Rebel Monks

is a term you just don't hear all that often. How this only made page A23 of the Philadelphia Inquirer, I don't know. It's fantastic irony.

The story is, some monks in Greece are fighting some other monks in Greece for control of a monastery. The Orthodox Church wants the rebel monks, who are occupying said monastery, gone. Courts have ordered their eviction. The rebel monks aren't leaving, and they oppose any effort to improve relations b/w the OC and the Vatican.

Where is Ratzinger, I mean Benedict XVI, in all this? He's busy making friends with the Orthodox Church but apparently has no words for (cue Peter Gunn) rebel monks.

Sledgehammer-wielding monks: it's practically a Python sketch.



http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/nation/16286135.htm
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/60/story_6021_1.html

El está muerto pero tan es la justicia

I wish that I felt happy enough about Augusto Pinochet's death to go into the street and bang pots and pans and throw confetti, like some Chileans did today. But part of the premise of being concerned with human rights and social justice is that justice will ultimately occur. The effort to make Pinochet accountable for his crimes was admirable and unceasing. Yet it was thwarted at almost every turn. So I don't feel happy. I feel sad for the victims and their families for what I see as their double loss.

I have heard some of Pinochet's victims discuss their horrific torture, some of which went on for years. I have heard the anguished voices of the families of people who were disappeared. I have seen Margaret Thatcher greet Pinochet with immense gratitude while he was under house arrest. The blood of thousands of people was spilled at his hands, but the hands of neocons who supported his torturous reign to prevent the spread of communism aren't clean, either. What a neoconservative coincidence that Jeane Kirkpatrick died this week, too.

When it's decided that communism is too terrible to bear but we'll allow lawless killing of people to ensure it doesn't happen, a thinking person is bound to wonder how much worse communism could be. When a country like Great Britain sends people to war to fight Saddam Hussein in violation of international law, but won't extradite a criminal to Spain in compliance with international law, I don't know where we go from there.

I'm not sure why we keep reliving this lesson: When law becomes optional, no one is very safe.

Bolton boltin'

Man, is there just no end to my good luck? First my team takes over, then Rummy leaves, and now Mr. Broomstache is also going away. Bye, John. We'll miss your ill-tempered comments and inability to get along with everyone.

But I think the far more interesting part of it is that the White House is now saying it's not a resignation. This administration has always understood the value of framing, a careful choice of the words we use to describe something. Partial-birth abortion is one such carefully framed term, Social Security reform is another. In the words are the view they want you to take, and if you say them long enough, you'll think it soon enough.

The interesting part is not that they're still recognizing the impact of the word choice itself. It's that they so clearly don't have the upper hand on it.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign...

Sources.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061204/ap_on_re_us/bolton_resigns
http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/12/04/white-house-contests-claim-that-bolton-resigned/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fblogs%2F2006%2F12%2F04%2Fpubliceye%2Fentry2224533.shtml&frame=true

It's a very good day

to be me. But it's a suck day to be George Bush. Or Donald Rumsfeld. Or Karl Rove. I feel hopeful about the state of this country for the first time in a very long time. We've got the House, and now we've got the Senate. We've got a lot of work to do, and a lot more to undo.

No Child Left in School

My children attend public school in Philadelphia. I should say they attend sporadically. It's not that they don't like school. It's that school is often not in session. To wit:
September 7, 2006 First day
September 15, 2006 Staff Development
- 3 Hour Early Dismissal
September 29, 2006 Staff Development
- 3 Hour Early Dismissal
October 2, 2006 Yom Kippur
- Schools Closed
October 9, 2006 Columbus Day
- Schools Closed
October 26, 2006 Staff Development
- 3 Hour Early Dismissal
October 27, 2006 Staff Only
- Professional Development Day
November 3, 2006 Staff Development
- 3 Hour Early Dismissal
November 7, 2006 Staff Only
- Professional Development Day
November 13, 2006 Veterans' Day
- Schools Closed
November 23 - 24, 2006 Thanksgiving Holiday
- Schools Closed
December 8, 2006 Staff Development
- 3 Hour Early Dismissal

The school day is only 6 hours and 39 minutes long in the first place. From September 7 through December 24th is 77 days. There are 5 days off that not everyone else has. There are another 15 hours lost due to professional development, which is more than two full school days. (Why all the professional development, you might ask? Weren't they teachers in the first place?)

Let's forget entirely how difficult it is for the working family to deal with this logistically, or for the nonworking student single mom who can't afford to drop her kids in daycare every other minute. (Hey, my kids are probably getting a lot out of sitting through my classes. And as a sidenote, they're at least as prepared as some of my fellow students--bah-dum-ksh!)

But let's not forget that the time spent on holidays the rest of America doesn't get, to say nothing of the professional development, is the equivalent of 38 minutes being lost out of every school day in this fall semester. There are 399 minutes in a school day, which means that the lost 38 minutes is almost 10% (9.5%) of every day. I think that's outrageous. I'm pretty sure my kids, and yours too, have the right to more than 90% of an education.

If you told the CEO of any major corporation that 10% of his workforce's productivity or earning potential was going down the crapper each and every day, that would be the end of the story. Whatever was occupying that 10% would be gone before lunchtime. We apparently love to compare (but never contrast) education to business, so I have to wonder why this is OK at the chalkboard, but not the boardroom?

Source:
http://www.philsch.k12.pa.us/offices/administration/calendar/2006_2007/#calendar

Oops

I'm so sorry--On September 29th, I said 290 people had been killed in my city. My bad, let me rectify that. The number is actually 316, as of Friday night. Might be even higher by now.

What I'm still waiting to have answered is: how many more people have to die until my city does something about it? Do you live here? If so, why aren't you furious? And if you are furious, why aren't you acting? Where the hell is my deadass city council rep who only shows herself when it's voting time? When will this be important enough to put some effort into it?

And finally, can I please get some reassurance that if this were happening in the rich white areas of Philadelphia, the response would be equally anemic? I'm sure we'd all feel much better if we knew the lack of response was democratic.

Somebody 'Splain

Can someone please provide me with a rational explanation of why the possible suicide of a rich black man with whom we were so angry that we ran him out of this town can bring this city to its knees, but the 290 largely poor largely black homicide victims who live right here don't merit anywhere near the same level of intensive, thoughtful discussion?

Thanks. I'd appreciate that very much.

Legal Ethics

Legal Ethics is the name of one of my textbooks. In it, it discusses Enron, and the law firm of Vinson & Elkins, which was the law firm employed by Enron. Essentially, the book says, "Don't do like they did."

I love that Enron and all its connected players wound up in legal textbooks. One of the strongest things a law professor can say to her students is, "Don't you wind up in the next edition." The students who hear that shudder, thinking what a terrible situation that would be.

The Enron crew has become a societal touchstone for what not to do. Every time I read about them in my book, I am reminded that in this case anyway, the spin didn't spin.

No joy in Mudville

So, just to be sure we're all on the same page here. Bob Casey is running against Rick Santorum in a very important senatorial race in Pennsylvania. Why is this particular race important? Because Santorum is an outspoken conservative who is quite powerful in the Senate and supports the war in Iraq and if he could be toppled by Democrats, it could significantly limit Republican power.

Both Casey and Santorum are both pro-life and pro-gun which effectively cancels both topics, a big drawback for those who seek to keep them on the table. But Casey has been holding better numbers than Santorum in Pennsylvania, and there is reason to believe that Santorum is a victim of a generalized national voter anguish.

So you'd think Casey would look for as much money as possible to bring Santorum down. Indeed, his site says, "This is going to be the most watched, and arguably most important Senate race in the entire country. Building early support is critical to our success." Critical.

So how come noted columnist Dan Savage can't send him money? Savage, if you don't already read him, is the writer of a weekly sex column. Per Wikipedia, "Savage reacted strongly to United States Senator Rick Santorum's statements about homosexuality in an interview with the Associated Press published April 20, 2003...In the interview, Santorum describes gay sex as part of a class of deviant sexual behavior, including incest, polygamy, and bestiality, which he said threaten society and the family. Furthermore Santorum stated that he believed consenting adults do not have a Constitutional right to privacy with respect to sexual acts."

"Savage was outraged by these statements. At the suggestion of a reader, Savage challenged his audience to come up with a sex-related definition for the word santorum as a satirical form of political protest for the express purpose of "memorializ[ing] the Santorum scandal […] by attaching his name to a sex act..." The winning definition: 'the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.'"

With that background, last month, Savage sent $2100 to the Bob Casey campaign. But apparently Bob doesn't need (sorry Dan) faggot money. And if Bob Casey, understanding how important the stakes are, doesn't need faggot money, he must not need my nonfaggot money either. And if Bob Casey had the stones to publish his email anywhere, I'd explain exactly that.

Yet the stakes are in fact really high. So I'm doing what Savage did, giving to Philadelphians Against Santorum, so I'll know I did what I could to send that sick* conservative beast packing.

*yes, sick. It's sick to judge other peoples' lives while bringing your own dead child home to be photographed with your other, live children and call that normal.

Sources:
http://youngphillypolitics.com/node/1284
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5406165
http://www.bobcasey.com/actioncenter/raise/?sc=2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Love
https://secure.actionpotential.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=cms.viewPage&organization_id=39§ion_id=509&page_id=2364
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61804-2005Apr17.html

251

is the number of homicides in this city this year, as of 12 am Wednesday. I know this because every day my newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, publishes the number. 251 is more than one person every single day. Most of these deaths are from gunshots. Some of the dead people are little children. The most recent dead person was a single mom whose spouse had also been murdered some years ago. I don't often have much good to say about the Inqy, given its fondness for reporting today's news tomorrow, but the Inqy has done a good job of staying on this.

And that's a very good thing, because I really have a hard time identifying exactly who else cares about this. Doesn't seem like I'm hearing jack from City Council (which is off having recess) or the mayor about solutions. But if these homicides occurred in places where the people had any money/power, much more of a big deal would be made over it. That is to say, if these homicides were happening in areas like Chestnut Hill or Mt. Airy or Roxborough or East Falls, you can be darn sure Council would come back early from the beach. It would be a crisis.

What I'd like to know is how come no NRA members ever pay condolence calls on any of the now-251 grieving families in my city? How big are the balls of these lifetime card-carrying members, the ones with a framed glossy of Charlton Heston in their dining rooms? Apparently not big enough to tell anyone, "Yes, your beloved mother/child/sibling died and while that's sad, it's way less important than being able to bear arms." I'd like to hear of even one NRA member who goes to grieve with a family that's been touched by homicide and still comes away sure that guns are vital for a peaceful society.

About friggin' time

In case you've been elsewhere of late, in the second-to-last day of this season's tour of duty, the Supremes put the smackdown on the Executive Branch, and said that the detainees at Guantanamo had rights. Rights to a trial that was an actual trial, whether civilian or military, and not just a bunch of authoritative guys scratching their butts. Rights to be protected under the Geneva Conventions. Unca Dub had maintained all along that these detainees were different than every other prisoner of war b/c, well, b/c they were detainees, not prisoners! And this was a different kind of war! But now he has to play by the rules. If he wants to be inhumane, he's gotta get Congress to back him. That might not be so hard to do, if Bill Frist has any say in it, but it's at least got to be legal.

Who knows what this will really do, except perhaps it signals the beginning of the end of the droit de seigneur mode of this administration. My favorite part is where Tony Snow tries to Snow us into believing this higher standard has really been going on the whole time. ("It is not really a reversal of policy. Humane treatment has always been the standard, and that is something they followed at Guantanamo," said White House spokesman Tony Snow.)

What?. Humane my ass. Didn't I tell you several posts ago that guy would cave? (See "We The People, Inc., part II" below.) I might have forgotten the part about our soldiers wizzing on the Koran, but I did write in "TortoroUS" also below (dang, I'm a prophet!) that Amnesty had decided that the US has been engaging in widespread torture and that only recently was a list of people who have been living at Gtmo for almost 4 years even made public. Let's forget about the degrading and inhumane treatment of prisoners for one second and look at the treatment of their non-criminal families, relative to Geneva.

Art. 32. General principle

In the implementation of this Section, the activities of the High Contracting Parties, of the Parties to the conflict and of the international humanitarian organizations mentioned in the Conventions and in this Protocol shall be prompted mainly by the right of families to know the fate of their relatives.

Four years. Four years.


Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060711/wl_afp/usattacksguantanamo_060711184922;_ylt=Ai0X3t.P6O_tGuG8cDD0YG43NiUi;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
http://www.genevaconventions.org/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4608949.stm

Wow

Apparently being a lying sack of shit is bad for your health. Ken Lay took a dirtnap.

Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060705/ts_nm/enron_lay_dc

Wal-mart reflux

I'm going to set this all down now to reduce the chance of my head exploding. Hey reader, if I can hear the blood rushing around in my brain, is that a bad sign?

My very first post, way back in January, was about Wal-Mart, applauding that Maryland finally stuck it back to the company that was sticking it to the taxpayers. MD decided it had had enough of paying the additional healthcare costs WM wouldn't cover. The law there is now that if you're a company over a particular size, 8% of your payroll has to be spent on healthcare. There are exactly four companies in Maryland that this new legislation affects.

So today when I read that W-M is actually fighting the law, I saw that the rationale by Eugene Scalia, attorney for W-M, is that W-M is the only company impacted by this. (Sound of hand smacking forehead) Do you know why that is? Because the other three companies comply with the law's requirements, and had done so even before the legislation went through.

Beyond that, the rationale is that this law was determined by the state of Maryland, but "only the federal government may dictate health spending by private companies." First of all, I'm not even sure that's true--it seems like the state would have more say in a scene like that--but more importantly, Wal-Mart is not a private company. It's publicly traded on the NYSE (WMT).

There was also some bizarro commentary designed to kick up a little fear about how if Wal-Mart had to pony up, it would (cue ominous music) pass on its increased costs to the consumer, even if they didn't live in Maryland.--What? A company passing on its costs to the end user? Holy mackerel. Can they really do that?

Eugene, Eugene. Here's my advice, bubbeleh. Take your dad out for a cup of coffee. Ask him what he thinks. He's no friend of mine, but he's a brilliant jurist. Hopefully he can make you see that you're fighting a really stupid and ignoble case.

Bottom line: Wal-Mart stands to lose more than any other corporation b/c 8% of its payroll is a hell of a lot of money. W-M did a good job of schmoozing the governor toward its view and thought they had this in the bag, but the gov got steamrolled by a veto so now W-M's gotta take it up a notch. If you think there's more to it than that, you're wrong.



Sources:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-06-23-walmart-healthcare_x.htm?csp=26

The Benefits of Fairness

It’s my understanding that The Man will be promoting an amendment to ban gay marriage. Apparently, Unca Dub believes “marriage is an enduring and sacred institution between men and women” and has supported measures to protect the sanctity of marriage. Well, that doesn’t fly for this hetero mom, but I suppose everyone is entitled to their view—I mean, except for all the gay would-be marrieds, of course.

But this is the same guy who’s willing to grant what amounts to an amnesty to millions of illegal aliens on the theory of fairness. Who was talking up a guestworker program before anyone in Congress had ever even heard Si se puede. In fact, a lot of what goes on under Uncle Dub concerns itself with fairness. In a nationally televised evening press conference at the end of April, for example, the word “fair” came up in his speech and responses to the press no less than 11 times. I don't think I've ever heard him say that he loves one daughter more than the other. So I know fairness is constantly on his mind. And I also know that if everyone can’t join our President and that scrog Santorum and every other gay-basher who wields power in this country in their narrow-minded views, everyone still wants fairness nonetheless.

So how to rectify our apparent ideological divide with our beloved fairness? How about this: Since we can’t make our gay friends married b/c that would somehow make it a sinstitution (trademark pending), let’s execute the only other choice: take away all the benefits that all married people get, so it can be fair. (TrogNote: We used to call this “the mountains coming to Mohammed,” until it became dangerous to say “Mohammed.” Now we have to say “the foothills coming to Frank.” It’s clunky, but Fellow Trogs know my view—anything for The Leader.)

Since we want to be fair, all we have to do is make all the married heteros living in this country lose all the health, life, dental, and car insurance benefits that they currently enjoy. (Really, who could enjoy it knowing so many others are having to unfairly go without?) And all the retirement benefits. And all the tax benefits. Whoops, almost forgot automatic guardianship over a spouse. And to be really au courant, let’s make it difficult for my family to prove we’re a family so we can do exotic things like join a swim club.

I know once we all have to endure this kind of humiliation and hassle and untold expense, we’ll all stand behind Unca Dub and the decision he made. Once again, the guy has made me so proud.


Sources:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-06-01-bush-gay-marriage_x.htm?csp=24
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/04/20050428-9.html

Orange Jumpsuits

So the Messrs. Skilling and Lay got busted. This is a great day. Apparently after six days of thinking it over, the jury decided the Enron boys were just lying out their asses. Good job, jury. What was the part that tipped it for you? The part where they lied or the part where they lied about lying?

Here are my two favorite parts of the whole thing:

Mr. Lay is an alumnus of the University of Missouri, and like many philanthropists, gave them a big chunk of money, but didn't want a lot of fanfare. As things started going south for Enron, he then wanted his name on the gift. Then he wanted the money back, but only so he could give it to charitable Katrina-related purposes close to the jury, I mean home. Then he said he needed it back for legal fees. Mizzou isn't giving it back, although it's questionable whether his name will be honored on a building.

I did fundraising work for 10 years and here's what I can share right off the bat: It's a gift you make because you believe in the mission of the institution. It's not a savings account, to be skimmed from when you're a little light.

My other favorite part was that futures traders were actively betting on whether Skilling and Lay would be convicted. When Skilling's lawyer Dan Petrocelli got wind of that, he said, "It is god-awful [that] people are betting on peoples' lives."

Yes, sir, it certainly was. Oh, oh, you mean the traders. I see now.


Sources:
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/business/14643441.htm
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/illinoisstatenews/story/21A19122F45E0B19862571770011CF79?OpenDocument

See Desk For Jimmies

This sign was actually seen at a buffet restaurant by one of the Trogettes. The intent of the restaurant was, "Not only don't we trust you to put sprinkles on your own ice cream correctly, but we think you'll take far more than you're entitled to, so come to us for your jimmy allotment. " So now, at Casa Trog, "See Desk For Jimmies" equals "dumb-ass public policy."

And now, I'd like to catch you up on what's been happening in el mundo de immigracion.

There's a lot happening. Just today, in fact, the Senate narrowly defeated the idiocy known as the Ensign Amendment. This gem attacked illegal aliens who work and pay taxes b/c they do so by using fake Social Security numbers. It would have prevented said aliens from receiving credit for any taxes paid into the system while working as an illegal resident. It lost, but it was a 50-49 loss.

As many of you know, PUS was on TV Monday night, talking up the value of a big fence. In reality, the point of this chat was to shore up a large part of his ever-fading fan base. What's interesting is if your fanbase consists of conservatives and corporate America, it doesn't seem like there would be very many times in which these two groups wouldn't be one and the same. Yet here we have such a case.

A closer examination of PUS's big idea: The fence in question will stretch all the way across the Mexican border so that no one can get in here. In reality, there will be places determined to be so dangerous that they won't be fenced, and those will become the points of entree for many. That is to say that what's already a very dangerous trek will become more so. More foreseeable death, courtesy the Administration Pals.

Next: we're going to do a much better job, per PUS, of guarding the border, b/c we're now going to arm the border with 6,000 National Guard. 6,000? The entire border is 700 miles. That's more than 8 Guards for every mile. Not to put too fine a point on it, if you were to run your high-school track, you'd run into two Guards by the time you ran one lap. Is that necessary? Are we planning to hire only really fat, out-of-shape Guards who can run a total of 1/8 of a mile or less?

And it's not like the National Guard has been slacking lately. The days of a few weekends a year are gone. They've been quite busy. They've been in Iraq, they've been helping with Katrina. I don't know how many extra Guards we actually have for border protection. (And of those, how many are fat and out-of-shape?)

Another point is that PUS said it would cost $1.9 b-b-billion dollars to fund this whole thing. In case you're wondering how PUS came to be sitting on such a huge wad, he's not. It will come out of the emergency request he made for funds for the Department of Defense.

So, let's review. We put National Guardspeople in Iraq b/c we didn't have enough regular troops. And there are a whole bunch of other servicepeople, in addition to the Guard, in Iraq who are going without appropriately armored cars, etc. In other words, our lack of budget is making them as unsafe as they can be in one of the most dangerous places in the world. Now, when we have an emergency request to get them the funding they desperately need, it's being taken away so a bunch of fat guys can stand so close to each other they're practically holding hands under the hot Texas sun. With me?

Have you wondered where Congress is getting all that money it's dispensing? Don't look to the rich folk--I watched Uncle PUS sign another big old tax cut for them just yesterday.

See Desk For Jimmies.

Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/washington/18cnd-immig.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=a1054fb2fa46ad96&hp&ex=1148011200&partner=homepage

torturoUS

Those pinkos over at Amnesty International report that the US has been engaging in widespread torture. A bunch of other wingnuts I know seem to think it's fine if this goes on, that as long as you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear. Hmm. Suppose you haven't done anything wrong yet you're still pulled into Guantanamo? Do you have better rights, more rights? The nice cell with the curtains and room service for the prisoners who didn't do anything wrong, it's just a case of mistaken identity? Or mistaken ethnicity? Or you just happen to tan well? I don't think so. I think you're equally hosed.

Only recently was a list of people who have been living at Gtmo for almost 4 years even made public. Can you imagine being one of those people, and hoping against hope that your family will get you released but they can't because they don't know where the hell you are? Or not being allowed to see a lawyer? Can anyone stay sane in the face of that, to say nothing of being tortured regularly to boot? I know myself. I'd have been rocking in the corner, muttering, inside of a month.

Forgetting for a moment small details like the Geneva Convention, which would protect even an enemy, why has our government not been required to prove that each prisoner is in fact an enemy combatant? This is why the whole idea of "you've got nothing to fear" is itself so very fearful. You have plenty to fear, whether you're a bad guy or a good guy. The reality is that Unca Dubya has no plan, and no one is holding him accountable for that vast and tragic lack. It could be argued that there are times, like in crises of national security, in which we need to give up some of the rights we hold so dear. I would argue that the erosion of civil and human rights is a terrible thing and should never even be entertained without the deepest thought and the most compelling reason, none of which has occurred as yet.

As has been said before, when none of us have any rights, I'm sure we'll all feel very safe. It's a damn scary thing when you realize that the real cause for concern in terms of our national security is inside the Beltway.

Yes, fellow Trogs, it's true. The calls are coming from inside the house.



Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/rights_amnesty_dc
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,1757618,00.html

We The People, Inc., part II

I would like to be surprised that FOX commentator Tony Snow has been named White House spokesperson, to replace Scott McClellan, who replaced Ari Fleischer. But I'm not. Isn't this just the long-awaited conjugal act of a wedding night that's been going on for a long time? FOX and the White House go together like cookies and milk.

I know I'm looking forward to hearing the daily spew of a guy who wouldn't know "fair and balanced" if it bit his ass.

Hey, is that Rupert Murdoch's headprint on the pillow in the Lincoln Bedroom?

Sources:
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060426/POLITICS/604260322/1022/rss10

Si se puede

"Otra gringa para justicia"* is what my t-shirt reads. I just came back from the protest re: pending legislation on undocumented aliens.

This is what I spend a lot of my time thinking about, but if you don't, let's just establish a few basic premises so we're all on the same page:
1. The infrastructure of our society is undocumented aliens. You can't build a building or run a restaurant without them, even in small towns.
2. There is a distinction between people who want to live here and people who want to work here but not live here.
3. This really isn't about security. If it were, we'd be talking about a fence to the North, too. (Wasn't that Pat Buchanan's idea when he was running for office?)
4. It's wrong to make states like Arizona and Texas have to do all the funding of keeping Mexicans out that benefits the whole country. Federal funding has to be the mode.
5. Having someone, anyone, undercut your pay is one consequence of a marketplace economy.
6. There is no such thing as an illegal immigrant. If you have immigrant status, you're legal.
7. No one would care about this if Mexico were of greater use to the US.
8. In the not-too-distant future, Hispanics will be the majority in this country.

Having clarified all that, I'm just unclear on a few things:
1. Where is the value of making undocumented aliens, and anyone who helps them, aggravated felons? That is the very wording that is used in the Immigration Nationality Act to prevent one from being able to enter this country legally ever again. So, the alien gets deported, and b/c he's labeled a felon, he can't come back. Family here? Too bad. Job here? Que lastima.
2. I realize it's heresy to tell this to a conservative but if you don't like your price being undercut, and you abhor government interference, and you don't like the way the market is treating you, you have another option: unionize. Is there a problem?
3. If you've never noticed, Cubans can stay here provided they get a foot on dry land and Haitians are going back no matter whether they're dry or wet. How come? Ever notice how the US is still processing applications from the Philippines from 1982? Why? Because it has no relative merit to us, nor does Haiti. And our policy regarding immigration is built around who is useful to the US. Is that the best way to do it?
4. How come we only claim to care about jobs when it's blue collar work? Why don't we care about the IT workers getting displaced for someone from overseas? For that matter, how come the overseas IT workers don't work for $5 an hour?
5. Why is Congress inventing distinctions like who's been here 5 years and who hasn't? What is so magical about the number 5? Why is no one dealing with real distinctions, like whether you really want to live here or whether you only want to work here?
6. How come since the implementation of IRCA in 1986, we've understood that businesses are in the business of doing whatever it is they do but somehow we don't know that now? Before, it was OK not to police employees. Just seeing documentation was enough; no verification necessary. Is there someone out there who thinks that working America has somehow gained a few hours each week in the last 20 years, such that there's plenty of time and manpower away from the actual business focal point to screw around with verification? Moreover, has anyone considered for five seconds the ramifications of that? If you can now be sued for photocopying the docs of some but not all of your employees under Title VII (you can), can you imagine the ensuing frenzy when b/c you can't verify someone, either b/c the docs are crap or b/c you can't get the right source on the phone or because you flat out suck at that task, he gets fired? Would there be any incentive not to sue, since one would at least stand a decent chance at a windfall in court, as compared with no income, since he was just canned?

Answers, who's got my answers?

*another North American woman for justice

Cold Child Left Behind

The best pal of Blogtrog is a teacher in a very poor school district. The school in which she teaches is very cold in the wintertime. The children wear their coats in the cold school so they're not distracted by the cold and can go on learning.

Yesterday, the teachers at the cold school were told that the children can no longer wear their coats in the cold school. Reason: no reason, it's just policy. See above, these are poor children. They don't come to school in warm, LL Bean fleece gear. They sometimes come to school during the winter in short-sleeve shirts. Literally, when one kid when asked by his teacher why he was wearing only a t-shirt, he told her that he only had one long-sleeved shirt and his brother was wearing it that day, so on a day that at its warmest was 28 degrees, he had short sleeves and that was all.

In a time and place where test scores are the main focus of an administration, where innovative teaching is seen as a threat, where kids walk down the hall screaming "F*ck you, p*ssy!" to their fellow students, I have to wonder: if there's a kid who, in the face of all that distraction, actually wants to learn, and all we have to do is let him wear his coat so he can, why is anyone standing in the way of that? Why does it matter if he learns in a coat? Calling Administration of the cold school: What is wrong with you that you would begrudge a child staying warm in the winter, and god forbid, learning?

It seems to me that public policy and taking care of the children ought never diverge from each other. But if and when they do, there had better be a damn compelling reason for a policy that doesn't take care of the children.

This just ain't it.

Holy smokes--Dick Cheney just shot his hunting partner. Not just once, mind you, but according to reports, "sprayed him with shotgun pellets."

Is this the same guy who swears that tax cuts boost federal government revenue, whose former company is making Christ-knows-how-much money off of the war in Iraq*, and who has various senators demanding an investigation into his role in l'affaire Plame?

Couldn't he have just told the poor guy to go f* himself?

Dick, bubele, listen to me: sit in a chair and do nothing for a while. It can only help.

*Please do not email BlogTrog to rant about how Cheney is no longer associated with Halliburton. I believe he still profits from stock options and he still collects deferred compensation.

Sources
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060212/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cheney_hunting_accident
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1247748,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/02/10/AR2006021001855.html

Malleable freedoms

When is it OK to violate First Amendment rights? When someone wears a t-shirt under her jacket to the House Chamber? When cartoons depicting a religion in an ugly light are shown in a newspaper? Do we base the value of that violation on how many people it offends? How deeply it offends?

I see similarities between Cindy Sheehan's removal from PUS's speech the other night and the brouhaha in European newspapers over an anti-Muslim cartoon. We can argue about subject matter discrimination and viewpoint discrimination but in the land of the Supremes, the latter almost always triggers strict scrutiny (as do questions of race), while the former often gets intermediate scrutiny. (So do cases about gender: Sing it with me ladies--We're still number 2!) Issues requiring strict scrutiny almost never make it unscathed through that scrutiny. They're seen as highly suspect in the first place, and the gov has to prove not only that it had some compelling interest in discriminating against the point of view but also that the method used was necessary to achieve that compelling interest.

So if we look at dissent in the House Chamber, and no one argues about whether the wearing of a particular shirt is an expression of dissent, we could argue whether there was compelling interest of the gov to quash dissent. Obviously Fellow Trogs know where I come down on that. However, even if we were to shoehorn past that issue and determine the gov did in fact have some "compelling" (cough) interest, it could have been achieved by, for example, asking Sheehan to cover her shirt, instead of bodily removing her, arresting her and jailing her. It becomes a question of the method used, which I think was completely unnecessary to achieve the objective.

The other issue is trickier b/c while it involves religion, it also an inherent shaky balance of a national culture subsuming another one; in this case, one based on a religion. Nonpluralistic societies struggle with this idea and how to balance competing interests. On the one hand, people should be allowed to see an editorial cartoon and come to their own conclusions. On the other, what is the value of allowing a national ethnicity to subsume yours if you can still be otherized whenever it suits the dominant culture to do so?

In listening to this issue play out, I hear arguments about freedom of expression and I hear slamming of Islam, but I hear very little about this last idea, and frankly, the refusal of any of the European countries struggling with this to have an out-front discussion about it just ensures its continuance.

Well, it's floodin' down in Texas...

And so begins the next chapter in The Enron Chronicles. Yes. Well. I hardly know where to begin. First off, I thought the judge was rather optimistic in thinking he'd have all jurors picked and ready to go by the end of the day. This day. A one-day pick-'em session for a case that took 4 years for prosecutors to put together. But he did it.

I love the defendant counsel's view: finding impartial jurors in Houston, where Enron was based, will be difficult, if not impossible. Ya think? I mean, in a town of 4 million people, what are the odds that Juror X will have some connection to laid-off, ripped-off Enron ex-employee Y? Not too low, I'd say. Even if the connection is tenuous, like "I didn't really know anyone specifically but I stood by while my local economy tanked," it's not likely to me that anyone would be utterly impartial.

Yet I think the issue of impartiality misses the point. It isn't whether they would be impartial that should be the defining issue. In order to be truly impartial, you'd have to be wooden. You'd have to be a clod of dirt. Flat-lining. Is that who you want for your jury? I'll take 12 people with IQs in the plus column, thanks. I'll take 12 regular people who understand that literally thousands of people had their futures ruined by the horrendous malfeasance of these guys. (TrogDigression: my favorite datum in all this is that a jury consultant hired by the defense to study potential juror responses, noted that among 280 questionnaires, the word "greed" appeared 272 times.)

Fellow Trogs know that people like, say, Antonin Scalia aren't impartial about issues that are important to them. But that isn't to say that Justice Nino or any of the other Supremes are incapable of justly applying the law.

A judge tries the law; a jury tries the facts. If we can extend that capability to the Supreme Court, is it any less believable that a jury of 12 randomly selected registered voters would be capable of serving out their civic duty regardless of whether or not they had a personal opinion in the matter?

If the facts are shown to be with Misters Lay and Skilling, and their story holds, that's great for them. The truth, as I see it, is that "we didn't know" is a damn thin veneer and it won't fly. But it wouldn't fly whether people had a personal agenda or not, b/c it's a crap defense and no one believes it. The jobs of a CEO and a chairman are to know.

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/business/businessspecial3/30cnd-enron.html?hp&ex=1138683600&en=6daa9c0db084e66e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/30/business/JURY.php

Jobbity Job

Good day, Fellow Trogs. Today I’m thinking about jobs. One current trend is an increase in contract employment. Not too difficult to understand: it’s a lot cheaper for a company to hire you as a contractor than as a fulltime employee because it won’t have to pay for your benefits, which are roughly 40% of an employee’s overall package.

Yesterday's NYT had an article about considering whether to become a contract employee. It's funny how the inherent assumption is that it will be your choice. The likelihood that you will have to consider this at some point in your life is not insignificant, and it will probably not have been your initial choice. Your initial choice would have looked like a fulltime job with benefits. Your initial choice probably didn’t include a layoff. Or a company that called you back several months later to do what you like to do, what you’re skilled at, for a salary that probably won’t cover the “benefits” you’ll now have to pay out yourself. (Language query: If you pay for them yourself, are they still benefits? Should I start calling my weekly grocery expedition the Food Benefit? Quick, get Safire!)

But while the article details ideas like whether you can afford your own health insurance and how much you like bookkeeping, there's no real discussion of the idea that you will have to put away for your own retirement, or what you would do if you were to become disabled. It doesn’t address whether you’re covered, as a contract employee, under Worker’s Comp. And it doesn’t mention that people who aren’t putting in facetime at an office aren’t getting promoted, either.

Hey, a job’s a job, and there are times when you do what you have to for food on the table. There are also times when it really is your choice, and the value of working from home and not worrying about dry-cleaning or having to commute and not having to put little ones in daycare is worthwhile. I'm not disputing that.

I just don’t want contract employment to seem like some halcyon holiday, b/c if the company really gave a crap about your having balance in your life, they could still pay your benefits and you could work from home. It doesn’t take a whole lot of vision to see that happy employees are better employees, but who can talk vision when that pesky bottom line keeps getting in the way?

As far as future trends, BlogTrog’s crystal ball says: When the baby boomers retire, there will be a lot less workers in the market. It's an opportunity for the workers who are left to demand better wages. However, I’m betting on a revival of Edward III’s approach.

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/jobs/22contract.html
http://www.britannia.com/history/docs/laborer1.html

Preemptive Clarity

I don't want to bore you insensate with my take on the law, nor is it my goal to alienate prospective employers, but am I the only person connected with the law who thinks a little proofreading would go a long way?

How many cases would not exist if the writing of a statute were clear? Hundreds, I can assure you. Maybe thousands--I stopped counting after my eyes glazed over during first year. Here's a classic example of what I mean: If there is a sign at the front of the park that says "No vehicles allowed" does that include bicycles? You might think of what constitutes a vehicle, look at the dictionary definition, try to determine what the writer of the sign meant, what the local customs are, etc. There are any number of ways to try to determine whether it includes bicycles.

These are not morons writing these statutes, mind you. These are legislators, a number of whom are lawyers and have read extensively about the very problem I just detailed to you in Paragraph 2. So how come they write in a resolution just three days after 9/11 that the President can use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for the terrorist acts? Here's what the effect of that action is. A guy named Dick Cheney is now running around telling people that the National Security Agency's program of domestic eavesdroppping is totally legit, "critical to the national security of the United States," and has "helped us to detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks against the American people." (TrogDigression: did we even know who was responsible for the terrorist acts three days after 9/11?)

This is exactly the kind of rhetorical spew this Administration has been putting out for five years. Why does no one insist on specifics? If it has helped, I'd like to know precisely how. When Cheney says the program "saved thousands of lives" I want to know how he derived that datum. It's my money that's funding this, so I think I'm entitled to the same inside knowledge as any other shareholder would get. We The People, Inc. has some splainin' to do.

If Congress had specificed exactly what 'necessary and appropriate force' meant, they might not have included spying on email and phonecalls of Americans to their overseas friends and families. We'll never know. But it does make me think twice about emailing my college friends who live abroad. Or at least curtailing the detail in those emails. And when I have to limit my own voice so I can go on being as threatless to my gov as I was before they snooped on that email, how is that not an infringement on my First Amendment right?

Vague=evil. You read it here first.

Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/20/cheney.wiretap

Truth

So apparently James Frey glossed over, or outright lied, depending on whom you read, about the veracity of his book A Million Little Pieces.

I heard a book critic speak about several other authors whose stories may or may not have been perfectly honest, notably Augusten Burroughs' Running With Scissors. Today I see that Elie Weisel's Night, which has just been retranslated into English, has a few mistakes. Night is Weisel's memoir of living through a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

So here's today's point. Why does it matter, or does it actually matter, if what an author purports to be true isn't exactly as it happened? And frankly, why do we accord more validity to the one saying it's untrue than to the original storyteller? Late sociologist Robert Merton said that if you define your reality as true, then it's true. So if Burroughs saw a situation one way and that became for him the truth and he wrote about it as such, is it valid/does it matter for another person who was part of his story to debate the veracity of what he's written? Is Weisel's story any less horrifying b/c he can't remember exactly how old he was when he entered the camp?

Or is it the fact that the author has actually said, "This is the truth" that is so upsetting to us? It's more the sense that we've been lied to, that we've misplaced our sympathies, that we were taken for a ride.

But if that's the case, that we don't like being lied to, how come The Smoking Gun, which came up with the dirt on Frey in the first place, isn't positively ripping on White House spokesman Scott McClellan every waking day?

Hunter S. Thompson wrote for years about drug-addled activities in the first person, and developed a cult following of um, recreational-drug supporters, but said repeatedly that none of it was true b/c if it had been, he'd be dead by now. (Actually, Hunter is dead now. But by his own gun, not from massive amounts of mescaline consumed in the Nevada desert.)

If I read a story that seems like an account of the author's life, is it any less meaningful if I find out the author tweaked it a bit? Don't movies do that all the time? I think we can all agree on the value of editing, prior post re: the quality of that editing notwithstanding. We happily endure the idea that someone else will determine the end-product that gets to us. It occurs in all media all the time. (I mean, I think my ass would give out if I were forced to sit through the entire contents of War and Peace on film, no?)

I just don't see the big deal. Whether it's 100% true or even not true, who cares? If it's a compelling tale and you're somehow changed for interacting with it, I think it's done its job.

Seems like we're holding Frey up to some standard the rest of us don't strictly adhere to and I don't understand why.

And frankly, when you become a grownup, believing 100% of what someone tells you gets you branded a naif.

Why is this News?

Every now and again I run across some article that makes me hope no one actually spent money on the study it trumpets. Ridiculous: I know a grant went to the researchers. But did we really need to spend money to know that smoking is bad for you or that if you eat butter 10 times a day your cholesterol will go through the roof?

I mean, maybe if you're not a Court watcher, you find it newsworthy that the Supreme Court did its job in leaving the states alone both in the matter of the Oregon assisted-suicide case and the New Hampshire abortion case. I could understand that. But you'd have to be seriously demented to think the following counts as news:

Traffic Officer Knocked Unconcious
Look, I sincerely hope for the officer and his family that he's OK. But way worse stuff happens all the time where I live, and where you live, and it doesn't make national newswires.

Today's rant is not about the poor traffic cop. It's about the editing judgment or lack thereof of people who edit news for a living and how it's gone from bad to worse. It's offensive. It's insulting. What are we doing about this? Oh right--nothing.

Here are some more headlines from NewsNet5, a TV station in Ohio. I love these:

Man Buries Car, Reports it Stolen
Come on. Some drunk woman drove down my street in August 2004 and totalled my car and told the police someone else had stolen her car before the incident. No news crews came by about it. And I was even home all day that day. Yes, this guy's a criminal and probably engaged in insurance fraud. But Ken Lay and Dennis K. and Bernie E. did a lot worse; by a depth-of-damage ratio they should be a news headline every single day and yet they're not.

Akron Zoo Holds Contest For Naming Jaguar Cubs
You have to be kidding me. Wal-Mart won't pay its workers' health insurance, my car gets totalled, the world is in shambles, and this is news? Maybe there's something I just don't get. If my fellow Trogs (you know--both of you) feel like this is truly news, do us all a favor, email me with your name suggestions for the jaguar cubs, and I promise I'll send them to the Akron Zoo speedy quick. Hell, if it's true I'm just an imbecile, I'm just misinterpreting everything, the naming gig is probably some sort of public service. So hop to it--those cubs ain't gettin' any younger.

Sources:
http://www.cnn.com
http://www.newsnet5.com/news/6206516/detail.html
http://www.newsnet5.com/akroncanton/6154562/detail.html
http://www.newsnet5.com/akroncanton/6154562/detail.html

Wal-Martyr

I think it's great the way Wal-Mart positions itself as Wal-Martyr by hiring no less than four lobbying firms, per the NYT, to rail against Maryland's holding it to the law. Apparently, companies in Maryland with 10,000 or more employees have to spend 8 percent of their payrolls on health insurance, or else pay the difference into a state Medicaid fund. Statewide, there are only four companies that fall into this category. Johns Hopkins does it, so does Giant Foods. So does military contractor Northrop Grumman. That leaves W-M.

Fellow Trogs may recall that this is actually the second time the MD Legislature voted on this bill. The first time, Governor Erlich vetoed it, with a senior Wal-Mart executive sitting right next to him as he did so. I wonder if said executive got to keep that pen.

What percentage of its payroll does W-M spend on its employees' healthcare? We don't know b/c they don't divulge that. Hmm. Isn't W-M a public company? Why, yes it is--WMT on the New York Stock Exchange. Shouldn't that information be listed in its annual report to its shareholders? Could the difference between what W-M currently pays and what it will have to pay be that substantial?

Other states around the country have been anxiously awaiting the outcome of this. It's not certain whether Wal-Mart will mount some sort of legal campaign. But it's also not likely to set a precedent unless the other states also have a similar payroll percentage minimum for large employers.

It does make one wonder, if W-M is such a stand-up corporate citizen, why doesn't it pay the 8% in the first place? Just come out with a press release that says, "Gosh darnit, we're making money hand over fist and we keep telling you what a good neighbor we are and we're going to take care of our employees to at least the standards of these other big companies."

Why is it important to always keep an eye on what Wal-Mart is doing? Because it's the largest retailer in the entire world, with $285.2 billion in sales in the fiscal year ending last January. And with apologies to Pat Metheny, as falls Wichita, so falls Wichita Falls.

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/13/business/13walmart.html

http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-story.asp?guid={3F22E53C-68EC-40E1-93A4-BEFCAF1C7343}&symb=WMT&sid=5318&siteid=NYT&dist=NYT&osymb=WMT

http://www.walmart.com