How to pick 'em

Suppose you're a young woman in college, trying to follow Salon's advice to pursue that M.R.S. degree. You might gravitate to a young man who "had a high GPA in high school, was his class valedictorian, was on [a sports] team, and was ‘from a good family.’” Or you might find that you'd just profiled a potential rapist, by the standards of Occidental University.

LAPD Detective Michelle Gomez interviewed the parties and witnesses. In a charge evaluation worksheet dated November 5, Deputy District Attorney Alison A.W. Meyers declined to prosecute, writing, “Witnesses were interviewed and agreed that the victim and suspect were both drunk, however, that they were both willing participants exercising bad judgment …. It would be reasonable for [Doe] to conclude based on their communications and [the accuser’s] actions that, even though she was intoxicated, she could still exercise reasonable judgment.” This decision ended police involvement in the case.

Meanwhile, Occidental pursued its own investigation by hiring the firm of Public Interest Investigations, which produced an 82-page report about the incident. Among other evidence, the report examined text messages between Doe and his accuser leading up to the sexual encounter. In the messages, the accuser asked Doe, “do you have a condom,” texted another friend “I’mgoingtohave sex now” [sic], and, in an exchange spanning 24 minutes, coordinated with Doe to sneak out of her dorm and proceed to Doe’s dorm to have sex with him.

Obviously a rape, but then she should have known better than to hang out with a valedictorian.

Profiteering

Adding "--eering" to a noun is a handy way to disapprove of the activity without explaining what's wrong with it.

Dipping a toe

Richard Fernandez doubts the efficacy of the pro-Yazidi airdrop and limited strikes:

In Obama’s gesture is an implicit lie. Nobody ever comes to a war “to help”. It’s not like stopping by a picnic or helping a neighbor move house, where you can participate as much or little as you want and then walk away. The only valid object of joining a conflict is ‘to win’, or at least, be on the winning side. Fighting to look good is neither moral nor does it work. You don’t ever want to “help” and be among the defeated. For those in the field, defeated means dead.

Bombing once started makes enemies and kills people. Unless it is done for a definite object and terminal state in mind, then it is better not done at all. Any action sufficient to ‘stop the genocide’ requires defeating ISIS. Either Obama aims to defeat ISIS or he is merely prolonging the agony. Lyndon Johnson was a great fan of “targeted airstrikes” in Vietnam. Johnson famously boasted of his fine grained control over the USAF.

“LBJ liked to pick bombing targets himself”. More strongly expressed in Vietnam Magazine, December 1997, by Air Force Major John Keeler (Ret) – who quotes LBJ as saying: “Those boys can’t hit an outhouse without my permission”.

Lyndon Johnson was in Vietnam to ‘send a message’. Ho Chi Minh was in it to win. How did that work out?

"Hold on; we're winning"

George Will reports on Ken Hughes's theories about what Nixon was really asking his "plumbers" to cover up:

On Nov. 2 at 8:34 p.m., a teleprinter at Johnson’s ranch delivered an FBI report on the embassy wiretap: [unofficial Nixon agent] Chennault had told South Vietnam’s ambassador “she had received a message from her boss (not further identified). . . . She said the message was that the ambassador is to ‘hold on, we are gonna win.’ ” The Logan Act of 1799 makes it a crime for a private U.S. citizen, which Nixon then was, to interfere with U.S. government diplomatic negotiations.

Setting aside the Logan Act violation for a moment, should we see this as an act of treason? Something along the lines of "I'll have more flexibility after the election"?   Some will argue that Nixon deliberately prolonged the Viet Nam War for the purpose of positioning himself politically as the only man who could end it.  I wouldn't put it past him, but I wonder if it isn't more fair to imagine that he believed that the war must be ended justly if at all, and that he was trying to send a message of encouragement to some desperately besieged fighters to have courage in the knowledge that reinforcements were on the way.  Whether he was right or wrong in this conviction, it's not clear to me that he was sacrificing lives in war for petty personal political gain.

Is it really "private diplomacy," let alone treason, to send a clear message about what you'll do if you're elected president in a few months?  I objected to Obama's "flexibility" statement, not because it was secret or improper diplomacy (and of course he wasn't a private citizen at the time, either), but because the message I got was "I'll be in a better position to compromise my own country's best interests in a few months, when I have this pesky domestic political competition out of the way."

Where's the outrage against ISIL?

I saw this yesterday, linked by a friend online:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/world/meast/stopping-isis/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
And the real pull quote for me was the following:

"I don't see any attention from the rest of the world," a member of the Yazidi minority in Iraq told the New Yorker. "In one day, they killed more than two thousand Yazidi in Sinjar, and the whole world says, 'Save Gaza, save Gaza.'"

So why is that?  What is it about Gaza that draws the world’s attention and ire, that seems to be lacking in the case of the Yazidi in Sinjar?

Well, the first and most obvious answer is that the Yazidi aren’t being killed by Jews.  Anti-Semitism is alive and well across the world.  Since the outbreak of the latest fighting (I will NOT use the term “Gaza War”, because Hamas is not engaged in war, this is just a continuation of their ongoing terror campaign), we’ve seen anti-Semitic riots across Europe, with Jews fleeing France.  I bolded that, because can you imagine violence directed at you being threatening enough to force you to flee the land you were born in, all because a nation that shares its ethnicity with you is engaged with terrorists?  The only thing I can compare it to is the Japanese Internment camps of WWII.  Germany has seen an uptick in anti-Semitic violence as well.  Mostly from Turkish and Arab immigrants, but the local skin heads are in on it as well.  Much to the embarrassment of Establishment Germany.  They’re not really stopping it, mind you, but they’re very embarrassed all the same.

But not everyone is opposed to what’s happening in Gaza due to anti-Semitism.  I actually know people who are not racists but still take the side against Israel.  They all happen to be Leftists, and I think their objections are racist, but not in the same vein.  They see Israel as a modern European democracy.  As in, “white”.  And for these people, “white” and “European” are just synonyms for “oppressor” and “racist”.  “Brown skin good, white skin bad” type stuff.  So therefore, by opposing Israel, they’re showing what good, caring people they are.  It’s still racist, but not because they’re Jews, but because they’re pale skinned and European in outlook.

But I think the reason most overlook is that it’s easy to deal with the conflict in Gaza.  Israel, regardless of what is said about it in the UN and international press, is not a pariah nation.  Nor is it willing to be one.  It actually cares (within reason) about international opinion.  If it didn’t, then the IDF would roll into Gaza, slaughter every living thing there, tear down the buildings, salt the earth, and dare the world to come do something about it.  That’s what a pariah nation does when faced with an existential threat and the means to deal with it.  But they will not ever do that.  Sure, they’re not so suicidal as to let Hamas keep flinging rockets at their civilians.  Hell, if Canada or Mexico started doing that to us, it’d be an act of war, and we’d roll over their military, occupy their capitals and put a stop to it permanently.  And we’d be right to.  But Israel recognizes that doing what they would be justified to do will come with far too high a price politically.  So they act (and have acted) with inhuman restraint.

So why not Sinjar?  Why does no one care about the Yazidi?  Because it’s not easy.  Because while Israel will eventually stop fighting due to international pressure, no amount of talking is going to stop ISIL.  They simply do not care about international opinion.  At all.  Put them in Israel’s position, with a comparable army to the IDF, and they absolutely would sow the fields with the blood of their enemies.  Words cost nothing.  But they can influence Israel.  To stop the slaughter of the Yazidi, it’s going to take combat.  Troops, on the ground, fighting ISIL in cities.  It will take wealth.  Driving out the ISIL troops will not be cheap.  And it will not be quick.  The problem with organizations like ISIL and al-Qaida, is that routing them in the field simply shatters their operational command.  The individuals will keep fighting on, until you root them out and destroy them.  There’s no one to “sign a cease fire” with.  If you were to capture al-Baghdadi, and tried to force him to sign a surrender, no one in ISIL would abide by it.  They’re not an army.  So destroying them root and branch will take years.


So it comes down to laziness.  It’s easy, cheap, and quick to talk-talk at the Israelis, and it will eventually lead to a cease fire (long enough for Hamas to refill its supply of Katyusha rockets).  Stopping ISIL, not so much.

A Non-Controversy

Apparently a restaurant up north is "facing heat" and has set off a FaceBook "firestorm" by adding to its receipts an explicit surcharge to cover the minimum wage increase that local voters have approved.

This seems like the sort of thing that both sides of the debate should love. If you are opposed to the minimum wage increase, you can say: "Good! This way all those do-gooder customers who voted for this increase have to face up to the costs they have imposed on everyone else. They can't hide from the fact that every single customer who comes in here now has to pay a higher price in order for the business to remain in operation. That'll teach them."

But if you're for the minimum wage, you can say: "Good! This shows everyone that the cost of providing these workers with a better life is just thirty-five cents per meal. I'm happy to pay that, and I think you should be too. If I eat at this restaurant twice a week every week all year, I'll still only be out an extra thirty-five bucks! That'll teach those minimum-wage opponents that their arguments that the costs will be ruinous is ridiculous."

Another front over the minimum wage regards the second-order effects of the thing: it turns out that, after every business has adjusted its prices, the minimum wage increase ends up doing no good at all for the worker. But if this is what you believe, then you too should enjoy seeing the information made explicit on the receipt. "See? If a minimum-wage worker wants to eat here, it now costs them an extra thirty-five cents every time. Once you increase every transaction they make by about that amount, how much is that increase really helping them?"

There's nothing here not to like. Everybody should be happy. Nobody is happy.

WDCAACMTS

It's getting to where White House press conferences should just come out and say "we're deeply concerned and are closely monitoring the situation."  Any followup questions about plans for specific action can be met with, "Yes, as I said, we're deeply concerned and are closely monitoring the situation."

Help

亨利 VIII

China will create own Christian belief system amid tensions with church, says official.

Well, it's worked before.

A River Flows in London Town

Poppies, for World War I.

Ponzi and education

I miss Richard Jeni:

Imagine my surprise when it turned out the main thing that I was qualified for was to get another degree and teach Political Science to other people, who would, in turn, teach it to other people! This wasn't higher education, this was Amway with a football team!

No disrespect intended to poli sci majors. My own undergraduate degree was in Fine Arts.

Rose Tattoo

The Dropkick Murphys have what they are calling a "hair razing time," as part of a fundraiser for a child with a deadly disease.



Maybe sometimes we do get better as we get older.

Gimme the cure

Richard Fernandez ruminates on the unfairness of first-world medicine:

The UK’s top public doctor says the failure to find a cure for Ebola represents underscores “the moral bankruptcy of capitalism”. Does that mean we can expect an Ebola vaccine from a socialist country any day now?

. . .

Whenever you discover a new cure, you have a problem. When most diseases were incurable, health care was cheap because you hired a grave digger and that was it. It’s when a cure is discovered that one can start ranting about the unfairness of it all. Ebola doesn’t illustrate the moral failure of capitalism; if anything it underscores the creative dilemma of private unreasonableness.

Tactical guide to mate selection

A Corporatist Constitution

Mickey Kaus has an interesting complaint about the way the administration looks at American society.

Special privileges for reporters (they’re “society’s eyes and ears”!) or big banks (they’re “too big to fail”). Corporatism’s acutely fascinating because it’s insidious, anti-democratic, sclerotic and perhaps inevitable....

The vision is “corporatist” because it analogizes society with a body, or corpus, with different institutions and sets of people performing different specialized, orchestrated roles, like bodily organs (as opposed to, say, seeing U.S. society as 300 million free, individual citizens exercising equal liberties and moving in and out of the marketplace in various unpredictable roles of their own choosing).

The system is characteristic of the Middle Ages, in which one had rights and duties chiefly determined by which part of the 'body' one belonged. If one was an abbess, one had certain privileges; if one was a master member of a trade guild in a major city, other privileges. The abbess was absolutely not free to move to your town and start selling your goods in a shop in the market! Nor was anyone else not in your guild -- your position ensured access to substantial wealth. By the same token, you had to pay some taxes from which she would be exempt, and you might be compelled into some sort of military service to defend the town. You were both expected to dress in a specific fashion proper to your role, in part so that everyone would understand how to treat you when they met you on the road.

Two things to say about the system: in the short run, this approach provided those with the power to license new corporate parts with some significant control over the structure of society. If (like Edward I) you wanted a town somewhere to provide you with a base for military operations and increased tax revenue, you could offer special privileges to people who would become part of that town. In Medieval Spain, these systems were critically important to the conquest of Spain from the Muslims: many special rights were offered to those who would come settle (and defend) the disputed land, including elevation to knighthood if you came with a horse and could fight on it, liberation from any existing bonds on you, freedom from certain taxes for a period of time, and more. If you moved to one of these 'new towns' as an unfree serf but could find a way to live there for a year and a day, you would be free and a member of the town from then on.

In the long run, then, these corporate bodies increased human liberty a great deal. Not only could people move from one body to another as they pleased, but desirable privileges came to be claimed by more and more bodies. Sometimes they were enacted by law into general rights of the class of those who were free; for example, the right to a trial by one's peers originally pertained to the barons and perhaps the knighthood, but came to belong to everyone (who are, now, also the peers of everyone). The privileges that pertained to any of these special classes are now general rights possessed by all free Americans, with few exceptions (freedom of churches from taxes still pertains chiefly to churches, although other 'corporations' can get special tax breaks in return for moving their business to somewhere that desires it!).

So clearly it is a short-term interest in control of society that motivates the President: for example, by giving journalists special privileges he is propping up the prestige of a dying industry, and obtaining a sense from them of being on their side that will benefit him in his public relations.

In the long term, though, these special rights are likely to become general rights. Banks are too big to fail? So is everyone! Mortgages must be bailed out! No one can be suffered to lose everything through bankruptcy.

It's only fair, after all.

The upside is that sometimes there are improvements in the relationship between the government and the citizen that might still exist. So if we see journalists being granted a shield law, don't worry: sooner or later that law's protections will belong to everyone. Sooner these days, given the American model of everyone being leveled into a single class with equal rights before the law.

The downside is that many of these special privileges are special just because it would be harmful 'if everyone did it.' Likely as not, eventually everyone will.

I Think Mine Are Up Close To Twenty-Five

"Florida Premiums to Jump 13% for 2015."

Really, That Was My Favorite Part

Related.

Oaths and Pledges

While arguing that corporations should have to take a loyalty oath in order to do business here, a Daily Beast author muses:

Because oaths and pledges are a little creepy, this effort needs something else—something that comes out of the legal and business worlds: a contract.

I have several things to say about that.

1) Could we possibly confuse the distinction between an oath and a contract any more? One of the most damaging things that happened to marriage was that people started thinking of it as a contract -- which, of course, can be renegotiated at will by the parties to the contract, and which may even have breach clauses just in case it doesn't work out -- instead of the sacred oath in which God unifies man and wife into one flesh, until death do they part.

2) Why should an oath or a pledge be "creepy"? Does the language of honor frighten you so much? There is an honor interest at stake, actually, because the corporation wishes to join the polity in the sense of obtaining legal protections and at least property rights. That means that the company takes the business of the polity -- protecting the rights of its members -- to be a common good of which it would like a part. Why, then, should the corporate person not be bound in the same way as the ordinary person: that is by honor, so that loyalty is owed if (and only if) the state does its duty in protecting the rights it was constituted to protect? What makes corporations special, that they should not have to take an oath that properly expresses the relationship between citizens and the polity of which they are a member?

3) Perhaps your real concern is that corporate loyalty to the state sounds like fascism. So, you're a fascist to some degree. But the American project has used the fasces in its iconography from the very beginning. This kind of proto-fascism is not the same as the full-throated Fascism of Mussolini -- for example, it admits of limits such as the right to renounce citizenship, the right of revolution in the cases where the state ceases to perform the duties for which loyalty is the reciprocal reward, and that some of the rights the state is duty-bound to protect include freedoms of association, religion, the press, etc. That we intend to bind everyone together, 'E Pluribus Unum,' does not mean that we shall have 'everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.' Our version creates several areas that are meant to be outside the state, where the state is supposed to be bound not to interfere.

4) Of course you understand that this demand for loyalty raises the price of doing business somewhat: what you are imposing is an opportunity cost. That will have economic as well as political ramifications. You had better be clear on just what you are offering in return, and the deal had better be fair if you want the corporate citizens to accept it. For example, I've heard a lot of noise lately about trying to overturn Citizens United via legislation. If you do, you had better think carefully about what you will use to replace it. If corporations are citizens, they won't get a vote (unless we change the Constitution to permit corporate citizens one vote, in addition to the votes of their members who are American citizens). Nevertheless, you have yourself proven that they will have a legitimate interest in being able to express opinions about the government and its policy. That's one of the traditional parts of loyalty oaths, going back even to the feudal loyalty oaths: in return for loyalty, you have the right to advise on policy.

Further Considerations on Impeachment

Dr. Codevilla, who has written some thought-provoking pieces on American government in the recent past, has a new piece treating the history of the impeachment clause. Just what was it supposed to control?

Connecticut’s Roger Sherman, “contended that the legislature should have power to remove the Executive at pleasure.” Nobody agreed. Virginia’s George Mason expressed the general sentiment when he argued that, while “the fallibility” of electors and “the corruptibility of the man chosen” makes indispensable “some mode of displacing an unfit magistrate,” nevertheless he “opposed decidedly making the Executive the mere creature of the Legislature in violation of the fundamental principle of good government.” New York’s Gouverneur Morris agreed, but was wary, lest impeachment “render the Executive dependent on those who are to impeach.”

Having agreed to provide for the president’s impeachment, the question became how to define the occasions of it so as to prevent impeachment from becoming a mere tool of political control. Everyone agreed that “treason and bribery ” ought to be causes. But George Mason noted that “Treason as defined in the Constitution will not reach many great and dangerous offenses….He movd. to add after “bribery” “or maladministration.” Mr. Gerry seconded him. Virginia’s James Madison objected: “So vague a term will be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the Senate.” Seeing the sense of that, “Col. Mason withdrew “maladministration” & substituted “other high crimes and misdemeanors”

Dr. Codevilla is worried that partisan politics have rendered this system nonfunctional, as recent Congresses have been unwilling to act to defend Congressional power per se if either house is controlled by the President's party. So in the Clinton administration we saw the House but not the Senate act in impeachment; now the House but not the Senate is suing to try to compel the President to keep his oath regarding 'the faithful execution of the law.' If Congress won't act to defend Congressional powers, but pursues partisan outcomes first and the Constitutional separation of powers second (if at all), the controls no longer function.

It turns out that Alexander Hamilton was worried about this at the time:

Alexander Hamilton warned that [nonpartisanship] would be in short supply. In Federalist 65 he wrote: “A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective.” That is because the “subjects of its jurisdiction…are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL… The prosecution of them…will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”

So it seems to have proven.

By the way, what constitutes "bribery," that offense which the Founders coupled with treason as a clear-cut case? The President spends very much of his time flying from one fundraiser to another.

Bank Run

Credibility is the currency, and sometimes currencies collapse:

This flouting of a U.S. red line by [the Republic of Georgia] might seem relatively inconsequential — Saakashvili, after all, is not under arrest but in Ukraine advising its new pro-Western government. But it is part of a larger trend. Ally after ally of the United States, including regimes that, like Georgia, depend heavily on Washington for military and economic aid, have begun openly defying the Obama administration and, in a few cases, deliberately humiliating its envoys.

Just in the last two months, Egypt sentenced three Al Jazeera journalists to long prison terms on flagrantly bogus charges the day after Secretary of State John F. Kerry announced that he had discussed their case with Cairo’s new strongman, Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. Bahrain, the Persian Gulf host of the U.S. 5th Fleet, expelled the assistant secretary of state for human rights after he met with members of a legal opposition party. Even tiny Aruba, whose foreign policy is run by the Netherlands, blindsided Washington by releasing a senior Venezuelan general it had arrested on a U.S. drug trafficking warrant. Apparently, it was considered easier to offend the Obama administration than the Chavista regime in Caracas.

Then there is Thailand, a “major non-Nato ally” of the United States, where the army carried out a military coup against an elected government even though it knew U.S. law would mandate a cutoff of military aid; and Burma, which backtracked on political reform promises its president made personally to Obama last year.

“It’s like a bank run,” one congressional foreign policy staffer told me last week. An international consensus seems to have gelled that the United States can’t be counted on to uphold its commitments and red lines, even with allies; the result is a free for all that can be seen as much in the nose-thumbing of Georgia as in Israel’s high-profile rejection of U.S. diplomacy.