Separating Art and Artists, and a Super Bowl Pick

Can we separate the artwork and the artist, the performance from the performer? Should we?

Can the artist's behavior render their art unworthy, or does the product or performance stand on its own merits regardless of the artist's notoriety?

Performers, writers, athletes, they're all artists.
Is the movie you watched still great after you learn it's a Mel Gibson project?
Is Cosmo Kramer still funny after Michael Richards went off?

---

One of these artists is different from the others,
One of these performers is different from the rest.

One of these artists is nicer than the others,
Can you guess?
(please click on the button of the nicest performer)

Roman Polanski is the nicest of the three.
Woody Allen is the nicest of the three.
Ben Roethlisberger is the nicest of the three.

I realize that good people can disagree on the matter of separating the performer from the performance.

I can't watch Roman Polanski movies.
I can't enjoy Woody Allen's work.

I can't support Ben Roethlisberger, the team that puts him on the stage, or the entertainment business that profits from his work.

I hope the Green Bay Packers win this weekend's bit of entertainment.
I hope that young coed in Georgia is doing all right.

"Do Not Cross" Pittsburgh FOP

"Cop Drama" is an excellent article in the City Paper by Chris Young, about an ongoing show situated in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, it is not a television series that the Pittsburgh Film Office can take credit for; it is a case of real life imitating bad art. But if this were a series, the key points of this week's show would include:

• Outcry over the beating of Jordan Miles has been overshadowed, if not replaced, by the hue-and-cry over a spoof press release on the first anniversary of the beating
  
• "If we catch anyone with regard to this, it's going to be multiple felonies," FOP President Dan O'Hara was quoted as saying in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. I don't think the FOP, which is an employee union, is entitled to conduct investigations, seize evidence, or file felony charges.
  
• According to an affidavit of probable cause -- a sworn statement needed to justify the Dreaming Ant search warrant -- police were forwarded a copy of the statement by WTAE-TV reporter Ashlie Hardway.
  
• The role of WTAE and Ashlie Hardway in sending the police squad to Crazy Mocha / Dreaming Ant to seize their hard drive and router has not yet been fully explored.
  
• Pittsburgh ACLU says the press release "is parody protected by the First Amendment"
  
• "It's a part of democratic free speech," says Pittsburgh City Councilor Bill Peduto
  
• a neologism was introduced: "douchenarchists"

Kudos to City Paper, Chris Young, Chris Potter, and Sadie Gurman, the only Pittsburgh journalists who seem to be working this beat.


Although the Post-Gazette reporting staff seems too interested in Steelers pep-rallies to cover the story, the PG Editorial Board awoke, arose on their hind legs, and wrote an interesting piece on Friday:

A year after what looks like the unnecessarily harsh treatment of a law-abiding citizen, there is no sign of movement toward a just conclusion.

Pittsburghers have a right to know what happened to Jordan Miles. He and the officers have a right to see the facts aired in public. Until that day, a cloud will hang over Pittsburgh and what passes for justice, accountability and transparency in this city.

Finally, in the top-left corner of this blog, you will find a Justice Delay Counter which keeps track of the number of days since Jordan Miles was beaten without any accountability. At press time, 383 days and waiting.

PNC Park Trail Detour, February - March 2011

According to Friends of the Riverfront,

a portion of the Three Rivers Heritage Trail along the North Shore will be temporarily detoured from February 1st to April 1st 2011. The detour is necessary to repair and replace deteriorated surface concrete on the trail in front of PNC Park.

I do appreciate the effort that's being put into announcing trail closures and publishing and marking the detours. There was a similar great response at the recent (and ongoing) trail closure on the Jail Trail at Bates Street.

I guess the good news is, they've picked the best months to do this.
Also: April is only 8 weeks away!

Tour De France Colorforms

As a person of a certain age, I've come to learn that when we use leading-edge new solutions to solve modern problems, what we're really doing is kicking the can down the street for about twenty years so that future-folks™ will face an even worse problem.

Given that insight, I really appreciate it when instead of introducing a new-fangled techno-gizmo solution, we reach back into the body of received wisdom and utilize a solution that has stood the test of time. It's particularly gratifying when the chosen solution is something that harkens back to the time of my own youth, because it reinforces my belief that WayBackWhen there were simple answers to complex problems.

I am very happy to see today's new development in professional cycling, straight out of my halcyon days: the introduction of Colorforms Tour De France Edition, 2011.



For the younger reader, Colorforms were paper-thin, die-cut vinyl images that are meant to be applied to a shiny plastic laminated board. The images and the laminated board tend to adhere to each other, and the figures can be posed in different juxtapositions. The tagline was, "It's more fun to play the Colorforms way!"


There were a lot of different types of Colorforms: there was Smurf Colorforms, Weather Girl Colorforms, GI Joe Colorforms, Barbie Colorforms, even Star Trek colorforms - althought I personally always hoped they would develop Star Trek Red Shirt Colorforms, where you could stick a red shirt on any character and they would be killed within four minutes.


Also in today's GoogleNews was the story of pro cyclist Alberto Contador's suspension for a year, retroactive to last August (a pretty cool way to get a one-year suspension in almost February, btw). He is also to be stripped of his victory in the 2010 Tour de France. The problem is that all the photos taken in August 2010 show Alberto Cantador as the winner. Do a Google Image search on "winner 2010 tour de france podium" and you'll see pictures like the one on the right: Alberto Contador winning, Andy Schleck second, Dennis Menchov third.

We've seen the same problem before with Floyd Landis. The winner of the Tour De France is announced, everybody takes pictures, yada yada yada, six months later they announce the results of drug tests to sell more newspapers, Floyd's title is revoked, drama denial sturm-und-drang, and the results are shuffled: the second-place rider moves up to first, the third-place rider moves up to second, and some unknown moves into third place.

The Affair du' Landis introduced the same problem that we now face again with Contador: Google Images is stuffed with pictures of the wrong rider winning the Tour de France, which we now know never really happened. With the corruption of the Google Image dataset, millions of school children will be learning a false history and turning in erroneous term papers - because the modern pedagogic process now consists of, Let Me Google That For You.

The potential effect on the world economy is mind-boggling. When the public's faith in whatever their screen tells them is shaken, when people can no longer trust their iPad app to tell them the absolute iTruth, some people will begin questioning all sorts of information and assertions that they once accepted in blind faith. Osama bin Ladin in Afghanistan Iraq Pakistan Iran? AIG / BoA / Citigroup caring about Main Street? Defined Contributions trumps Defined Benefits? Bipartisan congressional reform? No good can come of that path.


Fortunately, our capitalist economy and Adam Smith's invisible hand have provided a solution: Colorforms Tour de France Edition. This is going to be much more effective than the communistic Soviet technique of photoshopping and revising the historical archive; let's just build in some flexibility from the start, with ColorForms Tour De France Edition! Come on, it'll be fun!

After the initial rollout, we see opportunities for Special Edition versions.

• Great Masters Accessories: clingy images of Merckx, Patani, and a skinny LeMond.
• SideKick Accessories: featuring George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer
• the Lance Retrospective with Postal, Discovery, Astani, and Radio Shack kit
• the Euro Edition, by ColourFourms
• Daily Results Package: Colorforms of each days jersey - the Yellow, the Green, the White, and the Polka Dot - so that afficionados can stage their own Podium Ceremony™

It's more fun to ride the colorforms way!

10-13 Pittsburgh Police Bike Patrol

A bike unit police officer was struck by a car in Pittsburgh this afternoon around 2:45 p.m. at Penn and North Atlantic avenues in Garfield.

First, he/she is awesome for being a police officer.
Doubly awesome for being a bike riding police officer.
Trebly awesome for being on the street, in traffic, in January - sure, you see them in July and you think, sweet gig, ride a bike around town. Seems like it's not just a fair weather job.

I have Kevlar tires and carry a cellphone to bail me out. They roll with Kevlar vests and guns, and chase the bad guys.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the officer, and I hope they're back on the bike soon.

Tea Party Rail Policy: Starve The Beast, Build a Rail-to-Trail Bike Path

Transportation policy is an interest of mine. The National Journal's newest topic is Taking Aim at Railroads. From their intro,

It would appear that tea party Republicans aren't big fans of government rail programs, judging from the Republican Study Committee's spending reduction recommendations released last week. The conservative crop of Republicans have proposed eliminating federal subsidies for Amtrak ($1.6 billion annually), the Transportation Department's New Starts program for commuter rail and rapid transit systems ($2 billion annually), and all grant programs for intercity and high-speed rail ($2.5 billion annually).

They present a few different perspectives.
William Millar, head of a rail industry trade association, says the proposal puts 200,000 jobs at risk and is inconsistent with economic conditions. Ed Wytkind of AFL-CIO says the proposal will put people out of work and devastate critical infrastructure.

Jack Kinstlinger, who is a railroad guy and recently a MagLev advocate, calls the proposal "One of the most irresponsible documents I have ever seen. Republicans will try to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, sick and elderly. Rail projects are a target because they originated in the White House..."

Conservative think-tanker Bill Lind says Tea Partiers must be misinformed about rail, and suggests that if we were to reduce American safety standards then our costs would be reduced. (thanks Bill!)

Bob Poole of the Reason Foundation, who is like a relentless zombie that keeps showing up with nefarious claims, explains the problem with rail and mass transit is that the people who pay for it aren't the people that use it, so we should make the (poor, urban) people who use it pay for it.

Finally, think-tanker Gabriel Roth says, "Subsidies for inter-urban travel services can reasonably be terminated (because transportation has a user-pays tradition).... Mass transit benefits mainly urban areas, and Congress may reasonably question the propriety of forcing federal taxpayers to finance local services."

I'm trying to wrap my wee brain around the concept of the government only providing services to the people that are willing to directly pay for them. That would make the government seem rather like a vendor, which is certainly a model for effective outsourcing. It does have a few interesting implications.

• Since rich people are able to pay, they'll get a lot of government services
• Poor people will get less government services
• Kiss the safety net, the Great Society and the New Deal goodbye.
• Since people should pay only for the services they want, who exactly pays for Afghanistan and Iraq?
• Is democracy a cafeteria plan or is it prix fixe?

The return of the Starve The Beast crowd portends a grim time ahead, I think, for what's left of the middle class and for the growing ranks of the poor, the uninsured, and the WalMarted.




I do believe that the Tea Party rail policy will result in a lot of nice new rail-to-trail bike paths where the trains used to be. There is that.

Friday Evening Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District

Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District
Friday, January 28th 2011

Download a printable Map and schedule.

The Crime of Not Getting it: Pittsburgh FOP / Fraternal Order of Police

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			^

The great crime is the beating of Jordan Miles, and the subsequent failure of the system that is supposed to protect him to take any action on his behalf, which diminishes public confidence and the rule of law. Our leaders politicians don't get that.

We are amused at Pittsburgh Police Fraternal Order of Police investigating internet crimes. Does the FOP have any jurisdiction? Do they control the Cloud? Could the FOP seize the router from a suburban Wifi hotspot? What will they do with the (previously private) information on that server? Is the city liable for the FOP closing a business for two days? Would they have closed the Duquesne Club's wifi as quickly as they shut down "Pittsburgh's premier source for independent, foreign, gay+lesbian & documentary DVDs"? (per their website)


The Great Hoax serves well to remind us of the event, but the attention paid to the Hoax by the FOP, the City, and the Media actually overwhelms the attention paid to the Beating, and serves as a distraction. Every good magician needs a distraction to fool the audience. We shouldn't let the Hoax distract us from the Beating.

If the Fraternal Order of Police had ignored the Hoax, it would have blown over in one news cycle. But they reacted and over-reacted, sent seven cops into a coffee shop, and the Hoax has fixed public attention on the FOP's priorities for a week. They don't get it.

People who do "get it" see this as a manifestation of the Streisand Effect.

The Streisand Effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of perversely causing the information to be publicized more widely and to a greater extent than would have occurred if no contrary action had been attempted. It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, following a 2003 incident in which her attempts to suppress photographs of her residence inadvertently generated further publicity.

As early as 1993, John Gilmore observed that "the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Examples of such attempts include actions against photographs, numbers, files or websites (for example via a cease-and-desist letter). Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.

By the way, the Hoax Letter is online, if you're interested.

The conflation of the City, the Police, and the FOP in their responses to the Hoax blurs any boundaries of propriety or fiduciary responsibility. The FOP is not a law enforcement agency; they are a labor union. The police department should not take direction from the employee's union. The District Attorney should not wait for the Justice Department to tell him what happened. There is a complete abdication of civilian / political leadership. They don't get it. It isn't 1952 any more, Toto.

---

A few weeks ago, I suggested that if Pittsburgh had any real journalists, they'd conduct an interview with the young coed victimized in the Roethlisberger debacle of last summer.

Now I have a second person on my List of Those Who Should Be Interviewed: If there's a journalist working in Pittsburgh (rather than enabling sports writers, shills for the Allegheny Conference, and apologists for the Marcellus Coalition) can we also please have an interview with Jordan Miles? How is he doing? Is he holding out as well as the three men on paid administrative leave? Have the results when you Google his name affected his college applications? Is he okay?

---

And finally, the Crime that has not happened yet. It would be wonderful for the city, the police, the politicians, and the Pittsburgh F.O.P. if something bad happened to Jordan Miles. I pray that it does not happen.

Related: EBM: Justice Delayed: "Does anyone not get that the charge by minorities that the cops sometimes act like they are part of an occupying army is grounded in fact?"

You could Google Pittsburgh Fraternal Order of Police, or else Google Pittsburgh FOP.

The Crime of Criticizing Pittsburgh Fraternal Order of Police ( FOP )

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		^

Status as the anniversary of Jordan Miles' beating approached:

• the Mayor promised a City investigation
• the Feds started looking into this
• the City investigation decided to wait until the Feds acted
• the District Attorney decided to wait for the Feds
• the Citizens Police Review Board is dormant on hold, awaiting completion of the City investigation as required by law
• the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) marched in support of the three cops
• Jordan Miles filed a civil lawsuit in federal court

On the eve of the anniversary, an interesting press release was sent to CityPaper and at least one local blogger. The press release was a hoax, and by reports a fairly detailed hoax - the phone number purported to be an FOP phone, etc. It was an excellent fake, and several people took the bait.

The text of the fake presser was really excellent; it highlighted the contradictions between "should be" and "is". The hoax press release is on Google Docs. Maybe a lot of people will make their own copies of it. I'm just saying.


A honorable and worthy Pittsburgh blogger was duped by the hoax and posted it as news, then announced it was a fake and withdrew the original, and then twittered that he was willing to help the investigation. That's an unfortunate sidebar, and a distraction from the real issues. I think that's the nature of online reporting. BR and the Comet are tops in my book. He's done no wrong in this.


The hoax has game. The logo is a fake, and the latin "Justicia Volutabrum" seems to mean "Justice in a Pig Sty". The first letter of each word along the left column seems to spell out a vulgar message. The remaining three letters in the series seem to offer another clue, as yet unsolved: the letters T,D,J. Someone's initials, perhaps?

Which brings me to a point I'd rather not forget: Is this a Pittsburgh City Police investigation, a District Attorney investigation, or a Pittsburgh Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) investigation?


On January 19, Pittsburgh police FOP raided Dreaming Ant, seizing a computer and a router and shutting the business down. This prompted Infinonymous to ask, How Many FOP Members Does It Take to Bring In A Router? (Dreaming Ant has since reopened.)

The CityPaper covered police statements on the Dreaming Ant / Crazy Mocha raid and seizure of a computer and router. As is often true, some of the best stuff was in the comments. F.D. was on target.

What intrigues me is that the police spokesman in the CityPaper article is also an FOP official. The same person is reported as applying for the search warrant. Isn't there a conflict of interest for an FOP official to be performing police duties on duty time (representing the City, btw) investigating an issue the FOP has a clear interest in, requesting search warrants, and resulting in closing a local business? Does this make the City responsible for damages? I think: you betcha!

When did criticizing the police and local government become a crime?
When did satire become terrorism?

I think the hoax was well played. It got the media to talk about the one-year anniversary of an onerous event that the power structure would prefer we all forget about. It has the touch of a savvy marketeer. The 'perpetrators' are people who get it.

It seems like the local discussion of these events is driven by City Paper and the BurghBlogs, with particular compliments to Infinonymous and Chris Potter. Where is the Post-Gazette and the Tribune Review? You know, the media?

On cold days like this, I wonder how people lived in this region during the Revolutionary War, and I recall the history story about Washington's troops not having shoes, leaving a bloody trail from walking in the snow with frostbitten feet. What were they fighting for?

How did it come to this, with police criminalizing criticism, with the police union setting official city policy and driving official investigations, and with civilian oversight of the city's forces non-existent?

The city's response is un-American.
The Pittsburgh Fraternal Order of Police ( FOP )'s response is un-American.
The mayor's response is un-American.
The DA's response is un-American.

The city, the Pittsburgh FOP, the mayor and the DA dishonor the government that a lot of good men died to bring about, and they squander the virtue of the many honorable public servants. Shame on all of them - the Pittsburgh FOP, the mayor, and the DA.

Pop quiz: Which has resulted in more police activity and newspaper coverage?
        A: Jordan Miles' beating
        B: Making the Pittsburgh FOP look silly
        C: Friday's "Ground the Jets" Steeler Rally



Here we go Steelers, here we go.

continuing - - -

The Crime of Delay

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	^

After initial press reports of the beating of Jordan Miles, the wheels of the process began to turn ever so slowly.

On January 27 2010,

Black leaders today called for prosecutors to drop criminal charges against a Homewood teenager who says three white police officers beat him during an arrest earlier this month.

During a news conference this morning, leaders of the Pittsburgh branch of the NAACP called for the city to fire the officers because they beat Jordan Miles, who is black, "beyond recognition."

M. Gayle Moss, president of the local chapter, said the officers should face criminal charges for the Jan. 12 incident outside the home of Miles, 18, an honors student at the Creative and Performing Arts high school, Downtown.

On March 6 2010, charges against Jordan Miles were dismissed. Among the findings:

• All three officers are 5 feet 11 inches or taller and weigh about 200 pounds. Mr. Miles is 5 feet 6-1/2 inches tall and weighs 150 pounds.
• Police say they thought Jordan Miles had a gun, but it turned out to be Mountain Dew. The Dew evidence was lost. Mr. Miles said the Mt.Dew never existed.
• Police testified that a woman claimed to not know Mr. Miles, but she contradicted their testimony.
• Jordan Miles said, "I go to a very prestigious school. I get good grades, I don't want anyone to have an impression of me that I'm some gang-banger just because of the neighborhood that I live in."

On March 13, 2010 members of the Pittsburgh Fraternal Order of Police (FOP, the police union) don green shirts to march in today's St. Patrick's Day Parade to publicly declare their support for three officers accused of beating a Homewood teen.

In a memo dated Friday, the Fraternal Order of Police Fort Pitt Lodge No. 1 encouraged members to turn out in "unprecedented" numbers during the parade and to purchase T-shirts for $12 stating "We Support Our Three Brothers."

On the front of the shirts are the numbers 3599, police code that represents the three officers' car number the night of the controversial arrest.

The back of the shirt has the words of support and a thin blue line -- a reference to the 1988 documentary film, "The Thin Blue Line," about a man sentenced to die for the murder of a Dallas police officer he did not commit. The film's title came from the prosecutor's comment that police are the "thin blue line" separating society from anarchy.

On March 19, the FBI and a federal grand jury appeared on the scene:

The FBI this week took a DNA sample from Jordan Miles to compare to hair and braids found on a Homewood sidewalk as part of an investigation into his allegations that three Pittsburgh police officers beat him, the teenager's mother said Thursday.

"I know the FBI is looking for all kinds of evidence, including physical evidence, because the only piece of evidence which was logged into the police evidence room was the spent cartridge from the Taser," said Miles' attorney, J. Kerrington Lewis.

Subpoenas issued in connection with a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh seek interviews, police reports, medical records, witness statements and physical evidence collected as part of the initial criminal case against Miles and a city Office of Municipal Investigations review of the Jan. 12 arrest.

The Department of Justice is investigating as well, spokesman Alejandro Miyar said.

The Second Crime: Delay in a matter of Justice

When the event happened, the bureaucracy protected itself. Initially the police chief, the public safety director, the mayoral spokeswomen, the mayor - none of them were inclined to call foul, all of them (for reasons large and small) were motivated to keep their heads down and hope this thing goes away.

So the City announces an investigation. Then they learn the Feds are on the scene. In an attempt to make lemonade, the City announces that their investigation will continue but they won't release any results until the Fed inquiry is over. They don't want to damage the process. Nice.

Why would they think that? How could this posibly go away? This is where it gets ugly, this is the second crime. The delay plays to the bureaucracy's advantage in a few ways:

• If it came to a head early, it probably wouldn't go well for the bureaucracy. It's always good policy to kick bad news down the road.
• In another year or two, who knows what might happen to this 18-year-old living in Homewood? Maybe he'd get busted for dope and need something from the powerful. Maybe he'd get shot in a drive-by. Look at the numbers.

I'm not claiming there was a strategy session where an old hand set the course and everybody lined up behind it. I'm saying that for each factotum, the incentives were to wait and play the long game, and that economy of incentives rippled through the ranks of power like an invisible hand, and the uncoordinated result was a very efficient delay. (This is also the MO in the G-20 litigation.)


Run the clock. The House always wins. It's a classic example of how a structure of people (99% of whom are not racist, nobody's in the Klan), an organization, can act in a racist way when none of their members are overt racists. It's institutional racism.

On June 13,

Nearly 100 people marched Saturday afternoon from the Lower Hill District to Downtown to demand that three city police officers be charged for allegedly beating a Homewood teen in January.

Officers XXXXX, XXXXX, XXXXX are on paid leave while the city and a federal grand jury investigate a claim by Jordan Miles, 18, that he was assaulted during an arrest.

Police spokeswoman Diane Richard offered no timetable yesterday on when the investigations might be completed.

On August 13, activists demanded arrests of the three police officers.

The officers remain on paid leave pending a civil rights investigation by the FBI.

"This is not an indictment of all police officers," said community activist Paradise Gray. "But the only time we hear about good police officers is when other officers do bad things."

The delay in deciding whether to file charges stems from the district attorney's policy not to conduct simultaneous investigations, said spokesman Mike Manko.

"We're waiting on the findings of the federal investigation," Manko said. "We appreciate your concern, but that's where this stands."

Zappala's policy irked Miles' supporters. "He has the power. He's created a policy that he can change, and he chooses not to," said Harvey Holtz of Squirrel Hill, another activist.

The city's Office of Municipal Investigations is waiting for completion of the federal investigation before releasing its report. FBI spokesman Bill Crowley could not be reached for comment.

On August 30 2010, Jordan Miles filed a federal lawsuit against Pittsburgh, seeking punitive damages, an injunction limiting the officers' contact with the public, and a declaratory judgment that their actions were illegal and unconstitutional.

In a criminal investigation, the City and the beaucracy hold a hold of influence. They control the evidence room, which apparently lost all the evidence in the event. In a federal investigation, the City still has influence. But in a civil suit, the city is just another litigant.

All of a sudden Jordan Miles has a little bit of potential power, and the bureaucracy's last hope is that over the course of time, something negative happens to Jordan Miles. That's a very dangerous situation when the City has a paramilitary force with guns, and the FOP has its own motivations for making this thing go away.

The second crime is bureaucracy cynically delaying the process.
The victim of the beating is possibly in an even more dangerous situation.

continuing - - -

The Crime of Pittsburgh's Jordan Miles

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^

You read stories about young black men who end up hurt or killed after interacting with police. Let me make an assumption that I can't prove, but seems true on its face: A lot of those young men were doing something they weren't supposed to do, a lot of them were criminals, a lot of them have prior records.

In the aftermath of the injury/death, the newspaper stories often describe the young man as an angel. He shoveled the snow at his Aunt's house. He helped a friend move. He was a good kid that didn't mean any harm. He planned to get his GED next year. He was a choir boy. Let me make another assumption I can't prove: most of the time, that dead young man wasn't really a choir boy. Most of the time.

Sometimes a mistake is made. Everybody make mistakes. There's not too many.

Sometimes it's no mistake. Sometimes Rogue cops, out-of-control bad cops, beat up a kid who is, in fact, an honor student and a choir boy. The cops get to write the reports, they have control of the scene, they produce the record of what happened. What does the kid have?

One year ago this week, Jordan Miles, a senior at the city's Creative and Performing Arts high school, was beaten by three cops. They beat him, tazed him, left him with a tree branch impaling his gums, and then filed charges of aggravated assault and resisting arrest against him.

In reality, his only crime was WWB: Walking While Black.

Let me also say: ninety-nine percent of police officers are excellent people who care. That's why they're cops. God bless them.



continuing - - -

Giving the Finger / Have A Good Day Gloves

Too often, a bicyclist gets mad at a cager (a car driver) when they have an unfortunate interaction on the road. Usually the driver speeds away, all the way up to the next red light; in a few minutes, the bicyclist catches up to the cager, gets their attention (sometimes by tapping the vehicle), and gestures with their middle finger to signal their opinion of the driver.


This is generally a dangerous situation, because (1) drivers object to the middle finger, and (2) the car weighs 3500 pounds and the bike weighs 18 pounds. This rarely ends well.

A new concept in bicycling gloves promises to change all that; the new Good Day Gloves by Pryme carry a positive, life-affirming message on the middle finger, to help improve the cager-cyclist relationship.

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Somewhat related: "Give them the finger", Danny Kaye, in The Inspector General

Military Industrial Complex : 50th Birthday

Today is a day of remembrances, among them President Eisenhower's farewell speech given in the last days of his administration, 50 years ago today, Jan. 17, 1961. The full text of the speech is online. Here's a section of the speech I'd like to consider:

But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual --is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

Eisenhower chose to identify two threats: the military-industrial complex, and the power of federal contracts in driving research and the economy. These two threats have become one - federal contracts and a national economy driven by the military-industrial complex.

---

While the phrase "military-industrial complex" has endured, it's not the only formulation of a name for this particular creature.

The phrase began as "war-based" industrial-congressional complex before the word military was inserted in later drafts.^* Later the president chose to remove the word congressional in order to placate members of the legislative branch.

Linguist Noam Chomsky has suggested that "military-industrial complex" is a misnomer because (as he considers it) the phenomenon in question "is not specifically military."^* He claims, "There is no military-industrial complex: it's just the industrial system operating under one or another pretext (defense was a pretext for a long time)."

Norman Solomon has described the Military-Industrial-Media Complex. He has accused the military-industrial-media complex of using their media resources to promote militarism, and offers this example regarding NBC News:

"General Electric (which owns NBC) is a subcontractor for the Tomahawk cruise missile and Patriot II missile both of which were used extensively during the Persian Gulf War. General Electric also manufactures components for the B-2 stealth bomber and B-52 bomber and the E-3 AWACS aircraft which were also used extensively during the conflict. During Gulf War I, General Electric received $2 billion dollars in defense contractors related to weapons which would be used in Gulf War I and Gulf War II."

Chomsky moves further to say that the role of the media in the modern economy is to "manufacture consent" in favor of industry within the democracy. Chomsky identifies five factors that entice media to manufacture consent for industry; his fifth factor was The Cold War, and Chomsky says that role is now performed by the Global War On Terror.

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We have seen multiple situations where government contracts subsidize industry R&D; overruns are paid for and blamed on the government, not the contractor; and contractors influence the legislators that set government priorities. It becomes a self-licking ice-cream cone. You would never hire a contractor for your house with this arrangement.



Two recent news stories describe the current state of the military-industrial complex: the first is the Washington Post series, "Top Secret America", exposing the way that industry in the guise of contractors and manufacturers has turned 9/11 into a profit center.

Another recent military-industrial complex news story is the decision by the Dept. of Homeland Security (which is, itself, a MIC construct) to shut down development of a high-tech virtual wall along the American-Mexican border, covered here by the NY Times, and here by the Wall Street Journal. The government has spent more than $1 Billion dollars to end up without what they paid for. The primary contractor, Boeing, is an excellent example of the military-industrial complex: they over-promised, under-delivered, they still get paid and make money, they aren't held accountable, and they're bidding for new work next month.

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When I think of corruption I think of sweetheart deals on road projects and criminals with influence who walk away from charges, but that's penny-ante stuff compared to the military industrial complex.

What amazes me is that Eisenhower saw it coming, warned us about it, and it happened anyway.

Of course, there's very little new under the sun (VLNUS). Eisenhower said his piece in 1961; USMC Major General Smedley Butler (winner of two Medals of Honor) described the same thing in the 1930s with his speech and book, War Is A Racket.

Happy 50th Birthday, Military Industrial Complex.

related: Sure, They Can Cancel a Big Defense Project re the A12

Rorschach Iconography

Interesting that Frank Rich marks our modern period of violence as starting with Richard Poplawski's shooting of three Pittsburgh police officers. (see the paragraph starting with, But that sidesteps the issue.)

Pittsburgh Math: Common Denominator Steelers, Divided By Roethlisberger

The New York Times, a real newspaper that has actual journalists in addition to their sports writers, casts about for a sports story on the beginning of this gridiron weekend and ends up writing about Pittsburgh's problem: Ben Roethlisberger.

The TITLE tagline at the top of the window reads, "Steelers Unite Pittsburgh - Roethlisberger Splits It".

And still, no enterprising journalist has interviewed or reported on the young coed.

American Airlines, hoisted on their own petard (SABRE)

Last month, American Airlines removed its flight listings from Orbitz when they could not agree on commissions. Then Delta airlines stopped listing their flights with a half-dozen of the smaller websites. In general, the airlines are squeezing the middlemen, and hope to move the transaction to their own websites where low-cost competitors (JetBlue, etc) won't be presented to the potential customer. The theme has been airlines firing external websites.

This week, a truly remarkable thing happened: Sabre Holdings (a primary reservations company) fired American Airlines. It's sort of a man-bites-dog story when compared to what's happening throughout the industry.

I'm coming to learn that most of the problems I'm involved with are the direct results of brilliant solutions implemented ten or twenty years ago. The theory of unintended consquences suggests that the unintended consequences of any change will almost always exceed the desired outcomes, and that over time most solutions become problems.

There was a time when business processes exploited the capabilities of computers and automation by disintermediation, or the removal of middlemen. The intermediary (broker, agent, wholesaler, distributor) once connected the producer to the market and took a bit of money for it. Removing/replacing the intermediary left a bit more cash for either the new intermediary or the producer to keep.

Take cars. The car companies make cars but they don't have stores of their own. Dealers provide the interface with the market, motivated by their own markup. Some wunderkind develops Cars.com, the website can operate much less expensively than a dealership, and the website replaces the dealership. Usually the new intermediary doesn't immediately replace the legacy broker, they just coexist awkwardly for a while, but as soon as the industry or economy gets rough, the cost dynamics favor the technology-based intermediary, and the legacy mom-and-pops are gone.

Video rentals. Remember when there were mom-and-pop video stores? They were disintermediated by bigger operations: Hollywood, Blockbuster, etc. Seen any of them lately? They're all being disintermediated by Netflix, which first found a niche through IT-based distribution, and which lately has moved into its destiny of web-based distribution. Internet killed the video store.

Once there were mom-and-pop bookstores; now there's websites and Kindles and Nooks. Once there were music stores where you could go into booths, listen to a record, and then buy it and take it home. Now there's iTunes and Pandora and no physical product at all. Once there were stockbrokers, the priests of the financial industry, the people you had to go through in order to invest. Now there's e-trade.com.

Change isn't necessarily bad; there were jobs in the legacy shops, there are different kinds of jobs in the new shops, things move on. In many industries that relied on intermediaries, computers and networks and the internet are a disruptive innovation.

One of the functions that has been disintermediated to the point of obliteration is that of the travel agent. At one time, airlines couldn't deal with selling their tickets and interacting with the public on a sufficient scale to handle all the business; the travel agency provided travel agents who provided the expertise, and in return the travel agency drew commissions of 10% to 12% of the airplane, boat, train, hotel, and rental car fees.



Travel agencies were prone to "racking", which is putting the brochures for the trips most profitable for the agency on the most visible display racks. If there were two lines serving New York to Chicago, the travel agency was motivated to put the passenger with the tickets that were most lucrative for the travel agency.


American Airlines didn't like the influence the travel agencies had over their business. In the early 1950s aviation was booming, and the legacy people-and-paper systems weren't efficient enough. A funny thing happened; the story goes that in 1953, a senior IBM salesman found himself seated next to the American Airlines CEO on a flight. They started talking about how IBM's new military SAGE system could be adapted to meet American Airline's needs. Their conversation sparked the development of a system called Semi-Automated Business Research Environment, or SABRE, which was developed by IBM and owned by American Airlines.

American opened up their new technology to all comers. As more airlines looked at the system, they opted in to using SABRE to manage flight information with the travel agencies. But American Airlines now controlled the digital sales racks, and they accomplished "racking" in a big new way; SABRE presented flight info with a bias in favor of American's flights. American/SABRE believed that travel agents would be more likely to book flights that appeared on the top of the first screen. They were right; 92% of the time, the booking was made on flights on the first screen. American manipulated the results to be on the top of the first page.

In one example, New York Air in 1981 added a flight from La Guardia to Detroit, challenging American in an important market. Before long the new flights suddenly started appearing at the bottom of the screen. Reservations dried up, and NewYorkAir was forced to cut back from eight Detroit flights a day to none. On another occasion, Sabre deliberately withheld Continental's discount fares on 49 routes where American competed.

American Airlines developed SABRE as a key business strategy. SABRE became a profit center as big as the airline itself. In the last 1990s business consultants recommended spinning SABRE off from American Airlines, so that American could "focus on its core competencies"; after all, they're an airline, not an IT company.

Sabre Holdings left American Airlines with an IPO on March 15, 2000. It now employs approximately 9,000 people worldwide. Sabre Holdings operates the Sabre Travel Network, the Sabre Airline Solutions, Sabre Hospitality Solutions, and Travelocity.com.

Spinning off Sabre was an American solution that seemed brilliant at the time. This week, Sabre Holdings announced it would no longer carry American Airline's flights. This is Frankenstein's Monster firing Herr Doctor. Why is this happening?


The issue is American's Direct Connect service, a computer portal American asking travel agencies to use to access American's ticket inventory instead of using Sabre. Sabre, Expedia, Orbitz and some consumer advocates think that American's tactics with Direct Connect are aimed at making fare comparisons harder for online travel sites and for customers.

I'm convinced that back in 2000, people got bonuses for suggesting that American should spin off SABRE, get out of the geek stuff and focus on running an airline. Only ten years later, SABRE is throwing American out. Life is funny that way.

The current trend of jostling to see who gets to keep the business is of small interest, nothing too intriguing. But the notion of the reservations processor firing the airline is unique, and the fact that the airline was father to the enfant terrible is perhaps a lesson to those who think that outsourced functions are just as reliable as in-house shops.