News To Me

I have a little notebook in which I keep information, links, ideas and names of books or articles I want to explore and, perhaps, write about. Lots of the entries in my notebook never make it onto the blog, especially these days when the big news comes in so hot and fast, even the pros can't catch it.  My reflexes ain't what they used to be, anyway, and I deliberately try to avoid sipping from the fire hydrant of televised and daily paper news. Lots of things the rest of the nation knew last week are news to me right this minute. This post is a small collection of things I learned about just this week. Take pity. Pretend to be surprised.

1)  We can date the demise of Wall Street as an integral part of the American economy to a 1981 decision made by one man, once known as The King Of Wall Street, John Gutfreund.

I didn't know that. I didn't realize that, according to Michael Lewis in The Big Short, on the day Gutfreund took Salomon Brothers from a private partnership to Wall Street's first publicly traded corporation, Salomon Brothers stopped serving investors and started serving themselves. Of Gutfreund and the subsequent remake of The Street, Lewis writes,

He lifted a giant middle finger in the direction of the moral disapproval of his fellow Wall Street CEO's. And he'd seized the day. He and the other partners not only made a quick killing; they transferred the ultimate financial risk from themselves to their shareholders.

...from that moment, the Wall Street firm became a black box. The shareholders who financed the risk taking had no real understanding of what the risk takers were doing, and, as the risk taking grew ever more complex, their understanding diminished....The customers became, oddly, beside the point.

The moment Salomon Brothers demonstrated the potential gains to be had from turning an investment bank into a public corporation and leveraging its balance sheet with exotic risks, the psychological foundations of Wall Street shifted, from trust to blind faith.

From there on out, it was all about the CEO's, for whom short-term gain so far outweighed the value of long-term loss that a culture of growing bonuses each year was fostered even when the customers and the stockholders lost money. Even when the government bailed them out of bankruptcy! Without that one little piece, the private-to-public piece, none of it hung together for me.

2) On October 6th, the SCOTUS is scheduled to hear the case of Snyder vs. Phelps, perhaps better known as the case of a grieving father's right to a private funeral for his military son vs. Westboro Baptist Church's right to picket that funeral with signs saying, "Thank God For Dead Soldiers."

I tackled this subject in the spring in "You! What Planet Is This?" and The Wedding Bends. The synopsis is that 20 year old Marine Matthew Snyder died in March, '06, and Fred Phelps' church group picketed his funeral. Matthew's father Albert sued Phelps and his church in '07 for willfully causing emotional distress and invading his privacy. A jury awarded Snyder approximately $11 million, but, in 2009, the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, VA, overturned the verdict and ordered Snyder to pay over $16,500 to Phelps for court costs. Snyder refused to pay.


The 1988 case of Hustler Magazine v. Jerry Falwell, " in which the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous 8-0 decision held the First Amendment's free-speech guarantee prohibits awarding damages to public figures to compensate for emotional distress intentionally inflicted upon them," is cited as precedent.  Phelps' daughter, Margie, will represent the family and the church. For Military.com, Craig Trebilcock, one of Snyder's attorneys, was interviewed by Andrew Lubin:

"People want to make this out as free speech," Trebilcock said Monday, "but actually it's about harassment and who is or is not a public figure." He continued "Lance Corporal Snyder was a 20 year-old Marine from Maryland who died in Iraq; how does a church group from Kansas declare him a ‘public figure? Because they're claiming that since the Snyder family ran an obituary in the local newspaper that makes him fair game.

This is a verdict to watch for in October. And, if you ever doubted that it is the exception that proves the rule, here's a chance to watch the exception create the precedent for decades to come. Who ever, in their wildest and most horrible nightmares, could have dreamed up Fred Phelps? If this becomes a First Amendment ruling, then we are powerless in the face of insane and aggressive hatefulness. And there's plenty of that to go around these days. Fred Phelps is not the only demon capable of hiring or siring an attorney.

3) Something good--quick and quickly! There IS a place to listen to both sides in an entirely rational debate format.


Go to Intelligence Squared, where you can watch, download podcasts, and even buy tickets. Foremost authorities gather for classic debates of the most important issues we face. Their motto: Think Twice. This is exactly what I've been looking for.


In the most recent debate, the topic was, "Treat terrorists like enemy combatants, not criminals; for and against." The audience is polled prior to the debate and the outcome charted; after the debate, a re-polling shows the winner. I was naturally gratified to find that the audience agreed with me and with my own previously held position. (I'm so easily naturally gratified, in my opinion it just can't happen too frequently. Ahem.)

Outcome, Sept. 14, 2010

There's a Research In Depth link that provides titles, snippets, and articles used by each side in developing positions. I may disappear into this site, never to be seen again.


Who in the world knew?!

Let him have one?

Although all indications are that the vast majority of Americans thought Barak Obama "won" last night's conversation, the howling of the media this morning seems to be about the whining comment McCain made: "I am not George Bush." Is this an effort to allow McCain to leave with some small measure of undeserved dignity?

In the interest of that old "fair and balanced" shell game I guess they have to show that he didn't come across as an incoherent, double-talking, sneering and condescending Bush clone. He did however, and in contrast with polls of professional pundits who listen to and repeat what other professional pundits repeat, the public seems to agree. CNN's unscientific poll shows that about 80% of respondents did not think McCain won, but the "scientific" polls seem restricted to those still, after all this time undecided and not to the voters in general. I can't help thinking there's something a bit wrong with someone unable to make up their mind after almost two years.

So far this morning, all I'm reading are rubber stamp repeats of the "I am not George Bush" line and nothing of the embarrassing (for McCain) reiteration of "he's going to fine you" after it was explained that he would not and the nauseating repetition of the "there's more we need to know about your relationship with ayers" red herring after that stinker was put thoroughly in its grave. There are no more unanswered questions John, no matter how often you ask the same damn thing. No, Obama didn't say that, but I wish he had.

McCain repeated his rehearsed points over and over and it was often obvious that he wasn't really listening to the answers and that he had no idea what the public's view of his and Palin's mean, vicious accusations might be.

My biggest disappointments of the evening were that McCain seemed too often to have the last, and often dishonest word; that Obama did not point out the continuing "trickle down" nature of McCain's proposals that are so much like the Bush standard, that Obama did not bring up William Timmons and tell us "we need to know more." I wish Obama would have asked him why he kept repeating that chestnut about fines when it was patently a false claim. I wish a lot of things, actually. I wish sanity and honesty weren't so rare in this country, but all in all, I saw McCain as the defendant here, a defendant trying to talk his way around the evidence by postulating unlikely explanations of how his fingerprints were all over the crime scene.

Cross posted from Human Voices

Palin wins!

Style often trumps substance in debates, says MSNBC. It's very true, at least in terms of public opinion. We can see it illustrated in the extreme in the TV coverage of the crowds already forming in St Louis: wildly enthusiastic young women are waving "Palin Wins" signs hours before the event is to begin. To them it's a fait accompli. What actual words, what answers, what debate can change a mind like that?

I would go further and say prejudice trumps everything. Partisanship trumps everything. Reality means nothing. In a world where a truck can have the "soul of a sports car" it's about style, it's about fantasy, it's about self-delusion, it's about lunacy.

There is far too much speculation going on about tonight's Punch and Sarah show. Will she make a fool of herself? Will she demonstrate nearly total ignorance of all the things a chief executive is expected to have mastered even to be considered for office? It won't matter. If she breaks down and cries, if she begins to writhe on the floor, spouting glossolalia and moaning about witches, it won't really matter. If she thinks Bear Stearns is an Alaskan delicacy, they will love her for it. We'll be told that Joe Biden was condescending for knowing what the first amendment says or who the Chief Justice is and that will be that. Even though McCain got away with saying "Horseshit" twice during his debate with Obama, Biden will have been ungentlemanly, elitist, condescending, smug -- just for knowing the right stuff.

She will have shown attitude and edge and poise and style, or any number of nebulous and irrelevant attributes and that will be that. Palin Wins!