Isaac Laquedem

Support our troops after the war, too

The gas station at which I stopped this evening had a stack of small magnetic American flags and ribbons, designed to adhere to a car or refrigerator, each one with the patriotic message "Support our troops" emblazoned across the top.

The wrappers, however, discreetly disclosed that the flags were made in China.

I favor free trade as it moves the world toward Pareto-optimality, but it seems to me that we would be supporting our troops more effectively if we bought our trinkets of public patriotism that were made in the United States, by companies that might be providing jobs to the veterans when they return home.

The $10,000,000 flying shrimp

In November 2001 a New York man named Jerry Colaitis died of septic shock as a complication from neck surgery he had in June 2001.  He had the neck surgery because in January 2001 he injured his neck when he jerked his head out of the way of a pice of hot shrimp that a chef at Benihana had tossed toward him.  His estate is suing Benihana, seeking $10 million in damages for Mr. Colaitis's death.  Here's more of the story.

More to the story

The Knower of All Things reports that one of our local newspapers -- not the Oregonian -- is investigating who knew what, when, about our former Governor's involvement with a teenager.  Look for a follow-up investigative piece, perhaps as soon as Wednesday.

Anglofolles

"Anglofolles," meaning loosely "Those crazy English" and being a play on "Anglophiles," is the title of an article in the October issue of Paris Vogue, which I read -- rather haltingly -- in la belle langue.  I was proud of my knack of drawing connections between farfetched facts until I read this article,which puts me to shame.  It begins with "Is is the climate? The insularity?  The abuse of white beans at breakfast?  It's a fact that England is an environment unusually suited for the survival of eccentricity."  After discussing Edith Sitwell, the fashion sense of the late Queen Mother ("Queen Mum" in French), and John Galliano at the House of Dior, it ends with a description of George "Beau" Brummell, who used to take forty-five minutes to tie his necktie to his satisfaction, being an old man who shuffled about in a bathrobe, and then concludes "A century and a half later, in Seattle, the birth of the grunge movement will prove yet again that it's always wrong to be right too early."

ThURLsday XII: The lost men of Oregon

If you live in Oregon and have not clicked on the "Nth of Pril" link to the right of this page then I hope that you will at least follow this link to read (in the continuation below) her recent post on the lost men of Oregon: men in their 40s, living in Oregon's fishing and forest towns, who grew up expecting to become fishermen, loggers, and millwrights like their fathers, but who found too late that the salmon were gone, the forests were restricted, and the mills were closed.

I'm perhaps stretching cause and effect, but I think it plausible that Pril's "lost men" are lost because the mills and canneries closed.  The mills and canneries closed because the Portland and Eugene urbanites, with help from the federal government, pushed for stricter regulation of forest and fishing practices and used endangered species such as the northern spotted owl and the marbled murrelet as proxies to end logging, which meant that the mills had no lumber and the canneries no fish.  This threw people out of work in small-town Oregon, reducing incomes and also reducing the residents' ability and willingness to pay school taxes.  This in turn created the majorities that adopted Oregon's property tax limits, which slashed the funding for Portland schools, to the irritation of the same urbanites who started the chain reaction.

As I said, this might be a stretch.  But it might also be Homeric irony.

UPDATE:  As the older posts on Pril's weblog went down the day after I wrote this and the link no longer works, I've copied her post for reference and put it in the continuation below.

"Disabled" shouldn't mean "idle"

A few weeks ago I read the articles about how Portland police officers are granted disability leave at a frequency far higher than police officers in other cities, particularly for job-induced stress.  I didn't see in the articles  any mention of what police officers do when they're on disability leave, though the story in the preceding link said that one officer has been on paid leave for 14 years due to stress from a sexual harassment case, and does not have to return to work until her doctor pronounces her fit for duty.

It occurred to me that the City could reasonably provide some non-stressed duty for officers who have filed a disability claim: desk work, perhaps, or a secondment to another city bureau.  Surely there are jobs to be done.

A conversation stopper

I had no ready response when a youngish woman with whom I was talking said, "I used to follow local politics; my mother worked for Neil Goldschmidt when he was in office."

Matthew Troy, R.I.P; or, why I love New York

Sunday's New York Times carried the obituary of Matthew Troy, a lawyer and former political boss in the Queens borough of New York City.  Mr. Troy came to power in the early 1970s as a City Councilor and political party official, then was pushed out of his party position in 1974 by Mayor Abraham Beame and Councilor Donald Manes.  Things went from bad to worse: in 1976 he was convicted of tax fraud and then disbarred for not reporting as income $37,000 that he had stolen from his law clients.  The Times demurely notes, "While disbarred from law practice, he was not forced to surrender his Council seat because the state regarded the federal felony conviction as a misdemeanor."

Twelve years later, he lectured law students for two hours in a course entitled "Corruption and Integrity in Government."  As reported by the Times, he said "There were so many instances where bribes were offered to me - that I did not take - that, while I can't teach you the difference between right and wrong, I have an obligation to help you better understand."  The Times shared one other Troy Story: a man brought Mr. Troy a briefcase stuffed with cash and said, "I'd like to be a judge."  (Party bosses chose judicial candidates, and some good-government groups complained that Mr. Troy had made elections unnecessary.)  Mr. Troy asked, "Are you a lawyer?"  The obituary does not disclose whether the generous office-seeker was a member of the bar, but that obstacle could probably have been overcome.  Mr. Troy himself, despite his 1976 federal felony conviction and a later 1979 state conviction for grand larceny, was readmitted to the bar in the 1980s and practiced law until shortly before his death.

G.K. Chesterton writes about land use

In one of his minor works, The Club of Queer Trades, G.K. Chesterton invented a London club composed of people who were the first to undertake a particular trade or occupation.  In Chapter 3, "The Awful Reason for the Vicar's Visit," he described two men who were part of an agency of Professional Detainers.  As Chesterton tells it:

'Only another addition, Cherub, to your collection of Queer Trades. These two gentlemen (whose health I have now the pleasure of drinking) are Professional Detainers.'

'And what on earth's that?' I asked.

'It's really very simple, Mr Swinburne,' began he who had once been the Rev. Ellis Shorter, of Chuntsey, in Essex; and it gave me a shock indescribable to hear out of that pompous and familiar form come no longer its own pompous and familiar voice, but the brisk sharp tones of a young city man. `It is really nothing very important. We are paid by our clients to detain in conversation, on some harmless pretext, people whom they want out of the way for a few hours. And Captain Fraser --' and with that he hesitated and smiled.

Basil smiled also. He intervened.

'The fact is that Captain Fraser, who is one of my best friends, wanted us both out of the way very much. He is sailing tonight for East Africa, and the lady with whom we were all to have dined is---er ---what is I believe described as "the romance of his life''. He wanted that two hours with her, and employed these two reverend gentlemen to detain us at our houses so as to let him have the field to himself.'

It's a grand idea, and should be brought up to date in local government.  City councils and county commissions should keep a Professional Detainer on staff.  Then when the council wants to rush through a measure to respond to a long-awaited event -- I have in mind the response of local governments to Measure 37 passing -- the Professional Detainer could testify cheerfully and aimlessly for several hours so that the councilors and the public could have some more time to think before they act. 

It's reported that Eugene will consider Measure 37 development to be a nuisance after the property changes hands: Grandma can get permission to subdivide the family homestead and build four more houses, perhaps, but when Grandma sells the houses the buyers will have to tear them down.  (The Eugene City Council should triple its legal budget if it tries this.)  The City of Bend is creating a private right of action to allow neighbors of Measure 37 properties to sue developers who get a Measure 37 rules waiver for the loss of value of their properties.

Eugene and Bend could have used some Professional Detainers to ramble on at the public hearings before their councils adopted these ordinances.  If their mayors and councilors had taken some time to think before voting, they might have realized that they're creating more litigation, not less, and adding to the burden their cities are going to face in implementing Measure 37.

Rock, scissors, paper, television

The Old Newshound with whom I had dinner this week said that his family is doing well, except that his voice dropped in pitch and volume, so that the people at the other tables couldn't overhear, when he admitted that his daughter was married to "a television person."

Clearly he makes a class distinction between people who work for newspapers (where he worked for 40 years) and those who work for broadcast media, ranking newspaper people higher.  And yet: newspapers devote a lot of space to reporting on television, but television doesn't devote any airtime to reporting on newspapers.