The Mayor Has Nothing To Do With It

Unlike most people, I don't know enough about what happened to Freddie Gray to know who, if anyone, is to blame for his death.  Unlike most people, I don't have special insight into the relationship between the citizens of Baltimore and the Baltimore Police Department.

However, I do have enough information to know that this interview with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is proof positive that she should not be mayor.  Her wild careening between allowing "space to destroy" one day, labelling the occupants of that space "thugs" the next, and taking it all back the day after that is unsettling enough, but it's not the fundamental problem.  

Actually, there are two fundamental problems.  The first problem is that the Mayor seems unaware that the Baltimore Police are largely her own creation.  She speaks of wanting answers, of looking for justice for the Freddie Gray family, of working to heal the pain of the community, as if she's somehow outside the system.  She speaks of reforming and retraining the Police Department, as if she just arrived on the scene.

There is no one--no one--who has had more impact on and control of the system that is now of concern to her, than the current Mayor.  The police department reports to the police commissioner, who is appointed by the Mayor with the consent of the City Council.  She has been Mayor for more than 5 years.  Five years.  She appointed the current Commissioner in 2012.  Before she was mayor, she had been a member of the City Council since 1995.  Twenty years.  Who, exactly, has been in a better position to ensure a well-trained police force, to improve its relationship with the "community" and to address the pain of the community, if not the Mayor?


The second problem is the reason she gave for not appearing in public to attempt to calm the situation. Her words:  "I know that my presence can be a calming presence and can be a flashpoint.  I’m not going to risk inserting myself — you know, it might look good to some people — but I’m not going to insert myself in a situation that we know is potentially hostile and very fragile."

I had to watch that bit of the video twice to wrap my head around that.  She's afraid her presence would make things worse?  Really?  But she continues to think that she's the right person to lead the city?  She doesn't want to "risk" a personal appearance because of the potential consequences, but she's also the best person for the task of healing the pain of the community?  How does that work, exactly? 

Maybe Baltimore should just give Governor Hogan the Mayor's office as well.  His presence apparently causes nothing but friendly chit chat and basketball games.

Plan B, Part III

Last time we checked in with our foreign policy experts, our State Department was assuring Iran that we wouldn't be stopping any shipments of arms to Iran's allies in Yemen, the Houthi rebels.  Sure, we're nearing the end of a capitulation, er, negotiation on Iran's nuclear program that might give someone second thoughts about the value of any deal.  And sure, there was a UN resolution we'd pushed for that prohibited arming the Houthis.  And sure, we were moving warships (including an aircraft carrier!) toward a convoy of Iranian vessels thought to be carrying a shipment of arms destined for Yemen, but our State Department wanted to make sure everyone understood that we're all bark and no bite.  As Spokeswoman Marie Harf explained:  I want to be very clear just so that no one has the wrong impression. They are not there to intercept Iranian ships."  Oh.  Why are they there then?  "The purpose of moving them is only to ensure that the shipping lanes remain open and safe."

Today's blog won't rehash the many ways in which this is both depressing and hilarious.  (But click here if you'd like to.)  In any event, it appears that the Iranians didn't believe the stated commerce-protecting purpose of warships.  Perhaps they believed the much less pacific message from the Pentagon instead.  The Iranian ships turned around and headed for home.  If the Iranians did in fact turn around because of the US Navy, it's despite our State Department's behavior, not because of it.  But let's move on to see how we're doing with our stated goal of protecting the shipping lanes.

On Friday, (one day after the Iranian arms shipments turned around for home), Iran's navy intercepted a US-flagged cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, the Maersk Kensington.  After encircling and following for a time, the Iranians dispersed.  Yesterday, Iranian navy fired on and seized another cargo ship, the Maersk Tigris.  That ship is headed to port under Iranian escort.

Iran had not been in the habit of using its navy to block shipping lanes until immediately after our President and State Department made a point of saying we'd protect the shipping lanes.  I don't pretend to know if it's immediately possible to protect the cargo ships intercepted over the past 5 days, and I'd guess that Iran chose targets a little removed from the center of US naval presence in the region.  But it's as if Iran is making a point, no?

Which brings us back to Plan B theory.  Our President has publicly stated that he has no alternative to a deal with Iran.  He has no Plan B.  Iran will get what it wants in terms of nuclear militarization development because our lead negotiator, the President of the United States, believes there is no alternative.  He has said so, publicly.  His determination to get a deal at any cost, despite missed deadlines by Iran, despite Twitter (!) accusations by his counterpart of lying, cheating and general infidelitude, despite intentional military provocations during negotiations, confirms his desperation.  

If you get your opponent on the ropes, keep punching hard until he's down.

Here We Go Again

Today the Supreme Court is hearing arguments on whether the Constitution allows individual states to decide whether they will allow same sex marriage, or whether every state must allow same sex marriage.  Forgive the lengthy quote, but NPR sums up the background of today's arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges at the Supreme Court better than I could:

"While no single narrative explains the shift in public consciousness, it is clear that increasingly, Americans came to believe that, at least in some cases, gay marriage ought to be permitted. The elite reaches of the legal profession began to advocate reform of marriage laws. . . . By the end of the decade, 12 state legislatures would relax their . . . prohibitions . . . . Four other states — three by legislation and one by public referendum —would act by the end of 2014 to eliminate all or nearly all restrictions on gay marriage. 

Organized religion responded to these signs of change in different ways. Some denominations supported the cause of change, and liberal members of the clergy formed a network to perform gay marriage ceremonies. Other Protestant denominations sat on the sidelines. The Catholic Church, however, alarmed by the spread of new mores . . . began to focus on marriage. By the decade's end, as forces mobilized in support of liberalizing marriage laws, the Church began to make increasingly visible and organized efforts to block reform — first speaking in religious registers and then shifting to secular and nondenominational grounds for opposing gay marriage. Catholic legal scholars began calling on secular sources of law from which to argue for maintaining traditional marriage.  Even as the Church was beginning to organize the right-to-life movement, support for liberalizing marriage was emerging from sources that would fatefully change marriage's social meaning and expression."

OK, I cheated a little with this.  This is actually a description of the background to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, with "abortion" replaced by variations on "marriage" and a couple of dates changed.  Two days after Roe, a New York Times editorial hoped that the Roe decision would "bring to an end the emotional and divisive public argument over what always should have been an intensely private and personal matter."  All that had to happen for the argument to end, of course, was for the abortion opponents to conclude that they'd been wrong to oppose abortion.

Nothing like that occurred, of course.  Despite the pre-Roe movement in public opinion described above, and the incredibly high barrier to change created by the Roe, the "emotional and divisive public argument" continued.  For quite some time--20 years--public opinion as measured by Gallup continued to move against the pro-life position.  But current trends continue only until they change.  Over the next 20 years up to today, the position that abortion should be legal in every circumstance has declined, while the directly opposing position that abortion should be illegal in every circumstance has increased by roughly the same amount. Even more striking, self-identification as either pro-choice or pro-life has moved from a solid majority identifying as pro-choice versus a 33% minority identifying as pro-life, to equal proportions identifying as pro-choice and pro-life today.

Far from ending the debate, Roe disguised fashionable political preferences as a Constitutional requirement, and froze those fashions in place.  The same temptation has returned in Obergefell.

Support for gay marriage has been increasing rapidly.  Only a few short years ago, Barack Obama stated he was against gay marriage for religious reasons.  Since that statement in 2004, support and opposition to gay marriage have swapped places in the Gallup poll, moving from 55% opposition and 42% support, to 55% support and 42% opposition.  Staying just behind the curve, President Obama has also swapped his opposition for support.

Current trends will continue until they change.  There was no reason to think that the steady shift towards "pro-choice" had peaked in 1996.  But it had.  Over the past few years, and despite the constraints imposed by Roe, many states have voted for and implemented a raft of new restrictions on abortion.  There's no reason to think that current support for gay marriage is more enduring.  There may be reasons to think that it's actually less enduring--of the 37 states currently allowing same sex marriage, more than two thirds are doing so due to judicial decisions, not democratic process. 

Whether or not current trends change soon, or far in the future, the Court should not repeat its mistake of 1973.  If there really is to be a consensus that gay marriage is a good thing, it will be reflected in state laws.  But if there is to be no consensus, the Court should not impose one.

I Have Time for Things I Want To Do

Early in my career as a lawyer, probably during the first couple of months, I remember a senior associate telling me that "work expands to fill available time."  I tend to forget most of what I hear, but I remember this well--because it's very, very true.  I have learned since that this is known as Parkinson's law, first stated in an article published in The Economist in the 1950s.

I mentioned in my first blog post that I'm in a career transition.  There are some good things happening there, but I remain unemployed for now.  However, I still can't find the time to do everything that I think I ought to do.  Before my last day on the job, I expected to have so much free time that I would be making up things to do.  Of course, I did have a list of things in my head that I thought I ought to get to right away:  reorganize the garage and the attic, arrange a home office, build an outdoor fire pit, and handle basic set up at the new mountain cabin.  I've done some, but not all of that list.  I expected to have it done long ago.

There are so many other things I have been doing at the same time:  triathlon training is not as rushed and has expanded some; I'm glad that I can give more help around the house (the 2 year old is a handful; and I can run errands during the day); I've committed to writing everyday, which I've almost kept to; I've said yes to requests for help at church that I would have said no to before; and on and on.

I think there may be a Hicks corollary to Parkinson's law.  Or if not a corollary, at least a related rule:  

I have time for things I want to do.

If I compare the list of things that I've actually done with the list of things that I thought I'd get to but haven't yet, it's clear that the first list is the list of things that I really want to do.  The second list is of things I ought to do at some point, but am not so excited about actually doing.

This is not groundbreaking, I know, but it's something I've been thinking about for the past couple of years.  Now that my time is even more flexible, it's even more clear--when I start to say "I don't have time" for this or that, what I really mean is that I don't want to do it.  Period.

Of course, it's also now true that when someone else says "I don't have time," what I hear is "I don't want to."  There's some social value in the little white lie of blaming time for a refusal, rather than just saying "I don't want to."  Who can argue with time?  

But in my own internal conversations, removing "time" as a reason I give myself for not doing something and focussing on what my priorities actually are has helped me clarify (or even modify) my priorities on occasion.  

I've spent as much time as I want to on this.  Time to go do something else.

Plan B, cont.

Iran's march to regional domination is in the news again, as it will be for the foreseeable future. 

Yemen's government crumbled and dissolved into nothingness in January, four months after President Obama touted Yemen as an example of the success of his foreign policy.  Yemen has been in a Hobbesian state of war of all against all since then.

The Yemeni government was reasonably friendly to the US.  Not satisfied with the removal of US influence, Iran is attempting to ensure that Yemen becomes an Iranian puppet state.  A shipment of Iranian arms destined for the Houthis (Iran's allies in Yemen) is on its way.

A prior post examined the disaster that has resulted from having no Plan B in the negotiations with Iran over Iran's nuclear weapons program.  We still have no Plan B there, so even though Iran is actively pursuing military options against US interests in the Middle East (we've been assisting the Saudis in their military actions against Iran's Yemeni allies), we're not even going to pause negotiations.  White House spokesman Josh Earnest:  Iran's intervention "is not a reason to break up those negotiations — in fact, it is a very strong incentive for those negotiations to succeed."  Most experienced negotiators do not take threats, violence or other bad behavior as a reason to come to agreement.  The proper response to someone pounding the table across from you is not to agree with him in the hope that he'll stop the scary noises.  The proper response is to call his bluff.  But our negotiators seem invincible to experience.

On Sunday, the US diverted warships to the Yemeni coast.  Maybe we did learn how to call a bluff?  No.  Since Sunday, there have been a series of statements from the Obama administration, including Obama himself, that could not be better crafted to communicate confusion, weakness and irrelevance.

After his Press Secretary told reporters that the United States "is serious about the Iranians not providing weapons to the Houthis," President Obama said these words to Chris Mathews in an interview on MSNBC:

"Right now their ships are in international waters.  There’s a reason why we keep some of our ships in the Persian Gulf region and that is to make sure we maintain freedom of navigation. And what we’ve said to them is if there are weapons delivered to factions within Yemen that could threaten navigation, that’s a problem."

Let that sink in.  There's a UN resolution prohibiting anyone from arming the Houthis.  The White House Press Secretary has reiterated that we're serious about preventing Iran from arming the Houthis.  So to ensure that everyone understand our intentions, President Obama says that we're concerned with the shipping lanes.  If Mathews wasn't distracted by his tingling leg, perhaps he would have thought to ask what problem a weapons shipment could possibly create for maritime navigation.

Mr. President, there is no problem with the shipping lanes.  None.  The idea that weapons being delivered to Yemen could "threaten navigation" is intentional idiocy.  The weapons are to be used in Yemen, against our allies.  It's as if the FBI set up armed surveillance of a gun trafficking operation in a Walmart parking lot, for the sole purpose of ensuring that the traffickers didn't use any of the handicapped parking spaces.

For its part, the State Department wants to make sure we all understand that US warships aren't going to do anything, you know, warlike.  Spokeswoman Marie Harf:  "I want to be very clear just so that no one has the wrong impression. They are not there to intercept Iranian ships.  The purpose of moving them is only to ensure that the shipping lanes remain open and safe."

This is impossible to parody.  We're sending our warships toward an Iranian shipment of weapons, not to intercept those weapons, but to make sure they reach their destination safely. 

I Know You Are a Racist. Whoever You Are.

I see that Tyrus Byrd won an election for Mayor of Parma, Missouri.  This is the number one story trending in my Facebook feed as I write this.  Congratulations to Mayor-Elect Byrd.

Parma had 713 residents at the 2010 census.  It is surprising, I feel it's safe to say, for a mayoral election in a town with barely enough residents to fill a section at an NFL game to make national news.  There must be something extraordinary going on for our nation to be suddenly so intensely concerned with Parma.

I've searched far and wide for what that something extraordinary might be.  There are no facts available, apart from those included in the article linked above.  In its entirety:

Voters in Parma, Missouri voted in their first African-American female mayor.

Tyrus Byrd will be sworn in as mayor on Tuesday evening, April 14 at the Parma Community Building.

According to Mayor Randall Ramsey, five out of six police officers resigned this week, effectively immediately.

Mayor Ramsey said the city's attorney, the clerk and the waste water treatment plant supervisor also turned in resignation letters citing "safety concerns."

Mayor Elect, Tyrus, Byrd, said she was unaware of the situation and plans to ask questions about the "safety concerns" during Tuesday night's ceremony.

Mayor Randall Ramsey served the city of Parma for 37 years during two different terms.

He lost the election by 37 votes.

I did manage to figure out why this story is so exciting.  The headline writers have concluded that the Parma police and city officials are racist:

Missouri Police Officers & Officials Quit After Town Elects First Black ...
News One-4 hours ago

80 percent of police force resigns after Missouri town elects first ...
Raw Story-21 hours ago

Police, Officials Resign After Small Missouri Town Elects First Black ...
Highly Cited-Huffington Post-18 hours ago

Missouri police officers resign after black female mayor is elected
Highly Cited-New York Daily News-21 hours ago

And so on, and so forth.

(An aside, I think the "80%" of police force resigns headlines is my favorite--it manages to be mathematically incorrect while avoiding saying something less dramatic, like:  "5 police officers resign".)

Missouri.  Police.  Racism.  It feels so good to be better than those people, doesn't it?

We don't, of course, have any reason from the facts in the article to conclude that racism has anything to do with Parma's mayoral election, or the subsequent resignations.  Here are facts we don't know from reports:

• Is Byrd the first black mayor?  Is the outgoing Mayor black?  The reports say "first black female".  Does that mean there was a black male in the past?  For that matter, was there a female in the past?

• Are some or all of the cops who resigned black?  Are some or all of them female?  What about the other city officials?  Mayor-Elect Byrd herself was a black female city official prior to her election.

• What happened in the election campaign?  The incumbent was mayor for 37 years.  This must have been an unusual election--what were the issues and what happened?

• What was the relationship between the resignee cops and officials and the incumbent Mayor?  Any long term incumbent will have a long and complicated history with the people in his administration.  What reasons might they have to leave with him?

And so on and so forth.

I don't know if racism played any part in some or all of the resignations.  And neither do any of the rest of us, apart from a very small number of people in the town of Parma, Missouri.  But many of us are certain we know what's in the hearts and minds of these people--we're so certain of it we publicly assign motivations to them, even though we've never met them and know very little about them.  We don't even know their names in this case.  Or age.  Or race.  Or sex.

Almost everyone does this, reflexively, on some level.  I decide that I know why the customer service rep on the other end of the phone seems to want to move me off of the phone--he's lazy, I'm sure.  It could be that he has a mother dying in the hospital, is at the end of his shift, and can get to her as soon as he hangs up with me.  I don't know.

But there's a special communal harm in the sort of assumed racism that is generating our Parma headlines.  It makes us all distrust each other.  And we ought to stop jumping to conclusions based on desires to find the next available target of racial sins.

In Defense of Insider Trading

I'm sitting in a Continuing Legal Education seminar today. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in its wisdom, has decreed that I (and everyone else that wishes to remain a lawyer in Pennsylvania) must attend 12 hours of CLE every year. Maybe I'll write about the legal profession as a cartel in a future post. Anyway, so here I am.

This CLE deals with securities law. We have a whole panel of white collar defense lawyers, SEC enforcers, and one federal judge combing through the thicket of Supreme Court developments over the past year regarding insider trading. That is, how we know whether or not someone can be punished for knowing some piece of information during a trade of stock. 

The whole area of law is nonsense and should be scrapped. 

I might (and probably will) take more time later to write more carefully on this, but here's the preview summary:

The simple theory of insider trading law:  There's a market price for stocks. That price is based on what the market knows--that is, information publicly available regarding that company's stock. If someone sells or buys stocks based on information regarding that company not known to the market, then that person has an unfair advantage and should be sent to prison. Yes, prison. 

This is nonsense.

Let's say a company has a stock price of $10. There's a publicly unknown fact that would drop the company's price to $9. The insider (we'll call him Smarty) knows the fact, and sells all his stock before the fact is known. A buyer (we'll call him Ignoramus) buys it at $10, or if anything a little less, as Smarty's sale will create some downward pressure on the stock price. Then the fact becomes known and Ignoramus's stock is now worth $9. Unfair, we cry!  Poor Ignoramus!  Punish Smarty!

Alright. So what's the situation if Smarty doesn't sell before the info is publicly known?  Smarty's decision not to sell has no effect on Ignoramus--Ignoramus has no idea who Smarty is and doesn't care. So Ignoramus still buys at $10, and then the info becomes publicly known and Ignoramus's stock is then worth . . . $9. Same result (except that Ignoramus's losses may be marginally greater, because Smarty was prevented from creating the downward pressure on stock price noted above). 

Why do we punish Smarty?  I can't come up with a reason other than envy. Envy should never be the basis of any law.

One Man's Loophole Is Another Man's Targeted Tax Cut

One day of talking about taxes just isn't enough.  Yesterday, Rand Paul said he wants to get the IRS out of your life.  Who could oppose that?

As it turns out, almost everyone.

There is no inherent reason a tax code has to be complex.  I can write a fully functional tax code in one sentence:  

All sales of goods or services within the United States are subject to an 18% tax.  

Lots of people would like to make some modifications, clarifications, exceptions and other tweaks to that code, and if experience is any guide, they would succeed.  At last count, our federal income tax law, including the statute itself plus the regulations created by the IRS to implement the code was somewhere between 12,000 and 13,000 pages.  We've been succeeding like crazy.

Why are we so good at making what could be simple so complex that literally no single person can understand all of it?  Because it's so very tempting to use taxes to punish people for doing things we don't like (such as smoking, not having health insurance, or having a corporate headquarters in the US) and it's just as tempting to use taxes to benefit people for doing things we do like (such as borrowing money to buy a home, generating green energy or buying a Hummer and then destroying it).

Not everyone likes every exception that's written into the tax code.  Those who don't like a particular exception call it a loophole.  Those who do like a particular exception call it a targeted tax break.  There's no reason anyone to be consistent about it--you just have to switch from talking about loopholes to talking about targets depending on how you feel about the exception.  President Obama, for example, thinks that one particular rule that allows parents to leave money to their children without taxation is a "loophole".  But he's in favor of another particular rule that allows parents a "targeted tax break" if they happen to have children in college.  There's no logical reason for him to avoid saying that he'd like to create a loophole for parents with kids in college, or he's against the targeted tax break for inheritance.  But we somehow think of loopholes as an oversight or mistake, and a targeted tax cut as a wise and efficient use of our tax code.  Neither is true--no matter what we call them, exceptions are unwise, inefficient, and on purpose.

Rand Paul's flat tax is simpler, certainly, than the current system.  But he still leaves in very popular exceptions, like the mortgage interest deduction.  And if you can make one exception, why not another, and another . . .

We Will Rob You Only When Absolutely Necessary

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.

~Calvin Coolidge

Despite his best intentions, Cal made a non-controversial statement.  The controversy that does exist arises from our mixed perceptions of "necessity."

The first US income tax was passed in 1861 to help pay Civil War expenses.  War expenses are a necessity, most would agree, so no controversy there.  That tax was repealed, and the income tax wasn't re-established until passage of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution overcame Supreme Court rejection of prior attempts to impose a federal income tax.  Again, our elected representatives rested support for a new tax on the requirements of war:  "We are ready to vote for an income tax to meet any emergencies which may arise…and to stand by the Government in time of war".  

There's always disagreement as to whether a war should be fought in the first place--but once that's decided, there's nothing more necessary than paying for soldier rations and bullets.  But even when a war involving tanks, guns and bombs is not actually involved, the language of war, crisis and emergency has always been used to ensure that new taxes are properly viewed as "necessary."  Cal's quote starts to look naive as one moves through US history--expanding federal government, and the "necessary" increase in tax revenues, always in response to emergencies, crises and real or metaphorical wars of this or that sort.  

The disagreement on whether more tax is "necessary" isn't usually a disagreement as to whether there are problems in the world.  There always are.  The disagreement is whether the US Federal Government is the best means of shrinking those problems.  If it is, then taxes are "necessary."  If not, then robbery is the right word.

Happy Tax Day!

Where's My Bike

I'm getting a new bike.  For those of you without familiarity with the mid-life crisis sport of triathlon, you should know that this is a big deal.  Triathlon consists of three "disciplines" ("legs" or "sports" isn't quite pretentious enough for us):  swim, bike and run, in that order.  Swimming requires attention to technique, and running requires high pain tolerance.  But it's cycling that really allows the technology geek that lives in most triathletes to come out and play.

Selecting a new triathlon bike involves attention to a list of specifications that initially seems like a NASA bill of materials:  carbon fiber composition ratio, computational fluid dynamic and wind tunnel testing, integrated cable management systems, electronic shifting mechanisms, crank vs. hub power meters, blah, blah blah.  In January, I visited my bike guy, Rob.  After we spent 90 minutes building and tearing apart bikes in our heads and in paper sketches, and predicting the performance of possible bikes in races I might possibly do, we settled on this (with Rob's customizations, naturally):

This is a Cervelo P3.  Cervelo is a Canadian company.  They build their bikes in China.  Rob checked with his Cervelo rep, and his rep estimated that they'd have my bike to Rob by the middle of March.

It's the middle of April and I don't have my bike yet.  Which brings us to the subject of West Coast dock strikes.  All 29 West Coast ports are represented by a single union of dock workers, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.  All 29 West Coast ports are represented by a single association of shipping companies and terminal operators, the Pacific Maritime Association.  Yes, that's right--if the representatives of just two entities can't agree, no shipping traffic moves into or out of the entire West Coast.

For about nine months, during the negotiation of a new contract between the ILWU and the PMA, shipping traffic slowed dramatically, causing massive congestion, cancelled orders, and rotting produce.  The effect on retailers was significant of course--estimated in billions of dollars.  A new contract has been agreed, and traffic is moving again, but it's taking a long time to catch up with the traffic jam created since last summer.  Oakland cleared the backlog of ships waiting outside its ports 10 days ago, but other ports may take much longer.

If you thought that the rather unique ability to control trade on the entire West Coast, which is 25% of the entire US transportation business, might be a lucrative business for the ILWU and the PMA, you'd be right.  Members of the ILWU are well compensated:  dock workers average over $100,000 a year, and can make double or triple that  I couldn't find good numbers on PMA member profits, but they must be significant to allow them to pay their average employee a six-figure salary.  The price of this generosity rests on retailers and ultimately consumers, of course.

There's a long history of government intervention to break up monopolies, and the West Coast shipping situation might be interesting to Department of Justice attorneys concerned about economic harm, if there are any.  But the hostages of a monopoly can have their own methods of getting themselves free.  There are indications that shippers will use the 5 year labor contract term to find ways to get goods to market other than West Coast ports.  One way of doing that is to send traffic to East Coast ports, which do not have the same monopoly union representation as their West Coast counterparts.  That has its own costs, but the monopolists may have pushed their customers too far.

If they rerouted my bike to the East Coast, I'll go pick it up myself.

Condemned to Repeat It

"The real ruler, to whom everything is permitted, destroys Toulon, butchers in Paris, forgets an army in Egypt, expends half a million men in a Moscow campaign, shakes himself free with a pun in Wilno, and when he is dead they put up statues to him; everything is permitted to him.  No!  Such people are plainly not made of flesh, but of bronze!"  --Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment

Turkey recalled its ambassador to the Vatican yesterday, hours after Pope Francis used the word "genocide" in connection with the death of as many as 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1918.  There wasn't more to it than that--in the very brief opening address at Mass in St. Peter's commemorating the 100th anniversary of the genocide, Francis did not mention Turkey or Turks, did not elaborate on the details of the slaughter, and did not call for revenge, reparations or punishment.

The Foreign Ministry of Turkey took it upon itself to fill in all those blanks.  Responding as if accused (which Francis did not do), the Foreign Ministry complains that Francis did not mention the suffering of Turks or Muslims during World War I, raises a legalistic accusation of slander, relies for its own defense on the fact that no "competent court" has found Turkey guilty of genocide, and somehow also throws in what must be a purely reflexive reference to the "cruelty of colonialism."

What the Pope and the Foreign Ministry agree on, at least superficially, is that we must look to the future.  Official Turkey would have us think that, to get to a peaceful future, history must be forgotten.  Mentioning the deaths of Armenians, even without use of the "G-word", has resulted in criminal prosecution in Turkey.  Francis, on the other hand, paraphrases Santayana's warning about forgetting history:   'It is necessary, and indeed a duty, to honour their memory, for whenever memory fades, it means that evil allows wounds to fester. Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it!'  The Pope's reference to the past means to draw attention to the present--a "third world war" in the here and now against "our defenceless brothers and sisters who, on account of their faith in Christ or their ethnic origin, are publicly and ruthlessly put to death – decapitated, crucified, burned alive – or forced to leave their homeland."

The wound that Francis wants to heal is not in the past--it bleeds in the present.  The news of violence this year against Christians, simply for the offense of being Christian, is horrifying:  forced exodus, decapitations, mass murder.  

Outside of Turkey, there doesn't seem to be much disagreement as to whether what happened to the Armenians 100 years ago was genocide--in fact, the word was invented to describe it.  As is ever the case with evil, it can't call itself by its own name.  To survive, it needs distraction, dissembling and darkness.  Denial of the evil in plain sight is the only way to allow the evil to continue.  

Plan B

This is a post about Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Obama, but will take a bit of a detour first, so stick with me.

One of my primary jobs as a lawyer has been negotiation.  We want this, they want that, and sometimes, we and they can come together for a deal that makes both parties better off.  A deal won't happen unless both parties to the deal think that they're better off with the deal than without the deal.  If the deal makes someone worse off, then that someone will just refuse the deal.  Simple as that.

But a deal can still be a lot better for one side than for the other.  If there are 100 new benefits arising from a deal, sometimes Winner Corp. gets 99, and Loser, Inc. gets just 1.  Why would Loser, Inc. settle for so little, you ask?  It depends, always, on Plan B.  Plan B is Loser's back up plan, its next best option if it can't work out a deal with Winner.  For example, let's say Loser is in financial trouble, and expects that if it doesn't find some larger company to acquire it by this time next year, it will have to file bankruptcy.  So Loser starts to try to find a buyer.  If Loser finds two or more potential buyers, then it has an opportunity to create a good Plan B--an offer from one of the buyers will be Plan B, and the other buyer will have to beat it to make a deal.  But if Loser finds only one potential buyer, then bankruptcy becomes Plan B, and the one buyer can acquire Loser for nearly nothing; $1 is better than bankruptcy.

I said negotiations depend on Plan B.  That's not quite specific enough.  Negotiations depend on each side's perceptions of Plan B, both their own Plan B, and the other side's Plan B.  If Loser's perception of its own Plan B is that it's better than what Winner is offering, Loser won't make a deal with Winner until Winner sweetens its offer.  On the other hand, if Winner thinks that Loser's Plan B is a disaster for Loser, Winner will stick to a low ball offer and expect that Loser will have to take it, sooner or later.  But if Winner thinks that there's another buyer involved, that is, Loser has a valuable Plan B, then Winner will reconsider its low ball offer.  This is, in essence, what people mean by bargaining power--if Winner has other good options, but Loser's Plan B is an ugly mess, then Loser is going to be willing to give away almost everything to make a deal with Winner.

Last week, President Obama announced a "historic understanding" with Iran, and the State Department released a fact sheet list of "parameters" composing that understanding.  Whether State's parameters do or do not achieve the UN goal of ending Iranian nuclear weapons activities, the most interesting fact for Plan B analysis is the fact of the announcement by President Obama in light of the reaction by Supreme Leader Khamenei.  Khamenei tweeted that State's fact sheet was "contrary to what was agreed", that it was unclear whether talks would lead to a deal, that "no deal" is preferable to a deal contrary to Iran's interests, and attacked the American negotiators as liars, deceivers and promise-breachers.

Take the names and subject matter away from the negotiation, and look at the dynamic:

"Hey, listen up!  After long negotiations, we've finally agreed!  Here's the list of terms, we just need to work out minor details!  This is a great day!"

"No we haven't.  We didn't agree to any of that.  I don't know if we're agreeing or not, ever.  Besides, it's difficult to discuss things with a lying cheat such as yourself."

Tell me, which one has a Plan B that he's not terrified of?  Which Winner is getting 99 out of 100?

You might say that Khamenei is a clever man, and knows the value of making people think he has a good Plan B, and that Obama has a terrible Plan B.  You might be right--Khamenei may be more eager for a deal than he seems.  But for negotiations, the perception of Plan B is what matters.  And Obama has managed to become perceived as desperate for a deal, even going so far as to publicly paint himself into a corner by claiming his only Plan B is a war he finds unacceptable.  If Obama were to intentionally eliminate his negotiating leverage, he couldn't do a better job.

Writing is the new normal

In January, the company that I worked for 12 years was acquired.  In February, I was informed that my services are were no longer required.  

The fear of losing my job has always lived somewhere in the deep water of my id.  Sometimes it would swim closer to the surface than others, but it never let me forget its presence.  I should know that the actual event is not as difficult as the worrying fear prior to the event--but I was still sure that I would be a mess after my last day of work.  My wife Julie told me after I'd been home just a few days that she's never seen me in such a good mood.

I think she's right.

I've worked as a lawyer at a law firm and for two technology companies over the past 17 years.  I've created contract systems, intellectual property systems, bought companies, sold companies, hung on through a slow bleed of venture capital cash until bankruptcy was the only option, and celebrated with work friends and colleagues when careful plans paid off big.  For the last few of those 17 years, I've known that I ought to try something else.  This blog is part of that something else.  

Teaching is another big part of the something else.  I have put a few classes together in the meager free time that law-work has left me, and learned that even if I never had to work again, that's what I'd spend my time doing.  I still have to work, but it's time to see if I can make teaching into my work.

So together, the writing and teaching are the something else.  The writing can start now, and so it will.  I'll be writing week-daily about what interests me, which most days is politics, law, and my family and on some days, theology, triathlon or fly fishing.

With the introduction out of the way, I'll say just a few words about one thing that interests me today: the title of this blog.  Kevin Hicks is my name, but not a good title.  I spent a lot of time already not writing because I was looking for a good title--all of yesterday's writing time, in fact.  Today, I went with the first thing first, and wrote.  I've got a copy of Burke next to the keyboard, as well as a copy of Tolkien, hoping to find the right combination of 2 or 3 words to create some clever and recognizable reference that deals with liberty vs. tyranny, hope vs. despair.  But it won't get in the way of writing, I promise.