wants to be out there and she’s more reflective”; ”Cuddly nights in with big piles of junk food are just not for him”);
And speak in odd, overly distinct phraseology (“She’s been sharing the happy news with select friends”; “It looks like it’s all over for Renee and Jack -- and this time for good”).
Although it’s most likely that it’s the gossip writers who have a formula, not the sources, I’m enjoying the possibility that after so many years of gossip permeating our society, those who pay attention to such things -- I guess I’d have to include myself now -- have learned what’s required for when they turn snitch. They can rattle off the perfect dirty detail, in perfect form.
Or, although it’s obviously unlikely, maybe there’s only one source for all the gossip, one incredibly well-connected fink, and when Ben and J. Lo and Meg and Ashton and Bruce and Demi and Russell and Sean and the rest catch on as to who it is ...
Sunday, November 09, 2003
GOOD ACT TO FOLLOW
Earlier tonight I saw M. Doughty, that razor-edged if occasionally dada lyricist -- except that he’s not even M. Doughty anymore, but just ol’ Mike Doughty, softer around those edges, more apt to sing of love than scat in the typical somehow-cynical random syllables.
He’s been solo long enough now to carry a show without relying on his Soul Coughing work, and he only played two of his songs from that period (and from the first Soul Coughing album, at that). Although the Paradise was packed, most people didn’t seem to mind, maybe because, although he was playing gentler stuff from “Skittish” and “Rockity Roll,” he still rocked a little harder than recent visits (back when the Somerville club 608 was still open). He talked less between songs. This is Doughty in transition, on the way to working with a band again.
The most cutting point Doughty made all night was on the predictability of encores. He acknowledged just before his second-to-last song that it wasn’t his second-to-last song, and when he’d done his putative finale he merely told the audience he was going to go stand in one corner of the stage for awhile. The audience applauded as he stood in plain sight, his back to the audience swigging water, and finally looked around as though just noticing the cheers, walked back and did a couple more songs.
It was funny, and hardly snarky, but it’s about time someone started making fun of the tedious drill encores have become. The band leaves; the audience claps; the band returns. The suspense is mainly in how long the audience can stand clapping without becoming irritated that the band is making it clap for so long.
Once a music critic, then someone who regularly wrote such incisive polemics as “My eye like a noisegate the number 8 frustrate and I roll to the floor fruit,” it would be nice if Doughty kept this up long enough to set an example for other musicians. More, Doughty, more!
He’s been solo long enough now to carry a show without relying on his Soul Coughing work, and he only played two of his songs from that period (and from the first Soul Coughing album, at that). Although the Paradise was packed, most people didn’t seem to mind, maybe because, although he was playing gentler stuff from “Skittish” and “Rockity Roll,” he still rocked a little harder than recent visits (back when the Somerville club 608 was still open). He talked less between songs. This is Doughty in transition, on the way to working with a band again.
The most cutting point Doughty made all night was on the predictability of encores. He acknowledged just before his second-to-last song that it wasn’t his second-to-last song, and when he’d done his putative finale he merely told the audience he was going to go stand in one corner of the stage for awhile. The audience applauded as he stood in plain sight, his back to the audience swigging water, and finally looked around as though just noticing the cheers, walked back and did a couple more songs.
It was funny, and hardly snarky, but it’s about time someone started making fun of the tedious drill encores have become. The band leaves; the audience claps; the band returns. The suspense is mainly in how long the audience can stand clapping without becoming irritated that the band is making it clap for so long.
Once a music critic, then someone who regularly wrote such incisive polemics as “My eye like a noisegate the number 8 frustrate and I roll to the floor fruit,” it would be nice if Doughty kept this up long enough to set an example for other musicians. More, Doughty, more!
Saturday, November 08, 2003
THE MAD BOMBERS
Like the top brass at Radio Free Mike, I’m reading “Secrets,” the Pentagon Papers memoir by Daniel Ellsberg, and finding interesting echoes between that era and this.
In the “Kissinger” chapter, Ellsberg sits down with the soon-to-be secretary of state and others and gets a typical Henry Kissinger compliment, in which he summons an esoteric moment to give a sense of shared history. In this case, Ellsberg was complimented as a fine teacher not about Vietnam, but about “bargaining,” from a lecture series Ellsberg gave 11 years earlier.
“Nice,” Ellsberg writes. “Except that when I thought about it later, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The lectures I had given to his class had had to do with Hitler’s blackmail of Austria and Czechoslovakia in the late thirties that had allowed him to take over those countries just by threatening their destruction. One of the talks was titled ‘The Theory and Practice of Blackmail,’ and the other was ‘The Political Uses of Madness.’ Hitler had deliberately cultivated among his adversaries the impression of his own irrational unpredictability. He couldn’t be counted on not to carry out a threat to do something crazy, mutually destructive. It worked for him, up to a point, because he was crazy, madly aggressive, and reckless. But after a certain point it brought the world down around him. It wasn’t a tactic I was recommending for the United States, or anyone else, for that matter. For someone to imitate Hitler in this respect was to cultivate madness and court disaster.”
Ellsberg goes on to point out that news leaks about the recent invasion of Cambodia said some of the motivation was to convince the nation’s perceived enemies “that our decision making at the highest levels was unpredictable and that since we could do something so evidently erratic and crazy ... they could not count on our reasonableness or prudence in a crisis.”
So the mad bomber president is sort of a hallowed Republican tradition, from Nixon to Reagan (in addition to macho bluster and jokes about “We begin bombing [Russia] in five minutes,” Ronald Reagan was also prone to talking about the imminence of armageddon) to Bush. It’s enough to make me think that those strange vibrations in the earth are tectonic plates shifting, bringing Vietnam and Iraq just a little bit closer together ...
In the “Kissinger” chapter, Ellsberg sits down with the soon-to-be secretary of state and others and gets a typical Henry Kissinger compliment, in which he summons an esoteric moment to give a sense of shared history. In this case, Ellsberg was complimented as a fine teacher not about Vietnam, but about “bargaining,” from a lecture series Ellsberg gave 11 years earlier.
“Nice,” Ellsberg writes. “Except that when I thought about it later, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The lectures I had given to his class had had to do with Hitler’s blackmail of Austria and Czechoslovakia in the late thirties that had allowed him to take over those countries just by threatening their destruction. One of the talks was titled ‘The Theory and Practice of Blackmail,’ and the other was ‘The Political Uses of Madness.’ Hitler had deliberately cultivated among his adversaries the impression of his own irrational unpredictability. He couldn’t be counted on not to carry out a threat to do something crazy, mutually destructive. It worked for him, up to a point, because he was crazy, madly aggressive, and reckless. But after a certain point it brought the world down around him. It wasn’t a tactic I was recommending for the United States, or anyone else, for that matter. For someone to imitate Hitler in this respect was to cultivate madness and court disaster.”
Ellsberg goes on to point out that news leaks about the recent invasion of Cambodia said some of the motivation was to convince the nation’s perceived enemies “that our decision making at the highest levels was unpredictable and that since we could do something so evidently erratic and crazy ... they could not count on our reasonableness or prudence in a crisis.”
So the mad bomber president is sort of a hallowed Republican tradition, from Nixon to Reagan (in addition to macho bluster and jokes about “We begin bombing [Russia] in five minutes,” Ronald Reagan was also prone to talking about the imminence of armageddon) to Bush. It’s enough to make me think that those strange vibrations in the earth are tectonic plates shifting, bringing Vietnam and Iraq just a little bit closer together ...
Friday, November 07, 2003
RED-COLORED GLASSES
It’s the first birthday of Chicago’s “Red” papers, the tabs put out by the city’s traditional newspapers to capture younger readers, and the city’s alternative weeklies attended with predictably skeptical expressions on their faces.
The Reader and Newcity Chicago noted that the tabs, Red Streak (a product of the Sun-Times) and RedEye (a product of the Tribune), have decreased circulation of the dailies but are not generating much circulation revenue of their own. That is, almost no one is paying to buy the Reds.
“Circulation seems like a nightmare now, with stacks and stacks of the papers throughout the city laying around at the end of the day,” Kate Zambreno writes in
Newcity Chicago.
“Anyone who pays a quarter for either Red is a sap,” Michael Miner says in the Reader.
Both writers cite audit figures that admit that only about 11 percent of RedEye readers pay, 9,000 out of 80,000 copies -- and it’s unknown how many more are the “stacks and stacks” of unread copies. Red Streak figures are likely to be similar, although its owners offer no official count.
What’s going on? Although the Red Streak editor describes the effort in terms of a rescue effort (“And so, thank God, the Tribune did something to sort of force newspapers around the country to take a look”), the Reds, the Metros that preceded them and the junk that is to follow, such as amNewYork, are not the best solution to the generational decline in readership these tabs were meant to end.
That decline is indisputable. “Daily newspaper readership among people under thirty-five dropped from two-thirds in 1965 to one-third in 1990,” writes Harvard scholar Robert D. Putnam in his “Bowling Alone,” and now the industry doesn’t even bother to tout daily readership. Instead it cites readership on “an average weekday.”
The Fall 2003 Competitive Media Index, put out by the Newspaper Association of America, puts that percent of adults -- and adults just in the top 50 media markets -- at 54.1, with association leader John F. Sturm giving some credit to the “many new and innovative marketing strategies newspapers across the country are adopting [and] the launch of niche publications targeting younger readers and underserved markets.”
The association and the American Society of Newspaper Editors are backing a “readership initiative study,” the index press release says, with the study of “younger adult readers of local, English-language daily newspapers” taking place, interestingly, in Illinois. Evanston, home of Northwestern University, but Illinois nonetheless, not too far from Chicago, the home of the Reds.
The study isn’t likely to, and shouldn’t, focus on the Reds too much, if at all, or newspapers will continue to degrade and delude themselves.
To give a sense of how far off the Reditors are, I’ll just straight-out steal extensively from Zambreno’s Newcity piece:
“Both editors of the red papers say that while in their twenties, they were avid newspaper readers. But not everyone is, they assert, and papers like RedEye appeal to a different type of reader. [Mary Nesbitt, of Northwestern University] theorizes that the content and presentation behind daily newspapers don’t appeal to younger readers. ‘Perhaps that group doesn't see itself in the paper, so it doesn't seem to be about them,’ she muses. ‘If it doesn't have visuals, photos, people like them, then it might not appear to be for them.’ Many agree that newspapers have not concentrated enough on staying relevant.
“Both editors talk about how their papers are edited to appeal to the targeted demographic. Although Red Streak gets the majority of its news content from the core paper, and RedEye relies heavily on the Tribune as well as wire services, ‘the trick is to edit them and write headlines in an appropriate manner that appeals to the younger reader, and cuts to the chase and gives them information that we know they're looking for,’ says [Deborah Douglas, the editor of Red Streak] ‘as opposed to just writing these long treatises every day and expecting people to slog through to the very end to find out what the information is about.’ ”
So young readers want headlines and copy that “cuts to the chase and gives them information,” while adults are expected to “slog through to the very end” of “these long treatises.” And like it, apparently. Gosh, we’re so smart and responsible. Meanwhile, newspapers need “visuals, photos,” and -- the other universal message of the youth tabs -- short articles. Short enough that a reader can graze several in the length of a trip on public transportation.
For a clue as to how dramatically newspapers are going astray, stop by your local high school and college campuses and get copies of their student-run, student-produced newspapers. What you’ll see are newspapers that look pretty much like the newspapers put out by adults: generally traditional layouts; relatively sparse photos; typically lengthy, in-depth articles. Can the students simply be imitating adult newspapers because they think that’s what’s expected? Possibly. But what would make other students actually pick up the paper and read it, if its articles were too long and it looked so plain and unappealing? And, if students weren’t picking it up, for how long would a newspaper go on reading and looking the same way before evolving into something that would capture readers?
The fact that the readers are already captive may have more to do with it, in that there are fewer sources for relevant news for those high school and college readers. But that still underlines that the secret of readership is content, not visuals.
Perhaps tellingly, it is difficult to track down anyone who’s studying high school or college newspapers. Even the Poynter Institute, the Florida school and journalism think tank, had difficulty identifying anyone who is an expert in, or even interested in, these publications -- even though they are where the readers of the future, as well as its journalists, are coming from.
“The problem is, we haven’t been changing at the rate we should have been changing to appeal to a new generation of readers,” says Douglas, of the Red Streak. Maybe so. But the change can’t be for them; it has to be for all of us.
The Reader and Newcity Chicago noted that the tabs, Red Streak (a product of the Sun-Times) and RedEye (a product of the Tribune), have decreased circulation of the dailies but are not generating much circulation revenue of their own. That is, almost no one is paying to buy the Reds.
“Circulation seems like a nightmare now, with stacks and stacks of the papers throughout the city laying around at the end of the day,” Kate Zambreno writes in
Newcity Chicago.
“Anyone who pays a quarter for either Red is a sap,” Michael Miner says in the Reader.
Both writers cite audit figures that admit that only about 11 percent of RedEye readers pay, 9,000 out of 80,000 copies -- and it’s unknown how many more are the “stacks and stacks” of unread copies. Red Streak figures are likely to be similar, although its owners offer no official count.
What’s going on? Although the Red Streak editor describes the effort in terms of a rescue effort (“And so, thank God, the Tribune did something to sort of force newspapers around the country to take a look”), the Reds, the Metros that preceded them and the junk that is to follow, such as amNewYork, are not the best solution to the generational decline in readership these tabs were meant to end.
That decline is indisputable. “Daily newspaper readership among people under thirty-five dropped from two-thirds in 1965 to one-third in 1990,” writes Harvard scholar Robert D. Putnam in his “Bowling Alone,” and now the industry doesn’t even bother to tout daily readership. Instead it cites readership on “an average weekday.”
The Fall 2003 Competitive Media Index, put out by the Newspaper Association of America, puts that percent of adults -- and adults just in the top 50 media markets -- at 54.1, with association leader John F. Sturm giving some credit to the “many new and innovative marketing strategies newspapers across the country are adopting [and] the launch of niche publications targeting younger readers and underserved markets.”
The association and the American Society of Newspaper Editors are backing a “readership initiative study,” the index press release says, with the study of “younger adult readers of local, English-language daily newspapers” taking place, interestingly, in Illinois. Evanston, home of Northwestern University, but Illinois nonetheless, not too far from Chicago, the home of the Reds.
The study isn’t likely to, and shouldn’t, focus on the Reds too much, if at all, or newspapers will continue to degrade and delude themselves.
To give a sense of how far off the Reditors are, I’ll just straight-out steal extensively from Zambreno’s Newcity piece:
“Both editors of the red papers say that while in their twenties, they were avid newspaper readers. But not everyone is, they assert, and papers like RedEye appeal to a different type of reader. [Mary Nesbitt, of Northwestern University] theorizes that the content and presentation behind daily newspapers don’t appeal to younger readers. ‘Perhaps that group doesn't see itself in the paper, so it doesn't seem to be about them,’ she muses. ‘If it doesn't have visuals, photos, people like them, then it might not appear to be for them.’ Many agree that newspapers have not concentrated enough on staying relevant.
“Both editors talk about how their papers are edited to appeal to the targeted demographic. Although Red Streak gets the majority of its news content from the core paper, and RedEye relies heavily on the Tribune as well as wire services, ‘the trick is to edit them and write headlines in an appropriate manner that appeals to the younger reader, and cuts to the chase and gives them information that we know they're looking for,’ says [Deborah Douglas, the editor of Red Streak] ‘as opposed to just writing these long treatises every day and expecting people to slog through to the very end to find out what the information is about.’ ”
So young readers want headlines and copy that “cuts to the chase and gives them information,” while adults are expected to “slog through to the very end” of “these long treatises.” And like it, apparently. Gosh, we’re so smart and responsible. Meanwhile, newspapers need “visuals, photos,” and -- the other universal message of the youth tabs -- short articles. Short enough that a reader can graze several in the length of a trip on public transportation.
For a clue as to how dramatically newspapers are going astray, stop by your local high school and college campuses and get copies of their student-run, student-produced newspapers. What you’ll see are newspapers that look pretty much like the newspapers put out by adults: generally traditional layouts; relatively sparse photos; typically lengthy, in-depth articles. Can the students simply be imitating adult newspapers because they think that’s what’s expected? Possibly. But what would make other students actually pick up the paper and read it, if its articles were too long and it looked so plain and unappealing? And, if students weren’t picking it up, for how long would a newspaper go on reading and looking the same way before evolving into something that would capture readers?
The fact that the readers are already captive may have more to do with it, in that there are fewer sources for relevant news for those high school and college readers. But that still underlines that the secret of readership is content, not visuals.
Perhaps tellingly, it is difficult to track down anyone who’s studying high school or college newspapers. Even the Poynter Institute, the Florida school and journalism think tank, had difficulty identifying anyone who is an expert in, or even interested in, these publications -- even though they are where the readers of the future, as well as its journalists, are coming from.
“The problem is, we haven’t been changing at the rate we should have been changing to appeal to a new generation of readers,” says Douglas, of the Red Streak. Maybe so. But the change can’t be for them; it has to be for all of us.
Thursday, November 06, 2003
THE REAL KILLER
In March, as war loomed, the Bush administration rejected talks with Iraqis seeking peace on behalf of Saddam Hussein, The New York Times said today. The White House apparently decided against the entreaties “after a decade of evasions and deceptions by Iraq,” although nowhere in the article is it made clear that the United States didn’t believe what it was hearing.
It’s obviously appalling that all avenues to prevent war weren’t explored (“The message was, ‘Tell them that we will see them in Baghdad,’ ” according to Richard Perle, the White House adviser and Times source), but equally striking is the consistency of the claims that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
That’s what the Iraqi faction told Perle in March, matching what Hussein’s brother-in-law, Hussein Kamel, told U.S. and British intelligence agents in 1995, but it made no difference whether the information matched up or not, whether it came from an Iraqi official or an Iraqi defector -- or even United Nations weapons inspectors. (As Cambridge University scholar Glen Rangwala noted in June, “There is no UN report after 1994 that claims that Iraq continued to possess weapons of mass destruction.”)
Coupled with the administration’s willful misinterpretation of data and analysis provided by the United Nations and intelligence agencies, and with a new thoughtfulness and urgency provided by the ongoing U.S. deaths in Iraq, I wonder if we’re not all at the point of acknowledging that the president simply wanted this war? And that it may be time to rethink our approach to the, um, peace?
At the very least, let’s please end the search for the WMDs, that staggering waste of money and military effort.
I’m dreaming, of course. There’s no way the search will end. It will go on, and on, it will never stop -- not until we locate those weapons and, guarding them, the heavily armed, half-crazed real killer of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
It’s obviously appalling that all avenues to prevent war weren’t explored (“The message was, ‘Tell them that we will see them in Baghdad,’ ” according to Richard Perle, the White House adviser and Times source), but equally striking is the consistency of the claims that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
That’s what the Iraqi faction told Perle in March, matching what Hussein’s brother-in-law, Hussein Kamel, told U.S. and British intelligence agents in 1995, but it made no difference whether the information matched up or not, whether it came from an Iraqi official or an Iraqi defector -- or even United Nations weapons inspectors. (As Cambridge University scholar Glen Rangwala noted in June, “There is no UN report after 1994 that claims that Iraq continued to possess weapons of mass destruction.”)
Coupled with the administration’s willful misinterpretation of data and analysis provided by the United Nations and intelligence agencies, and with a new thoughtfulness and urgency provided by the ongoing U.S. deaths in Iraq, I wonder if we’re not all at the point of acknowledging that the president simply wanted this war? And that it may be time to rethink our approach to the, um, peace?
At the very least, let’s please end the search for the WMDs, that staggering waste of money and military effort.
I’m dreaming, of course. There’s no way the search will end. It will go on, and on, it will never stop -- not until we locate those weapons and, guarding them, the heavily armed, half-crazed real killer of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
ELECTION AFTERMATH
My vote does not automatically betoken disaster. The Cambridge election yesterday bears that out -- somewhat. Why, Henrietta Davis, my No. 3 vote for city council, was re-elected, and Marjorie Decker, my No. 6 vote, and so on ...
In fact, five of my nine votes for city council came through, and four of my six for school committee.
But rent control failed, a �lopsided defeat that probably marks the permanent end of rent control as an issue in Cambridge,� according to Robert Winter�s Cambridge Civic Journal.
Out of 20,299 votes cast, 12,467 were opposed to rent control and 7,832 were in favor. The home-rule petition needed slightly more than 18,800 to move on to the Legislature, and that�s pretty much all the people who voted.
I�m no so sure rent control is dead, but I�m also sure I have no idea what its backers were thinking, forcing the vote in an off-year when motivations to come to the polls is low -- that is, unless you�re a property owner petrified by the thought of rent restrictions being placed again. For renters, who are in a relatively gentle market, rent control probably doesn�t seem that urgent. (It may again soon.) More of Cambridge�s 55,000-plus voters would have made it to the polls next year, to vote against President Bush�s re-election.
Which reminds me: The sole Cambridge candidate with the guts to identify himself as a Republican, city council hopeful Robert L. Hall Sr., was cut in the fourth round of the election, earning, on his own, 96 first-place votes. To paraphrase �Repo Man,� �I don�t want no rent control in my city. No Republicans either!�
In fact, five of my nine votes for city council came through, and four of my six for school committee.
But rent control failed, a �lopsided defeat that probably marks the permanent end of rent control as an issue in Cambridge,� according to Robert Winter�s Cambridge Civic Journal.
Out of 20,299 votes cast, 12,467 were opposed to rent control and 7,832 were in favor. The home-rule petition needed slightly more than 18,800 to move on to the Legislature, and that�s pretty much all the people who voted.
I�m no so sure rent control is dead, but I�m also sure I have no idea what its backers were thinking, forcing the vote in an off-year when motivations to come to the polls is low -- that is, unless you�re a property owner petrified by the thought of rent restrictions being placed again. For renters, who are in a relatively gentle market, rent control probably doesn�t seem that urgent. (It may again soon.) More of Cambridge�s 55,000-plus voters would have made it to the polls next year, to vote against President Bush�s re-election.
Which reminds me: The sole Cambridge candidate with the guts to identify himself as a Republican, city council hopeful Robert L. Hall Sr., was cut in the fourth round of the election, earning, on his own, 96 first-place votes. To paraphrase �Repo Man,� �I don�t want no rent control in my city. No Republicans either!�
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
ELECTION DAY
Don’t I feel like an idiot. Trying to rate and rank Cambridge candidates by reading the Cambridge Chronicle (unsatisfying, disjointed factoids), gathering brochures (self-serving, uncritical mush) or consulting the city elections commission (essentially a list of candidates) is exhausting and nearly pointless.
Had I only known about the Cambridge Civic Journal Web site. Cool, especially for its accompanying candidates’ information, all courtesy of Journal editor Robert Winters. The fact that I’ve already voted is sort of a discouragement to looking through the site in depth, but it looks to be complete -- save for council candidates Marjorie Decker and Vincent Dixon, who didn’t respond to Winters’ queries -- and extraordinarily on-point.
The only thing in which the site is not complete, actually, is that it lacks (through no fault of its own, I’m sure) the real-time election results I crave. Did Fred Fantini cling to his school committee position? Did the doomed home-rule petition for rent control make it through? I’m on tenterhooks.
Had I only known about the Cambridge Civic Journal Web site. Cool, especially for its accompanying candidates’ information, all courtesy of Journal editor Robert Winters. The fact that I’ve already voted is sort of a discouragement to looking through the site in depth, but it looks to be complete -- save for council candidates Marjorie Decker and Vincent Dixon, who didn’t respond to Winters’ queries -- and extraordinarily on-point.
The only thing in which the site is not complete, actually, is that it lacks (through no fault of its own, I’m sure) the real-time election results I crave. Did Fred Fantini cling to his school committee position? Did the doomed home-rule petition for rent control make it through? I’m on tenterhooks.
Monday, November 03, 2003
ELECTION EVE
Cambridge elections are tomorrow, with responsible decision making complicated as usual in a place where the political spectrum usually ranges between Left and A Little Further to the Left.
It makes the process more difficult to always be working when meetings or debates are held, but it must be confusing for other citizens as well; our ballots and election commission don’t even identify party affiliations, so we rely on candidates to identify themselves as, say, fascists (none this year, that I know of) or republicans (council candidate Robert L. Hall).
Responsible voting also requires a little more attention in Cambridge because its voting is different than most, a process called “proportional representation” or “instant runoff.” We prioritize our votes, marking the candidate we want most as No. 1, our second-best choice as No. 2 and so on down the line -- somewhat exhausting in a place as political as Cambridge, where 20 people are vying for nine seats on the council and another eight are seeking six school committee seats. City computers figure out how many votes a candidate needs to win; the votes of the least-voted-for candidates are turned over to the candidates above, according to rank, until there are the right number of winners.
It may be complicated, but not so much that the complication outweighs its value; not to badmouth the electoral college, but if federal elections used it in a popular vote, we’d have a President Gore right now, without hesitation, confusion or doubt. Cambridge has used this method since 1941, long before computers made it easy, so San Francisco’s election officials -- who refused to implement it this year, in violation of the city charter -- really have no excuse. But it leaves Cambridge as the only U.S. city using the system.
Actually, it’s not that proportional representation may be complicated. It really is complicated. It forces voters to rank candidates, even if they don’t really prefer one over another. And the local media, the weekly Cambridge Chronicle, is little help in making those distinctions.
The Chronicle is top-tier for the Community Newspaper Co., which is owned by Boston Herald owner Herald Media Inc., so the problem isn’t necessarily a lack of staff or money. (Copies of this week’s paper, with “voters’ guide” inside, were delivered free throughout the city, including two to my house -- wretched excess.) It’s just that the political coverage relies mainly on factoids, those isolated bits of data that, detached from context or subtext, tend to confuse more than inform.
An Oct. 22 graphic, for instance, looks like it compares the number of policy orders and resolutions filed by city councilors from January to the date of publication with the number of policy orders and resolutions they filed in all of last year.
It is clear that there are three councilors who file far more policy orders and resolutions than the others. If only I knew what a policy order was, or how it differed from a resolution, that could be interesting or meaningful. And what if they’re filing policy orders or resolutions demanding such things as “All underwear is to be worn on the outside?” What’s with the horse-racing image serving as background to the chart, and why is the graphic labeled “Race to November”? Does filing motions have anything to do with their value as candidates, especially since there are 11 people running for council seats who, because they’re not on the council, didn’t file any policy orders or resolutions in this year or the last?
Things get even more confusing when the next week’s chart shows that Mayor Anthony Sullivan filed 109 resolutions in 2002, even though the first chart shows he filed 54. That indicates the chart shows activity within a certain period, not activity to date, but it doesn’t say what the period is. A week? Could the mayor really file 163 resolutions in a two-week period, which is two meetings?
Similarly, this week’s voting guide consists of excerpts from answers the candidates gave to three questions posed during recent debates. The topics are on Cambridge public schools, “On public safety” and “On balancing affordable housing, development and open space.”
The answers are less than illuminating.
On “CPS,” for instance, Anthony Galluccio thinks “the school system has become a centerpiece issue, and I think that’s new and I think that’s good for the city. I think all of our constituents demand our full attention to the school system and they ask us to weigh in.”
Apart from the last sentence making no sense, a risk when transcribing oral responses, how is this helpful compared with the response of Vance Dixon, who proposes “separate high school(s) for classics, for science, for performing arts and for the occupational and independent programs”?
Or how about Robert La Tremouille, who says that “The real function of the City Council with regard to the schools is the budget, and if we had a normal situation with regard to our government, that is where it would end ... The budget is such that we’re closing schools and we’re firing teachers ...” And? It’s impossible to tell from this what La Tremouille thinks should be done, or why. And so on.
Don’t turn to the editor for guidance. Although the Chronicle has regularly “criticized the City Council as a do-nothing celebratory body with little more to do than name corners after constituents,” the lead editorial this week says, “Monday’s landmark decision in the Riverside rezoning process proved us wrong.”
“We can think of no better nine to lead the city forward,” the editor writes.
So the nine councilors can sit around doing nothing all year -- and redeem themselves entirely with a single vote. Gee. Thanks for the help, Chronicle.
(The editorial also says that although “Several of the challengers brought interesting ideas to the table ... none convinced us they were ready to take on the toughest challenge of the campaign: being a Cambridge City Councilor.” This perplexing bit of rhetoric makes one wonder if the toughest challenge of dieting is not having to.)
Thank goodness the candidates reveal themselves, although the Chronicle does deserve credit for helping. In an Oct. 15 article about city schools failing to lead students in the pledge of allegiance every day, school committee incumbent Fred Fantini said he thinks “we should comply with state law ... especially considering the situation our country is in, I think it’s important that we encourage patriotism whenever we can.”
Thank you, Fred Fantini. In a flood of shades of mauve, you have made yourself stand out in screaming, brilliant blood red in my rankings. That’s one down, 27 candidates to go.
It makes the process more difficult to always be working when meetings or debates are held, but it must be confusing for other citizens as well; our ballots and election commission don’t even identify party affiliations, so we rely on candidates to identify themselves as, say, fascists (none this year, that I know of) or republicans (council candidate Robert L. Hall).
Responsible voting also requires a little more attention in Cambridge because its voting is different than most, a process called “proportional representation” or “instant runoff.” We prioritize our votes, marking the candidate we want most as No. 1, our second-best choice as No. 2 and so on down the line -- somewhat exhausting in a place as political as Cambridge, where 20 people are vying for nine seats on the council and another eight are seeking six school committee seats. City computers figure out how many votes a candidate needs to win; the votes of the least-voted-for candidates are turned over to the candidates above, according to rank, until there are the right number of winners.
It may be complicated, but not so much that the complication outweighs its value; not to badmouth the electoral college, but if federal elections used it in a popular vote, we’d have a President Gore right now, without hesitation, confusion or doubt. Cambridge has used this method since 1941, long before computers made it easy, so San Francisco’s election officials -- who refused to implement it this year, in violation of the city charter -- really have no excuse. But it leaves Cambridge as the only U.S. city using the system.
Actually, it’s not that proportional representation may be complicated. It really is complicated. It forces voters to rank candidates, even if they don’t really prefer one over another. And the local media, the weekly Cambridge Chronicle, is little help in making those distinctions.
The Chronicle is top-tier for the Community Newspaper Co., which is owned by Boston Herald owner Herald Media Inc., so the problem isn’t necessarily a lack of staff or money. (Copies of this week’s paper, with “voters’ guide” inside, were delivered free throughout the city, including two to my house -- wretched excess.) It’s just that the political coverage relies mainly on factoids, those isolated bits of data that, detached from context or subtext, tend to confuse more than inform.
An Oct. 22 graphic, for instance, looks like it compares the number of policy orders and resolutions filed by city councilors from January to the date of publication with the number of policy orders and resolutions they filed in all of last year.
It is clear that there are three councilors who file far more policy orders and resolutions than the others. If only I knew what a policy order was, or how it differed from a resolution, that could be interesting or meaningful. And what if they’re filing policy orders or resolutions demanding such things as “All underwear is to be worn on the outside?” What’s with the horse-racing image serving as background to the chart, and why is the graphic labeled “Race to November”? Does filing motions have anything to do with their value as candidates, especially since there are 11 people running for council seats who, because they’re not on the council, didn’t file any policy orders or resolutions in this year or the last?
Things get even more confusing when the next week’s chart shows that Mayor Anthony Sullivan filed 109 resolutions in 2002, even though the first chart shows he filed 54. That indicates the chart shows activity within a certain period, not activity to date, but it doesn’t say what the period is. A week? Could the mayor really file 163 resolutions in a two-week period, which is two meetings?
Similarly, this week’s voting guide consists of excerpts from answers the candidates gave to three questions posed during recent debates. The topics are on Cambridge public schools, “On public safety” and “On balancing affordable housing, development and open space.”
The answers are less than illuminating.
On “CPS,” for instance, Anthony Galluccio thinks “the school system has become a centerpiece issue, and I think that’s new and I think that’s good for the city. I think all of our constituents demand our full attention to the school system and they ask us to weigh in.”
Apart from the last sentence making no sense, a risk when transcribing oral responses, how is this helpful compared with the response of Vance Dixon, who proposes “separate high school(s) for classics, for science, for performing arts and for the occupational and independent programs”?
Or how about Robert La Tremouille, who says that “The real function of the City Council with regard to the schools is the budget, and if we had a normal situation with regard to our government, that is where it would end ... The budget is such that we’re closing schools and we’re firing teachers ...” And? It’s impossible to tell from this what La Tremouille thinks should be done, or why. And so on.
Don’t turn to the editor for guidance. Although the Chronicle has regularly “criticized the City Council as a do-nothing celebratory body with little more to do than name corners after constituents,” the lead editorial this week says, “Monday’s landmark decision in the Riverside rezoning process proved us wrong.”
“We can think of no better nine to lead the city forward,” the editor writes.
So the nine councilors can sit around doing nothing all year -- and redeem themselves entirely with a single vote. Gee. Thanks for the help, Chronicle.
(The editorial also says that although “Several of the challengers brought interesting ideas to the table ... none convinced us they were ready to take on the toughest challenge of the campaign: being a Cambridge City Councilor.” This perplexing bit of rhetoric makes one wonder if the toughest challenge of dieting is not having to.)
Thank goodness the candidates reveal themselves, although the Chronicle does deserve credit for helping. In an Oct. 15 article about city schools failing to lead students in the pledge of allegiance every day, school committee incumbent Fred Fantini said he thinks “we should comply with state law ... especially considering the situation our country is in, I think it’s important that we encourage patriotism whenever we can.”
Thank you, Fred Fantini. In a flood of shades of mauve, you have made yourself stand out in screaming, brilliant blood red in my rankings. That’s one down, 27 candidates to go.
Sunday, November 02, 2003
IRAQTIFYING THE SITUATION
Radio Free Mike Moore is curious what my Iraq plan is, since I’m so critical of New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman.
Domestically and internationally, the Iraq war has been a disaster for us, for all the reasons I stated before we actually hit the ground. But I didn’t say I had a better postwar idea to advocate, and nor should I. The effort would be wasted; we aren’t leaving Iraq any time soon.
I support -- with as much grumbling and condemnation as possible for the idiots who got us into this mess -- spending and doing what we need to in Iraq to not have our efforts there be a complete loss and utter disaster. As I said Sept. 15, “Thanks to Bush administration hubris, now we have to spend what it takes to get out of Iraq and leave it better than we found it -- and it looks like the expense will go some distance toward wrecking life for many Americans.”
But what the hell: Fantasizing about what passes for an ideal world these days, I would get the United States out of the business of running Iraq and let the United Nations do it instead. U.S. soldiers would stay not to build a nation, but to supplement protection of U.N. forces and hunt down anyone continuing to attack them. Then, job done more quickly because their efforts and motivations were not split, the U.S. soldiers would leave. I would remove all the no-bid corporations rebuilding Iraq, and possibly even those who did bid for the work, and instead use that money to pay Iraqis to rebuild their own country. First-worlders can be consultants; they -- we -- shouldn’t be taking jobs and money away from Iraqis.
Again, I do not think any of this will happen. Not as long as President Bush is in office.
Before the war began, I was intrigued and, despite myself, impressed with Bush’s mad bomber act, in which he portrayed himself as so eager to fight that nations did his bidding just to calm him down. I winced as Bush went too far, tarring nations as being in an “Axis of Evil” even as they followed China, at a distance, toward moderation. But I was amused to see him force U.N. inspectors back into Iraq and Iraq back into compliance with the U.N. He was saying “Jump,” and the world was saying, “All right, all right, all right! Just calm down!”
Unfortunately, it really wasn’t an act. Bush really was the mad bomber I thought he was playing in TV, and in an effort to make us safer, he has given Islamists a recruiting tool; claiming Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were in cahoots, he has succeeded in convincing them to work toward the same ends in attacking U.S. soldiers and U.N. and Red Cross workers; seeking to sound the warnings against weapons of mass destruction, he has accelerated nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea; because he’s made such a mess of the war on terrorism, he’ll probably have to watch helplessly as his great Democratic experiment in the Middle East collapses further into increased religious fervor and anti-Americanism.
This is what we have accomplished or will accomplish on our present tack, but neither Bush nor Friedman can afford to agree. Their attitudes, that one need not admit mistakes, just revise history to suit new needs, is no way to correct the situation.
So I’m not seriously looking for the United States to pull out of Iraq. I’m merely hoping without real hope for an acknowledgment that our occupation is doomed, in one way or another, because we were misguided going in.
Domestically and internationally, the Iraq war has been a disaster for us, for all the reasons I stated before we actually hit the ground. But I didn’t say I had a better postwar idea to advocate, and nor should I. The effort would be wasted; we aren’t leaving Iraq any time soon.
I support -- with as much grumbling and condemnation as possible for the idiots who got us into this mess -- spending and doing what we need to in Iraq to not have our efforts there be a complete loss and utter disaster. As I said Sept. 15, “Thanks to Bush administration hubris, now we have to spend what it takes to get out of Iraq and leave it better than we found it -- and it looks like the expense will go some distance toward wrecking life for many Americans.”
But what the hell: Fantasizing about what passes for an ideal world these days, I would get the United States out of the business of running Iraq and let the United Nations do it instead. U.S. soldiers would stay not to build a nation, but to supplement protection of U.N. forces and hunt down anyone continuing to attack them. Then, job done more quickly because their efforts and motivations were not split, the U.S. soldiers would leave. I would remove all the no-bid corporations rebuilding Iraq, and possibly even those who did bid for the work, and instead use that money to pay Iraqis to rebuild their own country. First-worlders can be consultants; they -- we -- shouldn’t be taking jobs and money away from Iraqis.
Again, I do not think any of this will happen. Not as long as President Bush is in office.
Before the war began, I was intrigued and, despite myself, impressed with Bush’s mad bomber act, in which he portrayed himself as so eager to fight that nations did his bidding just to calm him down. I winced as Bush went too far, tarring nations as being in an “Axis of Evil” even as they followed China, at a distance, toward moderation. But I was amused to see him force U.N. inspectors back into Iraq and Iraq back into compliance with the U.N. He was saying “Jump,” and the world was saying, “All right, all right, all right! Just calm down!”
Unfortunately, it really wasn’t an act. Bush really was the mad bomber I thought he was playing in TV, and in an effort to make us safer, he has given Islamists a recruiting tool; claiming Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were in cahoots, he has succeeded in convincing them to work toward the same ends in attacking U.S. soldiers and U.N. and Red Cross workers; seeking to sound the warnings against weapons of mass destruction, he has accelerated nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea; because he’s made such a mess of the war on terrorism, he’ll probably have to watch helplessly as his great Democratic experiment in the Middle East collapses further into increased religious fervor and anti-Americanism.
This is what we have accomplished or will accomplish on our present tack, but neither Bush nor Friedman can afford to agree. Their attitudes, that one need not admit mistakes, just revise history to suit new needs, is no way to correct the situation.
So I’m not seriously looking for the United States to pull out of Iraq. I’m merely hoping without real hope for an acknowledgment that our occupation is doomed, in one way or another, because we were misguided going in.
Saturday, November 01, 2003
DEATH TOLL UNTOLLED
It’s not schadenfreude behind the noting of occasional myopia at The New York Times. For some it’s outrage over the Times’ presumed liberalism and slanting of the news; when I draw attention to a lapse it’s because the skill and experience one assumes of the Times staff make the flubs mysterious and funny.
I was particularly mystified by the “Postwar G.I. Death Toll Exceeds Wartime Total” in the Iraq coverage of the Oct. 30 edition. The following two paragraphs, which you can, of course, skip, are the first paragraphs of the article.
“BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 29 -- American military casualties spiked Tuesday night into Wednesday with a new round of mortar attacks, roadside bombs and shootings that left four soldiers dead and more wounded.
“The American death toll since President Bush proclaimed the end of major combat operations now exceeds the 116 American combat deaths in the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The tempo of the attacks has increased as well, to an average of 33 a day over the last week from around 12 a day in July, a military spokesman said.”
Now, call me small-minded, but I read through the remaining 18 paragraphs of the story thinking it would tell me what the death toll was. You know, a number. Something to compare with 116. Maybe it would show up in the last paragraph, as a “by the way” kind of a thing? But the article -- the point of which, I think, was to point out that “Postwar G.I. Death Toll Exceeds Wartime Total” -- does not reveal the figure.
Was it in paragraph 19, which didn’t make the cut? Paragraph 300? Was it considered unimportant? Was there too much other valuable information to fit in?
Or did the reporter, Susan Sachs, and however many editors and copy editors reading the article before publication miss the fact that information was missing? The mind boggles.
As a postscript, the article included another forehead-wrinkler, if not head-scratcher: When discussing who may be organizing the attacks on U.S. and U.N. personnel, the Times notes that one suspect, once a general in Hussein’s forces, “is the highest-ranking former member of Mr. Hussein’s inner circle who is still at large.”
Except Hussein himself, of course.
I was particularly mystified by the “Postwar G.I. Death Toll Exceeds Wartime Total” in the Iraq coverage of the Oct. 30 edition. The following two paragraphs, which you can, of course, skip, are the first paragraphs of the article.
“BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 29 -- American military casualties spiked Tuesday night into Wednesday with a new round of mortar attacks, roadside bombs and shootings that left four soldiers dead and more wounded.
“The American death toll since President Bush proclaimed the end of major combat operations now exceeds the 116 American combat deaths in the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The tempo of the attacks has increased as well, to an average of 33 a day over the last week from around 12 a day in July, a military spokesman said.”
Now, call me small-minded, but I read through the remaining 18 paragraphs of the story thinking it would tell me what the death toll was. You know, a number. Something to compare with 116. Maybe it would show up in the last paragraph, as a “by the way” kind of a thing? But the article -- the point of which, I think, was to point out that “Postwar G.I. Death Toll Exceeds Wartime Total” -- does not reveal the figure.
Was it in paragraph 19, which didn’t make the cut? Paragraph 300? Was it considered unimportant? Was there too much other valuable information to fit in?
Or did the reporter, Susan Sachs, and however many editors and copy editors reading the article before publication miss the fact that information was missing? The mind boggles.
As a postscript, the article included another forehead-wrinkler, if not head-scratcher: When discussing who may be organizing the attacks on U.S. and U.N. personnel, the Times notes that one suspect, once a general in Hussein’s forces, “is the highest-ranking former member of Mr. Hussein’s inner circle who is still at large.”
Except Hussein himself, of course.
Friday, October 31, 2003
DRIVING LESSONS
Thomas L. Friedman, the Middle East-focused columnist for The New York Times, continued his descent into deranged apologia yesterday in a piece titled, “It’s no Vietnam.” (Iraq, he means.)
I admired his work only before Bush started his drive toward Iraq, which is when Friedman yelled, “Shotgun!” and jumped in for a fast and reckless ride that, in retrospect, shouldn’t have been undertaken with the nation’s most notorious DUI. Now that our soldiers are being attacked “an average of 33 times a day,” and continuing to die accordingly, notes an article found only 17 pages earlier in the Times’ front section, Friedman has been unable to leave the president’s vehicle -- which has, admittedly, yet to come to a complete stop.
Jump out, Tom! You look like an idiot in there.
Friedman is deranged because he is so in love with the Democratic experiment he sees going on in Iraq, despite the contradiction that the great Democratic experiment was the result of an immense con job on the American people, that before we export Democracy to Iraq and ask its people to pay for it, perhaps we should make sure it’s in good working order here.
“Many liberals oppose this war because they can’t believe that someone as radically conservative as George W. Bush could be mounting such a liberal war,” Friedman writes. “Some, though, just don’t believe the Bush team will do it right.”
Ugh. Has Friedman been reading his own newspaper? Or any? Has he not noticed that our efforts in Iraq are dramatically lacking in credibility? That killing innocents and forcing a way of life on people is not the most liberal of acts? That the Bush version of democracy is an improvement only by default? At least Friedman doesn’t try to pretend, despite his panting romanticism over what we could do in Iraq, that “this war” is over.
But his refusal to see the war as tainted translates into another blindness. He asserts that Iraq is “no Vietnam,” and that “The people who mounted the attacks on the Red Cross are not the Iraqi Vietcong. They are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge -- a murderous band of Saddam loyalists and Al Qaeda nihilists, who are not killing us so Iraqis can rule themselves. They are killing us so they can rule Iraqis.”
The blindness: So what? It’s a distinction without a difference. I don’t think Iraq is Vietnam either, for what it’s worth, but U.S. soldiers are still dying, as they did in Vietnam, Iraqis are still dying, as the Vietnamese did, and we still have no valid reason for being there, just as we lacked valid reasons to be in Vietnam.
Friedman wants us to think it matters which brand of killer is wrecking our glorious occupation, but the more important point is that the killers exist at all, and are attacking an average, just an average, of 33 times a day long after we drove in, guns blazing, and screamed, “Attack us!”
Friedman, riding shotgun, was screaming something somewhat different. He seems not to notice that his garbled message was indistinguishable from that insane provocation and is still -- still -- being drowned out by the sounds of gunfire.
I admired his work only before Bush started his drive toward Iraq, which is when Friedman yelled, “Shotgun!” and jumped in for a fast and reckless ride that, in retrospect, shouldn’t have been undertaken with the nation’s most notorious DUI. Now that our soldiers are being attacked “an average of 33 times a day,” and continuing to die accordingly, notes an article found only 17 pages earlier in the Times’ front section, Friedman has been unable to leave the president’s vehicle -- which has, admittedly, yet to come to a complete stop.
Jump out, Tom! You look like an idiot in there.
Friedman is deranged because he is so in love with the Democratic experiment he sees going on in Iraq, despite the contradiction that the great Democratic experiment was the result of an immense con job on the American people, that before we export Democracy to Iraq and ask its people to pay for it, perhaps we should make sure it’s in good working order here.
“Many liberals oppose this war because they can’t believe that someone as radically conservative as George W. Bush could be mounting such a liberal war,” Friedman writes. “Some, though, just don’t believe the Bush team will do it right.”
Ugh. Has Friedman been reading his own newspaper? Or any? Has he not noticed that our efforts in Iraq are dramatically lacking in credibility? That killing innocents and forcing a way of life on people is not the most liberal of acts? That the Bush version of democracy is an improvement only by default? At least Friedman doesn’t try to pretend, despite his panting romanticism over what we could do in Iraq, that “this war” is over.
But his refusal to see the war as tainted translates into another blindness. He asserts that Iraq is “no Vietnam,” and that “The people who mounted the attacks on the Red Cross are not the Iraqi Vietcong. They are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge -- a murderous band of Saddam loyalists and Al Qaeda nihilists, who are not killing us so Iraqis can rule themselves. They are killing us so they can rule Iraqis.”
The blindness: So what? It’s a distinction without a difference. I don’t think Iraq is Vietnam either, for what it’s worth, but U.S. soldiers are still dying, as they did in Vietnam, Iraqis are still dying, as the Vietnamese did, and we still have no valid reason for being there, just as we lacked valid reasons to be in Vietnam.
Friedman wants us to think it matters which brand of killer is wrecking our glorious occupation, but the more important point is that the killers exist at all, and are attacking an average, just an average, of 33 times a day long after we drove in, guns blazing, and screamed, “Attack us!”
Friedman, riding shotgun, was screaming something somewhat different. He seems not to notice that his garbled message was indistinguishable from that insane provocation and is still -- still -- being drowned out by the sounds of gunfire.
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
DAVIS’ DEFICIT
Journalists are supposed to doubt everything, confirm everything, but that’s awfully difficult. If the police tell you a thief escaped in a green Volvo, it takes a lot of energy to think of doubting, let alone to doubt and confirm, that the Volvo may not have been green, that it may not have been a Volvo and that there may have been no theft in the first place.
You should doubt all three. But, well, come on.
So on Oct. 9, when I pointed out that California’s budget deficit of $38 billion was tiny as a percent of gross state product (borrowing from a Republican defense on the U.S. deficit), I was checking the wrong thing.
It’s not that $38 billion is only 2.7 percent of California’s GSP; it’s that the deficit was cut down to only $8 billion in July, long before the gubernatorial recall vote that traded Gray Davis for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As much as I’m kicking myself, why not spread the blame? The lamebrains trying to keep Davis in office did a terrible job of getting the word out.
By the way, $8 billion is 0.6 percent of California’s gross state product.
You should doubt all three. But, well, come on.
So on Oct. 9, when I pointed out that California’s budget deficit of $38 billion was tiny as a percent of gross state product (borrowing from a Republican defense on the U.S. deficit), I was checking the wrong thing.
It’s not that $38 billion is only 2.7 percent of California’s GSP; it’s that the deficit was cut down to only $8 billion in July, long before the gubernatorial recall vote that traded Gray Davis for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As much as I’m kicking myself, why not spread the blame? The lamebrains trying to keep Davis in office did a terrible job of getting the word out.
By the way, $8 billion is 0.6 percent of California’s gross state product.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
THE FRENCH-CANADIAN CONNECTION
At last someone’s saying it and, even better, backing it up with a numbers: “The question is really safety, and the fact is ... Canadian procedures for safety are comparable and sometimes even better” than those of the United States.
The speaker was Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, a leader in the effort to import prescription drugs from Canada, where government price controls make them cheaper than in the United States, where, of course, the competition of the free market conspires to blah, blah, blah. Blagojevich’s 70-page study says that “as much as $90.7 million a year could be saved if drugs for (Illinois) state employees and retired employees were brought across the border,” according to the Monday New York Times. Readers were implicitly invited to multiply that by 50.
The idea is obviously seductive, and Springfield has followed Illinois, and Cambridge, Boston and Somerville are following Springfield. There’s a Congressional field hearing today in Boston -- yes, a politicians’ field trip, with U.S. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) visiting to weigh the pros and cons.
But the debate has so far been framed by the pharmaceuticals and biotech industry, which carries a lot of weight in Massachusetts, and the industry seems unfortunately to have been studying the playbook of the Recording Industry Association of America: hysteria and lawsuits for everyone!
“Industry leaders are concerned that short-term price cuts will undermine investment in research and development. That could slow the progress of drugs in the pipeline to the consumers who need them,” writes the credulous Boston Herald today. But Jennifer Heldt Powell’s article fails to note how little those consumers will care if they can’t afford the drugs in the first place.
It’s been reported that drug companies have threatened to end sales of pharmaceuticals to Canada, but that surely must be a reporting error, especially for an industry so weepy over the costs of research and development. The revised threat -- that sales to Canada would be limited to just what it’s determined Canada needs -- is more likely, but also a little silly. First would come the lawsuits when the inevitable shortage occurs, depriving sick people of their medicine; then would come the realization that making revenue in Canada from lower-cost exported drugs is better than making no revenue in the United States from people (and governments) who can’t buy them at the higher cost. Memo to the drug industry: Your products are frequently too expensive. Americans shouldn’t have to subsidize your research and development, and they no longer can.
The industry has hired the voice of reason in ex-New York City cop Richard “Bo” Dietl, who was played by Stephen Baldwin in “One Tough Cop: The Bo Dietl Story” (a 1998 release the Los Angeles Daily News called boring for those “not interested in self-destructive stupidity or counting how many expletives can be squeezed into an hour and a half”). Dietl, according the Wall Street Journal, interrupts news conferences to yell policy statements such as “This is a life or death issue ... you’re going to poison half of America.” (Half? Reminder: Dietl is a duly paid employee of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, so this may have to be considered an official policy statement.)
Dietl has a standard packet he hands out showing “a mug shot of a convicted thief who runs online Web sites selling prescription drugs,” the Journal’s Sarah Lueck wrote on Oct. 22, and “another shot, snapped by Mr. Dietl’s man on the ground in Kashmir, shows a dusty truck allegedly transporting medications that will be shipped to U.S. consumers who ordered them online.” And here’s a picture of the dog that almost bit me.
Dietl says his underage children have ordered drugs online, too, as a test of safety protocols. But either he or Lueck fail to note whether the drugs were to be delivered from a different country, such as Canada, or from one of the jillions of questionable businesses operating right here in these United States, bastion of drug safety and reputable business practices.
What’s gone missing in all this, until the study Blagojevich handed over to the U.S. government yesterday, is that Canada, our friend to the north, our Nafta buddy, is not a fly-by-night fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck business in Kashmir. It’s not a developing nation. The drug industry assertions that the United States can’t inspect every drug that comes across its borders is about as reasonable as noting that it also can’t test drive every car that enters the country.
The United States did $353 billion in trade with Canada in 2002, making it our top trading partner, said Walker Pollard, an international economist with the U.S. International Trade Commission, and we accept about $68 billion more in goods from Canada than we send it.
Check out the commission’s “data web” and you’ll see that pharmaceuticals are only 0.576 percent of Canada’s exports to us (for about $1.2 million in 2002). So if we’re going to freak out about inspecting things entering the country from Canada, shouldn’t it be killer cars and other rolling deathtraps, which account for a quarter of all imports from Canada?
As any rational person would expect, especially if they visited Canada, which is one of the more rational countries on Earth, the efforts of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are matched up north. The nation’s Food and Drug Act says, predictably, that before drugs “can be marketed for sale, they must go through a regulatory process for quality, safety and efficacy,” said Krista Apse, a spokeswoman for Health Canada. “Drugs not manufactured in Canada can only legally be exported if they are approved by us ... and only a licensed pharmacist can dispense (drugs).”
The main difference is that regulation is handled at the level of provinces, Apse said, rather than federally, as is done in the United States, but the level of quality, safety and efficacy is set by the act, not by local officials.
Despite Dietl and the drug industry’s panicked warnings, it is not the sky that would fall if drug imports were allowed -- just the cost of pharmaceuticals. Warnings about drugs bought from other nations or online are reasonable if there are no trustworthy mechanisms in place to ensure safety. In Canada, there are, and the U.S. Senate bill is written to allow imports only from Canada.
That’s fine news, and Blagojevich’s study will make such a bill more likely to pass.
If so, concern would have to shift to Canada, where Apse says there is already concern over drug shortages and industry anger making the problem even worse. But that would leave drug manufacturers looking like bad guys instead of saviors, and probably worsen the outlook for a sector that has struggled enough in recent years.
Pharmacist, heal thyself.
The speaker was Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, a leader in the effort to import prescription drugs from Canada, where government price controls make them cheaper than in the United States, where, of course, the competition of the free market conspires to blah, blah, blah. Blagojevich’s 70-page study says that “as much as $90.7 million a year could be saved if drugs for (Illinois) state employees and retired employees were brought across the border,” according to the Monday New York Times. Readers were implicitly invited to multiply that by 50.
The idea is obviously seductive, and Springfield has followed Illinois, and Cambridge, Boston and Somerville are following Springfield. There’s a Congressional field hearing today in Boston -- yes, a politicians’ field trip, with U.S. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) visiting to weigh the pros and cons.
But the debate has so far been framed by the pharmaceuticals and biotech industry, which carries a lot of weight in Massachusetts, and the industry seems unfortunately to have been studying the playbook of the Recording Industry Association of America: hysteria and lawsuits for everyone!
“Industry leaders are concerned that short-term price cuts will undermine investment in research and development. That could slow the progress of drugs in the pipeline to the consumers who need them,” writes the credulous Boston Herald today. But Jennifer Heldt Powell’s article fails to note how little those consumers will care if they can’t afford the drugs in the first place.
It’s been reported that drug companies have threatened to end sales of pharmaceuticals to Canada, but that surely must be a reporting error, especially for an industry so weepy over the costs of research and development. The revised threat -- that sales to Canada would be limited to just what it’s determined Canada needs -- is more likely, but also a little silly. First would come the lawsuits when the inevitable shortage occurs, depriving sick people of their medicine; then would come the realization that making revenue in Canada from lower-cost exported drugs is better than making no revenue in the United States from people (and governments) who can’t buy them at the higher cost. Memo to the drug industry: Your products are frequently too expensive. Americans shouldn’t have to subsidize your research and development, and they no longer can.
The industry has hired the voice of reason in ex-New York City cop Richard “Bo” Dietl, who was played by Stephen Baldwin in “One Tough Cop: The Bo Dietl Story” (a 1998 release the Los Angeles Daily News called boring for those “not interested in self-destructive stupidity or counting how many expletives can be squeezed into an hour and a half”). Dietl, according the Wall Street Journal, interrupts news conferences to yell policy statements such as “This is a life or death issue ... you’re going to poison half of America.” (Half? Reminder: Dietl is a duly paid employee of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, so this may have to be considered an official policy statement.)
Dietl has a standard packet he hands out showing “a mug shot of a convicted thief who runs online Web sites selling prescription drugs,” the Journal’s Sarah Lueck wrote on Oct. 22, and “another shot, snapped by Mr. Dietl’s man on the ground in Kashmir, shows a dusty truck allegedly transporting medications that will be shipped to U.S. consumers who ordered them online.” And here’s a picture of the dog that almost bit me.
Dietl says his underage children have ordered drugs online, too, as a test of safety protocols. But either he or Lueck fail to note whether the drugs were to be delivered from a different country, such as Canada, or from one of the jillions of questionable businesses operating right here in these United States, bastion of drug safety and reputable business practices.
What’s gone missing in all this, until the study Blagojevich handed over to the U.S. government yesterday, is that Canada, our friend to the north, our Nafta buddy, is not a fly-by-night fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck business in Kashmir. It’s not a developing nation. The drug industry assertions that the United States can’t inspect every drug that comes across its borders is about as reasonable as noting that it also can’t test drive every car that enters the country.
The United States did $353 billion in trade with Canada in 2002, making it our top trading partner, said Walker Pollard, an international economist with the U.S. International Trade Commission, and we accept about $68 billion more in goods from Canada than we send it.
Check out the commission’s “data web” and you’ll see that pharmaceuticals are only 0.576 percent of Canada’s exports to us (for about $1.2 million in 2002). So if we’re going to freak out about inspecting things entering the country from Canada, shouldn’t it be killer cars and other rolling deathtraps, which account for a quarter of all imports from Canada?
As any rational person would expect, especially if they visited Canada, which is one of the more rational countries on Earth, the efforts of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are matched up north. The nation’s Food and Drug Act says, predictably, that before drugs “can be marketed for sale, they must go through a regulatory process for quality, safety and efficacy,” said Krista Apse, a spokeswoman for Health Canada. “Drugs not manufactured in Canada can only legally be exported if they are approved by us ... and only a licensed pharmacist can dispense (drugs).”
The main difference is that regulation is handled at the level of provinces, Apse said, rather than federally, as is done in the United States, but the level of quality, safety and efficacy is set by the act, not by local officials.
Despite Dietl and the drug industry’s panicked warnings, it is not the sky that would fall if drug imports were allowed -- just the cost of pharmaceuticals. Warnings about drugs bought from other nations or online are reasonable if there are no trustworthy mechanisms in place to ensure safety. In Canada, there are, and the U.S. Senate bill is written to allow imports only from Canada.
That’s fine news, and Blagojevich’s study will make such a bill more likely to pass.
If so, concern would have to shift to Canada, where Apse says there is already concern over drug shortages and industry anger making the problem even worse. But that would leave drug manufacturers looking like bad guys instead of saviors, and probably worsen the outlook for a sector that has struggled enough in recent years.
Pharmacist, heal thyself.
Monday, October 27, 2003
IF THE HISSY-FITS, BEWARE IT
I’m just now catching up to Saturday’s lead editorial in the Boston Herald, which, I note with glee and horror, actually jeers a supporter of John Kerry’s presidential campaign for ... endorsing John Kerry for president!
The editorial begins:
“Now here's a real political shocker for you. Joseph Wilson, the former diplomat who threw a hissy-fit when his CIA-employed wife was outed in a Robert Novak column, has officially endorsed Sen. John Kerry for president.
“Oh, stop the presses!”
An odd stance to take, considering that the Herald was among the newspapers running such an article. But the editorial writers have another cunning point to make:
“Wilson also acknowledged that he has been advising Kerry on foreign policy for about five months. Yes, that would put it BEFORE Wilson started criticizing President Bush for the line in his State of the Union message about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger for use in Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. (Wilson was the one sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate the charge, but insists he found no evidence of same.)”
Again odd, this time concerning the phrasing of that last sentence, since no one has found such evidence. Or, to quote then-spokesman for the White House Ari Fleischer in the July 8, 2003, New York Times, “We’ve long acknowledged (the information) did, indeed, turn out to be incorrect.”
Even more funny, and I can only hope that’s what the editorial writers were trying to be, was the charge that Wilson’s “righteous indignation” is suspect, and his endorsement somehow questionable, because he’s been advising Kerry for several months. In other words, he’d been advising Kerry since June, while his public chiding of the Bush administration for misusing his report took place in July. But his trip to Niger to track down the uranium sale took place in 2002, and the speech George Bush gave incorrectly using Wilson’s information took place in January.
The Herald’s more strident cousin, The Washington Times, had a similarly odd point to make on Oct. 2. In pointing out that “Wilson, wife have tight ties to Democrats,” the Times’ Rowan Scarborough cleverly notes Wilson’s duplicity in having told ABC in November that Iraqis “would use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have,” although, Scarborough writes, “he now criticizes Mr. Bush for relying on the same intelligence.”
Wilson, of course, had nothing to do with biological weapons and wouldn’t necessarily have known anything about them, especially in November. In a fine point that eludes the Times, Wilson investigated a specific allegation of a purchase of uranium -- a material popular in nuclear warfare -- not general allegations of biological weaponry. So he didn’t necessarily have any intelligence on biological weapons, although Bush sure did.
Well, whatever.
WILSON: CONSISTENT
While Republicans have been inconsistent on Wilson, who was a hawk during the first Gulf War, Wilson has not been inconsistent on Iraq. He’s been quite prescient, in fact, and diplomatic, attempting to warn against a dangerous policy in Iraq while not blowing the whistle on the Bush administration’s deceit or incompetence (your choice) in regard to his own intelligence gathering. The proof is in the transcript of “The World Today” episode of March 13, months before his New York Times piece, in which Wilson tells Eleanor Hall:
“I have no doubt whatsoever that the United States is going to win the battle for Baghdad. We will go in, there may be some surprises, there may be some real nasty surprises, but we will succeed in our objective of throwing out the regime of Saddam Hussein and occupying Baghdad. But that is only the first battle. The success or failure of this operation won't be known until after we have effectively withdrawn from Iraq.”
“(The United States) is taking a terribly large gamble, and I’m not sure it’s a necessary gamble for the purposes of assuring our national security. I think, on the contrary, that if the photos coming out of Baghdad after we implement our strategy or anything like the military has described it, it may in fact become a wonderful recruiting tool for Osama bin Laden and others like him.
“We need to assume that after a brief period, when we’re perceived as liberators, we will come to be seen as occupiers. That will then have the effect, I think, of alienating a broader swath of the Arab and Muslim world, from Indonesia to Mauritania.”
THE HERALD: CONSISTENTLY NUTTY
Herald editorials are frequently as silly as the Wilson item. The writers trot after liberal issues, hopping indignantly in a Limbaughesque kind of sputtering rage, with the same lapses of fairness and logic. It’s always seemed harmless enough, mostly because no one at the newspaper tends to take the editorials very seriously -- just as something to put up with, like the junior high punctuation of the Inside Track gossip column or cheesecake shots linked winkingly to “news” (Here’s another giant photo of Miss Massachusetts in a bikini, because she’s competing in another beauty pageant, and here’s a giant photo of Jennifer Lopez in a wet, white bikini because she’s ... without Ben Affleck).
But there was one piece I hung onto, because it was so deliciously absurd.
“At the start of every academic year, the Young America’s Foundation calls attention to the idiocies of political correctness on campus in a little guide called ‘The Dirty Dozen.’ It’s an eye-opener,” ran an Aug. 26, 2001, editorial. “Conservative scholars such as Nobel-prize winner Milton Friedman and historian Paul Johnson are virtually ignored in college curricula (and) Karl Marx and his successors are widely favored in assigned reading.”
In fact, the piece said, “You would be as hard-pressed to find a course at a major university that treats capitalism sympathetically as you would be to locate one that examines feminism, Marxism or multiculturalism critically.”
This floored me, as, just within a several-mile radius around the Herald offices were, and are, the Harvard Business School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, Babson College’s MBA program, the Carroll School of Management at Boston College ... well, think of a school with a business program, which is where capitalism would be a main topic, and there you will find programs that are not only “sympathetic” to capitalism, but focused on wringing every advantage out of it.
Unlike The Washington Times, the Herald reserves most of its bosh for the editorial page and flags it as such with melodramatic rhetoric (hissy-fits, I’d call them). The Herald has a way to go before it’s spinning as fast as the No-Spin Zone is or tilted as far to the right as the Fair and Balanced.
But, lord, it’s in there trying. At least it’s trying.
The editorial begins:
“Now here's a real political shocker for you. Joseph Wilson, the former diplomat who threw a hissy-fit when his CIA-employed wife was outed in a Robert Novak column, has officially endorsed Sen. John Kerry for president.
“Oh, stop the presses!”
An odd stance to take, considering that the Herald was among the newspapers running such an article. But the editorial writers have another cunning point to make:
“Wilson also acknowledged that he has been advising Kerry on foreign policy for about five months. Yes, that would put it BEFORE Wilson started criticizing President Bush for the line in his State of the Union message about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger for use in Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. (Wilson was the one sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate the charge, but insists he found no evidence of same.)”
Again odd, this time concerning the phrasing of that last sentence, since no one has found such evidence. Or, to quote then-spokesman for the White House Ari Fleischer in the July 8, 2003, New York Times, “We’ve long acknowledged (the information) did, indeed, turn out to be incorrect.”
Even more funny, and I can only hope that’s what the editorial writers were trying to be, was the charge that Wilson’s “righteous indignation” is suspect, and his endorsement somehow questionable, because he’s been advising Kerry for several months. In other words, he’d been advising Kerry since June, while his public chiding of the Bush administration for misusing his report took place in July. But his trip to Niger to track down the uranium sale took place in 2002, and the speech George Bush gave incorrectly using Wilson’s information took place in January.
The Herald’s more strident cousin, The Washington Times, had a similarly odd point to make on Oct. 2. In pointing out that “Wilson, wife have tight ties to Democrats,” the Times’ Rowan Scarborough cleverly notes Wilson’s duplicity in having told ABC in November that Iraqis “would use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have,” although, Scarborough writes, “he now criticizes Mr. Bush for relying on the same intelligence.”
Wilson, of course, had nothing to do with biological weapons and wouldn’t necessarily have known anything about them, especially in November. In a fine point that eludes the Times, Wilson investigated a specific allegation of a purchase of uranium -- a material popular in nuclear warfare -- not general allegations of biological weaponry. So he didn’t necessarily have any intelligence on biological weapons, although Bush sure did.
Well, whatever.
WILSON: CONSISTENT
While Republicans have been inconsistent on Wilson, who was a hawk during the first Gulf War, Wilson has not been inconsistent on Iraq. He’s been quite prescient, in fact, and diplomatic, attempting to warn against a dangerous policy in Iraq while not blowing the whistle on the Bush administration’s deceit or incompetence (your choice) in regard to his own intelligence gathering. The proof is in the transcript of “The World Today” episode of March 13, months before his New York Times piece, in which Wilson tells Eleanor Hall:
“I have no doubt whatsoever that the United States is going to win the battle for Baghdad. We will go in, there may be some surprises, there may be some real nasty surprises, but we will succeed in our objective of throwing out the regime of Saddam Hussein and occupying Baghdad. But that is only the first battle. The success or failure of this operation won't be known until after we have effectively withdrawn from Iraq.”
“(The United States) is taking a terribly large gamble, and I’m not sure it’s a necessary gamble for the purposes of assuring our national security. I think, on the contrary, that if the photos coming out of Baghdad after we implement our strategy or anything like the military has described it, it may in fact become a wonderful recruiting tool for Osama bin Laden and others like him.
“We need to assume that after a brief period, when we’re perceived as liberators, we will come to be seen as occupiers. That will then have the effect, I think, of alienating a broader swath of the Arab and Muslim world, from Indonesia to Mauritania.”
THE HERALD: CONSISTENTLY NUTTY
Herald editorials are frequently as silly as the Wilson item. The writers trot after liberal issues, hopping indignantly in a Limbaughesque kind of sputtering rage, with the same lapses of fairness and logic. It’s always seemed harmless enough, mostly because no one at the newspaper tends to take the editorials very seriously -- just as something to put up with, like the junior high punctuation of the Inside Track gossip column or cheesecake shots linked winkingly to “news” (Here’s another giant photo of Miss Massachusetts in a bikini, because she’s competing in another beauty pageant, and here’s a giant photo of Jennifer Lopez in a wet, white bikini because she’s ... without Ben Affleck).
But there was one piece I hung onto, because it was so deliciously absurd.
“At the start of every academic year, the Young America’s Foundation calls attention to the idiocies of political correctness on campus in a little guide called ‘The Dirty Dozen.’ It’s an eye-opener,” ran an Aug. 26, 2001, editorial. “Conservative scholars such as Nobel-prize winner Milton Friedman and historian Paul Johnson are virtually ignored in college curricula (and) Karl Marx and his successors are widely favored in assigned reading.”
In fact, the piece said, “You would be as hard-pressed to find a course at a major university that treats capitalism sympathetically as you would be to locate one that examines feminism, Marxism or multiculturalism critically.”
This floored me, as, just within a several-mile radius around the Herald offices were, and are, the Harvard Business School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, Babson College’s MBA program, the Carroll School of Management at Boston College ... well, think of a school with a business program, which is where capitalism would be a main topic, and there you will find programs that are not only “sympathetic” to capitalism, but focused on wringing every advantage out of it.
Unlike The Washington Times, the Herald reserves most of its bosh for the editorial page and flags it as such with melodramatic rhetoric (hissy-fits, I’d call them). The Herald has a way to go before it’s spinning as fast as the No-Spin Zone is or tilted as far to the right as the Fair and Balanced.
But, lord, it’s in there trying. At least it’s trying.
Saturday, October 25, 2003
ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER
What? Still no word from Cingular Wireless?
No, not as of yesterday, so I called the company again and reminded them that their agreement to let me out of my contract was, so far, just a lot of talk. Cingular worker Kamille Gregory told me Sept. 30 that she’d send me our breakup note the next day; when I hadn’t gotten it by Oct. 10, I called back (and discovered she’d sent the letter to someone else) and was told again that the letter was on its way.
Two weeks later, nothing.
And during my latest, and last, round of calls, yesterday, the customer service representative handling me by agreeing to fax me the letter put me on hold and -- ah, nostalgia -- lost me. I was left holding a telephone receiver telling me that if I’d “like to make a call ...”
But success, I think, as the final rep of the day managed to survive my outraged ranting and fax me the letter. It’s dated Oct. 10, making me wonder about that Sept. 30th promise, as well as the claim of an incorrect address, but no matter. Here it is, misspellings and such intact:
“Dear Mr. Levy,
“Cingular Wireless strives for premium customer service and we are very displeased that we were unable to meet your demands for service.
“Per our phone conversation on October 1, 2003, this letter is acknowledgement that we have agreed to cancel your wireless account without you having fulfilled your commitment due to expire on August 2, 2004. Any associated termination penalties will be waived upon the return of your wireless equipment. Please remit to my attention at the following address:
“Cingular Wireless, 17000 Cantrell Road, Little Rock AR 72223
“If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me at 1 (866) 220-8446 ext. 2110.
“Sincerely, Kamille Gregory, Cingular Wireless, Office of the President.”
No, not as of yesterday, so I called the company again and reminded them that their agreement to let me out of my contract was, so far, just a lot of talk. Cingular worker Kamille Gregory told me Sept. 30 that she’d send me our breakup note the next day; when I hadn’t gotten it by Oct. 10, I called back (and discovered she’d sent the letter to someone else) and was told again that the letter was on its way.
Two weeks later, nothing.
And during my latest, and last, round of calls, yesterday, the customer service representative handling me by agreeing to fax me the letter put me on hold and -- ah, nostalgia -- lost me. I was left holding a telephone receiver telling me that if I’d “like to make a call ...”
But success, I think, as the final rep of the day managed to survive my outraged ranting and fax me the letter. It’s dated Oct. 10, making me wonder about that Sept. 30th promise, as well as the claim of an incorrect address, but no matter. Here it is, misspellings and such intact:
“Dear Mr. Levy,
“Cingular Wireless strives for premium customer service and we are very displeased that we were unable to meet your demands for service.
“Per our phone conversation on October 1, 2003, this letter is acknowledgement that we have agreed to cancel your wireless account without you having fulfilled your commitment due to expire on August 2, 2004. Any associated termination penalties will be waived upon the return of your wireless equipment. Please remit to my attention at the following address:
“Cingular Wireless, 17000 Cantrell Road, Little Rock AR 72223
“If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me at 1 (866) 220-8446 ext. 2110.
“Sincerely, Kamille Gregory, Cingular Wireless, Office of the President.”
Friday, October 24, 2003
CHECK THEIR MATH
I’m slow in getting to it -- “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” being far more important -- but the official word on the U.S. deficit came out this week: At $374 billion for the fiscal year that’s just passed, White House estimates in July were off by $81 billion.
Thus the White House confirms it cannot do math; the averaged guess of bond-trading firms surveyed by Bloomberg News at the time was off by only $58 billion, and they had less data. Or, if the surprise $26 billion boost of the past few months of tax revenue is factored in, the White House is off by $55 billion, while the traders were off by $32 billion.
Good going, White House. But we know you’re doing the best you can -- that you have problems with numbers, such as how much a war will cost or how much malpractice reform will help ease the staggering cost of health care premiums in the United States. (The answers, respectively, are “a lot” and “not much.”)
And it must be respected that the White House Office of Management and Budget concedes that not only is the $374 billion double what it was in the previous fiscal year, but that the deficit in the next fiscal year will be more than $500 billion.
(Looking at this year for guidance, that indicates a deficit for fiscal year 2004 of somewhere around $419 billion.)
It defends the deficits by noting their size compared with gross domestic product, of which $374 billion is only 3.5 percent.
But the office can’t keep its figures straight, probably because it benefits from the confusion. A look at the tables posted on its Web site yesterday shows that by its own estimates, the $500 billion deficit it expects for fiscal year 2004 will be 4.2 percent of gross domestic product -- but that it matches the percentage of deficit for fiscal year 2003.
It doesn’t.
While two plus two may equal five, 3.5 percent does not equal 4.2 percent.
The punchline is that the chart showing this is labeled “As a percentage of GDP, the budget deficit is expected to be cut by more than half by 2006.”
More than half! You can trust that!
Thus the White House confirms it cannot do math; the averaged guess of bond-trading firms surveyed by Bloomberg News at the time was off by only $58 billion, and they had less data. Or, if the surprise $26 billion boost of the past few months of tax revenue is factored in, the White House is off by $55 billion, while the traders were off by $32 billion.
Good going, White House. But we know you’re doing the best you can -- that you have problems with numbers, such as how much a war will cost or how much malpractice reform will help ease the staggering cost of health care premiums in the United States. (The answers, respectively, are “a lot” and “not much.”)
And it must be respected that the White House Office of Management and Budget concedes that not only is the $374 billion double what it was in the previous fiscal year, but that the deficit in the next fiscal year will be more than $500 billion.
(Looking at this year for guidance, that indicates a deficit for fiscal year 2004 of somewhere around $419 billion.)
It defends the deficits by noting their size compared with gross domestic product, of which $374 billion is only 3.5 percent.
But the office can’t keep its figures straight, probably because it benefits from the confusion. A look at the tables posted on its Web site yesterday shows that by its own estimates, the $500 billion deficit it expects for fiscal year 2004 will be 4.2 percent of gross domestic product -- but that it matches the percentage of deficit for fiscal year 2003.
It doesn’t.
While two plus two may equal five, 3.5 percent does not equal 4.2 percent.
The punchline is that the chart showing this is labeled “As a percentage of GDP, the budget deficit is expected to be cut by more than half by 2006.”
More than half! You can trust that!
Thursday, October 23, 2003
RAIDERS OF THE LOST OPPORTUNITY
Steven Spielberg, director of the “Indiana Jones” movies, had time to digitally transform the guns in the rereleased “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” into walkie-talkies and give prolonged consideration to eliminating its use of the phrase “penis breath.”
George Lucas, executive producer of the “Indiana Jones” movies, by now has probably changed more on the original “Star Wars” trilogy than he’s kept -- including making Greedo shoot first in an entirely unnecessary attempt to make Han Solo less of a scoundrel.
Yet in 14 years neither could be bothered to fix the lame bluescreen effects in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”?
George Lucas, executive producer of the “Indiana Jones” movies, by now has probably changed more on the original “Star Wars” trilogy than he’s kept -- including making Greedo shoot first in an entirely unnecessary attempt to make Han Solo less of a scoundrel.
Yet in 14 years neither could be bothered to fix the lame bluescreen effects in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”?
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
HATING STAR MARKET
There was a notable trip to the Porter Square Star Market, a quick jaunt to pick up a couple of bagels and replenish the house’s dwindling supply of roasted, unsalted store-brand peanuts. The trip was notable because the store had neither, making the trip worthless.
But that makes many of my trips to the store notable, because many wind up in that kind of frustration. And it’s not because most of my shopping is done between 11 p.m. and midnight, before restocking is done, since there are other nights when bagels are plentiful and yet other nights when there are at least a few, even if -- oddly -- it is only one flavor. You’d think the demand for bagels would be somewhat more steady, like the demand for roasted, unsalted store-brand peanuts, but you wouldn’t know it from the supply.
The store seems to have two main failings: It doesn’t note when something’s running out, so it can reorder, restock and keep a supply on hand -- although millions of people in households across the United States do that without thinking; and it invests heavily in merchandise that gathers dust on the shelf, sometimes a lot of dust, but lightly in the merchandise that sells out quickly. I’m confident of this because many times I shop night after night, buying one or two items and returning to buy one or two more, so I get a good sense of flow of, say, the roasted, unsalted store-brand peanuts I buy (fast, but few jars are put on the shelves) vs. the salted variety (slow, with an army of jars available). The same goes for the Tribe brand Calamata Chunky Olive Hummus vs. its many hummus siblings, SoBe teas vs. the various bizarre nontea liquids SoBe puts out (“SoBe Fuerte,” “Lizard Lava,” et. al.), and probably many more.
The store does learn, slowly, at least on some items. The calamata hummus is now in steadier supply, after weeks or months of spotty appearances, and the same goes for the Peloponnese Kalatama Olive Spread, rare but encouraging examples of store managers doing what they’re supposed to: noticing what sells out when and figuring out when to get more. And, although prices remain high, at least the store has stopped moving stuff around so frequently.
But managers are stubborn on other improvements, citing excuses such as the disproportionate number of people served by the relatively small store (an odd mea culpa coming from a site that was open 24 hours but now closes at midnight). Nonsense. If Newbury Comics can think to keep reordering 13-year-old spoken-word albums by dead beat writer William S. Burroughs, Star Market managers can arrange to keep some popular peanuts around.
That excuse is weak, also, for many of the other mysteries of the market.
The bags of salad, for instance, lacked individual price labels when I ate salad wraps daily, and there were no shelf labels, either. (I have pictures of this, from back when I blackmailed the store into action by complaining repeatedly that it was illegal and that I intended to notify the attorney general.) It’s insidious because, although the bags are almost all the same size, they have different weights and prices. A 10-ounce bag of one kind of salad looks the same as a 16-ounce bag of another kind, but today it cost $2.99, while the 16-ounce bag cost $1.99. And the 32-ounce bag, although twice as large, is just $1.79. There are also 5-ounce bags for $2.99 and 6-ounce bags for $3.29, as well as at least two brands on sale, with the store’s costing counterintuitively more. So ... good luck.
I also have pictures of individual cans of Hanson’s soda from the market’s bargain bin, priced to move at a mere $1. Interesting, considering that a six-pack costs $2.
During a recent visit, some of the Nikos Feta Cheese packages had individual price stickers, which are necessary because the weight of the cheese slabs vary. But some didn’t have stickers, and the bin holding them offered no guidance.
And how about Shaw’s Dandruff Shampoo? There are two kinds, for normal hair or for fine or oily hair, and each bottle holds 13.5 fluid ounces. The normal-hair version cost $8.27 per quart, or $3.49 for a bottle, and the other version costs $7.34 per quart or ... $3.49 for a bottle. I pointed out to a manager that this was mathematically impossible. He walked away.
Some three months later, nothing has changed.
My revenge for this cold incompetence is to snack as I wander the aisles, feasting from the penny candy and bins of cashews or yogurt pretzels intended for bagging.
It’s petty, but satisfying. Unlike the shopping experience.
But that makes many of my trips to the store notable, because many wind up in that kind of frustration. And it’s not because most of my shopping is done between 11 p.m. and midnight, before restocking is done, since there are other nights when bagels are plentiful and yet other nights when there are at least a few, even if -- oddly -- it is only one flavor. You’d think the demand for bagels would be somewhat more steady, like the demand for roasted, unsalted store-brand peanuts, but you wouldn’t know it from the supply.
The store seems to have two main failings: It doesn’t note when something’s running out, so it can reorder, restock and keep a supply on hand -- although millions of people in households across the United States do that without thinking; and it invests heavily in merchandise that gathers dust on the shelf, sometimes a lot of dust, but lightly in the merchandise that sells out quickly. I’m confident of this because many times I shop night after night, buying one or two items and returning to buy one or two more, so I get a good sense of flow of, say, the roasted, unsalted store-brand peanuts I buy (fast, but few jars are put on the shelves) vs. the salted variety (slow, with an army of jars available). The same goes for the Tribe brand Calamata Chunky Olive Hummus vs. its many hummus siblings, SoBe teas vs. the various bizarre nontea liquids SoBe puts out (“SoBe Fuerte,” “Lizard Lava,” et. al.), and probably many more.
The store does learn, slowly, at least on some items. The calamata hummus is now in steadier supply, after weeks or months of spotty appearances, and the same goes for the Peloponnese Kalatama Olive Spread, rare but encouraging examples of store managers doing what they’re supposed to: noticing what sells out when and figuring out when to get more. And, although prices remain high, at least the store has stopped moving stuff around so frequently.
But managers are stubborn on other improvements, citing excuses such as the disproportionate number of people served by the relatively small store (an odd mea culpa coming from a site that was open 24 hours but now closes at midnight). Nonsense. If Newbury Comics can think to keep reordering 13-year-old spoken-word albums by dead beat writer William S. Burroughs, Star Market managers can arrange to keep some popular peanuts around.
That excuse is weak, also, for many of the other mysteries of the market.
The bags of salad, for instance, lacked individual price labels when I ate salad wraps daily, and there were no shelf labels, either. (I have pictures of this, from back when I blackmailed the store into action by complaining repeatedly that it was illegal and that I intended to notify the attorney general.) It’s insidious because, although the bags are almost all the same size, they have different weights and prices. A 10-ounce bag of one kind of salad looks the same as a 16-ounce bag of another kind, but today it cost $2.99, while the 16-ounce bag cost $1.99. And the 32-ounce bag, although twice as large, is just $1.79. There are also 5-ounce bags for $2.99 and 6-ounce bags for $3.29, as well as at least two brands on sale, with the store’s costing counterintuitively more. So ... good luck.
I also have pictures of individual cans of Hanson’s soda from the market’s bargain bin, priced to move at a mere $1. Interesting, considering that a six-pack costs $2.
During a recent visit, some of the Nikos Feta Cheese packages had individual price stickers, which are necessary because the weight of the cheese slabs vary. But some didn’t have stickers, and the bin holding them offered no guidance.
And how about Shaw’s Dandruff Shampoo? There are two kinds, for normal hair or for fine or oily hair, and each bottle holds 13.5 fluid ounces. The normal-hair version cost $8.27 per quart, or $3.49 for a bottle, and the other version costs $7.34 per quart or ... $3.49 for a bottle. I pointed out to a manager that this was mathematically impossible. He walked away.
Some three months later, nothing has changed.
My revenge for this cold incompetence is to snack as I wander the aisles, feasting from the penny candy and bins of cashews or yogurt pretzels intended for bagging.
It’s petty, but satisfying. Unlike the shopping experience.
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