For the past three or more years, I have subscribed to MLB.com TV, which allows me to watch any major league baseball game, either in real time or after they´ve been played. In the U.S. there are market blackouts on live games, but I don't have that problem in Brasil.
When I first started watching games this way, the intervals between half innings were usually just dead time, with an MLB logo and a printed message saying that the game was in a commercial break. But there came to be more and more more advertisements, so that today most of that interval is filled with boring commercials.
One of the ads I've seen several times this year is one that supposedly celebrates "the American spirit." It has generic images that suggest excitement and adventure while an insipid voice over drones on and on. Frankly, the only image I remember is a still shot of a motorcycle, and I don't remember a word of the mindless drivel. The point is that, as you listen to this schlock, you begin to wonder what in the hell is this commercial pushing. At the end you learn, as a hand slaps down a bottle of Jack Daniels and the voice says something again about the American spirit.
After seeing this ad about a dozen times (the ads repeat even more frequently than the ads do during sports events on TV), the inappropriateness of it struck me. What the hell can Jack Daniels do to enhance the enjoyment of life as represented by the images I've just seen? I thought, this romanticization of alcohol should not be allowed. And then I remembered, it isn't allowed on TV or radio. It is just that the booze industry figured out what regulators and legislators haven't...there is another medium out there for us to use.
At least the motorcycle was a still shot without a rider anywhere to be seen. That tells you the corporate lawyers were involved in the production; you can imagine what the ad men wanted.
And, mind you, I had these crystal clear thoughts about the evils of booze after having downed a fair amount of vodka. Thank gawd I don't own a motorcycle.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
The Oprah Bump
For several days now I've been reading the new translation of Anna Karenina. Actually, when I checked the other day, I found out this widely-praised new translation is ten years old. I'm just a little bit behind in my reading. I can't die yet; there is so much to read.
Everytime I turn on my Kindle, on the home page I see "Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club). What would Tolstoy have been without her?
Everytime I turn on my Kindle, on the home page I see "Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club). What would Tolstoy have been without her?
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Friday, July 6, 2012
Alternative History
Of all the posts I've made just to satisfy myself, this probably needs to go near the head. What I had in mind when I first thought of this post yesterday probably isn't true anymore, but I still find it interesting. You don't have to.
A post on the SCOTUSBlog in April says of Chief Justice Fred Vinson:
One of his former law clerks said of Vinson:
His colleague on the Court, Felix Frankfurter, said upon hearing of Vinson´s death:
What I didn't know when I made the last post was that, in the Spring of 2011, the Indiana Law Review hosted a symposium on counterfactuals in constitutional history, and one of the topics was "What if Chief Justice Fred Vinson Had Not Died of a Heart Attack in 1953?: Implications for Brown and Beyond." The following is from the abstract of their conclusion:
The reason I went ahead with this blog anyway is that I find the subject of alternative history, or counterfactuals, mildly intriguing. I liked the observation I read somewhere and can no longer find which pointed out that we deal in counterfactuals all the time without giving it a thought. If Gore were President instead of Bush, we wouldn't have gone to war in Iraq. If Kennedy hadn't been shot, he would never have allowed the country to get as deeply committed in Vietnam as did Johnson. If the Obama stimulus package had been of the size that Paul Krugman recommended at the time, the recovery would be further along. If McCain had picked a real Vice Presidential candidate instead of a space alien...etc. etc. etc.
A post on the SCOTUSBlog in April says of Chief Justice Fred Vinson:
There’s a pretty strong consensus that Chief Justice Fred Vinson was the worst Chief Justice of the twentieth century. The conventional view goes something like this: Vinson was a bumbling, incompetent political hack, an intellectual lightweight with minimal understanding of complex legal issues, a card-playing crony of Harry Truman who continued to advise Truman even after taking his seat on the Court, a reactionary with horrific instincts in key civil liberties cases, and, worst of all, a major obstacle to unanimity in Brown v. Board of Education. By this account, the best thing Vinson ever did was to die of a heart attack at precisely the right moment – in the middle of the Brown proceedings in 1953, thus allowing his successor, Chief Justice Earl Warren, to author a unanimous opinion invalidating racial segregation in public schools.The conventional wisdom for years, and which I assumed was still true when I made my last post, was that the Brown v Board of Education ruling, from a Vincent Court would have been a divided ruling. Apparently there is even a would-be-confidential memo from Justice Douglas which asserts that very notion. And there are so many demeaning opinions about Vinson which make it an appealing conclusion.
One of his former law clerks said of Vinson:
“He was a mean little despot who was so deficient in many respects as man and judge. This man is a pygmy morally and mentally. And so uncouth.”Talk about having problems with your boss!
His colleague on the Court, Felix Frankfurter, said upon hearing of Vinson´s death:
I've worked with people like that too.“This is the first indication that I have ever had, that there is a God.”
What I didn't know when I made the last post was that, in the Spring of 2011, the Indiana Law Review hosted a symposium on counterfactuals in constitutional history, and one of the topics was "What if Chief Justice Fred Vinson Had Not Died of a Heart Attack in 1953?: Implications for Brown and Beyond." The following is from the abstract of their conclusion:
....Chief Justice Vinson’s untimely death deprived him of the historical stature to which he otherwise would have been entitled. It concludes, contrary to many accounts, that Vinson would have authored a unanimous opinion of the Court in Brown v. Board of Education invalidating segregation in public schools. This conclusion is bolstered by Vinson’s decisions in prior race cases, by his consistent support for the policies of the federal government, by his fervent anti-Communism, and by his close friendship with President Harry Truman. Authorship of Brown would have given Vinson instant historical immortality, guaranteeing his place among the nation’s most significant chief justices.For example, we would still have had the Brown decision but Miranda would have gone the other way.
Moreover, if Vinson had survived, Earl Warren would not have become Chief Justice. Vinson’s more likely successors would have been John Marshall Harlan (under Eisenhower) or Byron White (under Kennedy). Depending on the timing of Vinson’s ultimate departure from the court, certain key Warren Court precedents might have been decided by 5-4 votes in the other direction.
The reason I went ahead with this blog anyway is that I find the subject of alternative history, or counterfactuals, mildly intriguing. I liked the observation I read somewhere and can no longer find which pointed out that we deal in counterfactuals all the time without giving it a thought. If Gore were President instead of Bush, we wouldn't have gone to war in Iraq. If Kennedy hadn't been shot, he would never have allowed the country to get as deeply committed in Vietnam as did Johnson. If the Obama stimulus package had been of the size that Paul Krugman recommended at the time, the recovery would be further along. If McCain had picked a real Vice Presidential candidate instead of a space alien...etc. etc. etc.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Today's Book Review and History Lesson
For whatever reason, lately I seem to keep coming back to matters that concern the Supreme Court. The latest example was my decision to read the 2000 biography Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, by Juan Williams.
Marshall was certainly one of the giants of the civil rights movement, whose life was a continual effort to bring about an end to racial segregation in the U.S. Working for the NAACP and later the Legal Defense Fund arm of that organization, he had a series of important victories before the Supreme Court that forced an end to "separate but equal." The first cases, beginning in the mid-1930s, involved law schools and medical schools. I don't know if it is still true, but at one time he had argued more cases before the Supreme Court than anyone else in history, and it was only after a string of victories that he was prepared to argue the famous Brown v. Board of Education case (which was really 5 different cases from around the country consolidated into one and remembered with the name of one of them.)
After the Brown case, Marshall was appointed as a Federal Judge on the Appellate Court in NYC, and in 1962 LBJ named it as the U.S. Solicitor General. (There is an interesting story here that I don't think Juan Williams has necessarily got to the bottom of. Marshall had a lifetime appointment to the Appellate Court and he gave that up to take a political appointment as Solicitor General. Marshall and LBJ always denied there was an agreement that Marshall would get the next appointment to the Supreme Court, and Johnson even told Marshall, on the night before he named him, that he was not going to name him. And there is plenty of testimony by LBJ's inner circle that he was considering others. Still it seems like there is more to that story.)
One of the things I did not know about this time in the civil rights movement is that the goal of integration, while always in Marshall's sights, was not universally shared. Many people thought it was much more practical, and therefore desirable, to use the courts to make the segregated black schools truly equal. The worry was that Marshall's and the NCAAP's quest for the perfect solution would prevent an acceptable improvement of the current reality. While it may seem like an interesting historical abstraction today, these were the real concerns of real people who wanted the best possible education for their children, and for whom the failure to end segregation meant the continuation of some truly horrific schools in many locales. The black community was truly split on this issue, if not 50-50 at least significantly, and with a lot of important leaders on both sides.
Also, it took an amazing amount of personal courage for a black family to allow themselves to be used in an integration case, while a case to bring about truly equal schools could have been filed with less threat to any individual black family. The truly heroic aspect of the ordinary people involved in these cases, people who risked literally everything, reminds me to reread Juan Williams' other book, Eyes on the Prize, which was a companion to the PBS series of the same name...way back when.
Marshall and the NAACP never wavered in their commitment to integration, and one of the reasons the Topeka case was chosen over others is that the black schools in Topeka were very nearly on a par with the white schools. Juan Williams cites evidence that the best black schools may even have been better than the worst white schools in Topeka. The rationale was that they wanted to remove the option from the courts of simply ordering the city to make the schools truly equal, since they virtually were already.
Marshall's story ultimately becomes rather tragic, as the civil rights movement took a different direction from the legal approach he had followed, and he felt less than appreciated by the last decade of his life, especially as the make up of the Supreme Court had changed and he was relegated to the role of perpetual dissenter.
Enough history for today. Next up is an alternative history lesson of what would have it meant to history if Chief Justice Vinson had not died of a heart attack between the time the Brown case was first argued before the court and the time it was finally decided.
Marshall was certainly one of the giants of the civil rights movement, whose life was a continual effort to bring about an end to racial segregation in the U.S. Working for the NAACP and later the Legal Defense Fund arm of that organization, he had a series of important victories before the Supreme Court that forced an end to "separate but equal." The first cases, beginning in the mid-1930s, involved law schools and medical schools. I don't know if it is still true, but at one time he had argued more cases before the Supreme Court than anyone else in history, and it was only after a string of victories that he was prepared to argue the famous Brown v. Board of Education case (which was really 5 different cases from around the country consolidated into one and remembered with the name of one of them.)
After the Brown case, Marshall was appointed as a Federal Judge on the Appellate Court in NYC, and in 1962 LBJ named it as the U.S. Solicitor General. (There is an interesting story here that I don't think Juan Williams has necessarily got to the bottom of. Marshall had a lifetime appointment to the Appellate Court and he gave that up to take a political appointment as Solicitor General. Marshall and LBJ always denied there was an agreement that Marshall would get the next appointment to the Supreme Court, and Johnson even told Marshall, on the night before he named him, that he was not going to name him. And there is plenty of testimony by LBJ's inner circle that he was considering others. Still it seems like there is more to that story.)
One of the things I did not know about this time in the civil rights movement is that the goal of integration, while always in Marshall's sights, was not universally shared. Many people thought it was much more practical, and therefore desirable, to use the courts to make the segregated black schools truly equal. The worry was that Marshall's and the NCAAP's quest for the perfect solution would prevent an acceptable improvement of the current reality. While it may seem like an interesting historical abstraction today, these were the real concerns of real people who wanted the best possible education for their children, and for whom the failure to end segregation meant the continuation of some truly horrific schools in many locales. The black community was truly split on this issue, if not 50-50 at least significantly, and with a lot of important leaders on both sides.
Also, it took an amazing amount of personal courage for a black family to allow themselves to be used in an integration case, while a case to bring about truly equal schools could have been filed with less threat to any individual black family. The truly heroic aspect of the ordinary people involved in these cases, people who risked literally everything, reminds me to reread Juan Williams' other book, Eyes on the Prize, which was a companion to the PBS series of the same name...way back when.
Marshall and the NAACP never wavered in their commitment to integration, and one of the reasons the Topeka case was chosen over others is that the black schools in Topeka were very nearly on a par with the white schools. Juan Williams cites evidence that the best black schools may even have been better than the worst white schools in Topeka. The rationale was that they wanted to remove the option from the courts of simply ordering the city to make the schools truly equal, since they virtually were already.
Marshall's story ultimately becomes rather tragic, as the civil rights movement took a different direction from the legal approach he had followed, and he felt less than appreciated by the last decade of his life, especially as the make up of the Supreme Court had changed and he was relegated to the role of perpetual dissenter.
Enough history for today. Next up is an alternative history lesson of what would have it meant to history if Chief Justice Vinson had not died of a heart attack between the time the Brown case was first argued before the court and the time it was finally decided.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Privatized Debtors' Prisons
According to a scary story in the NY Times, the latest trend in our so-called judicial system is for municipalities to turn their courts into profit centers by handing their uncollected misdemeanor fines over to private companies, who have the authority to jail people and to levy additional fees of their own. To paraphrase one person cited in the story, it's now about generating revenue and not about meting out justice.
The private companies who go in for this line of work don't charge the cities anything, of course. They make their money by assessing fees onto the fines of the defendants and charging jailed defendants a daily charge for being held. The story cites one county in Pennsylvania that has authorized 26 different fees, totaling $2500, that the private companies can charge in addition to the original fine. In one Alabama case, a $179 traffic ticket is now a bill of over $3000 to the private company, and the defendant has already spent 40 days in jail.
And forget all Supreme Court rulings about the rights of defendants to legal representation. I don't think the Miranda ruling applies to people charged with misdemeanors. But when misdemeanors can mean jail time, it should.
What all of these private companies have down pat is their sales pitch for gullible and gutless politicians who are looking for easy answers, and that is always what is promised, the answer to whatever might be the problem of the moment. What they're not so good at is delivering the services they promise or safeguarding the constitutional rights of the people in their control.
But we keep going back for more.
The private companies who go in for this line of work don't charge the cities anything, of course. They make their money by assessing fees onto the fines of the defendants and charging jailed defendants a daily charge for being held. The story cites one county in Pennsylvania that has authorized 26 different fees, totaling $2500, that the private companies can charge in addition to the original fine. In one Alabama case, a $179 traffic ticket is now a bill of over $3000 to the private company, and the defendant has already spent 40 days in jail.
And forget all Supreme Court rulings about the rights of defendants to legal representation. I don't think the Miranda ruling applies to people charged with misdemeanors. But when misdemeanors can mean jail time, it should.
These companies are bill collectors, but they are given the authority to say to someone that if he doesn’t pay he is going to jail,” said John B. Long, a lawyer in Augusta, Ga., who is taking the issue to a federal appeals court this fall. “There are things like garbage collection where private companies are O.K. No one’s liberty is affected. The closer you get to locking someone up, the closer you get to a constitutional issue.”
J. Scott Vowell, the presiding judge of Alabama’s 10th Judicial Circuit, said in an interview that his state’s Legislature, like many across the country, was pressuring courts to produce revenue, and that some legislators even believed courts should be financially self-sufficient.All government functions cannot be expected to generate revenue, nor can they legitimately be turned over to private companies. The failure stories mount up, from for-profit schools all over the country, to New Jersey's privatized and under-supervised halfway houses where a misdemeanor defendant was killed a few weeks ago, and now this.
What all of these private companies have down pat is their sales pitch for gullible and gutless politicians who are looking for easy answers, and that is always what is promised, the answer to whatever might be the problem of the moment. What they're not so good at is delivering the services they promise or safeguarding the constitutional rights of the people in their control.
But we keep going back for more.
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