Externalities: Hawkeyes' Football, Obama's Safety

September 21, 2009, 5:50 a.m.

Externalities: Football; Murdoch and Obama's Safety
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)

externality -- an external effect, often unforeseen or unintended, accompanying a process or activity: to eliminate externalities such as air pollution through government regulation. Dictionary.com

Football's Externalities

If you live near the Kinnick Stadium you know that leaves are not the only things that fall on your yard in the fall.

(1) When I was a lad I was trained by my parents and other adults to deposit trash in receptacles -- and not just when they were close at hand. On wilderness hiking trips, the rule was "if you carry it in, you pack out the trash." I've never grasped the "drop-it-anywhere" philosophy, especially when trash cans are only seconds or minutes away. (The philosophy also applies, apparently, to dropping one's pants anywhere, notwithstanding the availability of port-a-johns within a block or two walk, as urination on private lawns continues to be a problem.)

(2) But that's not my complaint. Thank goodness for the bottle and can deposit law, and those who believe it's worth a nickel to bend over and pick up cans, put them in large trash bags, and bike or carry them to redemption centers. Those folks clean up much of my lawn between the sidewalk and the street.

At 3:00 a.m. I feel like the father in the Cheerios ad
whose kid is concerned about the father's heart condition and brings him a bowl of Cheerios at 6:00 a.m. The father responds, "That was very thoughtful of you. Very early, but very thoughtful." For I know I'll always start the day early on the Sunday mornings following the Saturday football afternoons when the street sweepers come rumbling down the street and back again at 3:00 a.m. That someone would be willing to get up even earlier than I in order to clean my street before dawn is also, "Very thoughtful. Very early, but very thoughtful." Besides, I've been fascinated with street sweeping equipment for most of my life.

(3) Indeed, if the bumblebees and their offspring would just drop their trash, I wouldn't like having to pick it up rather than their doing so, but it would at least be a relatively easy task and things would soon be back to normal. But they don't. They throw it in and under bushes. Maybe they think they're doing me a favor, so their trash won't be so visible on my yard. But they're not. They are necessitating my crawling under some rather uncomfortable growth to drag out goodness knows what.

This is a picture of what I found under one bush following one football game (yesterday). Because not even the can and bottle redeemers consider a nickel a worthwhile reward for such effort, it's left to me. Beer cans and bottles, cups, snack sacks, a condom -- thankfully unused, presumably by someone who doesn't yet know where they need to go to prevent pregnancy and STDs. (Research data and best practices advise that merely putting them on the ground, unopened, before you put down the blanket and lie down provides virtually no protection.) Also note that Budweiser's effort to sell even more beer to college students by using schools' colors on the beer cans is successfully proceeding apace, notwithstanding the UI's professed objections, if my sample of black and gold Bud is representative. [Photo credit: Me.]

Needless to say, I don't go around taking pictures at every football game, but if you're interested in more here are some on Picasa from a Kinnick neighborhood from a couple years ago. See -- and especially read the comments on -- Nicholas Johnson, "Hawkeye Football's Externalities," September 9, 2007.

And for a participant-observer's more detailed, but consistent and candid descriptions of football Saturdays in the Melrose neighborhood, see Michael Dale-Stein, "Quintessential Iowa Tradition," The Daily Iowan, September 21, 2009, p. 4A. For a blogger's comment about (disgust with) that DI column, see Dawn, "Growing Up Sober," For the Love of . . . Eloquence," September 21, 2009.

Rupert Murdoch's Externalities: President Obama's Safety

"Congress shall make . . . no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; . . .." So reads the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

"What part of 'no' do our judges not understand?" Justice Hugo Black, for whom I clerked, took the view that because the drafters knew how to use qualifiers, such as "unreasonable searches and seizures" in the Fourth Amendment, we should assume when they said "no law" they meant "no law."

When the FCC exacts substantial fines for relatively trivial "indecency" (which, unlike "obscenity," is constitutionally protected speech), when the post office sets postal rates for newspapers on the basis of the quantity of advertising they contain, when the airport security rules forbid humor near the metal detector machines, when corporations are required to put revelations in a stock prospectus they would rather keep to themselves, when the FTC finds advertising "false and misleading," when cigarette makers are required to tell potential customers that their product will kill them -- each constitutes an "abridgment" of speech the judges say is consistent with the "no law" prohibition.

Sometimes the judges just say the speech in question isn't "speech." Obscenity, defamation (until the Sullivan case), "fighting words," speech that might lead to "imminent lawless action," commercial speech (for the first half of the 20th Century), military secrets in time of war, and child pornography are simply defined as "non-speech" outside of the First Amendment's protection.

(To remove any possible ambiguity, I am not voicing objection to the ultimate result in these cases. I'm certainly not making the case for the social benefits of child pornography or, as in the next paragraph, visual depictions of animal cruelty. All I'm saying is that coming to these results as an interpretation of a constitutional provision that there shall be "no law" abridging free speech really does require three years in a law school.)

On October 6th the Supreme Court will consider adding another category of speech to this long list of exemptions: dog fight videos (under a 1999 federal law that forbids trafficking in “depictions of animal cruelty”). Adam Liptak, "A Free Speech Battle Arises From Videos of Fighting Dogs," New York Times, September 19, 2009, p. A1.

I recently came upon a letter from a citizen to Rupert Murdoch [Photo credit: Wikipedia.org], owner of the Fox broadcasting enterprise, in which she expresses her concern about the impact of Fox's programming on our nation, including the potential physical risk to our President from those

who actually believe President Obama is the equivalent of Adolph Hitler . . . someone to be feared. They get these ideas from your media organizations.

And it makes them dangerous and sick . . ..

[Y]ou are hurting people in our country, and I would like you and your stations to start showing some restraint before one of these individuals thinks they are doing the right thing by actually committing an act of violence.

For a more detailed documentation of similar serious concerns and their connection to the media, see Larry Keller, "The Second Wave; Evidence Grows of Far-Right Militia Resurgence," Intellegence Report, Southern Poverty Law Center, Issue 135, Fall 2009, p. 30.

A part of what I omitted (the entire letter is reproduced below) is, "Maybe you have the right to do whatever you want . . .."

And indeed Murdoch does. Because hate speech -- especially political hate speech -- including that which reflects inaccurate sources of information, is protected speech under our courts' interpretations of the First Amendment. The Court may find that "animal cruelty" is outside the protection of the First Amendment. But depictions of, and incitement to, human cruelty are protected. Unless the "lawless action" from speech is "imminent" it's OK.

It was not always thus. In 1932 a court upheld the old Radio Commission (predecessor to the FCC in 1934) in its denial of a license renewal to Reverend Dr. Shuler of the Trinty Church in Los Angeles, licensee of station KGEF. Based on the record in the case it would seem that his speech was no more inaccurate, mean spirited and hateful than what passes for talk shows on Fox. The court, while upholding Shuler's First Amendment rights to hold and speak his views elsewhere, drew a distinction in terms of his right to use a station licensed to serve "the public interest" for such purposes. Judge Groner wrote:

[If broadcasters are permitted to] use these facilities, reaching out, as they do, from one corner of the country to the other, to obstruct the administration of justice, offend the religious susceptibilities of thousands, inspire political distrust and civic discord . . . and be answerable for slander only at the instance of the one offended, then this great science [of radio broadcasting], instead of a boon, will become a scourge, and the nation a theater for the display of individual passions and the collision of personal interests. This [restriction on a broadcaster's speech, in this case resulting in the Commission's refusal to renew Shuler's license] is neither censorship nor previous restraint, nor is it a whittling away of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, or an impairment of their free exercise.

Appellant may continue to indulge his strictures upon the characters of men in public office. He may just as freely as ever criticize religious practices of which he does not approve [which were Roman Catholicism].

He may even indulge private malice or personal slander -- subject, of course, to be required to answer for the abuse thereof -- but he may not, as we think, demand, of right, the continued use of an instrumentality of commerce for such purposes, or any other, except in subordination to all reasonable rules and regulations Congress, acting through the Commission, may prescribe.

Trinity Methodist Church, South v. Federal Radio Commission, 62 F.2d 850, 852-53 (C.A.D.C. 1932).

Suffice it to say, Trinity is no longer the law either at the FCC or among the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit.

Rupert Murdoch, this Australian-born, 78-year-old media mogul, and 132nd richest person in the world, controls the News Corporation, which owns Fox. And today, unlike 1932, he can legally use his media to spew forth hatred-for-ratings of a sort that would have resulted in the loss of his licenses in the Commission's early days.

When I was an FCC commissioner, major media operations were owned and controlled by, and identified with, individual human beings. Bill Paley was the one to give the credit, or blame, for CBS' programming; as was David Sarnoff for NBC. Today, all too often, media corporations are run by hired hands (albeit very well compensated hired hands) and controlled by Wall Street.

But in the case of Fox we still have a person, Rupert Murdoch.

So in the absence of any prospect for action from Congress, the FCC, or the courts, Ms. Trish Nelson wrote directly to Rupert Murdoch:

Rupert Murdoch
Chairman and Chief Executive
News Corporation
1211 Avenue of Americas
8th Floor
New York NY 10036-8701

Dear Mr. Murdoch:

I am writing to you because I understand you own and control a large number of newspapers, television stations and other kinds of media outlets.

I have been sickened and saddened by the choices your news organizations have made to show, over and over, on TV, horrible, hate inspired images against President Obama, and people carrying signs with messages of violence.

You are taking advantage of a few sad, ignorant people, who don't know any better, because they believe Fox and people like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly care about them and are telling them the truth. They don't understand that these people are just doing what they do because they are TV and radio personalities. The people in those crowds don't understand that they are being used, and that the ideas they are supporting are actually harmful to them. This is not right.

Do you do this for the money? How much money do you and yours need? Are you trying to start full-blown civil unrest so that you can make even more money?

Do you have any idea what it is like out here, having to live and work alongside people who are so horribly misinformed about how the world works? Who actually believe Obama was not born in this country, who actually believe in death panels, who actually believe President Obama is the equivalent of Adolph Hitler, and is someone to be feared? They get these ideas from your media organizations.

And it makes them dangerous and sick on an individual level.

Maybe you have the right to do whatever you want, but you are hurting people in our country, and I would like you and your stations to start showing some restraint before one of these individuals thinks they are doing the right thing by actually committing an act of violence.

Trish Nelson
Iowa City, Iowa

Murdoch's address is at the top of the letter. You might want to consider writing him, as I will -- making reference to Ms. Nelson's letter, or not, as you choose. Given our Constitution and courts -- and corporate control of Congress -- Murdoch is these days about the only power to which you can appeal.

Blog Entry Makes "Saturday Night Live"

A week ago I had a blog entry suggesting that Congressman Joe Wilson's shout out at President Obama during a Joint Session of Congress was the result of a prior plan among Republicans that they would all shout "You lie!" in chorus -- a chorus in which Wilson would ultimately become the only member. Nicholas Johnson, "Republicans' Practical Joke . . .; 'You lie!'" September 11, 2009.

Imagine my surprise when "Saturday Night Live" developed the idea into one of the show's openings.



["Update Thursday, Part I," Saturday Night Live Web site.]

You're welcome, SNL. Great job with the video! And special thanks to Jason Grubbe.
____________

* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson

# # #

Republicans' Practical Joke; President's Unwinnable War

September 11, 2009, 7:00 a.m.

9/11 -- Eight Years and Out
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
"You lie!" A member of my family with a twisted sense of humor has come up with an explanation for S.C. Republican Congressman Joe Wilson's otherwise inexplicable outburst ("You lie!") during the President's health care address to a Joint Session of Congress Wednesday evening (Sept. 9th). See Robbie Brown and Carl Hulse, "Heckler’s District Mostly Supports the Outburst," New York Times, September 11, 2009, p. A15. According to his theory the boorish behavior came about as a result of a trick his fellow Republicans played on Wilson. Before the President's speech the Republican caucus gathered to plan its post-speech strategy. Most of the discussion was as serious as that caucus' discussion ever gets. But, unknown to Wilson, this next part was not.

The whole thing grew out of a bet entered into one day, long before the President's speech. A Republican bet one of his colleagues, "I'll bet you $1000 I can make Joe apologize to the President." "What? Are you nuts? He'd never do that. Why would he?" Other caucus members were contacted (all but Wilson). The matter of the $1000 was dropped, and all joined in. Following their pre-caucus planning about what to do after the speech they began talking about what to do during the speech.

The pre-arranged consensus that finally emerged was that when the President mentioned that his plan would not provide health insurance for illegal immigrants the entire Republican membership would shout out in chorus, as loud as they could, "You lie!" Wilson was persuaded, thought it a great idea, and fell for it. As a result, when the time came his was the only voice to ring out in the chamber and he was forced to apologize to the President. Who says Republicans don't have a sense of humor? Bad taste and poor timing perhaps, but a creative sense of practical jokes.

Afghanistan. When members of the House and Senate are not shouting at the President or each other they are now beginning to hem and haw about sending more troops to Afghanistan. Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger, "Obama Facing Doubts Within His Own Party on Afghanistan," New York Times, September 11, 2009, p. A1.

Why is there no one to stand and speak out, like the little boy in "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The emperor is naked"? -- in this case, "This course of action is nuts!"

From my perspective, what we should do about what we're confronting over there is kind of a no-brainer.

Our military, especially at the top, has some very bright, analytical, broadly well educated, thoughtful and responsible individuals. But they have two, often disparate, responsibilities.

One is to participate, when asked, in the early stages of evaluating options for the most appropriate response to a trouble spot, global strategies, and foreign relations.

The other is, once the decision has been made by the president to undertake a military operation, to request the levels of personnel and other resources thought necessary to execute that military mission.

In the case of Afghanistan, General McChrystal has wisely responded to this inherent conflict by preparing for the President not one, but two, reports -- the first his evaluation of how things are going and what's necessary to make them better, and the second his best guess as to what he will need if the President wishes to continue to treat our role in Afghanistan as a "military" one.

His first report candidly acknowledges, in effect, why our interests in Afghanistan are ill suited to military operations.

(Some of what follows is mine alone, and some based on what he -- and numerous other military officers over the past year or so -- have said.)

There's no "there" there. Afghanistan, as a "nation," is essentially ungoverned and ungovernable. Political, economic, police and military power rest essentially with regional war lords, tribal and religious leaders. There is little infrastructure in the form of the kind of roads we're used to in our Interstate highway system; electric, gas, water and communications networks. Large numbers of Afghans have very little education. The treatment of women is horrible. Corruption is a widespread way of life at all levels. The recent election was riddled with fraud and may likely produce more divisiveness rather than unity in the society.

Our actions result in financing our enemy. There is very little to the Afghan economy, or "GDP." Unemployment is high; one of the nation's primary needs, General McChrystal noted, is a "jobs program." Ironically, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan they eliminated the drug trade. We have permitted it to flourish; Afghanistan is once again the world's leading supplier of heroin (including to the United States). It is this drug money that creates the ability of the Taliban to acquire ever more sophisticated military weaponry -- in addition to the thousands of improvised explosive devices ("IEDs") that have succeeded in killing unprecedented numbers of American soldiers during July and August of this year.

And it now turns out that as much of 20% of what U.S. taxpayers are providing to private contractors in Afghanistan is being siphoned off with bribes to the Taliban. So in a very real sense, we have created the funding for both sides in this war: our own troops and those who are determined to kill them (as a result of the bribes we pay and the increased drug trade we've enabled).

It's not exactly our favored terrain. The Taliban live there. We don't. We wear easily identifiable uniforms. They don't. They know the terrain. We don't. Going through those mountains would not be an easy hike even if you were on vacation and there were no danger. But you're not, and there is. They know how and where to hide. We don't. It's relatively easy for them to ambush our soldiers. Harder for us to do the same.

Why it is that the more we fight the less we win. There is solid evidence that the more troops we send in (with the resulting "collateral damage" in the form of dead women, children and innocent men, the destruction of their homes and buildings) the less the local population supports our being there, and the more fighters the Taliban are able to recruit, arm and send out to kill Americans. In short, our military operation involves the execution of a self-defeating strategy.

Although it is doing remarkably well under the circumstances, the military is also severely handicapped by the mission imposed upon it by the White House and the Congress. It is ill defined, shifting and irrational.

Wrong enemy, wrong country. It was Al Qaeda that attacked us 8 years ago today, not the Taliban. To the extent we want to fight the Taliban anyway, instead of Al Qaeda, note that they are coming into Afghanistan from Pakistan. Fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, when Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, makes about as much sense as going to war with Iraq because of what some Saudi terrorists, and their Saudi financiers, did to us on 9/11. Increasing the terrorist population in Pakistan really does constitute a threat -- one that we are intensifying by our own actions. Moreover, as the AP's headline reveals, Mike Corder, "McChrystal: No Major Al-Qaida Signs in Afghanistan," Associated Press, September 11, 2009.

The futility of containment. We are not at war with a "nation." Make no mistake, "we're not paranoid, we have real enemies." What is a mistake is to think that, if only we can run Al Qaeda, or the Taliban, out of Afghanistan, or Pakistan -- something we clearly cannot do -- we have "won." We will not have won. One of the feminist movement's bumper stickers in the 1970s read, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." Well, neither does Al Qaeda need Afghanistan. Terrorist plots can be hatched in any apartment in any city in the world -- or village, mountain retreat, or desert -- and have been. Training camps can be based in any dysfunctional country -- in other words, any one of a large number of potential destinations.

There can be, by definition, no truly effective "exit strategy." If our goal is to create a self-sustaining, stable, secure government and environment for the Afghan people (and it's not clear what our goal is), that is possible only if we will treat Afghanistan as our 51st state and stay there forever. That is certainly one possible scenario. World War II ended over 60 years ago and we still have troops in Germany and Japan. We still have troops in Korea. We have troops all around the world. If we had the troops, financial resources (Afghanistan costs us close to $100 billion a year), and will -- none of which we do have -- we could decide to stay in Afghanistan, too, for 50 to 100 years. Since I don't think we're able to do that, even if we wanted to, we're going to have to leave at some point. When we do conditions will likely revert, as they did after the Russians left, and after we left (or got substantially diverted by Iraq) the first time. So long as that is the seemingly inevitable result, what exactly is the long-term advantage of our staying another 5 years rather than 5 months?

Going to do it anyway? What will it take?

For all the reasons listed above, and the many more that could be added, we need to get our brave fighting men and women out of Afghanistan. That seems to me obvious. It is not only senseless and ill considered, it is actually counterproductive to try to conduct a "war" there. Will there be consequences, adverse consequences, when we leave? Of course. Whenever we leave there will be -- although there will also be local benefits. That's not the question. The question is whether the adverse consequences of staying -- which are pretty well known by now -- so far exceed those of leaving that any rational benefit-cost analysis suggests we should get out as soon as reasonably possible.

Then the question becomes, if the President and the Congress continue to dilly and dally over the matter, and decide to go ahead with this folly and send in more troops anyway, how many should that be?

As General McChrystal puts it, "My position here is a little bit like a mechanic. We've got a situation with a vehicle and I've been asked to look at it and tell the owner what the situation is and what it will cost to make the vehicle run correctly and I will provide that. Now I understand that the vehicle owner has to make a decision on what the car is worth, how much longer he intends to drive it. Whether he wants it to look good or just run." Mike Corder, "McChrystal: No Major Al-Qaida Signs in Afghanistan," Associated Press, September 11, 2009.

That is to be the subject of General McChrystal's second report.

My own view is that the numbers being talked about are but small fractions of the numbers that would be necessary to provide "stability and security" for the Afghan people (one of the goals sometimes mentioned). I think it would require something more like a total of 250,000 to 350,000 troops, rather than another 20,000, to bring anything like "stability and security" to that country.

This morning I discover that Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee who just returned from Afghanistan, is talking similar numbers -- albeit he hopes these numbers will be provided by the Afghans rather than the U.S.: 240,000 troops and 160,000 police. See Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger, "Obama Facing Doubts Within His Own Party on Afghanistan," New York Times, September 11, 2009, p. A1.

In my judgment the likelihood of that happening is "somewhere between slim and none at all," and that even if it did the chances are good that it would bring analogous (though not identical) problems of corruption and tribal loyalties to those we've confronted in Iraq.

We put a cap on presidential terms. A president can only serve for eight years. Perhaps we should put a similar cap on our wars of choice: If they can't be won in eight years the president has to stop, leave, and start a war somewhere else.
____________

* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson

# # #