How Hillary Lost

 A ridiculous amount of effort is spent criticizing Hillary Clinton’s character. When elections are that close, every infraction is magnified. There is a much simpler material explanation.

It is pathetic how cheap Congress is. Most of their time is spent on phone banks raising money. There was a moment when it looked like Chicago’s alderman Vrdolyak would be sent to Congress. Imagine:

-This is a billion-dollar appropriation? I get more than this for a zoning variance.

Occasionally money rains on Washington. World War II was cost plus. Johnson unleashed Taiwan. When Nixon made the China deal, they had so much cash they were shoving it into filing cabinets. Reaganauts were Nixon wannabes. Bush Sr. held up the Saudis for Kuwait. Hillary Clinton was queen. She shook down healthcare so hard their teeth rattled. Everyone in Washington should love Hillary Clinton. The Saudis had to sit down, and Ross Perot complained about the service. Insurance and Pharmacy were in a bidding war to see who could shut it down fastest.

Healthcare was not going to allow Hillary the presidency, either time. Obama, lawyer that he is, crafted a compromise that has held. Healthcare was still frightened of Clinton. Who could they pay? Orange Julius is unreliable. Would you give money to Rumbo? Healthcare paid Putin. Healthcare didn’t have to report it. Putin used the marketing tactics we taught him for His Hugeness:

-Oh, we wouldn’t interfere in your elections.

Cambridge Analytica had a pass because they were doing god’s work. Everyone looked the other way while Cambridge Analytica, a creature of England’s security service, violated privacy protection. Cambridge Analytica was identifying the goofs. If a goof was heading to Syria say, we would know who they were. When Bannon’s boyfriend, Mercer, got hold of Cambridge Analytica he said:

-Show them where the polls are.

Cambridge Analytica shared lists with the Russians. The Russian problem was that they had no one reliable to coordinate with. Would you work for El Pompadour? Fat and Furious had to shout over the top.

It was just enough. As Joe Kennedy said:

-I’m not paying for a landslide.

I have an entry in this blog on Brexit where I speculate that healthcare paid Putin for that.

The Supreme Court is going to twist constructionist into a pretzel arguing that the 14th amendment is unconstitutional.  How can you argue original intent if you won’t respect the letter of the law? They just ignored the 9^th amendment in their “argument” against abortion. The Supremes took that original intent from the inquisition. The definition of fascism is ignoring the law in favor of popular will. Given that the law is so brazenly flaunted, our only hope is crossing over to vote for Haley in the primary.

Hamas

 Anyone who says “peace in the Mideast” should be slapped. They are announcing that what follows is stupid. Peace never had anything to do with the Mideast. The statement is arrogant. How would you like to hear “peace in the US”? American policy in the Mideast should be mute. It is disgusting to hear Americans advise and excuse each group their atrocities. Americans are never short of advice.

“Debate” in the US has circled around who’s better. It is not going to convince anyone that they should shut up and take it because their families had it coming.  No one has rounded up their criminals.

Here is a quick review of America’s relationship, keeping an American eye for the man behind the curtain and the emperor’s clothes:

Before World War II, the countries of the world refused Jewish refugees from Germany. Germans made that a big deal. During and after the war Churchill sent Jewish refugees to Palestine. British grabbed Palestine from the Ottomans. Some Pan Arabism is nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire.

Israel was founded by Harry Truman as a Baptist fantasy. Palestinians originally met the Israeli incursion by demanding a unified secular democratic state. I can see why Israel didn’t trust that compromise. While those Palestinians were right, they weren’t demanding citizenship in Israel. Fatah has now found itself splayed across the position of demanding their own secular state. It is fun seeing Muslims demand a secular state. Wilsonian democracy is fraud. Do you want to be a nation or a religious artifact?

The American position in the Middle East is oil reserves. Eisenhower said it was oil when we made Israel, France and England give back Suez. It is not just gasoline or earnings on oil. It is the financial value of oil reserves, the tapped, estimated oil in the ground. That value has a multiplier from compounded investment instruments dependent on its future value. It is much larger than oil company earnings. Finance is the best conspiracy theory.

Sirhan killed Bobby Kennedy for supporting Israel.

Golda Meir, Wisconsin school teacher, had to take on the entire world, including Kissinger and Nixon, through two major existential conflicts. Each time, US support came once the conflict was determined.

In 1978 the three stupidest men in the world: Arafat, Begin and Carter met at Camp David. Eventually Arafat said something like:

-What’s it going to be? In or out?

At that moment Begin started talking two states. Arafat’s mistake was discarding his strongest card. Israel has no intention of allowing two states.

Just as refugees created Israel, Palestinian refugees then dominated the adjoining countries of Jordan and Lebanon. In 1982 Israel had enough and charged across Lebanon surrounding the PLO military in Beirut. Israel was starving out the encircled city. Haig, the cast iron American Secretary of State told Israel to hurry it up. Then Arafat called out to King Fahd:

-Am I not yours?

Haig was out. American, French and Italian military evacuated PLO from Beirut. Each PLO military unit returned to its own country, abandoning the refugees in their camps. You can see why Israel is nuts.

There has been snark about Israel lobby. Under Bush Sr. Israel was trying to borrow 10 billion dollars. At the exact same time King Fahd gave a check for 32 billion to the US to thank us for Kuwait. That difference is orders of magnitude. The function of the Israel lobby in American politics is to maintain the price.

To belabor the obvious, we showed up for Kuwait, not Israel.

After Likud called for the murder of Prime Minister Rabin, Rabin was killed and Likud created the next government. This stopped the Oslo accord. Rabin was a git. He was always working angles and fixing things. Talmud teaches that we are only judged on our last day. On his last day Rabin was murdered at a peace demonstration. Rabin even fixed that.

Israel dug most of the tunnels under Gaza, when Gaza was intended as a buffer state. Israel supported the creation of Hamas in 1987 to undercut PLO legitimacy. The atrocities of the Gaza strip justify the settlers. Americans understand the settler game. That is where we came from.

You would suppose Israel could find an intelligent leader. Netanyahu can’t acknowledge that all the arguments are reversible, either way. Coming from America, I realize it is difficult. America has privately demanded a cease fire. Israel initially said no, now kind of. As any law enforcement or jail can explain, the only way to prevent hostages is to officially make them the first target. Inept and heartless is a bad look. Israel leadership cannot appear to acquiesce to America once again reigning them in. America has pulled back Israel at least ten times before. I don’t think Israel will change leadership. As Americans know, demonstrations are not votes.

Another occupation will fail as all the previous ones have. If Israel wanted two states, they would clear the settlers out of the territories or better yet pull the Israeli police and let Fatah, do it. This would give the PLO legitimacy. The settlers aren’t that many votes; they aren’t even in the army. Many came from America and have sponsors here. Once that was done evacuate everyone from Gaza to the west bank. If you are going to be imperial, ask yourself what would the British do? Sift through the Gaza Palestinians, get the DNA, see if they match any pictures. PLO can do the second screening. This would minimize Israel casualties. Try sending missiles from a flattened Gaza.

Don’t worry, won’t happen. Israel wants Gaza, they want Hamas. Hamas is used like our black power during the civil rights movement. The settlers do not want Gaza moved to the west bank. It is not Iran but Qatar that directs Hamas with Israel’s acquiescence. Israel had the Hamas battle plan because Israel created it.  Gas reserves are also decision making valuable. Check Gaza Marine.

The pathetic sick undisciplined losers who tortured their captives had to know that they had the time to do it. Someone else had to create the plan and coach the disposable scum. I’m guessing they hadn’t planned for success.

Don’t demand disenfranchisement in a democracy.  What advice would you give our indigenous in the US about voting? The most terrifying demand the Palestinians could make is Israeli citizenship. Then Palestinians would be the settlers. I can see why Palestinians wouldn’t trust that compromise.

Questioning legitimacy is a slippery slope. Israel is a nation; the Palestinians are a people. You are not going to impress Americans talking about land. Except for Hawaiian, Navajo and Eskimo, we all recently came from somewhere else. Few of us are the people we started from. We are raised on atrocity and bitterness. Find a county seat in Illinois, there will be a monument with the cannon pointed south. In Mississippi the cannon points north. The north was right. We aren’t that into good and bad, we do understand big and little. My only advice is to not be the US. That pursuit is futile. You be you.

-How many white people did Chief Blackhawk kill?

-Not enough.

Allying yourself with America, or any group in America, is a mistake. Even Baptists. Americans are fickle and spendthrift. The last American general who understood attrition was George Washington. As for appropriations, Ukraine and Israel will have arms. If we don’t fund them, that will free them to buy from other countries and develop their own. Our appropriations are only matched by the cost of our systems. If the left was impeding military spending, military autonomy and national interest the way the right is, we’d be dead.

Once US blew up the pipeline, we became junior partners to Qatar supplying natural gas to Europe. Neither US nor Qatar is in any hurry to see Gaza Marine developed.

Friends With the Mayor

Brandon Johnson has just been elected mayor of Chicago. Except Byrne we have always elected lawyers, even prosecutors, in the hope that they would avoid indictment. So far, they have. Johnson is the first schoolteacher. As a teacher Johnson is trying to approach crime from a Confucious perspective, systemically. Here are some obvious concerns:

A court clerk just made the mistake of self-publishing a book about a recent case. In general police, prosecutors, judges and even clerks should be cautious publicly expressing opinions that could be thrown back at them, endangering testimony, and convictions. It is unfortunate that people closest to issues are precisely the ones constrained from public discussion.

Police are not screened for clerical aptitude. Clerical tasks are a major part of police work, especially investigations. Back in the 90’s the federal government confronted domestic violence. Their solution was the development of a form that must be filed if the husband was not arrested and removed from the incident. This had the consequence of saving a lot of men’s lives. The legislators understood full well that police will do anything to avoid filling out a form.

You may be puzzled that police sometimes ventilate suspects. Imagine you are a responsible person training police. You are not training multi $100,000 SOCOM warriors who wound their opponents to entice their comrades into further casualties. Hopefully, it is unlikely that a police officer will ever be in a gun battle. You train to the exception. Your officer will undergo inquiry and may lose their job. Your objective is that the officer survives. You will train said officer to start shooting the moment they clear the holster, correct as they go, keep shooting and don’t stop till they drop. It is not common, but there are people who when shot pull out their gun and kill you. It is not a good look, but police should also receive baton training. Police should have options.

It used to be that police were the biggest street gang, they coordinated with each other, set it up and take it down. Just as Catholic school graduates make the worst public-school teachers, military are the worst police. Warrior mentality is dangerous to police survival. Running to the gun fire didn’t work against one way glass at the Tennessee bank shooting.

I don’t know if they are intentionally disingenuous, but the best argument for gun control is the You tube video channels Garand Thumb and She Equips Herself. If you have any critical faculty watching man children play in the desert, shoot hogs from helicopters, and practice with grenade launchers should give pause. I don’t mind people who are raised having guns. Trained isn’t raised. Stavroula from She Equips Herself may not be raised but she is being trained by people who were. She considers serious issues. At some point you may wonder why you need to conceal carry:

-Everyone else is.

Hmmm.

The underlying justification for all this is crime. Why are people so prejudiced against criminals? You may need a criminal someday. Boosters get shot; gangsters pardoned.

In Chicago, teachers won against police in the mayoral election. This is another click in the Officer Krupke cycle from West Side Story.  They are even considering sending social workers instead of police. Department of Children and Family Services does not have a good reputation. Every time a child dies, a social worker should be killed. It is true that criminals are created. Once they are created, they are dangerous.

Crime is intrinsic to society. Take the Barbary pirates. British and American tribute stopped any other competition with their trade. Saudi ransoms to Somali pirates encourage instability and forestall oil development. Developers encourage street gangs to clear neighborhoods. Without crime there would be no police. Wildings could not occur without police encouragement. The various prohibitions are gang subsidies. Recently Oregon tried drug legalization with dubious consequences. I was disappointed. The lesson is that legalization alone is not sufficient in America. The snap back is too great.

Most people are not carrying cash. The only people worth sticking up are poor people who can’t qualify for credit. Using stolen credit cards gets you caught. The only way violent personal crime can be profitable is if it is receiving subsidy.

I am terrified of nostalgia. In the past minority populations were deprived of police services. Even when minorities were arrested, they would likely be released unless they had violated social order and murdering each other didn’t qualify. If you didn’t deal justice on the spot it didn’t happen. I don’t want to return to two-gun Pete, and we stomp drunk drivers. I have seen social justice; I am not a fan.

Part of the difficulty is that we have seen the man behind the curtain. I don’t know how many have been freed because of DNA, records aren’t kept, but they are coming out of jail like popcorn. Circumstantial evidence, ha, eyewitness, chortle, confession, horse laugh, doesn’t leave much. In Oak Park IL most murders are unsolved. Just don’t park wrong.

People like charter schools because they don’t want their kids in class with Huck Finn. It has little to do with parental control, values, uniforms, quality… Huck Finn is a nuisance. There is no charter school for the bad kids. We used to kid Huck Finn along until he was 18 and his brain had slightly congealed. We had social promotion, outposts, tracking… He probably didn’t get a degree, but we had kept him somewhere. Now, not only is Huck Finn out on the street but we told him he was worthless. Please don’t be shocked at the consequence. From the news reports it would appear that it is often the shining kids, college bound, athletes, adept who get shot. Think Huck might have a grudge?

Whenever you get confused, ask yourself:

-What would happen if those kids were white?

Resources would be found. The children would be placed in structured environments. Chicago has an abundance of lawyers. Huck is making videos. His sponsors are violating laws against delinquency and RICO. Put the lawyers on commission.

The right has suddenly discovered mental health. It is fun to see the ill take umbrage. The right wants mental health without national health care.

We are a military imperial nation. Violence abroad reflects as violence at home. Rather than excusing military adventures we should have treated terrorism as a police concern. FBI is far more vicious than marines.  

This is a lot to put on a mayor. It would be good to get our mental health centers restored.

Dismissing Racist Explanation

 

Recently there has been some fluff that we couldn’t find American workers to build a new integrated circuit plant. Our workers say it is because they are not getting enough money. Boomers bemoan:

-Our kids are too dumb to get the jobs we used to have.

Depend on Americans to find the racist reason even when it is against us. Foreign workers may get less than citizens, but that is not enough for a business decision, particularly on a subsidized plant.

As I explain in this blog in Income Disparity and Bribes, in 1969 America removed discretionary fund as an accounting entry. This has several consequences. Companies moved the amount in that entry to executive compensation, so it is now after tax. Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has a graph showing executive compensation on an upward diagonal from 1970 on. CEOs used to get ten times base earnings. Take the difference then apply the tax rate gives us the total compensation, for the bribes and kickbacks required for business. Moving kickbacks out of sales and into management has dramatically increased right-wing fund raising. Politics provides cover for payments.

This has also impacted hiring. Arthur Anderson would come in over the top, but most hiring is decided at middle management. It looks odd for the CEO of a large temp or placement company to directly solicit managers. Foreign companies with the accounting discretionary fund entry have advantage in the American market. As Trump says:

-Foreigners can bribe us; Americans can’t bribe them.

You would think that American ingenuity could overcome this pettifoggery. Simply pass the money to sales. Such practice cements the clique. Without the accounting subordinates take advantage and abuse their position.

It Is Just a Gun

 

I recently learned about pistol compensators. These are vents you can install on your pistol to lessen recoil. Since the recoil is what drives the reload, you have to be careful the compensator doesn’t jam the gun. This is a variant of the gas operated action on assault rifles that allows them to be the small plastic toy looking guns that are so popular. Shooting guns used to be more difficult. You can find YouTube videos of people shooting old rifles that hit them in the face because they are not used to the recoil.

There are also laser pointers you can attach to the gun. Fire a round into the target at the range you expect to use. Fix the laser dot on the bullet impact. From then on, within range, your shots should hit the dot.

Eventually we will have the Tom Swift electronic rifle. The gun won’t need a hammer anymore because it will fire with a spark. This will allow the cartridge to be held still and contained with no blow back. The cartridge may not have a case. Even if it does, ejection will be handled by battery driven actuators, motors, just as artillery sometimes is. The reload will also be actuator. Abandoning the pistols slide means that guns can be vented solely to minimize noise and recoil. Rifles will be defined only by the length of the barrel and stock.

There are already expensive computerized rifles that fire the trigger automagically once the target is selected. These guns are as self-focusing as cameras. You can set up a fire plan, inventory your targets, and their ranges, then move back through it. As the guns become popular, they will drop dramatically in price. We are talking about the same chips and optics that are in your phone.

Large magazines are passe. The gun lobby objective will be belt ammunition.

Don’t forget drones, the sport of drone hunting. If people want the game, the drone could hover until they get there. If someone shoots at your drone, is it legal to shoot back?

Imagine what massacres we will have.

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court functions as a safety valve. When the court fails, it is a big mess, we have had a civil war. In 1974 people were voting with their feet. Illegal abortion was so prevalent that the court had to act.

The prisoner’s dilemma underlies our concept of justice. Say a juror is fixed. How does the juror know that they will be paid? If they are paid ahead of time, how does the fixer know the juror will stick?

At this time, it has been announced that there are five judges who will rule against abortion. The early decision is a blatant loud fart. As Biden explained, it ignores the ninth amendment. The ninth amendment is intended to prevent this argument. As Pogo said:

-I got rights I ain’t even used yet!

If privacy or women’s equality are rights, then abortion should be legal. Buttigieg explained why abortion, whatever the term, should be a private family, not an arbitrary government decision.  It is a difficult medical and personal decision made in hard circumstance.

The judges are receiving constant renumeration: speech engagements, book deals, private excursions… Once the decision is reached, the gravy train stops. There are attempts at reassurance: further issues, maintenance of the decision. Out of the five justices, one has to realize that it will be more profitable if they renege. It may even be more profitable for the dissenter.

The early release of the decision physically endangered the Supreme Court. Congress is debating increased court security. The early release also put the matter up to bid, one last squeeze. It might appear that publishing the decision and source confidentiality is covered under freedom of speech and the public’s right to know. But this endangered all the justices. Sounds like an issue for the Supreme Court. Except that the court should recuse itself. Given the surveillance state and all the money spent, it must be known who leaked the decision.

If an amendment is required keep it simple. Allow no wiggle room:

-Abortion is legal. 

Vegas Conspiracy

Danley, Paddock’s girlfriend, appears to be receiving undue attention. Perhaps because she and Campos are the only ones involved who aren’t white. Vegas police haven’t presented well. I’m thinking that Reno 911 is more real than satire. Paddock seems to have given Danley the opportunity for a fat lawsuit. Maybe it’s just that all parties are concerned with liability but there is smoke. Did Paddock belong to somebody?

Odd that Paddocks tax returns have not yet been released. I doubt that he was operational, those guys been there, done that. He could have been in a support function.  The only operational goofs I can think of are Oswald and McVeigh.

Some of the smoke is Paddock as “professional gambler”. Supposedly, with comps, if you play big slots you can profit. This is why Vegas has so many rich gamblers and the casinos are broke. When gamblers play for comps they identify themselves to the casino. Everyone knows the machines are throttled. There is nothing illegal about this. When the house has volume it makes sense to throttle forward the machines, more big payouts and dings, to generate excitement. Likewise low volume is an opportunity to tighten the throttle and improve margins. Once a player is identified it is possible to tailor the throttle strategy to that player, keep them playing, and milk them for maximum return. It is a natural AI application. This would be legal as long as the percentage payout would be over the required amount. So Paddock was a chump. Did Paddock change his life style and investments only to realize he had been suckered?

It is likely that Paddock was a victim of child abuse. His dad was caught when Paddock was seven. Bad people, such as his father, often do bad things.

However Paddock got his stake and whatever his gullibility, he entered the real estate market at an auspicious time. In a boom market a persistent fool may do far better than a cautious investor.

The Korean War was voted down because of casualties and supply scandals. In Vietnam the military kept casualties down and when stories of the ArmaLite rifles jamming came out the military reacted with hysteria. To this day soldiers regard a rifle jam as a personal failure. Now that these rifles are widely available, you can see shooters clearing their jams while insisting that their guns are reliable.

-Look how easy it is to clear the jam.

Once a gun starts jamming it is best to clean it. It is now obvious that the guns jam because they are designed to minimize recoil. Why did the shooter have so many rifles? Because he knew that they would get hot and jam. Why did he stop shooting? Initially I thought maybe all his guns had jammed. But mass killers often become disgusted with the reality and are frightened of capture.

If you must have conspiracy, Campos, the hotel security responder, might have shot Paddock. Given Vegas he would have deemed it better to avoid attention.

Why is there so much violence? Violence is endemic. Constant immigration takes its toll. Our violence is quantitatively less than other places but it doesn’t have the same level of institutional acceptance. Why so much shooting? Shooting has gotten easier; the equipment is improved. The lone shooter reminds me of domestic violence. They are attacking people because they feel isolated, abandoned and betrayed.

Likely and So/Sandra Bland

I don’t know what happened. Dope means they toyed with her and that is why she broke.

I hate the word surreal. We all have some commitment to Bayesian analysis. Recognize that it is a probability and all probabilities include frustration as an outcome. Calvinism, the widely held belief enshrining Bayesian outcomes that things are as they are, frequently fails. This may be explained as fractal dynamic or failures of framing, but may simply be the consequence of chance. Confusing improbable with surreal simply means that your smug world view has been challenged by experience. Likely is not always so.

Explication still requires likely. We are indisposed to accept the miraculous, even when it is so. In the case of Sandra Bland the difficult anomaly is that she died stoned. If you believe that she somehow smuggled the dope in herself, I suggest you attempt it. If all the various formality and process of incarceration guarantee anything, they ensure that you will not have marijuana in prison. The explanation requires that Ms. Bland, in anticipation of her incarceration, secreted marijuana on her presence in some way unnoticed by her guards who deal with exactly that scenario every single day of their careers. If Waller County cannot explain the marijuana, they have no legitimacy.

Some believe that Sandra Bland was murdered. This is an excellent example of the difficulty of framing. It is likely that you have been inside. If you have, then you are well aware that prison is a very serious time out. We like to think we have internal resources. But as you read this you can select an entertainment source, order a pizza, or step out for some air. You can’t do those things in jail. Most of us are not good company and would resent being the sole source of someone’s divertissement, even or especially our own. It is likely that Sandra Bland obtained the marijuana from the guards. It is unreasonable that they would give her dope and then murder her. I hope that Sandra Bland was murdered. I think it was far worse.

Sandra Bland is depicted as fragile. I see her as self-reliant and adaptable. I doubt most of us would have lasted as long.   Why would the guards give her dope? What could she do for them? As you have come this far, I will be explicit. Harassment of prisoners, particularly women prisoners is common. One may say likely.

Lennon Conspiracy Revisited

Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently excoriated a reporter who revealed Emanuel’s travel plan to Cuba. It is generally thought that he was taking umbrage after a difficult interview. But most reporters are respectful of itinerary and family information, and Emanuel may well have had reasonable expectations that were violated.

This brings me to the legendary example of the danger of this sort of privacy violation. One of the good things about People Magazine is that it provides an archive. So I will give you the offending article directly. This was in the Chatter column 11/10/1980:

“Hanging 5
Reportedly worth more than $150 million, John Lennon stands to augment that considerably when his new album, Double Fantasy, which he made with wife Yoko Ono, comes out this month. Where does all that money go? Well, the ex-Beatle has been investing heavily of late in the works of a young artist. Patrons of a gallery on Manhattan's Upper West Side saw one of the canvases when an employee of the Lennons brought it in to be framed. The artist turns out to be son Sean, 5, who painted a green-and-brown cottage for Dad's 40th birthday in October. A white wood frame was added for $44. According to a salesman, the Lennons have had nearly 100 of Sean's paintings framed there. This is not merely a case of indulgent parents. With five giant apartments in New York's Dakota, four dairy farms, a Palm Beach mansion and assorted country homes, the Lennons clearly have a lot of wall space. “

People Magazine prints itinerary articles, so this one is not unusual. The information given is also available in a book, John Lennon, One Day at a Time, 1976, which People explicitly references in their description of Lennon’s killer, Mark Chapman. The difference between the article and the book, of course, is that the article is current, while the book may have been out of date. Wikipedia cites Lennon’s wealth as being an explicit betrayal of Chapman’s Lennon idealization:

According to Chapman’s wife Gloria, "He was angry that Lennon would preach love and peace but yet have millions [of dollars]." Chapman later said that "He told us to imagine no possessions, and there he was, with millions of dollars and yachts and farms and country estates, laughing at people like me who had believed the lies and bought the records and built a big part of their lives around his music."^[15]

There is a difference between common local knowledge and publication for a much larger audience. I remember bumping into Harold Washington at a local breakfast stop after his usual was outed by People. He may have also been avoiding a waitress who tried to force oatmeal on him.

Shortly after Chapman killed Lennon, People published an article on Jackie Onassis with where she often shopped and lunched. The Time Inc. corporate brass was visiting Chicago and I along with the rest of the employees was invited next door to Holiday Inn to meet them. I happened to be talking to the CEO and I said:

-I know you don’t involve yourself in editorial decisions.

He smiled.

-But isn’t it a bit much giving Jackie O’s itinerary? Wasn’t Lennon enough?

This isn’t as foolhardy as it might sound. In those days a programmer could always find work. I fully expected him to laugh and ask for my badge. Instead the CEO turned and ran.

I noticed that People seemed to be concentrating on celebrities living around Central Park. As well as the Lennon mention and Onassis article, there was an article on Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. At the time there was a furor about Trump tearing down the Bonwit Teller department store and building his first tower. There was a lot of outrage on the Upper East Side about Trump’s disproportionate skyscraper looming over the park and the celebrities were out in front in opposition. Trump totally played them. Unlike the following successful campaigns against development this one didn’t get much press. The failure to stop Trump tower solidified the opposition to future projects. New York plays rough. 

Rates

Any time someone gives you a rate for anything, it’s been jiggered.  The unemployment rate is a well-known example. In 2012 the reported unemployment rate was around 8%. If I take the total reported employment of around 134,000,000 then apply it to the total population between 20 and 64 of about 162,000,000 I get around 17%. That seems a little high for 2012 but it gives you an idea of the variance. At this point economists start throwing smoke.  Most economics seems to be disputes about rates.  Disability, yadda yadda, looking for work, employability, underemployment, I’ve known a lot of deranged people who have jobs.  A good rule of thumb seems to be double the reported rate. Google real unemployment and double the rate seems the general conclusion.

Given the tremendous amount of data available and studied we should have immediate, accurate and complete information segmented across any desired index of our unemployment.  Given that we don’t it is obvious that we don’t want this information. We have national job search sites, Monster, LinkedIn, Dice, which should be able to show employment rates and active job searchers by profession. Why aren't these numbers publicly available?

Earnings are another notorious quagmire. Security Analysis, the legendary book by Graham and Dodd, is essentially a diatribe on the difficulty of reading company reports. Investors want to see a smooth earnings curve, so management spends most of its time trying to fit its real revenue into that form.  Inevitably there is a disaster, the company takes a bath, reveals all its bad news and then goes back to building its earnings curve.  Knowing this, are you more likely to trust a company reporting gyrating earnings-or would you regard it as management not being smart enough to play the game?

Inflation is also difficult. Adam Smith proposed animal feed as the benchmark for determining the value of your paycheck. Nowadays this would correspond to gasoline. Recently, the price of gas dropped but the value of the dollar as measured against gold has not yet responded.  This is probably because we have hollowed out so much of our industry. Galbraith argued that inflation was the consequence of business requiring a rate of return for investment.  I think we all intuitively recognize that there is always a real, constant and underlying rate of inflation despite particular market events. Underneath all the various currency gyrations and trade imbalances currency value has an intrinsic depreciation.

What got me started on this article were college acceptance rates.  I was startled at how selective colleges had become. Then it was explained that students are sending out far more applications than they had in the past.  What the schools are not reporting is student acceptance rates, how many students turn down the school after they have been accepted.

Everyone recognizes a drop in crime statistics. Credit has been taken by the police. Contraception and abortion have been recognized.  Cell phones help with reporting and solving crimes. The prevalence of video cameras is significant. 1984 is real. Videophilia, the prevalence of video games, is linked with drops in pregnancy, recreational activity and crime. Improvements in medical care reduce the number of successful homicides. Some of the decrease is municipalities’ jiggering the reporting. These causes explain the drop in reported crime. But the nature of criminal activity has changed. Banks and businesses have supplanted organized crime.

In the past murder rates were in inverse ratio to construction. As Sam Destafano said:

-You will never catch me; you’ll never dig up the Dan Ryan.

I have noticed a number of articles mentioning bodies found in dumpsters.  At first this method of disposal seemed foolish to me. The bodies were being discovered.  Then it occurred to me that maybe a lot of other bodies were not being discovered.  The garbage disposal process is so automated. Now that it is easy to dispose of bodies, the true murder rate is hiding in missing persons.  How can anyone stay missing nowadays? It is more difficult to hide your identity than it is to dispose of a body.

Teachable Moments

I am not going to get into the issues of truth and justice because I am not a good advocate for that.  I think there are some teachable moments in the Martin/Zimmerman case.  It is so rare that children might pay attention to us older folk and this instance may give an opportunity. 

Given that all phone calls are recorded it seems to me that Mr. Martin’s last call should be subpoenaed from the phone company. There was some doubt about testimony that could be answered and it would give a more reliable timeline of events as well as state of mind.  The precise GPS coordinates may be helpful as well.

http://open.salon.com/blog/paul_j_orourke/2013/07/17/where_was_trayvon_the_missing_minutes

There has been an observation that the administrations characterization of vigilante justice could also be applied to our foreign policy:http://www.salon.com/2013/07/18/holders_amazing_anti_drone_war_speech/

I think we should hunt down all vigilantes.

There has been condemnation of Florida as unusual.  This may be. But the slaughter of young black men is not that particular as to place.  In Chicago such events are categorized as gang violence regardless of circumstance.  The thinking is that the families do not need the additional pain of knowing that their children were engaged in wrongdoing.

In Chicago Mr. Zimmerman would have been found guilty because he was out looking for it. In Chicago we go to great lengths to appear unpremeditated:

-So why did you have a baseball bat?

-I was coming from a game.

-At 3: AM?

-I was out afterwards and I didn’t want to drive.

Mr. Zimmerman was concerned about a rash of successful burglaries in his area.  Since the burglaries were successful it is likely that they were a neighbor rather than someone passing through.  Probably someone in the citizen watch group as they have the interest and the time.  I am curious as to whether the burglaries have continued.

If you can get the children’s attention it might be worthwhile to point out that young Martin had a tool in his hand, not just an emotional support system. I realize that this is a difficult concept. What would have happened if either of the children on their call had suddenly realized that it was appropriate to notify the authorities?  I’m not saying that the consequences would have changed but imagine the moment if Martin had handed Zimmerman the phone and said:

-The dispatcher wants to talk to you.

Once both young men had decided to stand their ground the only issue remaining is which one would be left standing.  According to Zimmerman, he was on the ground screaming for help.  The second dispatcher recording and subsequent testimony raised doubt on this issue. But Zimmerman’s is the only immediate deposition.  This brings to mind the advice of my own sweet dear little mother. Physical conflict is not a form of recreation or discussion. Please children, there is no reason to get someone down just to let them get back up again.  Whether you run or stand, you were given feet.

Action Movies

This should be read at poetry slams, open mic events, or wherever writers might congregate.

All movies, romance, comedy or drama are really horror movies. The one thing that cinema does well is draw you into their premise and then surprise and shock you.  That sense of outrage as you find yourself sympathizing with the loser, cheering for some victorious social deviant and then realizing its absurdity is what makes movies so entertaining.

The last good action movie I saw was Heathers, the humor, violence and sex seemed believable to me. I liked the premise that adults would accept a rash of teenage suicides that were really homicides. Body Heat was good; the combination of mystery and sympathy for the villains enchanted me. The Three Stooges shorts were a respectable depiction of violence. Most action movies suck.  The hero gets captured, the villain gets killed.  This is because they have to have the dialogue between the hero and villain. In what way is that realistic?  All problems are solved by Karate, guns, or if creativity is called for, large pieces of falling scenery.  When has an action movie said, as really happens:

-Quick, get the cash and the lawyers!

I can’t stand the constant monotonous bang-bang boom-boom yell thud scream of the typical action sound track pounding the intelligence out of its jaded audience in perpetuum.  It would be difficult to make an audience suffer through the explosion of a real gun shot.  Guns are loud.  One of the problems with shooting a gun is that an explosion has gone off in your hand and it is difficult to keep it steady for the next shot. The famous Dirty Harry “five shots or six” sequence in real life would have gone something like:

-…so the question is, do you feel lucky?

-What?

-What?

One was firing a magnum .44 the other a 12 gauge pump; their ears were ringing. They weren’t talking to anybody.

I think everybody should have the experience of actually firing a gun and trying to make that little bullet go where you want it to in a consistent fashion. It’s not that easy and if you are not wearing ear protection it is not that fun.

Most depictions of hand to hand combat are ridiculous. As Jim Harbaugh learned punching Jim Kelly, your hand has a lot of little bones in it and your jaw is a large solid piece of bone.  I suppose if you have sufficient practice with various formalized, ritualistic forms of martial arts, it will be possible for you to administer enough impact to the jaw to rattle the brain and bring on concussion without breaking anything in your hand. But I think most people who have experience in such matters would rather use a tool, preferably one that will extend your reach.

Fights are not stylized choreography but a panting crying screaming mess between people who are very upset and scared.  Part of the difficulty is that it is almost impossible for cinematography to have enough frames to capture the speed of real movements.  So we are given a series of frames resembling animation.

My biggest complaint is the setting.  The Old West or a modern metropolis is not particularly violent.  There are times and places in America that were dangerous.  If you were a Native American in California during the gold rush your prospects were bleak.  Chinese immigrants were often the victims of crimes.

 The nature of discrimination was usually that those areas did not receive adequate police protection and enforcement of the law, even when people were arrested, was lax.  This meant that if disputes were not settled immediately they were never settled: 

-We stomp drunk drivers.

What the movies have done is taken characters and plots out of their original context in order to give them broader appeal.  There may have once been a Dirty Harry, but that Irish stereotype was back in the 1930’s at the latest. More recently, in the 40’s and 50’s there was a Two Gun Pete, Sylvester Washington, but you will not find him on the screen. Two Gun Pete was a Chicago policeman who realized that there was little point in making arrests as the courts didn’t care if black people were killing each other.  If you were one of the Jones Boys, the gang that ran policy, he would call you up and tell you to turn yourself in.  But if you were a common thug he would leave you bleeding out, on the street.

In order to give it broader market violence is stripped of its class, ethnic, racist and gender qualities. For instance, saying a police officer was dirty meant he was on the take. Violence is most often a top down rather than bottom up endeavor. Offering it as the general solution to social problems only adds further confusion.

Arafat Conspiracy

This is an example of the dog that didn’t bark.  Arafat was killed by polonium poisoning.  This poison has the property of leaking residue all over the place, which residue is traceable to whichever nuclear reactor created it.  Any intelligence agency worth anything has its own private sample of this poison and determined which country killed Arafat and no one is saying.

If it were Israel the stool pigeons would have reached a crescendo.  This leaves one likely candidate.

The poisoning of Litvinenko two years later by polonium seemed odd. It appeared that Russia intended to put a big greasy thumb print on the murder as a warning to other dissidents.  Were they also waving a big sign pointing at Arafat?

Currently the US government has claimed the right to murder terrorists.  But this was the poisoning of a world leader in 2004.

It appears that taking out Saud’s stooge was irresistible to the Bush administration

Prohibition and the Great Depression

You would think that if econometrics and modeling had any validity at all then the issue of the cause and resolution of the great depression would be resolved.  Obviously they don’t.  The debate generally centers on some well propounded common sense axiom that has been violated and the ensuing consequence as proof of its validity.  A good synopsis is in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Great_Depression

It is generally held that World War II ended the great depression.  This correlation has been unfortunate for America’s self-perception and foreign policy.

The debate for whichever cause is met by instances where such stupidity did not cause the great depression.

I offer prohibition as a major factor.  The untraced illegal flows of capital may have severely burdened all the other extenuating circumstances.  The opium trade should also be considered.  When investors can get much larger returns with substantially less risk why should they consider legitimate markets?

If we ever can model economies then capital must be considered.  It is well understood that various investments and industries impact people’s livelihood in different ways.  The aforementioned defense industry requires large capital investment with relatively less employees.  Whereas smaller manufacturing enterprises spread the risk and employ far more people for less investment.

There is also the social cost of enterprise.  For instance mining and logging while initially profitable can have much greater costs for the nation than any profits extracted.

If it is ever possible to reasonably model the flows of money and investment then it may well be found that prohibition, by absorbing so much cost and investment was the unique and underlying cause of our financial ruin.

OJ

The OJ case was remarkable in that it encapsulated all the deficiencies apparent in our criminal justice system.  Part of the difficulty of recognizing the problem is that it is so easy to dismiss incompetence without recognizing its systemic nature.  The vagaries of state law and tradition make it easier to dismiss aberrant events in other jurisdictions. Illinois laughs at the foibles of Wisconsin judges and police. Even the antics of Buffalo Grove and Arlington Heights are merely sources of entertainment to the rest of us, unless you are the one being stopped.  Regardless of his guilt, if OJ had been tried in Chicago he would have been convicted.

 As OJ demonstrated in the Bronco episode he couldn't even break the speed limit.  He was framed in Vegas for running his mouth.  He didn't murder his ex and her boyfriend, he hired it done.

Put yourself in the shoes of the Los Angeles police.  OJ’s plane is in the air when the two victims had their throats slit, the kids aren’t disturbed, and there is no evidence.  It was obviously a professional job.  I suppose if this were television they would devote their efforts to finding the hit man.  Good luck with that Matlock.  Do you really want all the copycat clones in Malibu hiring hit men?

-Hey cheaper than a divorce.

It was also obvious who paid for it.  So they decided to smear up OJ.  Rule number one: don’t disrespect the police.  Bless them for trying. This seems a little risky, what if OJ had an alibi for the time before he was in the air? People don’t really have servants nowadays and celebrities value their privacy. Conversely even though older people remember OJ running through the airport in the Hertz rent a car commercial, detouring to kill his ex and her boyfriend before making the flight seems over scheduled. 

Unfortunately the police went overboard on the evidence.  Blood in the Bronco was more than sufficient.  The, hat, the shoe, the glove, the socks, where was the underwear? The stuff they grabbed hadn’t even been worn yet. Memo to police, when framing celebrities, look for signs of wear on their clothing.  Rule number two: don’t disrespect the jury.  It is well documented that police coerce confessions and influence witnesses, why should they stop at physical evidence?

Vincent Bugliosi wrote a book Helter Skelter where he described his prosecution of Charles Manson. He put on a very quick case and then let the defense talk their client into a conviction.  At the end of the interminable defense Bugliosi got up and said something to the effect of:

-Remember me? You know he did it, right?

The jury was so furious at the defense that they convicted Manson even though he wasn't at the scene of the crime.  Unfortunately the Los Angeles prosecution hadn't read the book, and they traded blows with the defense, answering their every point.  At the end of a yearlong trial, the jury met; someone said:

-Does anyone still care?

Someone else on the jury raised their hand and the case was decided.

DNA evidence has revealed the total failure of our court system.  In Illinois it was proven that half the people on death row were wrongfully convicted.  This doesn't mean that the other half was rightfully convicted.  It means that they were able to prove that half were wrongfully convicted.  As Governor Ryan observed if we can’t decide these cases correctly what makes you think that we are doing any better on any other cases, criminal or civil?  We would do better flipping a coin. We routinely convict the innocent and free the guilty. We haven’t progressed from the day of stocks and witch dunking.  Governor Ryan went on, rightly or wrongly, to be convicted on suborned testimony of conspiracy charges. 

Now that DNA evidence is understood, the establishment is attempting to paper over the immense breach of reality revealed by all the falsely decided cases. What we should be discussing is how to improve our court system. Instead we are indulging in CSI fantasies of justice.  Someday a new technological wonder will arrive and once again we will be shocked, shocked I tell you, at all the injustice.

How should we improve the courts?  One obvious issue is that it is the incompetent lawyers who become judges. The OJ case demonstrates how dangerous this Dilbert Principle can be for selecting judges.  I have never heard of someone entering law school because they want to be a judge.  The most successful lawyers never see the inside of a court room unless they get caught.  I propose that the pool of lawyers be subject to service as judges, perhaps for five year terms, just as citizens are subject to jury service.  The sitting judges should favor this system as it would open up more opportunities for them.

St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

I am always startled at my own innocence and naiveté.  Every Chicagoan knows that the police killed the Moran gang.  The papers reported it as:

-Men in police uniforms.

This may be the origin of that journalist’s trick that persists to this day:

-Men in government army uniforms, etc.

Of course, who wears official uniforms?  Officials, but that would be in poor taste, and might lead to misadventure. Yet I was surprised when I read Get Capone by Eig; I think most of us assumed that the hit had been ordered by the gangster establishment.   This had always been puzzling, as Capone usually observed the proper and traditional forms.  

What Eig suggests is that the Chicago police operation may have actually belonged to the Chicago police.

Capone was coming under indictment, his grip was loosening and the Police, with the backing of the FBI, wished to reassert themselves as equals rather than juniors.   It seems perfectly logical.  I admit I never would have considered it on my own. As Walter Arnold says:

-The Chicago mob is a front for city hall.  

Income Disparity and Bribes

Occasionally you will read a business story about some great CEO flying in to save a sale.  At first you will nod approvingly about a hard working executive protecting his company.  But then you might wonder, doesn’t this company have sales people? Is he going to fix general ledger next week and lead the research break through the week after that?  The answer is that the Chief Executive is the only one left who can lay down the cash briefcase.

In the old days, the disparity between lowest and highest compensation in a company was about 10 to 15 to 1. Now the disparity is enormous.  Like most government disasters, this was caused by reform.  Back in the sixties a Texas firm demonstrating good old fashioned American ingenuity was caught paying incentives to its sales employees out of its discretionary account.  Recognizing a loophole of gigantic proportions that anyone could use, Congress with the advice of the IRS passed legislation changing the accounting rules and made bribery illegal.  Up until that time while bribery was illegal in several jurisdictions, it did have a place in accounting practice under variously titled entries commonly known as slush fund or petty cash.  The justification was that these funds were allocated for “foreign” business activities where such practices were customary.  Places like New Mexico.  This rubric about foreign practice was repeated too often and that was made specifically illegal as well.

This means that bribes have to be paid out on an after tax basis, except, of course, when corporations operate through nonprofits, promotions, foreign partners or foreign subsidiaries. Good old fashioned cash has to come out of the boss’s pocket.  The discretionary fund entry has moved to corporate executive compensation. This is the major reason that executive compensation has ballooned.  It’s not simply that boards of directors are spineless sycophants; it is how business gets done.

In some other countries the old ratio of compensation is still in effect.  Those countries still allow slush funds.  So their upper management does not have the responsibility of sealing the deal.

The IRS now gets its cut.  Consider this from the point of view of the executive.  Not only has his liability increased and he has to participate in dubious adventures and expenses to wash this money through to its intended recipients, but his costs have dramatically increased as well, small wonder that the major complaint of the 1% is taxes.  The impact on legislation is the worst consequence.  When these funds were administered by lower level employees it was poor form to use them for anything other than improving the company’s market position.  Now furthering class interest is justified as providing cover for corporate objectives.