Polygon, the Dancing Bear

Occasional notes on politics, history, technology, architecture,
and the life of a county clerk

Monday, July 14, 2008, 3:52 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message for my staff.

Where I grew up, there was a busy boulevard through the center of town, with a broad median strip. One year, there was a very serious project to display large works of sculpture in this median.

They set up a committee and a jury of experts and obtained funding. Pretty soon, a series of abstract artworks were installed at intervals along the boulevard, each one with a sign announcing its title. There would be, say, a whole bunch of rusty metal shards bolted together, with a title like "Aurora of Happiness." Or a pile of huge glass balls labeled "Aggressive Ennui." Nobody but the artist understood what that was about, but the whole town was very pleased with itself over this wonderful display of Art.

A couple weeks later, another sculpture came along, which got a lot more attention than all the others put together. It was installed in the median in the dead of night by persons unknown, and consisted of what appeared to be a well-made set of wooden porch steps, nicely stained and varnished, with the title "Mother and Child."

You can imagine the cries of outrage at how some trickster or amateur had invaded the haughty circles of Art. Yes, right there on the highway median. Others thought it was a hilarious parody on the whole concept of abstract sculpture. I don't think they ever found out who was responsible.

The moral of the story is that we shouldn't pay too much attention to what is, or is not, "Art". Professors and art critics claim to have a monopoly on the definition, while others dispute it, and still others push the envelope, seeking official recognition for all kinds of odd objects and antics. If you dare to disagree with any of these folks, without holding an advanced arts degree, you'll be dismissed as ignorant and immoral.

With half a million people poised to descend on our community this week in search of Art, we're likely to hear a lot of these arguments going on.

My advice is, when somebody announces they know what Art is, or what it is not, just smile politely and back away.

Instead, let us appreciate the Art Fairs not for what they claim to represent, but what they are: an amazing display of human ingenuity and effort.

As in past years, Clerk-Register staff are invited to take a two-hour lunch break on one of the Art Fair days. You can arrange this with your supervisor.

Let's have a great week, and enjoy the weather.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Thursday, July 10, 2008, 2:39 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Yesterday's email message to my staff:

Late one night last week, when a big storm blew down branches and trees, the power went out at our house. From what we could see, the whole neighborhood was dark.

Some hours passed, while storms came and went. I lay awake in bed, listening to the rumble of thunder and the insistent drumming of heavy rain on the roof.

I thought, there's no way we'll have power back before morning. After all, who's going to climb up a utility pole at 1:00 am, in the middle of a lightning storm, to reconnect high voltage electric lines?

Just then, the power came back on.

Somebody DID climb up that pole, wherever it was.

It sounds terrifying, but the utility worker probably thought of it as just another day on the job. We don't think of those folks very often, but they make our modern lives possible.

We [in the Clerk/Register's office] may not be splicing electric cables in the rain after midnight, but we also do important work. People rely on us — whether they think about it or not.

Remember to take pride in everything you do.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Friday, June 27, 2008, 10:43 pm

From the Clerk-Register. This afternoon's email message to my staff (who work in various separate spaces in three different buildings, one of them four miles away from the other two, and rarely gather together in one place in person):

(1) Next Friday (one week from today) is the Fourth of July. Instead of having a Casual Friday on a day we're not here, the short week of June 30 through July 3 will be Casual Attire Week.

(2) My daughter sometimes complains about being teased by her classmates in elementary school. Like many parents, I have taught her to calmly respond with "That's your opinion." They're trying to get a rise out of you, I explain. The teasers win if you get mad or upset. You win by not rising to the bait.

Those conversations come back to mind when I hear about customers who are not only rude, but actively bait us, muttering or whispering personal insults as they stand at our counters, or openly sneering at our competence. Each of our offices has certain customers who come with a lot of attitude, people who you dread seeing come through the door.

Stop. Take a deep breath. Don't let them know how you feel. Take pride in your professionalism. All customers are entitled to courtesy and respect, even snarling ogres and crazy people. Suppress your instinct to reflect back their rudeness; instead, kill them with kindness. Don't give them the slightest excuse to complain about our attitude. Let them be the ones who would look ridiculous to any outside observer.

It's not easy. But you win, we all win, when this office is known for being unfailingly polite. People take notice, believe me.

Have a great weekend.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Thursday, May 1, 2008, 1:47 pm

More Bad Economic News from the Deeds Office

A "sheriff's deed" is recorded when a mortgage has been foreclosed and the property sold at auction. Hence, the number of sheriff's deeds recorded in the Register of Deeds office is a precise indicator of distress among homeowners in that county.

By that standard, things are looking grim here in Washtenaw County, with the number of sheriff's deeds reaching previously unheard-of levels. There were 1,151 in calendar year 2007, compared to 703 in 2006 and 433 in 2005. And so far this year we already have 500.

Here's the data by month and year since 2002:

Month 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Jan 15 21 25 33 32 88 106
Feb 9 17 22 28 54 99 126
Mar 16 10 31 38 59 103 123
Apr 13 37 23 27 46 72 145
May 20 11 29 40 53 75
Jun 25 26 13 40 69 76
Jul 19 21 29 41 30 113
Aug 23 29 22 27 68 78
Sep 20 17 21 42 63 85
Oct 19 25 22 42 59 108
Nov 24 20 21 20 93 107
Dec 28 31 30 55 77 147
Totals 231 265 288 433 703 1,151 500

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, March 31, 2008, 11:25 pm

Speaking at the Ypsilanti school board meeting

This evening, the Ypsilanti school board took up the issue of selling the long-closed Ardis school on Ellsworth Road to the Hidaya Community Center/Michigan Islamic Academy, which has offered $3.9 million for it. Earlier, sale of the property to the Salvation Army fell through.

The proposed sale had aroused some opposition, some of it frankly anti-Muslim, and flyers were distributed in the neighborhood. About 300 people were at the meeting, and some 20 spoke during public comment (each with a gently but firmly enforced 3 minute limit). Here's what I said:

Good evening. I'm Larry Kestenbaum, Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds. My office is at 200 North Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor.

I'm not a resident of the Ypsilanti school district, but you're all part of my constituency, and my office serves the entire county when it comes to vital records, elections, court records, and deeds. I'm very interested in intergroup relations in Washtenaw County.

Myself, I'm Jewish, and an active member of Temple Beth Emeth, Jewish congregation, and my wife is on the board of trustees.

The closing of a school is always painful. Generations of students share memories of their formative years in those rooms. The elementary school I attended was closed some years ago, amid bitter controversy. But that school building still exists and contributes to the community, under different ownership, as a community center.

Accordingly, I am here to support the recommendation to sell Ardis School to the Hidaya Center, which I am sure will put the building to good use and benefit the whole community.

Let me share just a couple of brief anecdotes to make my point.

First, some years ago, when I was the youngest member of the East Lansing Planning Commission, we received a site plan for the MSU Islamic Center, across the street from the MSU campus, but also adjoining a single-family residential area.

The plan was approved, and East Lansing has never had cause to regret that decision. Nearby homeowners, folks I grew up with, people I represented as county commissioner, say the Islamic Center is a very good neighbor.

Second, when Ann Arbor had to close a school, they made a decision similar to the one I hope you will make tonight. They sold the Clinton Elementary School, and it became the Jewish Community Center of Washtenaw County.

As a member of the JCC organization, I view this facility with some pride. It houses a school, day care center, and meeting rooms for community events. Just yesterday afternoon, I took my daughter Sarah, who happens to be here tonight, to her Girl Scout troop meeting there.

The Washtenaw County Jewish community is still grateful for the consideration we received to purchase and reuse Clinton School. I urge you to give the Islamic community the same consideration in its bid to purchase and reuse Ardis School.

Census estimates show that Washtenaw County is growing, even as the state's population is declining. People are coming here because of our economy, still the best in the state, and because of the things this area has to offer.

A growing and thriving community naturally becomes more diverse, including religiously diverse. Yes, we'll have more Catholics and Baptists and Lutherans. But we'll also have more Jews, and Mormons, and Buddhists, and Hindus, and Muslims. And all of these groups need to build and nurture their community institutions.

That religious development is inseparable from economic development, which means: more talent, more business, more jobs, and a better future for everyone in Washtenaw County.

Thank you.

I'm happy to report that the school board approved the sale.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, February 25, 2008, 4:42 pm

Some thoughts about campaign spending.

(Also posted to Michigan Liberal.)

In Jess Unruh's famous formulation, money is the mother's milk of politics. Nobody in a political campaign can be unmindful of this. Still, wealthy self-funded candidates such as Dick DeVos and Mitt Romney have demonstrated that it's not possible to simply buy electoral victory.

Perhaps this is an awkward subject to raise in an election year where Democrats, for once, are raising more money than Republicans. But if we and our candidates are to make the best use of this advantage, we need to understand that a well-funded campaign has its own set of risks and pitfalls.

My own cynical rule of thumb is that, the more money a campaign has, the higher the proportion that is wasted. In other words, when money is not a constraint, a big campaign stays in better hotels, eats better food, has a nicer headquarters in a more expensive neighborhood, etc., etc., things which do almost nothing to actually win the election. That's why, contrary to conventional wisdom, shoestring campaigns often beat well-funded campaigns.

Recent news coverage of one of the presidential campaigns highlights lavish spending on catering and luxury hotels, and brings this issue to the forefront.

Now, carping over specific items in one campaign might be a little unfair. Many of us have direct experience of the difficulties of quickly creating a large and temporary organization, when the tactical objectives are constantly changing, and all the participants are amateurs.

But more than that, a large organization is inherently less efficient than a small one. The bigger the entity, the higher the overhead costs, the transaction costs, the communication costs. A great metaphor for this is construction. You can build a hundred identical houses cheaper per house than you can build one house. But a skyscraper costs enormously more per usable square foot than a one-story office building.

In tangible political terms, what's necessary and what's wasteful depends critically on the context. A typical city council campaign doesn't need office space, but a gubernatorial campaign can't do without.

When planning your campaign this year, or any year, here are a few thoughts I would suggest you bear in mind.

1. The big picture. A political campaign is brought into being to win an election. Don't lose sight of the main goal when making decisions on campaign activity and spending.

2. Ethic of frugality. Don't spend campaign money on a new coffeepot, when a volunteer could loan you one for free. Spend money on voter contact instead of creature comforts. Be a good steward for the money entrusted to you by your contributors.

3. Maintain some objectivity. When you're the candidate, it's easy to see each and every manifestation of the opponent as a personal attack that has to be "answered". All too often, when the candidate sees the other side has a radio ad, or a billboard, the budget goes out the window. Sure, sometimes the campaign plan has to adapt to circumstances, but don't waste money trying to keep up with your opponent's waste of money.

4. You can't keep it secret. As soon as you file each campaign finance report, people are looking at it. You may think that the thousand dollars spent at Victoria's Secret is buried at the bottom of page 137, but it may be in the blogs the next day -- or in your opponent's next attack piece.

5. Volunteers and candidate effort are more important than money. No amount of money can buy enthusiastic support. Paid staff are easier to control and direct than volunteers, but if you can't recruit and motivate volunteers, you're not going to win.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Sunday, February 17, 2008, 8:12 pm

Presidents Day Fundraiser

My term as County Clerk is up at the end of the year. I love the job and I've accomplished a lot, but there's lots more to do.

Hence, I'm seeking re-election in the August primary and November general election. I have no definite word on who my opposition will be, but there have been plenty of rumors, and I need to be ready.

My campaign committee is holding a Presidents Day Fundraiser on Monday, February 18, 5pm, at Leopold Brothers Brewpub, 523 S. Main Street, in downtown Ann Arbor.

Many of us are mourning the impending loss of this place; here's a chance to visit Leopold's before it closes.

Alternatively, if you can't make it on Monday, but wish to contribute to the campaign, make checks to Kestenbaum for Clerk-Register and send them to P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106. No cash or corporate checks.

What happens at a political fundraiser? Essentially, people come in, drop off a check in a bowl near the door, mill around, eat, drink, and talk about politics or whatever. At some point, somebody stands up and introduces all the politicos who are present, and I make a very brief speech. Food is free, alcohol costs. Pretty much like a party, other than that.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, January 14, 2008, 5:30 pm

Presidential Primary: Two Dramatic Updates!

First, I was sued this morning. Nothing personal, though. Local Libertarian Party activist and attorney David Raaflaub sued the Secretary of State, the county Election Commission, and the County Clerk, asking for the presidential primary law to be declared unconstitutional, and for an injunction against holding the primary.

Mr. Raaflaub argued that being required to disclose which party primary he is voting in is a violation the Michigan Constitution's guarantee of ballot secrecy.

(I know those of you in states with party registration will find this hilarious.)

This afternoon, Judge Timothy Connors dismissed the suit.

Second, we have heard from the state Bureau of Elections that, due to an error in ballot programming, Uncommitted and Write-in votes will be counted together in many counties. In order to untangle the mess, they will have to do hand counts.

Here's a pretty good, but probably not perfect, list of the affected counties:

Alger, Alpena, Antrim, Arenac, Baraga, Cheboygan, Chippewa, Gogebic, Grand Traverse, Houghton, Iron, Jackson, Keweenaw, Leelanau, Lenawee, Luce, Mackinac, Manistee, Marquette, Montmorency, Ontonagon, Oscoda, Otsego, Presque Isle, Roscommon, Schoolcraft, Wexford.

Bottom line, if this is a close election, it will be a very long night.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Wednesday, January 9, 2008, 4:44 pm

Today's message to my staff: polls and New Hampshire.

After yesterday's startling result in New Hampshire, inconsistent with all the polls, the news media are asking what went wrong.

Similar questions were raised in the last Detroit mayor's race, when every poll showed that the challenger was way ahead - but the incumbent won by 14,000 votes.

The problem is that accurate opinion polling is harder and harder to do.

The mathematical theory behind polling is that you can talk to a random sample of the entire population, and come up with a pretty good estimate of what the entire population is thinking.

However, if the people in your sample are not a random sample of the relevant population, the whole concept fails.

In past times, almost everybody had a Bell System home telephone, and almost everybody answered the phone when it rang.  Polling was comparatively easy then.

Nowadays, with answering machines and Caller ID, we all have more control over who we spend time talking to.  Years of unwelcome interruptions from telemarketers have taught us to screen our calls.

More and more people are choosing to delist themselves from the telephone directory, or not to bother with a "land line" at all.  For most purposes, these people are lost to polling.

With two-career families, longer commute times, growing use of restaurants for meals, taking kids to more and more extracurricular activities, etc., it's harder for pollsters to find people at home at all.

And there's another problem.  A poll-taker who reaches a voter by phone has to cajole participation in a sometimes lengthy interview. Willingness to do this is on the decline.  After all, it's an unsolicited call from a stranger asking personal questions - no surprise that people often say "no".

When a population is very heavily polled (like primary voters in New Hampshire?) the weariness with all the calls really sets in.  And the more people who decline to participate, the less accurate the results will be.

On the other hand, if political activists and people with strong opinions are more inclined to say "yes" - that means those folks will be overrepresented, and the overall poll result will be skewed.

The growing disconnect between poll results and reality comes back to haunt us as election officials, since the media and the political campaigns rely heavily on polls for news.  It's taken for granted that polls are accurate.  When the election turns out differently than polls, we may even be accused of some kind of chicanery.

During this frenetic election year, with media outlets constantly trumpeting their latest surveys, don't forget the old campaign cliché: "The only poll that matters is the one on Election Day."

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Wednesday, January 2, 2008, 10:50 pm

Bad Economic News from the Deeds Office

A "sheriff's deed" is recorded when a mortgage has been foreclosed and the property sold at auction. Hence, the number of sheriff's deeds recorded in the Register of Deeds office is a precise indicator of distress among homeowners in that county.

By that standard, things are looking grim here in Washtenaw County, with the number of sheriff's deeds reaching previously unheard-of levels. There were 1,151 in calendar year 2007, compared to 703 in 2006 and 433 in 2005. The month just ended had 147, which is the highest monthly total in years, perhaps ever.

Here's the data by month and year since 2002:

Month 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Jan 15 21 25 33 32 88
Feb 9 17 22 28 54 99
Mar 16 10 31 38 59 103
Apr 13 37 23 27 46 72
May 20 11 29 40 53 75
Jun 25 26 13 40 69 76
Jul 19 21 29 41 30 113
Aug 23 29 22 27 68 78
Sep 20 17 21 42 63 85
Oct 19 25 22 42 59 108
Nov 24 20 21 20 93 107
Dec 28 31 30 55 77 147
Totals 231 265 288 433 703 1,151

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Sunday, December 16, 2007, 11:35 pm

Presidential Primary: Q&A

(I sent this out to my staff last week; it was picked up and posted to the county's public web site, and it will also appear in the next Washtenaw Legal News.)

Everywhere I go, people ask me about the presidential primary. When will it be held? What will the choices be? Will my vote be secret? Many of you are probably hearing those questions, too. So here are some answers:

The Michigan presidential primary will be held on Tuesday, January 15. In Washtenaw County, no other issues or races are on the ballot. The State will reimburse localities for election costs.

Voters will have to check a box to choose the Democratic or Republican ballot. If you vote by absentee ballot, you'll need to select a party ballot on an attached form. If you vote at the precinct, you'll get a form with your application to vote.

If you don't select one party's ballot, you can't vote in the presidential primary.

Under the law, the ballot selection information (the list of who chose a Democratic or a Republican ballot) will be transmitted to the state party chairs for them to use, most likely in direct mail and phone calling. It is to be kept confidential from anyone else.

After the primary, I expect that a federal judge will strike down that restriction. Depending on the ruling, that could mean the lists of Democratic and Republican primary voters become public information. Or, possibly, the judge could order that the lists be destroyed without any disclosure.

Therefore, chances are, many people will know which ballot you selected. However, the CONTENT of your ballot, who specifically you vote for, is completely secret. Whether you choose a Democratic or Republican ballot, you can vote for any one candidate, OR "uncommitted", OR write in a name which has been properly filed with the State.

The Republican candidates on the ballot are: Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo, and Fred Thompson.

The Democratic candidates on the ballot are: Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel, and Dennis Kucinich. Four other Democratic candidates, under pressure from Iowa and New Hampshire, withdrew their names from the Michigan ballot. These candidates are Joe Biden, John Edwards, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson.

Write-in votes WILL NOT COUNT in the primary unless the write-in candidate files an affidavit of identity with the State by January 4. It's very unlikely that any major candidate not on the ballot will file such an affidavit, since such a filing could be used against them in the New Hampshire primary.

If there are enough "uncommitted" votes to earn delegates, those delegates will be elected at congressional district conventions. Very likely, supporters of various candidates will converge to try to win those "uncommitted" delegate seats.

That being said, both national parties are penalizing Michigan for the unauthorized early primary. Republicans have reduced Michigan's delegate count by half. And planning for the Democratic National Convention in Denver next summer is going forward on the assumption that Michigan won't have a delegation there at all. No hotel space, nor seating section on the convention floor, have been allocated to Michigan. Possibly the delegates will end up being seated, after the presidential nomination has already been settled.

We election officials aren't happy with this whole state of affairs, but it's our job to conduct the election according to law.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Tuesday, November 27, 2007, 10:31 pm

Yet another chapter in the presidential primary saga. Or, two chapters, actually.

First, in an appalling decision, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed lower court rulings and upheld the constitutionality of giving only major parties access to the list of voters in the primary.

The decision was four to three, with the solid bloc of four right-wing Republicans (Young, Markman, Corrigan, and Taylor) outvoting the two Democrats (Kelly and Cavanagh) and one disaffected Republican (Weaver).

Michigan Supreme Court justices are nominated by party conventions, so their party labels are widely known, except on the ballot, where they are listed as "nonpartisan".

Election officials, including the Michigan Association of County Clerks, had urged the Secretary of State not to appeal the original court ruling, given the now very limited time left to prepare for the election. It will now be essentially impossible for overseas absentees, such as troops in Iraq, to participate in the election via absentee ballot.

The Traverse City Record-Eagle did a great editorial about this. An excerpt:

The Michigan Supreme Court's Engler Majority, in its never-ending quest to prove that justice not only isn't blind but in fact views everything through a lens, has again created law out of whole cloth. This time, the beneficiaries were the Republican and Democratic parties; the losers were the rest of us....

The court's assertion of political party privilege clearly flies in the face of not only common sense but decades of precedent. Further, it helps create the impression that there are two kinds of citizens -- those with political clout, and those without. It's not hard to tell which side the Engler Four favors (Chief Justice Clifford Taylor and justices Robert Young, Stephen Markman and Maura Corrigan were all appointed by former Gov. John Engler to the Supreme or state Appeals courts.)

The Supreme Court ruling meant that the January 15 primary sprung back to life without much time for election officials to prepare for it.

But then another chapter opened.

With the Michigan Democratic Party now looking toward the primary rather than caucuses, and with the Michigan Republican Party worried that a meaningless Democratic primary might motivate a lot of crossover votes from Democrats for Ron Paul, there was a push to change the law, to put the complete list of Democratic candidates back on the ballot.

The House met yesterday, and passed a bill that would put Obama, Edwards, Richardson and Biden back on the primary ballot, notwithstanding their earlier filing of withdrawal papers.

But H.B. 4507, as rewritten, does more than just that! It strips out the "secret list" provisions from the presidential primary law. It undoes a recent Court of Appeals decision which prohibited local clerks from sending out unsolicited absentee ballot applications. And it reforms the scheduling of school board elections, which most districts now have annually in May, in favor of odd-November OR even-November OR even-August.

We county clerks have been calling for some of these things for years. So, notwithstanding the last-minute change in the candidate list (a royal pain for programming and printing the ballots), I like this bill now.

Unfortunately, though it passed the House, it didn't get two-thirds for immediate effect. But they should get another shot at that today.

Today, the State Senate may or may not take action on the bill.

As the legal saga has unfolded, I've posted some updates to Daily Kos:

Tomorrow, Wednesday November 28, I'll be appearing, alongside Mark Brewer and other party and campaign people, on a panel sponsored by the Electionn Law Project, from 12:20 to 1:20 pm, in Room 132 of the University of Michigan Law School. Should be fun.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Tuesday, November 20, 2007, 5:24 pm

Presidential primary update. A panel of the Court of Appeals, last Friday, voted 2-1 to uphold Judge Collette's decision throwing out the presidential primary. Yesterday, the state filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court. Time to print ballots, prepare for the election, etc., is running extremely short.

A couple of interesting documents to share:

From the State Election Director. Chris Thomas (director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections) sent the following email this afternoon to all the county clerks:

Greetings,

I wanted to touch base with you concerning the status of the presidential primary. I know for the outset that many of you were opposed to the law and to any appeal of the Ingham County Circuit Court order.

When a state law is declared unconstitutional by a circuit court there will nearly always be an appeal. The parties are the Secretary of State and the State of Michigan. The decision to appeal is not unilaterally made by the Secretary of State. Our decision to appeal is motivated by a need for a final decision at the earliest date.

I submitted an affidavit with the appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court outlining the duties that must be completed; the time lost due to the injunction; and the need for a decision by noon on Wednesday, November 21, 2008. I informed the court that anything after that date would risk failure, error and disenfranchisement. It is our view that a primary should not be held if we cannot start work until some date after tomorrow.

If the Court rules tomorrow that the presidential primary will move forward, we will immediately e-mail all the necessary documents to you. We have talked with printers and they are ready to move forward as well. They will need information on any county or local issues or special elections scheduled to appear on the January 15 ballot.

We will be using a two ballot process: Republican Party and Democratic Party. If there are local issues or candidates there will be a third ballot. The challenge is to gauge the proper number of ballots to order. We will be providing you with a guide to begin that calculation. Essentially, it involves the 2000 presidential primary turnout and the Democratic Party turnout in the 1992 presidential primary.

I wanted to give you a heads up on this before tomorrow.

From MACC. Second, a press release issued today by the Michigan Association of County Clerks:

MACC: January Primary a "Post-Holiday Nightmare"
No time to get ballots to military overseas, the elderly and the disabled

LANSING — The Michigan Association of County Clerks today urged lawmakers to reject any temptation to resuscitate a law to hold the Michigan Presidential Primary in January, an idea the group called a "post-holiday nightmare" that would disenfranchise absentee voters.

In a letter to legislative leaders, the MACC said it opposed the law establishing the Jan. 15 presidential primary for many reasons. Notably, the group said with fewer than 60 days before the proposed primary it's too late to guarantee that absentee voters — especially military members serving overseas, the elderly and the disabled — would have time to apply for, receive and return ballots.

"Unless Santa and his reindeer are prepared to deliver the ballots, it will be virtually impossible to get absentee ballots to everyone who requests one for the Jan. 15 primary," said Saginaw County Clerk Sue Kaltenbach, who takes the helm as MACC's president in January.

The MACC's obligation to protect the integrity of the electoral process by ensuring every citizen has the opportunity to participate "could be jeopardized by any eleventh-hour attempt by the legislature to reinstitute the primary," Kaltenbach said.

The county clerks, who objected to the closed primary when it was enacted in August, also expressed concern over the projected $10 million-plus price tag. Most clerks responsibly put off incurring any expenses, including the programming and printing of absentee ballots, while the law was being challenged. They did so, in part, because the Legislature limited reimbursements to counties in the event the election was cancelled, as it has been.

"If the political parties want a state-run presidential primary that adheres to their party rules and meets their list-gathering needs, they should pay for it," said Ottawa County Clerk Dan Krueger. "A taxpayer-funded primary that would cost in excess of $10 million should be open to all registered voters, not just those willing to declare their party affiliation in order to participate."

Krueger added, "Holding a closed primary at taxpayers' expense is one holiday gift that ought to be returned unopened."

In addition, the MACC strongly believes that requiring voters to declare party affiliation could lead to the same sort of chaos and voter dissatisfaction that resulted the last time Michigan held a closed primary in 1992.

The state Court of Appeals invalidated the Act late last week after ruling that an aspect of the law is unconstitutional. The case has been appealed to the state Supreme Court. The lower court's ruling addressed only whether voter lists garnered from a taxpayer-funded primary could be provided to the state's two major political parties since that would be using public resources for a private purpose. The court ruled that doing so would violate the Constitution.

####

In theory, we should know the outcome by lunchtime tomorrow.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, November 12, 2007, 11:40 pm

Presidential primary tale grows longer. So much has happened in the last week that it's difficult to summarize briefly.

First off, my friend Mark Grebner, along with a bunch of co-plaintiffs, sued in circuit court for a ruling against the presidential primary law. In particular, they challenged the parties' exclusive right to get lists of who voted in the Democratic and Republican primaries. Kept secret, those lists are worth an estimated $5 to $10 million.

Judge Collette agreed, and ruled that it was unconstitutional to turn over the lists of primary voters to the two major parties, while keeping them secret from everybody else. To do so was to transfer public property to private interests, which takes a two-thirds vote in the Legislature (the primary bill didn't get two-thirds). Further, he ruled, the secrecy requirement abridged the rights of other political parties, and journalists.

Curiously, the presidential primary law, as a cobbled-together compromise, contained a very unusual NON-severability clause, which provided that if any portion of the law were struck down as invalid, the entire law was invalid. Hence, Judge Collette was forced to strike down the entire presidential primary.

(Here's a Detroit Free Press editorial and a Laura Berman column (Detroit News) praising the judge for the decision.)

So the Legislature, still in session last Thursday before the two-week deer hunting recess, was expected to receive and re-enact a "cleaned up" version of the presidential primary law.

But no! The proposed new version still had the unconstitutional secret-list provisions in it. The concept was to get two-thirds in both houses, in order to overcome the giving-away-public-property objection, while ignoring the other issues. The bill was unveiled late Thursday afternoon and rammed through the Senate. It got two-thirds there. But then, it didn't get two-thirds for "immediate effect".

Normally, bills passed by the Legislature don't take effect until the following April. To give a bill "immediate effect" takes two-thirds vote. A law calling for a January 15, 2008 primary would be meaningless if it didn't take effect until three months after that.

In other words, any bill to revive the presidential primary really needs two-thirds support in both houses.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives, meeting late into the evening, ended up not taking up the Senate-passed bill. Sensing Republican desperation to get the primary re-established, Democrats asked for the Moon: no-reason absentee voting, repeal of the voter-ID law, and allowing people to have different voter and driver addresses. Republicans refused to bend on any one of these, let alone all three.

So the legislative solution seemed to have failed, as the senators and representatives headed off for the traditional deer hunting season recess — notwithstanding that only nine of them have hunting licenses.

But no! The House and Senate are scheduled to return to session tomorrow, Tuesday, November 13, presumably to try again.

Still, there is considerable opposition to the primary among House Democrats, and the likelihood of getting two-thirds there is slim. It didn't get two-thirds in the House the first time, and that was with the Governor fighting hard for it. My understanding is that the revived primary is no longer one of the Governor's priorities.

Further, some of the legislators who recently voted for tax increases are facing recall efforts in their districts. A presidential primary would be an ideal opportunity to collect recall signatures. This probably dampens their enthusiasm to re-establish the primary.

Why did the "cleaned up" bill still have the voter list provisions in it that were struck down by the judge? Because even though the state is determined to defy national party rules by having an early primary, the state Democratic Party is determined to follow national rules in not having an "open" primary, where voters select a party primary within the voting booth. Meanwhile, the Republicans are opposed to having a primary where the names of voters who selected one party or the other are public record (as they are in most states).

Neither party really wants to have a Michigan-style open primary, the Democrats because that would provide another excuse for refusing to seat our delegates at the national convention, and the Republicans because they fear Democrats crossing over to vote for Ron Paul.

The secret-list-for-state-parties-only is the "middle road" between letting everybody choose a primary privately, and letting everybody's party choice be public. Judge Collette ruled that middle road is illegal, but that's just a detail. And both state parties are plainly salivating over the exclusive mailing list they're expecting to get.

One feature of the proposed bill is that it does all over again the process of selecting the candidates for the presidential primary. The option for a candidate to get off the ballot looks like it's still there, but (in the words of one of the drafters) it's a "hall of mirrors" — there's really no way out. So welcome back to the Michigan primary ballot, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, and Joe Biden!

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Elections (via email sent last Friday at 5:17 pm) has ordered all counties and localities to cease preparing for the January 15 primary, but not to throw away what's been prepared, since the primary could be revived.

The courts were closed today (Monday the 12th) for Veterans Day, but the Secretary of State will appeal Judge Collette's order on Tuesday the 13th. The Bureau stated that she would file at the Court of Appeals, but more recent word is that she will go directly to the Michigan Supreme Court.

Since the Supreme Court is nominated at state party conventions, they are likely to be very responsive to the interests of those parties. Note that the non-severability clause in the original presidential primary law limits their options to all or nothing: they can't throw out some clauses and save others, unless they can invalidate the non-severability clause itself, which seems unlikely.

Will they be so shameless as to decide that it's perfectly okay to turn over lists of voters exclusively to the major parties?

We're pretty close to the drop-dead date for scheduling a January 15 primary, especially if overseas absentee voters (e.g., soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq) are going to take part. There's already some talk of giving up on the January 15 date, and scheduling the primary later. But that would require legislative action, which might not be politically possible.

All this last-minute furor must be giving fits to the New Hampshire official who is supposed to schedule that state's primary a week ahead of all others.

UPDATES, Tuesday morning.

(1) The legislative session scheduled for today has been canceled, and the next session won't be for another week. Presumably they decided they don't have the votes to get a new presidential primary law through in time.

(2) The Secretary of State is still saying she's going to the Court of Appeals (Michigan's intermediate appellate court), not the Supreme Court. That means they'll get a draw of any random three-judge panel -- harder for the powers-that-be to predict and control. Unless they can get it into the Supreme Court this week, I don't see much chance for a timely reversal.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, November 12, 2007, 9:03 pm

Update on a self-proclaimed icon. Those of us old enough to remember the early 1970s probably recall the adulation for the Guru Maharaj Ji, the "14 year old Perfect Master" (he seemed to be stuck at that age for some time). His smooth, fat, baby-faced visage smiled serenely from innumerable posters in college towns in those days, plastered everywhere by the vaguely sinister Divine Light Mission. Apparently, he had millions of followers.

Woody Allen's movie Annie Hall had a scene ridiculing him.

Later, he had some kind of falling out with his mom, and she renounced his divinity. It was the sort of ending you'd expect, and I hadn't given him much thought for the last thirty-plus years.

Tonight I accidentally discovered, through Wikipedia, that he's still around, still preaching, but without claiming to be God. His face is older (he'll be 50 next month) but otherwise unchanged. He now goes by his civilian name: Prem Rawat.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Wednesday, October 10, 2007, 1:24 pm

The Presidential Primary. We Michiganders have sure gotten ourselves into a pickle again.

The Legislature enacted a January 15, 2008 presidential primary, defying the schedule laid down by both national parties. In compliance with national Democratic Party rules, it's a choice-of-ballot primary. But the lists of voters who chose the Democratic and Republican ballots would be disclosed only to the state party chairs, so as to mollify people who didn't want to leave a public record of which party's primary they voted in.

For a little while, it looked like Michigan and Florida had won the game by scheduling such early primaries. But New Hampshire still has a lot of leverage, so pledges were extracted from the candidates not to campaign in either state. Of course, that didn't stop candidates from visiting Michigan and Florida for "fundraising".

Then, the national Democratic Party decided to punish Florida (and presumably Michigan too) by taking away all delegate seats. This was widely seen as an empty threat. The two unauthorized primaries might be zero-delegate "beauty contests", but given the timing and the expected large participation, they could have a huge impact on the race. And by convention time, with the primaries over with, Michigan and Florida delegates would surely be welcomed back.

But our presidential primary law has an escape hatch for candidates. Five of the eight Democratic presidential candidates (under pressure from New Hampshire and the national party) filed papers by the deadline yesterday to remove their names from the ballot. Dennis Kucinich's filing lacked his signature and was rejected, so he remains on the ballot, along with front-runner Hillary Clinton, and also-rans Mike Gravel and Chris Dodd.

The Michigan presidential primary law has had that escape provision for some time; that was the mechanism by which the Democratic presidential primary was all but cancelled most years from 1980 to 2004. In retrospect, it was a big mistake to leave it in the law this year. Florida has a no-escape presidential primary, and we could have done that, too.

I suppose the Legislature could retroactively remove the escape clause and force the four candidates back onto the ballot. That would smack of changing the rules during the game, but stuff happens when everybody plays hardball. On the other hand, the candidates who withdrew their names will be portrayed as having spat in the face of Michigan voters; it might seem awfully mean-spirited to drag them back to be humiliated in the "beauty contest".

Technically, Michigan has not yet suffered any formal sanctions from the national party, and will not until a delegate selection plan is filed. Quite possibly, the state party could quietly abandon the primary for delegate selection, and go back to the February 9 caucus date that was originally planned.

Even if that happens, the primary will not be modified or canceled unless both parties agree to it. We election officials will still have to do election preparations during the holiday season. Not only that, we will still be required to print two (or three) different ballots per precinct, and will still be required to ask every voter which party's ballot they want, all to comply with Democratic Party rules — for a primary rejected by the national party, and perhaps also abandoned by the state party.

Since the Democratic front-runner will be essentially unopposed, the action will be on the Republican side. And the "closed primary" that was demanded by the Democratic Party will instead protect the Republican primary from crossover votes for Ron Paul.

That is, unless the early caucuses and primaries shake up the Democratic race, in which case we will have hundreds of thousands of write-in votes to deal with.

Legislate in haste, repent at leisure.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, October 1, 2007, 11:50 am

From the Clerk-Register. This morning's message to my staff: about the state budget brinkmanship.

The Legislature was up all night, last night, working out the budget deal. This morning, Michigan is a little less of a national disgrace because they succeeded.

But the details are still not entirely clear. Were school elections moved to November? Neither the Bureau of Elections nor the WISD superintendent knew the answer to that this morning. I'm guessing that many desperate and sleep-deprived state legislators barely grasped the details of what they were voting on.

And it almost didn't work!

Last night, the lobbyists who represent Washtenaw County's interests in Lansing warned us that "the agreement is extremely fragile and could fall apart over the slightest misstep." And they were right. The necessary tax increases would both have failed on 19 to 19 votes in the Senate, were it not for the Lieutenant Governor's authority to cast a tie-breaking vote.

In other words, even at that desperate hour, there was no ability for the parties to join together on an agreement. A shutdown of state services was averted because a handful of gutsy mavericks broke ranks and supported a compromise.

Term limits, by weakening individual members, have made Lansing more partisan, and sharply reduced the number of independent voices in the Legislature. I'm very grateful there are still a few left.

And let's be clear on what was at stake last night. Had our state government shut down today, we wouldn't just have been a national laughingstock. We would have been sending a signal that Michigan's leaders are unable or unwilling to work together and cope with problems, even at the brink of disaster. The blame game in Lansing would have gotten national attention, and underlined the image of Michigan as an economic sinking ship. How likely is it that someone is going to want to bring their company to Michigan under these conditions?

It is a great relief not to have to wake up to that kind of debacle this morning.

And it's even better to hear the (unspecific, but reliable) report that some good news for our local economy will be announced soon.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Thursday, August 23, 2007, 11:50 pm

New York Times Outraged at Murder Case Acquittal. I came across the following editorial this evening, published May 1, 1854 (paragraph breaks added for readability):

The Moral of the Kentucky Murder.

The issue between influence and justice has been boldly made and fairly met. It has been decided that certain circles of society are not to be rudely entered by the public executioner; that certain classes are not amenable to the penalty of the law. As by law the "King can do no wrong," so the aristocracy can commit no murder.

We cannot complain that any other than this bare question of privilege was presented. The WARDS owe their acquittal to no legal chicanery — to no vulgar or hackneyed expedients. The case was fairly presented. No very essential testimony was excluded. No important evidence was manufactured. There was, indeed, some attempt to bully and browbeat and confuse certain witnesses; but, if we may judge by the reports of the trial, there was less of this than is usual in important cases. No pretence of insanity was set up; no abuse of the murdered man was resorted to.

Take the case as presented by the defence, and it was murder — wanton, premeditated, cowardly murder — murder without qualification or extenuation — without palliation or excuse. To bring the perpetrator of such a crime clear off, and upon the sole and simple ground that he belonged to their body — by the sheer dint of influence, or wealth and position — is indeed a triumph for the aristocracy of Kentucky.

To effect this, all their forces were marshalled. Clergymen came down from their studies; colonels came up from haunts, to be named only by the delicate circumlocution of "places to which young men are apt to go;" accomplished ladies left their boudoirs — all to plead for their darling associate. The halls of Congress, the offices of Government, the editor's sanctum, were subsidized for witnesses. Governors and Senators appeared as counsel.

It is not often that a person of such character holds up his hand at the bar of justice. One would have supposed, from the evidence given, that MATT. WARD was undergoing examination for some post requiring the possession of all the moral and intellectual virtues, rather than upon trial for murder.

Yet to balance all the amiable, mild, and gentle qualities attributed to him, appear the facts, proved and admitted, that he deliberately armed himself; deliberately took with him his brother, likewise secretly armed; deliberately insulted his victim, in his own house and before his own pupils; and upon the insult being resented — allowing the case to stand just as sworn to by his own accomplice — in a manner far milder than its aggravation demanded, deliberately, with a concealed weapon, shot down an unarmed man.

No array of words from his counsel — no gentle euphemism of the reverend gentleman who calls this brutal affair a "sad occurrence" — can prevent these damning facts from standing upon perpetual record. Yet, in spite of them all, the perpetrator of the deed has been borne triumphantly off.

We remember with what breathless anxiety men watched the progress of the WEBSTER trial at Boston; as they saw the law take its calm, unrelenting course, without haste, without delay, until its supreme sentence was accomplished, they breathed more deeply and freely. They felt that however corruption might have invaded social and political life, our Courts were still pure, the scales of justice were held with even poise, the regis of law in the hands of a jury was interposed between them and the assassin.

With like, with deeper anxiety — men have watched the Kentucky case. In the former instance, the murderer and his victim belonged to the privileged social classes, and the influence which might have been brought to bear as a shield for the criminal, was equally potent to call for his punishment. In this Kentucky case, the weight of social influence was all on one side; and had justice here triumphed over influence, the triumph would have been perfect.

As it is, so far as this decision can reach, it is decided that any man who has inherited or acquired wealth, or a position in certain circles of society, may at his pleasure shoot down the man who, standing outside that charmed circle, shall dare to resent any insult which a member of the privileged class shall choose to offer.

We read that, during the French Revolution, it was gravely moved in the Assembly that any law should be abolished which authorized a Noble, upon returning from hunting, to put to death a number of his serfs, in order that he might refresh himself by a bath of human blood. It would probably have been in vain to have searched for that law in the Statute-book.

If, some generations hence, a motion should be made in the Kentucky legislature to render null and void any decision, authorizing a member of the privileged classes to shoot down at pleasure a public teacher, there will be no difficulty in finding the decision intended to be set aside.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, August 6, 2007, 4:38 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff: about the voter ID law

Last month, the Michigan Supreme Court voted to revive a law requiring that voters show photo ID to vote — and created a big headache for election administrators.

On the face of it, the concept seems sensible. You need identification for many transactions, so why not voting? What's the problem with this law?

First of all, there's no evidence that crooks are showing up at the polls pretending to be other people. It's a felony, which is a pretty strong disincentive for most people. But, perhaps more to the point, it is an ineffective way to steal elections. Not knowing the vote totals in advance, the crooks would need to create thousands of fake votes — maybe ten thousand or more in a large election. For each fake vote, one of the fraudsters would have to stand in line and impersonate a different voter, any one of whom might show up either before or after, and blow the scam. With or without IDs, they could never get away with it on that scale.

Second, voting is fundamental and should be accessible to all citizens — even those who don't have or habitually carry identification with them.

Third, implementation of this law will add more steps to the voting process. That will raise the cost — we'll need more workers, more training, more forms to print and store — and lengthen the wait in line.

The law provides that people who don't have any ID can swear an affidavit to that effect. Though the law does not provide an affidavit option for those who forgot to bring an ID to the polls, the state is going to interpret the law as if it did.

On the other hand, if you choose to vote absentee, there is no need for any photo ID whatsoever. Until the Saturday before the election, you can typically go to your local clerk's office and cast your absentee ballot on the spot. Or, if you plan ahead, you can vote by mail.

Our neighbors in Ohio had to implement a similar voter-ID law in the last general election. Thanks to preparation, planning, training, and a public information campaign, they had few problems on Election Day.

Michigan can do that, too. And we will.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Thursday, July 26, 2007, 4:05 pm

From the Clerk-Register. A recent message to my staff: the perils of email

Have you ever said something you came to regret?

I certainly have. There are incidents I can remember from as long ago as my adolescence, when my careless words hurt feelings and severed friendships. I try not to dwell on these mistakes, but they come to mind from time to time, and probably will as long as I live.

But human memory is fallible. Maybe my recollection is inaccurate. Probably some of the people I offended have completely forgotten what I said.

Networks of computers, on the other hand, can remember with perfect clarity. The Internet can preserve one's words forever.

When you send an email message, you are releasing it into the world. Copies will be archived in multiple places. Even if you immediately delete it, the county's network servers retain a copy in perpetuity. Your recipient can forward it along to others - with your name still attached. The news media can obtain it either directly or indirectly. Your current and future employers, your spouse or ex-spouse, your kids and grandkids, your neighbors, all might get access to it one way or another. You can never blot it out.

Slurs or stereotypes about ethnic or racial groups, the disabled, the mentally ill, gays and lesbians, immigrants, religious believers, or even unkind remarks about specific individuals, are unprofessional and violate acceptable use policies. In the not very long run, an email message with such content is likely to embarrass and demean the sender, the recipient, this entire office, and Washtenaw County.

What might seem like harmless fun between friends might well look very different if published on the front page of the Ann Arbor News, or broadcast on CNN. And all our efforts to demonstrate respect for our customers could be for naught, if one single message convinces people that we're all sneering at them.

Let's not be paranoid about this, but please do recognize that email is not confidential. Let the words you write demonstrate your professionalism and your commitment to public service for all.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Tuesday, July 24, 2007, 9:30 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff: a Blink link

I recently came across a passage in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink, which speaks to an aspect of customer service.

The topic was medical malpractice lawsuits. Studies show that the most important factor determining whether a doctor gets sued or not is how they talk to their patients.

One expert says, "When a patient has a bad medical result, the doctor has to take the time to explain what happened, and to answer the patient's questions — to treat him like a human being. The doctors who don't are the ones who get sued."

Gladwell describes the research, and adds: "In the end it comes down to a matter of respect, and the simplest way that respect is communicated is through tone of voice."

In the Clerk/Register's office, we don't often get sued by our customers. But the same principles apply. We sometimes have to give people unwelcome news, and the way we do it is critical. Will they leave the office furious at us? Or will they feel they were treated fairly?

This is one reason we strive to treat every customer with courtesy and respect — even the ones who are difficult or challenging or confused. Your tone of voice, your willingness to explain and answer questions, will help the customer feel better about the outcome, whatever it happens to be.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, July 16, 2007, 3:58 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff: it happens every summer

For four days every July, half a million people descend on downtown Ann Arbor. Major streets become crowded outdoor galleries with endless rows of booths and tents, each packed with someone's handiwork for sale.

If you work downtown, you can't help but notice the change. Parking facilities are full beyond capacity. Traffic is enormously heavier than usual, but with fewer streets to travel on. Slow moving crowds fill the streets, making even a short walk time consuming. The restaurants and gift shops are busy, but those of us who aren't catering to vast crowds of visitors are going to have a light week.

By the same token, the customers who brave the crowds to see us probably have some urgent need. They will be stressed, not just by parking and traffic issues, but by whatever problem brought them to our counter. We know how stress can make people impatient, demanding, even rude. The best response is to treat them with unfailing courtesy and respect, to pay attention to their needs, and to respond with the best service possible. We gain the respect of our community by upholding these principles even when it isn't easy.

In recognition of the special conditions of this week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday will be casual dress days in Clerk-Register offices. And each employee will be able to take an extra hour for lunch on one of those days. Consult your supervisor for details.

Have a great week, and smile as you watch the throngs go by.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Thursday, July 12, 2007, 11:31 pm

Another press clipping. The Ann Arbor News ran an article on the front page about the latest passport regulation. More than that, they quoted me and even included a (dour, balding) photo:

New bump in passport road
Local clerks can't process them for people born here

Thursday, July 12, 2007
BY AMY WHITESALL
News Staff Reporter

Just when you thought you had a handle on this summer's passport saga - a new wrinkle was added.

As of June 25, the U.S. Department of State has said county clerks can no longer process passports for anyone who was issued a birth certificate from that office.

"As if the passport situation wasn't enough of a train wreck already, they've decided to add something else,'' said Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum. "I think it's safe to say county clerks around the state are baffled and outraged."

The move is designed to quash any incentive employees in a clerk's office might have to issue a fake birth certificate or otherwise falsify a passport application.

But Kestenbaum says it amounts to an unnecessary inconvenience for customers - and it takes a bite out of his office's business. In the weeks since the directive was announced, the county clerk's office has turned away 88 passport-seeking citizens.

The county clerk's office usually processes about 2,000 passports a year, and the processing office receives a mandatory $30 fee.

In the two-week span, that amounts to $2,640 in missed income - which will surely rise with increased demand for passports leading up to the new year.

Passport demand has been high since the Western Hemisphere travel initiative went into effect Jan. 23, extending passport requirements to all air travelers entering the country. In early June, the State Department announced relaxed rules for air travelers returning from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean until Sept. 30.

The county clerk's office isn't the only place to apply for a passport - post offices and many municipal offices also can do the initial processing. But since a birth certificate is part of the required paperwork, the clerk's office offered one-stop shopping for people who couldn't find their birth certificates at home.

All local agencies send the applications to the State Department, which issues the passports.

"We're talking to our members of Congress, hoping we might get some amelioration of this," Kestenbaum said. "I heard a clerk somewhere has arranged it so birth certificates are issued on one floor and passports are processed on another to see if that will satisfy them. I think the whole thing is crazy to begin with."

Check www.state.gov/travel for information on nearby passport processing sites.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Tuesday, May 29, 2007, 11:22 am

Personal Best from the Fray. The online magazine Slate has a reader comments section called "The Fray".

I've been a sometime participant in the Fray, and though most of the things I have written there have long disappeared, a few remain today on Slate's web site, and six of those carry the coveted check mark that means "Fray Editor's Pick".

The comments function is about to be completely rebuilt, and I'm guessing that the old comments will disappear. I'm copying a few of them here, so I can find them later.

1. Nixon and McGovern. I wrote this in response to a Slate piece about Nixon the Populist:

Subject: Nixon and McGovern
From: Polygon
Date: Oct 2 2003 7:47AM

Greenberg is persuasive as to the history, but he writes about the American electorate as if it were essentially unchanged from 50 years ago.

Back in 1972, conservative pundits pointed to what they saw as the key difference between Nixonites and McGovernites: the Nixon voters were productive, that is, they made tangible, real-world stuff. Farmers, factory workers, tradesmen, and so forth were portrayed as morally superior to effete McGovern supporters whose occupations were caricatured as sitting around thinking and dreaming, or writing and talking.

Leaving the moral dimension out of it, they were on to something: today we recognize it as the schism between the Old Economy and the New Economy. In retrospect, McGovern's campaign was part of an epochal shift of highly educated professionals from being the most Republican occupational category to the most Democratic.

At the same time, the professional category has quadrupled its share of the vote, from 5% to 21%. As Judis and Teixera documented in The Emerging Democratic Majority, most of the economic and population growth in the U.S. is concentrated in New Economy metropolitan areas (which tend to prefer more liberal candidates), while the old farming and manufacturing regions are in relative decline.As usual, the political conventional wisdom is late catching up to changed conditions. It stands to reason that a growing population segment will grow in political influence.

2. Two Columbus Circle. During the controversy over whether to preserve 2 Columbus Circle, Timothy Noah (Chatterbox) challenged its chief defender to call it beautiful. I wrote as follows:

Subject: 2 Columbus Circle
From: Polygon
Date: Oct 17 2003 8:51AM

I'm not a fan of Tom Wolfe, but he is absolutely right about architecture. And surely 2 Columbus Circle is historically significant.

Chatterbox asks if it is beautiful. But architectural beauty has to be judged in context. Among 1964-vintage architect-designed major buildings, 2CC may be the most beautiful on earth, though admittedly that isn't saying much. (Okay, Saarinen's fascinating TWA terminal, also hated by the Modernists, might be close enough to 1964 to outrank 2CC.)

In the 1960s, the International Style was the ideology of destruction and forgetfulness. Just as Gropius discarded Harvard's architectural library, declaring history to be irrelevant to architecture, International Style architects and theoreticians sought to level historic landmarks and neighborhoods and replace them with arid concrete plazas and glass boxes. International Style buildings are unbeautiful because beauty was never the goal. Only ideological purity mattered.

What is revealing about the treatment of Stone's building is that the rigid, Stalinist, International style orthodoxy STILL has a stranglehold on the architectural profession. Architects (to this day) apologize to each other for designing those "vulgar" postmodern buildings. Postmodern ornament is permitted if-and-only-if it is "ironic", which is to say, that it's thin and fake-looking and not integral to the building. It's as if architects look forward to a messianic era when all the postmodern buildings will be stripped back to their International style "purity".

Establishment architects hate 2 Columbus Circle not because it is ugly (their own buildings are MUCH uglier), but because it was a heresy. All these years later, it is STILL a heresy, and sneering critics like Herbert Muschamp have never stopped demanding that it be demolished.

2 Columbus Circle should remain as a rebuke to the Herbert Muschamps of the world and their brutal ideological certainties.

3. The Pulitzer Prize. Jack Shafer ridiculed the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. I was one of many who responded:

Subject: Pulitzer Prize
From: Polygon
Date: Apr 7 2004 8:07AM

As other Fraysters have commented, the Pulitzer Prize in journalism actually does correlate to a large extent with talent and accomplishment.

It's silly to assign too much significance to the numbers of prizes handed out in a given year (five to one newspaper, two to another) as indicating any kind of mathematical truth about the two papers. A single year's prizes are a tiny sample size.

However, the Pulitzers have been handed out for nearly nine decades now, to newspapers in hundreds of cities large and small, all across the U.S. Some cities, like New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, have received dozens of Pulitzers.

My favorite trivia question: what's the largest city in America which has NEVER had a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper? And what's the second-largest?

You used to be able to answer these questions with the World Almanac (which came from Pulitzer's New York World). Unfortunately, they have stopped publishing the list of past Pulitzer Prizes.

Shame on the World Almanac for throwing that history away. And shame on San Antonio and Columbus (answers to those trivia questions above) for having such wretchedly bad newspapers.

4. Disappearing Gas Stations. In an article about the shortage of oil refineries, Daniel Gross (Moneybox) went on to bemoan the loss of gas stations in Manhattan:

In New York, the least obtrusive component of the petroleum supply chain.the neighborhood gas station.is an endangered species. Nearly 20 percent of Manhattan's gas stations have disappeared since 1999, according to Monday's New York Times. And it's getting worse. Gotham's remaining gas stations are generally located on the far East or West sides.formerly commercial and industrial areas with easy access for delivery trucks and motorists. But these are precisely the areas that savvy builders are now seeking to develop. The gas station I used to frequent, on a run-down corner at 92nd Street and First Avenue, was demolished last summer to make way for a 32-story hotel/apartment building.

That struck me as remarkably uninformed about the consolidation of oil retailing, so I wrote the following:

Subject: Why there are fewer gas stations
From: Polygon
Date:Jun 10 2004 11:02AM

Moneybox comments on the decline in the number of gas stations in Manhattan. However, that trend is everywhere, not just in NYC, and it is not primarily due to competing land uses.

In the old days, there were lots of independently owned gas stations everywhere. Not any more — not even in places which have plenty of commercial road frontage available.

The business of selling gasoline to motorists has a very narrow profit margin. To sell sufficient volume and minimize staff costs, you need massive investment in a battery of automated self-service pumps, and a very specific type of high-traffic location.

Most 1960s and 1970s gas stations were in the wrong places for this, and their costs were too high. The economic censuses document a steep decline in the number of gas stations nationally and in almost every local area. Everywhere on commercial strips, you can recognize the shapes of those sturdy 1970s gas stations, now converted to restaurants or car dealerships or other uses.

For consumers, there is more limited choice, and a longer drive to the nearest fueling outlet, but lower prices and round-the-clock availability. Driving father is an environmental negative, but with fewer and better-run sites, there is less likelihood of gasoline leaking from tanks into ground water, and fewer neighborhood externalities.

Indeed, in most communities, the heavy traffic which is an economic prerequisite for siting a new gas station has probably already driven out anyone who might have objected to it being built.

5. Jackson, the Whigs, Slavery, and the Civil War. Fred Siegel's piece When History Meets Politics contained so many dubious assertions that it was vigorously disputed by the author of the book he praised. I was involved in the Fray debate to rebut other dubious ideas about mid-19th century America. Here are three postings:

Subject: RE: Jackson Vs. Industrial America
From: Polygon
Date: Dec 12 2005 5:29PM

First of all, the influence of abolitionists is being gigantically overstated here. Prior to the war, there were never more than 1% in the North who favored immediate abolition of slavery. No matter how evil slavery looks to us in retrospect, at the time, respect for property rights was held very high, and no one wanted to be responsible for the expropriation of a huge amount of Southern "property". Abolitionism was not a mainstream idea.

In the political rhetoric of the 1850s, to be "anti-slavery" meant to be opposed to the then-potent political influence of the slaveholders. It was roughly the equivalent of someone today who might self-describe as anti-oil-industry or anti-pharmaceutical industry, who (if mainstream) certainly isn't advocating that all the refineries or drug labs be destroyed.

It is absolutely misplaced to describe the Whigs as abolitionists; after all, many of them owned slaves. The Whig Party was a coalition of critics and complainers who were out of power most of the time and agreed on little. Whig candidates for president got elected by taking no positions on anything for fear of straining the creaky coalition. The Whig Party became a political home to critics of the slaveholders, but they also helped alienate the Southern wing and break up the party.


Subject: No, those were distinct
From: Polygon
Date: Dec 13 2005 2:03AM

The idea of confining slavery to the South and hoping for its eventual disappearance should not be confused with abolitionism.

Today, an environmentalist who says we should work to eventually reduce greenhouse gas emissions could be considered mainstream. But one who says greenhouse gas emissions should all stop NOW would be dismissed as a wacko.

There's a romantic fallacy that the North went to war to destroy slavery, parallel to that other romantic fallacy that the U.S. went to war with Nazi Germany to save the Jews of Europe. These are widely believed, but no serious historian takes either one seriously.


Subject: RE: No, those were distinct
From: Polygon
Date: Dec 13 2005 1:09PM

For decades prior to 1860, presidents had been figures who were allied with or deferential to the power and interests of the slaveholders in the South. Southern leaders were accustomed to this deference.

The ascension of Lincoln was a departure from this. Lincoln was also elected on a protectionist platform which was economically threatening to the South, dependent as it was on the cotton trade with Europe.

Lincoln was no friend of slavery, but he was not an abolitionist. He never would have been nominated or elected if he were. Operationally, his "anti-slavery" (like that of other mainstream politicos up through 1860) consisted of confronting the political power of the slaveholders on issues peripheral to slavery itself: expansion into the territories, handling of fugitive slaves, etc.

Absolutely, protecting and justifying slavery were central to secessionist rhetoric. Yes, it would be fair to argue that the South began the war in part to protect slavery. But the North's military response was intended to protect the Union, not to get rid of slavery.

Lincoln is revered as the Great Emancipator, and it is a common misconception to retroactively think of him as an abolitionist in the 1860 campaign or even earlier. You're misreading those debates and speeches if you believe this. What might seem 140 years later like mincing little distinctions carried huge weight at the time.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, May 28, 2007, 8:09 pm

On this day three decades ago, a northern Kentucky nightclub was destroyed in one of the worst fires in American history.

When my wife was growing up in Northern Kentucky, one of her high school graduation events was held at the Beverly Hills Supper Club, in Southgate (just a few miles south of Cincinnati). It was a nightclub and a familiar venue for high school proms, wedding receptions, and so on. Many famous performers appeared there over the years.

The original building was built in 1937, but it had been greatly expanded over the years with little or no safety inspection or enforcement. It postdated Prohibition, but locals thought of it as an old speakeasy, and it was said to be a headquarters for illegal gambling.

On May 28, 1977, a fire broke out in the building, apparently caused by faulty aluminum wiring. The cheap building materials burned rapidly and generated toxic fumes. In the vast, crowded Cabaret Room, the exits were unmarked and access to them was constricted.

About two thousand people escaped from the building that night, but 165 died — most of them in the Cabaret Room.

Until last year, I had not known about Walter Bailey, a teenage busboy who saved hundreds of lives. More than a thousand people were packed into the Cabaret Room, watching a comedy act, unaware of the fire raging at the other end of the building. Bailey ran down the long hallway, jumped on stage, grabbed a microphone, warned the audience to evacuate, and pointed out the exits. Most of the crowd did escape safely. Two minutes after Bailey's warning, fire and thick smoke exploded into the room.

Wikipedia has an article about the fire. There's an edit war still going on over whether the fire that burst into the Cabaret Room was a backdraft or a flashover.

The location of the Supper Club (at the end of a long driveway some distance back from the road) has never been built on. Some rubble still remains there. There has been some agitation for a memorial at the site. Survivors and families are gathering there today to observe the anniversary.

Three years ago, when I first posted about the fire in my blog, I started a QuickTopic comment page. That board now contains comments from quite a few people who experienced the disaster either directly or indirectly.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Tuesday, May 22, 2007, 12:56 pm

Mulberry, 1991-2007.

Mulberry was a small black-and-white tuxedo cat who came to us in 1991, when Katie Geddes found her as a tiny, motherless kitten on her farm near Grass Lake, Michigan.

Back in 1990-91, on M-Net (local Unix-based conferencing system), "mulberry" was an anonymous writer, also known as "Thisbe Alcestis". Mulberry fascinated us all with postings of original poetry, often done as commentary on M-Net happenings and people. The real identity of Mulberry was a much-speculated-upon mystery. Some of us had figured it out by the time this kitten came along, and so it was natural to endow her with the name of the secret alter ego of the woman who had given her to us.

Even some time after that, I remember when John Perry, one of the M-Net board members, disclaiming knowledge of who was writing the mulberry postings, declared that as far as he was concerned, "Mulberry is Larry Kestenbaum's cat."

Being motherless, Mulberry grew up a bit undersocialized. The arrival of another, older cat in our household seemed to help her mellow out a bit, but she was always feisty about being crossed, and very shy or skittish with strangers; she never fully trusted anyone besides me and Janice.

We still have around our house a number of those plastic rings (about an inch-plus in diameter) from the tops of plastic milk jugs. Mulberry liked to play a game with these. She bring one of these rings to me or Janice and mew, in a particular warbling way, for us to throw them across the room. She would chase after the ring, sometimes knocking it around in a frenzy, and finally capture it. Then she did a very clever cat thing: she would put her paw down on one side of the little hoop, so that the other side rotated upward, and grasp the rising edge in her mouth. She would triumphantly bring the ring back, drop it within our reach, and mew for it to be thrown again.

I don't think she played the ring toss game in the last year or so of her life, but she was still doing it from time to time even as a fairly old cat.

Some cats engage in habits which become almost ritualized, and no cat I have known was more into this than Mulberry. When she was a young cat, she got into habit of attacking me every night about 11 pm. I came to dread this, but I also knew that once it happened, it was over for the night.

Much later, when we would confine her to our room for feeding (to keep the other cats from eating the medicine in her food), she would take a few bites of food, then urgently demand to be let out of the room. Let out, she would wander into the living room and back for no apparent reason, then return to our room to finish the meal. She did this day in and day out for quite a while.

All her life, Mulberry never liked it when somebody made the bed, and would remain on the bed, mewing insistently, while we tried to straighten the sheets and pull up the covers.

Mulberry was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease some years ago, and was treated with prednisone. Cats tolerate steroids much better than humans do, and as long as she had her medicine, she was fine. On occasion, she would lose her appetite and hence not get the medicine, and her condition would further suppress her appetite until she was dehydrated. So we would pack her off to the veterinarian, who would inject some prednisone, and she'd be fine again.

But when Janice came home Friday evening, Mulberry was considerably sicker than usual, and was extremely weak and passive. She barely even bothered to object when put in the cat carrier and taken to the veterinary ER.

It turned out that in addition to being dehydrated and unable to keep food down, she was jaundiced and in liver failure. Possibly she had liver cancer (quite common among cats), or possibly it was a side effect of the prednisone. Either way, any treatment would be difficult, invasive, expensive, and of dubious usefulness. We had to euthanize her.

It's ironic that the same medication which kept her alive these last seven years may have destroyed her liver. Former U.S. Senator Paul Tsongas had a similar fate. Even "miracle" drugs can carry a downside.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Friday, May 18, 2007, 3:48 pm

Short notes:

  • My daughter Sarah (age 8) received her black belt in karate (Tae Kwan Do) last Saturday.

  • Also on Saturday, at the Ann Arbor Democratic Party meeting, I finally met Juan Cole, University of Michigan professor and internationally famed blogger on Middle East issues.

  • On Tuesday, I testified before the Michigan House Elections and Ethics Committee, arguing (1) in favor of students voting in college towns, where they spend most of their time and are counted by the Census for representation purposes, (2) against a proposed bill that would break the connection between driver's license addresses and voter registration addresses, and (3) in favor of amending the law to allow all voters (but particularly students) to have a separate mailing address in addition to their physical residence address. This is done anyway for the homeless and for people who insist on it, so why not open the option to everyone, and regularize it as part of the management of voter and driver lists?

  • Also on Tuesday, blogger Hugh Stimson had some flattering things to say about me and my blog.

  • Last night, we attended the taping of the NPR radio news quiz Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor.

  • Today is the 80th anniversary of the Bath school disaster, when an angry and paranoid school board member put explosives under the school and killed 45 people. I grew up near where this happened.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, May 3, 2007, 6:26 pm

The Lost Convention. Congress proposed the 21st Amendment (repeal of Prohibition) in 1933, and specified that ratification would be through state conventions rather than state legislatures.

Michigan was the first state to act. The ratification convention was scheduled for April 10. Delegates, elected only a week earlier, voted 99-1 to ratify the repeal amendment.

Unlike other state elections and conventions, none of this was documented in the 1933 Michigan Manual. In 1951, a fire at the state archives destroyed most of the records.

The election and convention has sunk into such obscurity that people knowledgeable in Michigan political history had never heard of it. I myself didn't know about it until I came across it in a 1933 newspaper. Of course, I wanted to collect the information for Political Graveyard.

Over the last few months, I gathered data from county and state archives, and from newspapers published at the time. I'm delighted to report that I now have all the delegate and candidate names. I didn't try to collect and reconcile the vote totals.

Here's the report: Delegates to Michigan Convention to Ratify 21st Amendment.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, April 30, 2007, 6:33 pm

Our presidential primary.

It's time I wrote something about the scuffle over whether Michigan will hold a presidential primary.

I spent much of Friday and Saturday in Gaylord at the statewide county clerks' conference, where this was a big topic of discussion. The county clerks as a group are opposed to holding a presidential primary, but they are starting to be resigned to the fact that it's likely to happen.

This is a complicated story, so I'll break it down into just a few points:

(1) No "open" primary. Selection of delegates to national party conventions is governed by national party rules. Democratic national rules require that any presidential preference primary or caucus be limited to people willing to call themselves Democrats, or at least, people who are participating in the Democratic primary.

That's no problem in most states, where people register by party to participate in primaries, or openly choose a Democratic or Republican primary ballot. But it doesn't work in Michigan, which allows voters to choose a party primary in the privacy of the voting booth.

One of the events which precipitated this rule was the 1972 Michigan presidential primary, which was won by George Wallace. It was clear from the geographic distribution of results that a great many Republicans, seeing no contest in their own party primary, had "crossed over" to give Wallace a win that was seen as not the expression of Michigan Democrats.

Similarly, in 2000, many Democrats voted in the Republican presidential primary, boosting John McCain to a win over George W. Bush. Among self-identified Republicans, Bush won, but they were swamped by non-Republicans, and all the votes counted the same.

The 2000 crossover vote was especially large because there were no Democratic candidates on the ballot. Rather than participate in the primary, Michigan Democrats held a caucus, essentially a party-run election. More on that below.

(2) A new primary law is proposed. Last December, the Democratic and Republican state party chairs seemed to have come up with a joint proposal for a presidential primary law. The plan (which didn't work) was to sneak the bill through the legislature in the last days of 2006. The text of the bill was kept secret, but eventually the details leaked out.

This bill has never actually been introduced, but it's still the only proposal on the table. Knowledgeable lobbyists expect that, quite soon, it will suddenly come screaming out of committee and be voted through the House and Senate in a matter of hours.

The proposal contemplates a presidential primary, on a date to be determined jointly by the party chairs, but probably February 5, 2008. It will be choice-of-ballot primary — voters will have to openly request a Democratic or Republican primary ballot. However, the written list would be kept secret from everyone except the state party organizations.

(3) Republicans know they're in a pickle. Republicans are pushing the presidential primary, and are ready to make the compromises needed to make it happen, because they have nowhere else to go. They have never run a mass participation statewide caucus, and are not very interested in devoting the millions of dollars in party resources it would take to do so.

If the law is totally unchanged, a Republican-candidates-only presidential primary will take place February 26 or so. Assuming it's not rendered irrelevant by earlier events, gleeful Democrats will be free to take part. This prospect does not excite Republican leaders.

(4) Democrats DON'T know they're in a pickle. Democrats are in a strong negotiating position, not just because the Republicans are desperate, but because the party leadership mistakenly thinks they're "ready" to hold a caucus on Saturday, February 9th.

Three years ago, the Michigan Democratic caucus was saved from being a train wreck by becoming irrelevant, so that only activists took part. Had Howard Dean not withdrawn a few days earlier, there is no possible way that the party could have handled a serious turnout.

Just for example, there were just 18 caucus sites in all of Washtenaw County — compared with about 164 voting precincts. Some of those 18 sites would have been overwhelmed with as many as 10,000 or 20,000 voters — in the very compressed time frame of just a few hours. In terms of facilities, parking, supplies, volunteers, there's just no way that could work. And Washtenaw was probably one of the better organized counties. Statewide, we could have had at least hundreds of thousands of people giving up, frustrated and angry.

Yes, there was Internet voting available, but didn't work well either. An estimated 72,000 people tried and failed to cast a ballot that way. A better implementation would help, but I hear nothing from the party about lessons learned from last time. (And of course Internet voting is feasible ONLY because there's no secret ballot in the caucus.)

(5) Joining the crowd. February 5th is turning into a nearly national primary. On the one hand, how important could Michigan be if we're voting on the same day as California, New York, etc.? On the other hand, "Super Duper Tuesday" will get wall-to-wall media coverage, and our voters are going to want to take part.

I'm saying this in response to county clerks who predict public outrage over "wasting" $10 million in scarce state dollars on the primary. I'm guessing there will be greater outrage if it turns out that Michigan ISN'T taking part in what may be seen as a national presidential election.

(6) Choice of ballot. Michiganders are used to the "open" primary system, so the choice-of-ballot system is likely to face some hostility. Opponents, including some the county clerks, darkly predict that voters will revolt at having to tell which primary they're voting in, and will yell at or even assault precinct workers.

But it's pretty silly to call choice-of-ballot "un-American" when most of America has been doing it for years.

There are bad memories of the last two-party presidential primary, in 1992, but in that case, advance registration of party preference was required — and those party preferences were painstakingly collected from voters for a couple of years. But then both parties changed the rules in the week or so before the primary, creating a lot of confusion.

(6) The secret lists. The presidential primary proposal (as it currently seems to stand) would immensely complicate election administration by requiring that those choice-of-ballot decisions, once announced in the polling place, would be written down and kept secret from everyone but the parties themselves.

In other words, there would be three poll lists in every precinct. One would be the poll book for the names of all the voters; one would be the list of Democratic primary voters, and one would be the list of Republican primary voters.

The local clerks would be required to transmit the Democratic and Republican lists to the county clerk, and destroy all other copies. The county clerks would then transmit these lists to the secretary of state (retaining no copies), and the secretary of state would send them to the Democratic and Republican state party chairs. The lists would be non-public records exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Many problems arise with this.

Ballots are serially numbered, and the ballot number (which appears on the tear-off stub) is recorded in the poll book for each voter. This is necessary to account for used, unused, and spoiled ballots. But presumably the Democratic ballots would be numbered in a different range than the Republican ballots? It would then be obvious who had which ballot from the poll book, which has to be public as part of the transparency of the election process. Any solution to this is going to involve vast trouble for election administration.

Some people will apply for absentee ballots. How will clerks know which ballot to send them? If the absentee ballot application includes a line about which party ballot to send, will they make the application also non-public? Concern for the purity of elections (guarding against absentee ballot fraud) ought to foreclose that. If the clerk sends both ballots, what happens if the voter marks and returns both?

In any case, if the law provides that the information is revealed to the party chairmen but not anyone else, expect some litigation. That might tie up the process in further knots, and make it even less likely that presidential candidates will regard Michigan as a good place to invest time and attention.

(7) Robo-calls. Critics point out that the parties will use their secret lists of names for robo-calling, which of course they will. So perhaps the same bill will be made more appealing and more unstoppable by adding a provision that prohibits political (or any other) robocalls. Arguably that would be unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds, but Indiana's law has been upheld so far.

Stay tuned for more developments!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Thursday, March 29, 2007, 11:37 pm

"Political Graveyard" in the New York Times, 1851-2006.

As creator of the web site by that name, I'm always interested in clues about how the phrase "political graveyard" was popularized. This evening, I tried doing a search for the phrase in the New York Times archive, and turned up some interesting stuff.

Though "political cemetery" shows up as early as 1858 (and then not again for decades), the phrase "political graveyard" did not start to appear in the Times until the 1870s.

Based on what I found, two 19th century American political figures played significant roles in making "political graveyard" a common term: Henry L. Clinton and Thomas C. Platt.

Clinton was a New York City politician who (at least according to the articles in the Times) was noted for readily changing his political stripes. In February 1872, he made a speech denouncing Tammany Hall's power in Democratic politics. So, when he became an ally of Tammany, excerpts from his old speech were quoted in New York Times articles in 1875 and 1878 (emphasis added in all quotes):

The Sachems [Tammany Hall leaders] invite the Democracy [Democratic Party] to wear the threadbare, cast-off political garments of Tweed and Sweeny: to steep themselves in dishonor; to wear the garlands of political infamy, and to enjoy the hospitable entertainment of a political graveyard.

Perhaps influenced by that speech, which must have been printed in other papers for the Times to be able to quote from it word for word three years later, an Iowa newspaper editor (quoted in the Times) used the phrase in an August 1875 campaign dispatch:

These reports are not from one or two locations alone, but are general; and while all is zeal and animation in the Republican ranks, the funeral cortege of Democracy [Democratic Party] slowly wends its way to the political graveyard of annihilation and oblivion.

Though it postdated the 1872 speech, this Iowa report was apparently the first time the phrase "political graveyard" appeared in print in the New York Times (August 18, 1875).

But after these three occurrences, there was nothing more of the term in the New York Times for more than a dozen years.

"Political graveyard" returned to the news in 1888, and there were fourteen articles using the term in the fifteen years from 1888 to 1903. Of these, one was about the British House of Lords; the rest are about American politics.

And in all but two of these, "political graveyard" is used to refer to what happens to the careers of politicians who disobey New York State Republican boss Thomas C. Platt.

The first one, in December 1888, was about Platt's irritation over his scant chances of being appointed to the Cabinet by president-elect Benjamin Harrison:

The succeeding of any other New-York man will not compensate Platt, who could not get a substitute who would as effectively fill up his political graveyard as he would himself.

A little later, in 1890, a column or editorial, titled "The Assassin Method", denounces Platt and his control of the New York Republican Party, saying:

He has two instruments with which he does his work-- the corruption fund and the political graveyard. He rules through cupidity and fear, and appeals to the meanest motives of the human soul.

The next reference, from May 1890, is an article about the Republican state committee doing Platt's bidding:

The object was to denounce Hamilton Fish, Jr., and Frederick S. Gibbs for their treachery to the party during the session of the Legislature, and to warn all who acted with them that they are marked for slaughter labeled for PLATT'S private political graveyard.

Another article, soon after, refers to the same purge in similar terms:

Mr. Platt has enlarged the area of his political graveyard, and has left marked places for Messrs. Gibbs, Fish, and the eight or ten other Republicans who stood by them.

Still another editorial in 1891 denouncing Platt:

Any Republican who sought advancement by nomination for office or by official appointment would have to discard all independence, sink his self-respect, and become wholly subsurvient to the Platt machine. If he presumed to oppose or to question the decrees of the Boss he would be consigned to the political graveyard, and only the sordid and submissive would be admitted to the rewards of party activity.

A politician named Milholland opposed Platt, in April 1894, so:

Into his political graveyard Platt proposes to put the doughty Milholland.

A piece in January 1895 chronicles a brief moment of magnaminity during Platt's earlier rise to power:

He finally abandoned his political graveyard and declared a general amnesty to all who had been at war against him.

In June 1896, Platt's propensity for revenge is cited again:

Mr. Platt keeps a political graveyard in which there are said to be many unoccupied plots.

In August 1896, apparently he had a scare:

Platt's friends took the alarm, and the "boss" himself seems to have had visions of the spooks that might troop from his political graveyard with substantial knives in their voluminous sleeves.

It wasn't until July, 1900 (for the first time since 1878), that the term "political graveyard" was used in a New York Times article about American politics unconnected to Tom Platt. It was in a quote from an unnamed Democrat critical of William Jennings Bryan:

"If we make a mistake," said an Indiana man of great experience in party conventions, "this will be but a funeral march to a political graveyard."

Many of these uses of "political graveyard" are in quotations or editorials rather than in the Times' own reportorial prose. None of the quotations are from Platt himself, but I'm guessing that he must have used the phrase frequently, given the way it stuck to him for so long.

There's a further oddity. The Times uses "political graveyard" 21 times from 1900 through 1937. Then, it disappears, with no mention for more than a dozen years. Was it out of fashion, or perhaps banned by the newspaper's style book?

Hodding Carter brought "political graveyard" back to the Times in June 1950, with a Times Magazine article about Southern politics. The term has appeared in 45 articles since 1950 -- most recently (October 1, 2006) in reference to my web site.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Tuesday, March 20, 2007, 12:11 am

Buttermilk for the gamblers? From the New York Times, December 4, 1951:

Sometimes surprise attacks from completely unsuspected quarters briefly embarrassed the syndicate ... On the night of July 2, 1943, operatives of the Office of Defense Transportation in New York trailed a fleet of cars to a syndicate dice house in Fort Lee [New Jersey], two blocks north of the New Jersey end of the [George Washington] bridge.

The Defense Transportation men were not concerned with the dice playing at all. They had just followed the cars in a routine check on gasoline rationing, and were a little astonished when it developed that they had joined a caravan of New York dice players being conveyed to Bergen [County, New Jersey] as syndicate guests. Since the wartime regulation provided no extra gas ration for sporting gentlemen, they picked up the drivers.

Before this story got into the papers, the syndicate quietly folded its dice equipment and reopened next night in adjoining Cliffside [New Jersey]. The Prosecutor and his staff were in a spot because they had not been warned. All they found in the place was fifteen empty milk bottles and some gaming slips. Dice players incline to ulcers because the game induces tension, and the understanding syndicate always supplied milk and buttermilk for them.

I came across this while looking up information on corrupt New Jersey mayors for The Political Graveyard.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, March 19, 2007, 11:36 pm

A note about presidential politics. I generally prefer to focus my time and attention on local rather than national politics. Still, the presidential race sets the tone for everything else, and I can't help but have opinions about it.

I've been saying for some time that I don't expect any of the four "front-runners" (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani) to be their party's nominees for president.

That prediction is looking pretty good right now, notwithstanding the old saw that Republicans always nominate their front-runner. McCain is fading fast, and it is inconceivable that the Republicans will nominate someone as liberal on social issues as Giuliani. Meanwhile, Obama (appealing but untested) and Clinton (heavy baggage and weak speaking skills) seem to be focused on one-upping each other.

John Edwards looks better and better. He's already been through a national campaign, and shows strong signs of having learned from the experience. He has come up with well-thought-out specifics on a number of issues, notably health care. So, I might as well say it, I'm supporting Edwards.

I'm usually pretty cautious about future elections, and a lot can change in the next year and a half. Still, George W. Bush retains enormous influence in the Republican process. A recent poll shows that GWB has 75% support in his own party: a feeble number by historical standards, but a commanding number for intraparty skirmishes. Hence, it will be impossible for next year's Republican presidential nominee to distance himself very far from the miserable failure in the White House.

We Democrats have managed to blow huge advantages in presidential elections before, but I'm guessing that won't happen this time.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 10:42 am

Last Saturday in Otsego. My friend David John Alway (1950-2007) was a big, brilliant, awkward guy from a family of big, brilliant, awkward guys. His resemblance to the Cowardly Lion was often remarked upon.

According to one of his brothers, a personality analysis once accurately characterized Dave to be both "workaholic" and "rebel". He accommodated those two sides of himself by strict compartmentalization: during the week he was a corporate drone for Upjohn (one-time pharmaceutical giant) in Kalamazoo, Michigan; on weekends, he participated in science fiction conventions, writing, and especially music (the folkish "filk" music of that community, heavy on parodies and sf-literary references).

Long before I met Dave, I knew him through a personal zine he published, the North American Therianthropic Journal (circulation, I think, equal to the 25 members of an amateur publishing association). With desktop publishing magic available to few at the time, he hugely outdid my own pseudo-pompous Proceedings of the Institute for Obscure Studies (a takeoff on the "Institute for Advanced Studies" at Princeton), which was collated together with his and others for distribution.

The therianthropy of his title was quite serious, however. Dave's passion was for half-human mythological beasts such as centaurs and mermaids, extending even to the risqué possibilities.

He was the kind of engineer who finds delight in Legos and wooden trains and other such interesting toys. And you'd better not have been in a hurry if you asked Dave to explain something. I heard that on one long car trip, he spent many hours recounting for his fellow passengers the entire history of the federal highway system.

I was baffled by his politics. He called himself a Democrat (and even donated to the Democratic National Committee), but he was an extreme Libertarian on every issue we argued. Or perhaps he was putting me on.

When I moved to Ann Arbor from Ithaca, N.Y. on a very hot day in the summer of 1990, Dave was one of the folks who showed up to help us unload the truck, though Janice became very concerned that Dave was over-exerting his ponderous frame in the heat.

Some time in the 90s, the takeover or collapse of Upjohn left Dave with early retirement; he and one of his brothers moved several miles north of Kalamazoo to the small town of Otsego, Michigan.

Dave's house includes a long common room with a high, peaked ceiling. And this space became a venue for regular, all-day gatherings of SF-community musicians and singers. I was invited to each one, but to my regret, I never made it out to Otsego while Dave was alive.

When Dave died from a heart attack last January, one such event had already been scheduled for Saturday, March 10. The family (which is to say, Dave's siblings) decided to go ahead with the gathering "To Commemorate Dave's Love of the Arts" (as the invitation stated).

On Saturday, there were, oh, some fifty people in attendance, some from as far away as Chicago or Pittsburgh, or as close as Kalamazoo. There were several of us from Ann Arbor.

The "traditional" memorial service, starting at 1:30 pm, consisted of Dave's siblings speaking about their departed brother, the audience sitting in rows of chairs. Around 2:30 pm, food was set out, the chairs were rearranged into approximately a circle, and playing cards were distributed. I received the four of clubs.

The first suit was Hearts, and the holders of the cards were called on by the concert mistress in numerical order. Many of the guests had brought musical instruments and sometimes even their own compositions, often parodies or on science fiction themes. Others sang a capella or karaoke style, or did readings. Most of them were quite good.

Newcomers had been cautioned at the outset to respond with (at least) polite enthusiasm to each and every performer, because "those who are excellent now used to be not-so-excellent, and those who are not-so-excellent will, in time, become excellent."

When my card was called, I swallowed my misgivings, stood up, and recited Poe's "The Raven" from memory. It seemed the right thing to do under the circumstances.

Around six o'clock, when the cards had run out, many pizzas appeared, and there was a lengthy break for dinner. Afterwards, the group reconvened in the circle, the cards were redistributed, and the game began again, albeit more somberly.

Some links:

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Friday, February 16, 2007, 2:33 pm

Working Cats. From the New York Times obituary of former Boston mayor and U.S. Secretary of Labor, Maurice Tobin, July 20, 1953:

As mayor of Boston, Mr. Tobin concentrated on nursing a virtually bankrupt city back to financial health and even reduced the appropriation covering milk for the two official cats in the public library. He won a reputation as an honest Mayor and defeated Mr. Curley again in 1941 for re-election by 9,000 votes.

So, as of 1941, if you believe the Times, the Boston Public Library had resident cats who were a line item in the city budget.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, February 12, 2007, 7:35 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

Today is the 198th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. I'm guessing we'll be hearing a lot more about him as we get closer to his 200th.

Lincoln was a lawyer; since he traveled a great deal for his practice, the county clerks and court clerks of Illinois (our long-ago predecessors) surely had a lot of contact with him during his career. From accounts of people who knew him, he didn't look majestic or impressive. Elihu Washburne wrote:

No one who saw him can forget his personal appearance at that time. Tall, angular and awkward, he had on a short-waisted, thin swallow-tail coat, a short vest of the same material, thin pantaloons, scarcely coming to his ankles, a straw hat and a pair of brogans with woolen socks.

No doubt some of the court clerks he dealt with regarded him with pity or contempt. But this awkward and poorly dressed young man went on to become the greatest president in American history.

There's no telling which of our customers might one day do great things. Indeed, some of them already have. Washtenaw County has more than its share of residents who have written novels, invented tools, discovered medicines, composed music, engineered bridges, or advanced human knowledge and progress in a myriad of ways.

And even if they haven't become nationally prominent in their fields, a great many more are unsung heroes for their devotion to their families, for overcoming personal handicaps, for healing the sick, for fighting fires and crime, for fixing our great networks of pipes and wires and roads, for service in our military, for helping make this a great community.

Sometimes we know our customers and the things they have helped make possible through their lives and work. More often, we don't know just how much someone has done. And they themselves don't know how much they will ultimately do for the country, for the community, even for us as individuals.

Treating each and every customer with courtesy and respect is a small but important way to show our appreciation for all those past and future contributions.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, February 5, 2007, 11:00 am

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

Most local schools are closed today. This took us by surprise. As my wife said, "Don't kids go to school in Minnesota?"

Kids go to school through the winter even in the Yukon. But here in Ann Arbor, the prospect of children walking a mile to school when the wind chill is 25 degrees below zero seemed like not such a good idea. Moreover, I hear that a lot of school buses wouldn't start this morning.

The implacable chemistry of lead-acid batteries and low temperatures affects us all: my car was slow to start, too. But if you're reading this today, you're in the office anyway, and I appreciate it.

Yes, it's below zero outside, and drafty in some of our offices. Our cars are encrusted with ice and salt, and our hands ache from the cold. The papers and radio and TV are full of grim news at the local, state, and national level.

But the sun is shining, and so are the faces of the customers who appreciate our being here to serve their needs.

If you were cheering for the Colts yesterday, congratulations on the win.

Let's think positive, and have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Thursday, January 11, 2007, 10:20 pm

Ann Arbor News Commends Ron Suarez Blog. Today's lead editorial in the Ann Arbor news praises one of our newest city council members for blogging, and mentions other local political blogs:

Ann Arbor's Suarez makes Web an asset: Input, interaction improves government

One of the newest Ann Arbor City Council members is using technology in a way that shouldn't, at this point, be unique - but is.

Ron Suarez, elected to represent the First Ward last year, is a tech entrepreneur who's also a bit of an evangelist for using the Internet to promote public discourse. He has morphed his campaign Web site - ronsuarez.com - into a place that lets constituents know what issues the council is considering, and what his thoughts are on those issues.

Recent posts, for example, discuss the proposed merging of two city advisory boards, financing for the Broadway Village at Lower Town project and a proposal for city-owned land across from the YMCA.

Suarez also posts excerpts from e-mails he's received that add context to the discussion, and the blog format allows anyone to comment on these postings and to read others' comments. You can search the site if you're looking for something in particular, or browse through comments by category.

For anyone who traverses the Internet and its many blogs - including local ones like Arbor Update - this will look very familiar. Some local officials, like Washtenaw County Administrator Bob Guenzel, put up regular messages on the Web. You can contact him by e-mail or phone, but there's no place to put public comments for all to read.

Chelsea City Manager Mike Steklac and Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum have personal blogs that usually focus on local issues and include comments from readers.

Still, it's unusual to find a council member, mayor, county commissioner or other elected representative who uses the Web like Suarez does, as a tool for input and broader interaction in decision-making.

One issue with this type of communication is that it relies on having Internet access, and those who don't have it can't participate. As access becomes ubiquitous, as TV and radio did, that won't remain a problem. Nearly all public libraries provide opportunities to go online.

While it shouldn't replace interaction in person or by phone, using the Web to inform and engage residents is a great way to improve our local government. Kudos to Suarez for leading the way.

And kudos to the News for paying attention to the local political blogs.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Tuesday, January 2, 2007, 10:44 pm

Another side of Jerry Ford. This afternoon, I saw a big jet fly over downtown Ann Arbor, east to west, at what seemed like a dangerously low altitude. I didn't know it until later, but it was Air Force One, carrying the remains of ex-President Gerald R. Ford back to Grand Rapids. According to a radio report, they paused en route to buzz Michigan Stadium.

Update: The proprietor of Daddy Zine also noticed the jet. On Jan. 2, he wrote: "Air Force One just flew over my house at an altitude of, like, twelve feet. My guess is they were giving Gerald Ford one last look at the University of Michigan Stadium."

The news media have been full of adoring stories about the now-deceased former president, and indeed, he was an admirably unassuming guy who ended up in the White House without having spent his life fighting to get there.

Unlike most of my friends, I never held the pardon of Richard Nixon against him. My reaction at the time, and ever since, was somewhat along the lines of that scene in the movie Dr. Zhivago when word comes that the Czar has been shot. One of the characters essentially shrugs and says, well, it had to happen.

On New Year's Eve, a friend suggested to me that this reverential treatment of the Richard Nixon Pardon was intended to prepare the public and a future president for the upcoming George W. Bush Pardon — a wrinkle which had not occurred to me.

In any case, for me, the counterpoint to the recent Jerry Ford hagiography that stuck in my mind was not the pardon, but a story from about 18 months earlier.

In the spring of 1973, my friend Aubrey Marron was a senior at Lowell High School, in Ford's congressional district. Her government teacher (let's call him Mr. Smith), a Republican and an admirer of Congressman Ford, induced him to come to speak at the school.

All of the school's seniors were released from class to attend an assembly with Ford. Mr. Smith was the master of ceremonies. During the question and answer session, he wouldn't call on Aubrey, whose left-wing politics he was familiar with, but not all of the questions were friendly.

A transfer student from Yugoslavia asked a question about U.S. policy toward that country, and Ford went on somewhat harshly about "Soviet satellites". The student was becoming visibly upset at this characterization, but Ford didn't notice. Mr. Smith tapped the Congressman on the shoulder and whispered in his ear; Ford then reversed into shameless travelogue mode: "Yugoslavia is such a beautiful country! Why, Betty and I were in Belgrade last spring and ..."

The assembly completed, students were sent to their next class. Aubrey caught up with the Congressman in the hallway and asked him a probably challenging question about his support for the Vietnam War.

Ford, who was much taller than she was, looked down condescendingly, and said: "Don't worry, little girl, we'll take care of your country for you." And he patted her on the head.

"I wanted to kick him," said Aubrey. But she didn't.

The students dispersed to their classes, and it happened that Aubrey's next class was with Mr. Smith, the government teacher. The students sat down at their desks and awaited the teacher. Minutes passed — more minutes passed — and he didn't show up.

Half an hour into the class session, Mr. Smith came into the room looking distressed. "Aubrey, after class, I need to talk to you," he said.

What had happened was this: Ford had asked Mr. Smith for a copy of Aubrey's school record, including her full name and address and the folder containing her grades and so forth. The teacher, appalled, had stood his ground and refused. However, granting or refusing this request was up to the school's main office, and it was never made clear to Aubrey whether or not they complied.

So, what on Earth was Ford doing? When I first heard this story, many years ago, I took it for granted that the Congressman was "taking names" of suspected left-wing agitators, to turn over to some Red Squad. But why just Aubrey, and not the other students who asked pointed questions during the assembly?

Another possibility is that Ford was just playing retail politics as the hometown Congressman, wanting to send Aubrey a good-to-meet-you, thank-you-for-your-concerns kind of letter (not that it would have been well received). But if so, why didn't he ask for just her name and address, rather than her entire school record?

This episode certainly shook up the government teacher, and led those of us who knew the story to see Jerry Ford as a much more sinister figure than popularly supposed.

Today, it would be a huge scandal if a politician attempted such a thing, and anti-stalking laws would probably be invoked. But 1973 was more casual about the privacy of high school students, while political paranoia was just receding from highs we can hardly even imagine nowadays.

I was a high school freshman at the time of the Kent State killings in 1970, and along with millions of others in the antiwar movement, I thought those four deaths were just the beginning of a bloody crackdown on dissenters like us — even high school students. Meanwhile, other millions, seeing threats and disorder in what we thought were peaceful protests, feared an organized effort to overthrow the United States by force and violence.

I do not defend the establishment of Red Squads like the one in Michigan, the use of illegal wiretaps, and the compilation by police of dossiers on millions of law-abiding U.S. citizens, but I'm sure those actions were founded in fear of the violent revolution that was openly discussed on the Left and in popular culture.

Persistent critics of Ford and his presidency have brought up his veto of the common situs picketing bill (following his promise to sign it) and his inept dealings with various dictators.

But back in the fall of 1976, what seemed the final argument against Ford's re-election (persuasive to at least one friend who would otherwise have voted for a third party candidate instead of Carter) was the apparent tolerance for sneering racist views in his administration. Yes, Earl Butz was forced to resign over his infamous joke about "what coloreds want," but only after it was published and became an embarrassment.

Of course, when the funeral bell tolls, most of us are inclined to be more forgiving than vindictive. Jerry Ford was a man of his times, and (yes, as the obits all say) the man the times needed. Coming into the White House without a vast campaign apparatus or a cult of personality, and with Nixon's operatives in place throughout the Executive Branch, his options were severely constrained. I freely concede that he did the best he could as President. May his memory be for a blessing.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Sunday, December 31, 2006, 6:42 pm

Another press clipping. From today's installment in the Ann Arbor News series on the decline in civic engagement:

In November 2005, Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje gave a lecture in his University of Michigan public policy class examining the question, "Is Ann Arbor overrated?"

When a student's account of the class was posted on the weblog Ann Arbor Is Overrated (www.annarborisoverrated.com), it generated some 67 responses, a lively electronic conversation on water quality, affordable housing, and how to pronounce the mayor's name.

Eventually, Hieftje himself chimed in and invited anyone interested in talking face-to-face to meet at Leopold Brothers brewpub. Those who accepted the offer talked with the mayor about affordable housing and alternative energy - and for the record, it's pronounced "HEEF-t-ya."

"That was the kind of thing you have to have," says Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestennbaum, a blogger himself and frequent visitor to Ann Arbor Is Overrated. "One thing I have noticed in connection with some of the local online communities is that these groups are always stronger when there's a way for people to get together and meet each other."

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Saturday, December 30, 2006, 10:00 am

From the Clerk-Register. Message to my staff, sent December 18, containing some family news:

Notes for the Clerk/Register staff:

  1. Last Saturday, my daughter's karate school (Keith Hafner's) sponsored a fundraising event for students to break boards, barehanded. Sarah, age 8, is a karate brown belt, but she had never done this before.

    The concept is that the board symbolizes the obstacles or difficulties in one's own life. Prior to the event, many of the students decorated their boards (substantial pieces of pine, about a foot across and 3/4 inch thick), with words to remind them what they.re trying to overcome. Most of the boards were emblazoned with the word FEAR, but Sarah, who has a temper, put ANGER on hers.

    She broke the board on the first try (click for photos).

  2. In this last week before Christmas, we are seeing people who are more cheerful than usual but also more stressed than usual. Some of our customers are behind on their Christmas shopping and decorating, and rushing to finish everything on time. Others, who have no family nearby to share holidays with, are no doubt feeling lonely or grumpy. Still others are resentful at having to spend time with family they don't get along with. Plus, cold weather and difficult driving conditions sometimes get to everybody.

    Count on it: a lot of those bad feelings will be taken out on us — especially those who staff high-traffic counters like Vital Records or Court Services.

    Nobody enjoys dealing with rude or defiant customers, but it's important to maintain your composure and treat every one with courtesy and respect. Yes, it's sometimes difficult, but in the long run, it can be very satisfying to take pride in your consistent professionalism. I think I can speak for the entire county in expressing my gratitude and admiration for the work you do with customers every day.

  3. "Casual Friday" dress rules apply during the week between Christmas and New Year's.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Friday, December 29, 2006, 11:20 am

Voting absentee. Michigan law currently provides a menu of legal reasons on the absentee ballot application; you have to pick one to be eligible. Most election officials of both parties have long advocated "no-reason" absentee voting. The current system is something of a charade, since anyone can declare that they "plan" to be away from their home city during the election, even if those plans later change.

In the Michigan legislature, this became a partisan issue, with Democrats supporting "no-reason", and Republicans (especially in the Senate leadership) opposing it. Now that Democrats have won control of the House, and gained seats in the Senate, action on no-reason absentee voting is expected. ("Early voting" is a related, but distinct, issue.)

I came across the following editorial in the Kentucky Enquirer (a branch of the Cincinnati Enquirer) on December 22:

The spread of `no-excuse' voting

Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson wants Kentucky to follow Ohio's lead and adopt "no-excuse" absentee voting.

It would increase the number of votes cast, especially in lower-profile races. Ohio set a state elections record this November with absentee ballots accounting for 15 percent of the total. That bests Ohio's previous record of 10.6 percent in 2004. The increase is credited to a new Ohio law that says any qualified voter may request an absentee ballot - without giving a reason. About 14 percent of Hamilton County's voters [Cincinnati area] this time voted absentee.

Kentucky lawmakers should take up Grayson's early-voting plan. There could be negatives such as more risk of vote fraud or delayed vote counts, but these can be overcome.

Healthy democracies depend on a citizenry energized enough to be heard decisively at election time.

Oregon voters in 1998 did away with precinct voting altogether. Vote By Mail saves the cost of voting machines and staffing the polls. Like a take-home test from school, mail-in ballots give voters more time to study the issues and candidates before choosing. Oregon's system with its nonpartisan traditions may not lend itself to bare-knuckle Kentucky politics, but some form of "no-fault" absentee voting could boost voter participation here.

"The biggest advantage is that people would be able to schedule when they vote," says Grayson, a Boone County Republican who filed on Tuesday as a candidate for re-election. The Secretary of State has pushed other election reforms in the legislature, including a stalled bill that would have prohibited automatic "straight-ticket" voting by party.

Current Kentucky law requires that voters seeking to vote early at county clerks' offices or by mail-in ballots must qualified to do so by such reasons as advanced age, disability, military service or attending a school outside the county.

Some lawmakers will resist change for fear of increased vote fraud. A federal grand jury in October indicted a former Bath County Attorney, Donald "Champ" Maze, on charges of buying absentee votes in the primary. A "no-excuse" system might increase the opportunities for fraud.

Other lawmakers may object that a surge in absentee ballots could slow reporting of election results. Ohio's Warren County Board of Elections found the crush of absentee ballots so great that it voted late on election night to go home, with many uncounted. Hamilton County Board of Elections avoided that embarrassment by readying absentee ballots in advance for scanning on election day and by buying additional scanners.

Kentucky county clerks could help lawmakers craft an early-vote plan that's more fraud-proof and less susceptible to counting delays. The General Assembly will need to fund the change, and not just dump an unfunded mandate on county clerks.

States need to do all they can to make voting more convenient in an age of instant, electronic communications.

Though I strongly disagree with the implication of the last sentence that ballots should be transmitted by electronic means, I think Michigan and other states will see no-excuse absentee voting soon.

It sounds like Ohio's no-excuse law led to a 50% increase in the percentage of absentee ballots - from 10.6 to 15 percent. If our law changes, we election officials should be prepared for a similar increase.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Thursday, December 14, 2006, 8:18 pm

Ann Arbor News editorial on Election Technology. The lead editorial in today's Ann Arbor News, titled Michigan's voting system a wise choice, praises Michigan's Secretary of State for choosing the optical scan technology:

Terri Lynn Land is looking pretty smart these days.

Michigan's Secretary of State, re-elected this November to a second term, made a crucial decision when she chose optical scanning as the system for use in Michigan elections. The Nov. 7 general election was the first time in Michigan's history when voters statewide used this type of equipment, and while there were glitches, the process was relatively smooth.

Some other states that opted for touch-screen computer systems haven't fared as well, and now a federal agency has issued a report highly critical of these voting systems.

In the same report released earlier this month, the National Institute of Standards and Technology - a research entity that advises the U.S. Election Assistance Commission - endorsed optical-scan systems like the one used in Michigan, which combines paper ballots and electronic recording of votes.

The NIST report states that the absence of a paper trail causes "continued questions about voting system security and diminished public confidence in elections."

Local officials have also endorsed the optical-scan system used in Michigan. In an essay published in the Nov. 5 edition of The Ann Arbor News, Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum called it "the ideal 'voter-verified paper trail': clear, trustworthy and fully recountable by hand. This is better than punch cards, better than old-style paper ballots and enormously better than unrecountable methods such as mechanical voting machines or touch-screen computers with internal counters.''

Federal lawmakers are expected to introduce legislation next year requiring a voter-verified paper trail. If passed, states that invested in touch-screen technology could be spending even more to modify their systems.

In Michigan, we're already there.

Federal election laws passed in response to the 2000 debacle mandated an ambitiously rapid rollout of new voting devices. Unfortunately, little thought was devoted to how to shape and implement all these new mandates. When you make decisions at breakneck speed, no surprise that some necks get broken — or in this case, a few billion dollars goes misspent.

At least Michigan got it right.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Sunday, December 10, 2006, 11:07 pm

Exchange of letters between Sheriff's Dad and Ypsilanti Police Chief. Here's two more letters about the jail issue that have been widely circulated but not published. My apologies for the delay in getting these online.

Jack Minzey, a former EMU official, is the father of Sheriff Dan Minzey. Matt Harshberger is the Ypsilanti city police chief.

First, the letter from Jack Minzey to Matt Harshberger, responding to his earlier letter (posted here December 2) criticizing the Sheriff:

From: Jack Minzey
To: Matthew Harshberger
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 5:26 PM
Subject: Re: Jail Expansion Proposal

Matt-

I have tried to stay out of the discussions relative to the jail expansion. However, there are some points which I would like to make that are not being widely circulated by you and should be brought to the attention of everyone.

The jail issue must not be confused with the policing issue. Except as Bob Gunzel tries to find funds to expand the jail, they are quite separate issues.

I can understand if you are concerned that you might have been given incorrect information about the money being spent on the expansion costs. However, this should not be the main issue of contention. The issue is not whether the cost is 9 million or 21 million. The issue is, how many beds do we need to adequately meet the needs of our county. The fact is that the jail is currently 100 beds short of their needs. The sheriff is trying to get across the point that 96 beds, to be built in the nex three years, will not meet those needs In fact, if the beds were available tomorrow, you would still face the same situation of lock up because there would still be no room for new prisoners. We are in need of a few hundred beds, and to convince the public that 96 beds will be adequate, is really a public disservice and is going to be casistrophic. The sheriff is trying to get this message out, but no one, including Mr. Gunzel and the Ann Arbor News, is willing to let the public hear of this.

There are a couple of concerns which I have. First, why are you and Gunzel the authorities on the jail in our community rather than the sheriff or the commander of the jail, Capt. Filsinger, who is one of your residents? In fact, even Ronnie Peterson, your county representative, would give you information which does not agree with what you are telling people. Why are you not encouraging the various agencies, service clubs, and the city council to invite those directly responsible for the jail to present their information, which appears to be quite different from yours and Bob Gunzel's?

I am aware that the sheriff has explained this need to you in detail, but unlike the other chiefs in the county, you seem determined to back Mr Gunzel's inadequate proposal. These are some of the facts as I understand them.

  1. They are not spending the 21 million on new beds. Only about 9 million is for new beds. The rest of the money is for renovation and will not help you with your criminal problem.
  2. In the plan, the county administrator will come up with another 10 million bond issue for court houses in two years.

Since the sheriff showed you that plan, you should have understood that the current 21 million will not be for beds and that the court money he was talking about was the money to be spent in a couple of years. Thus, when he said that only 9 million was going to the jail (beds) and more than that was being being proposed for the courts, he ws not lying to you and it was simply a case of misunderstanding on your part.

Why you would allow yourself to be supportive of 96 beds is beyond me. You have seen the professional consultants report which states the jail currently needs 550 beds, and in two years, when this project is complete, it will be far greater than that. We probably need a jail with at leawt 750 beds.

Further confusing to me is that you are supporting a 96 bed increase, to be available in three years, when you have stated to several community groups that you have about 100 criminals from Ypsilalnti alone ewho should be locked up. How do those figures make sense?

Another concern should probably be your concern. You have joined forces with Bob Gunzel, and the Ann Arbor News to push a plan that falls far short of our needs for even the immediate future. A few years from now, when those beds are in place, and we still have about 17 years to pay for them, will you not be the object of peoples disatisfaction when they discover that you, while complaining about the dishonesty of the sheriff's office, were giving people bad information about what was really needed in the expansion of the jail. How will you then be viewed in terms of your leadership and truthfulness?

Jack

Next, the brief response from Matt Harshberger:

From: Matthew Harshberger
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 1:01 PM
To: Jack Minzey
Subject: RE: Jail Expansion Proposal

Hi Jack,

Thank you for voicing your thoughts and/or concerns. Although we apparently have different points of view on many of the issues at hand, we must partner together to do what is best for the Ypsilanti community - using it as our common goal to drive our efforts to improve the overall quality of life in Ypsilanti. I sincerely wish you and your family a warm, festive and safe holiday season. Take care.

Matt

Matt Harshberger, Chief of Police
Ypsilanti Police Department

A few comments. Interesting to see that critics of the 96-bed expansion plan, nominally on the same side, either denounce it (a) as grossly inadequate to serve the county's needs, or (b) as a totally unnecessary "giant jail".

To quickly expand the jail to the size envisioned by Jack Minzey (and by the sheriff) is not politically possible, since the county's voters would never approve a tax increase to fund it.

What most of the critics of incremental expansion have in common is opposition to funding it through the phase-out of the sheriff's road patrol subsidy.

But what's the alternative? Given that most of the services the county provides are mandated by state law, there is not a lot of room for major cuts. After road patrol, I think the biggest non-mandated county program is (comparatively tiny) Head Start.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Saturday, December 2, 2006, 11:20 pm

Another letter about the jail. The following email was sent by Ypsilanti Police Chief Matt Harshberger to many community leaders yesterday:

From: Matthew Harshberger
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2006 5:27 PM
To: [recipient list omitted]
Subject: Jail Expansion Proposal

I recently gave information to CoPAC, the Rotary Club and many others about the cost breakdown of the bond proposal for the 96-bed jail expansion. At the time that I gave out the information, I believed it was accurate. However, upon having a meeting yesterday afternoon with the County Administrator, Bob Guenzel, I learned the information that I was spreading ($9 million for jail expansion & $11 million for court facilities improvements) was patently false/wrong/inaccurate/erroneous. I, along with all the other Chiefs and Directors in Washtenaw County, received this false information directly from the Sheriff and his jail administrator. Obviously, I will not allow this error of trust to occur again. The citizens of Washtenaw County should not be misinformed about any public issue and I will not allow it to happen again. Please accept my apology.

The truth, according to the County Administration, is that the entire $21 million bond proposal is going toward jail and correctional improvements, which includes the 96-bed jail expansion and jail infrastructure improvements, including support systems due to increased capacity. The county provided a written breakdown of the costs that shows specifically the recommended improvements and the cost of each, which totals $21,177,210. Bob Guenzel will be presenting this information at the City of Ypsilanti Council meeting on Tuesday, December 5th.

I have a copy of the cost breakdown for the bond proposal and I am happy to provide copies of it to anyone that may want it.

I am very sorry for the misinformation that I gave out with regard to the bond proposal costs. It is sad that I will not be able to trust information coming from the sheriffs department until it can be confirmed, or, as in this case, denied.

Take care and I hope you have a good weekend.

Matt Harshberger, Chief of Police
Ypsilanti Police Department
505 W. Michigan Ave.
Ypsilanti, MI. 48197
Website: ypsilantipolice.org

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Wednesday, November 22, 2006, 4:27 pm

Bob Guenzel's letter to the Ann Arbor News. Today, County Administrator Bob Guenzel wrote as follows to the Ann Arbor News, copied to other county officials:

From: Bob Guenzel
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 2:41 PM
Subject: Concerns about the News' reporting

November 22, 2006

Mr. Pepple,

I am writing to you today to make you aware of a very real perception - mine as well as others' - that the people of Ann Arbor and surrounding communities are not being well served by the Ann Arbor News in your coverage of public safety and justice, namely the need for expansion of the Washtenaw County Jail.

I personally have been disappointed by the newspaper's lack of coverage on what I consider to be the now critical issue of jail overcrowding, and the Sheriff's handling of the same. The jail has been chronically overcrowded for more than two years, experiencing "official" overcrowdings dozens of times, leading to the early release of inmates. The current "lockdown" is the second declared by the Sheriff in the last three months. The status prohibits new arrestees from being booked into the jail, creating a dangerous situation not only for the community, but for jail staff and the inmates themselves.

In spite of this serious situation, the Sheriff refuses to act pursuant to Section 7 of the Jail Overcrowding Statute, which mandates that the Sheriff shall reduce all sentences by up to 30% in order to alleviate overcrowding. Three inmates are now suing the Sheriff because of the situation. Numerous members of the law enforcement community, the judiciary, and the Board of Commissioners have expressed to me their frustration at the Sheriff's refusal to act, some considering it a serious abrogation of official duty. These facts have been discussed at numerous public meetings, yet the Ann Arbor News has only given passing reference to the topic.

Instead, the News found it useful to report the Sheriff's assertion that I attempted to "stack" the Criminal Justice Collaborative Council (CJCC) with the appointment of former Commissioner Robert Brackenbury. Your reporters accepted this assertion as fact despite never having attended one of these regular public CJCC meetings, checking the web site for the roster of members, or speaking to any of the other CJCC members regarding their opinion of the matter.

In fact, if anyone had approached the Chair of the CJCC, the honorable Archie Brown, I am sure he gladly would have provided you with the letter he recently sent the Sheriff in which he expresses (on behalf of the entire CJCC) disappointment in the Sheriff's persistent refusal to participate in the Council. Your reporters have relied on information provided by a person who does not even attend the forum on which he presumes to comment.

I suppose what has moved me finally to write to you today was the lead in the recent story regarding the jail bond issuance. Your reporters relied on information provided by the Sheriff in stating that the jail bond issuance included funding for a new District Court which, of course, it does not. When I complained about this error, the News responded with a two-sentence correction buried in Saturday's paper.

Seriously concerned as I am about misstatements such as these (the "stacking" of the CJCC, the inclusion of funding for a new District Court in the jail bond issuance, and other instances that I could reference upon request), I am more bothered by what continues to be unstated by the News.

The implication of silence on important issues such as the Sheriff's refusal to carry out his duty, the ramifications of impediments to expansion of the Jail, as well as other vital aspects to these stories, is alarming. Without all the information, without an opportunity to get all the facts, our community will continue to face competing agendas that do not serve the common good.

My fear is that people who do not have the facts, but who have great concerns over public safety and justice, will seize on this informational vacuum to launch yet another campaign to prevent the expansion of the jail, which has been and continues to be an urgent priority for this community. Missing information or disinformation undermines the hard work of very dedicated individuals.

If you need access to more information on most of these topics, I would urge you to contact any one of the diverse 17 members of the CJCC (cjcc.ewashtenaw.org) which includes the judiciary, the Prosecuting Attorney, the Public Defender, private attorneys, elected officials, and others.

As always, my door is open to you and your staff. If there's something more I can do to be more welcoming or accessible, or to ensure that you are receiving all the information that you need, please do not hesitate to let me know.

I sincerely look forward to working with your reporters.

Bob Guenzel

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Tuesday, November 21, 2006, 6:31 pm

Yesterday's message to my staff.

We have all been telling each other what a short week this is, with Thursday and Friday off. Thanksgiving is not just a time for seeing family and giving thanks: it is also the last day of autumn as culturally defined, and the kickoff of the holiday season, followed all too soon by Hanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year's.

Our office, like most offices, isn't open the day after Thanksgiving, but all the retail stores will be. When I worked at the Lord & Taylor department store in Briarwood Mall, we were made to understand that this was the biggest sales day of the year. In other words, it was all hands on deck. Nobody in the store could have that day off, from the management office to the sales floor to the loading dock. And it was a very long day, too.

So when you do your shopping this Friday, spare a thought for all the hard working folks who are ringing up your purchases, stocking those shelves, and vacuuming the aisles. Sooner or later, each of them will come to see us, whether to pick up a birth certificate or to serve on a jury, and the roles will be reversed: they will be the customer, and we will be at their service. Courtesy and respect smooths the process, no matter which side of the counter we are on.

Individual meetings with nonsupervisory staff continue. I'm hearing feedback that it's easier to respond if you're named out in the open, so here's who I'd like to see in the next week or two: [names redacted]. Please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week and a Happy Thanksgiving!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Saturday, November 18, 2006, 12:57 pm

Belated press clippings. Last Sunday, November 12, the Ann Arbor News printed a Q & A about the election:

Insider's view of Election Day
Sunday, November 12, 2006
BY DAVE GERSHMAN
News Staff Reporter

As the supervisor of elections in Washtenaw County, Lawrence Kestenbaum discusses how the midterm elections went and why voter turnout here may be even higher than you think.

Q: Procedurally, how did the election go?

A: We had a very smooth election, I'd say. We had some scattered problems in particular areas. We had some tabulators which had to be replaced because they broke down, particularly in one jurisdiction where the tabulators were a little bit older than the tabulators in the rest of the county. But we got those replaced in the morning and, on the whole, things went very smoothly.

Q: Any specific problems at the polls?

A: There were some complaints, really scattered complaints, about voters being challenged on grounds that seemed spurious, but I don't think there was a systematic problem. I think there were some scattered places where there were issues. Very few of them even came to us. They didn't really blow up to the point that they thought to involve the county clerk as opposed to the local clerk.

Q: What was the voter turnout in the county?

A: Countywide we had just over 135,000 voters, which is a significant increase over four years ago, the last comparable election, when we had just over 108,000 voters. It was a smaller increase in the percent turnout, from about 47 to about 54 percent of the total registered voters.

Q: What do you attribute to the increase in the turnout?

A: I think that this was an election which had nationally a relative high turnout. There were some areas I heard about - not around here - where the turnout was actually higher than the 2004 presidential election, which would be amazing, given that the 2004 presidential election had a very high turnout.

We had a smaller increase here over (the last midterm election in) 2002 partly because we had less of a ceiling here. Washtenaw County has a higher turnout to begin with, and so there's not much room for a further increase.

And also because I think that unlike a lot of other areas, we didn't have a lot of contested local races on the ballot. Most of the interest in Washtenaw County was directed at the state and national level - governor, U.S. senator, and the ballot proposals, especially Proposal 2.

Q: Can you talk about the specific demographics of the county and how that might affect turnout?

A: Washtenaw County is the 10th most highly educated county in the United States out of 3,000 counties, and so it has a highly educated electorate which has a tendency to turn out. Educational attainment is the No. 1 highest correlate for voting. ... We have a lot of people here with post-graduate degrees, and certainly with bachelor's degrees ... so the turnout here is high and the turnout here doesn't vary as much from year to year as in other counties.

We also have a relatively transient population. There's a tremendous flow of people, students, and faculty and other folks who come here and leave - who move out of the area, move out of state - which creates issues with maintaining voter records for them. ... If someone leaves the state, chances are their voter registration is going to remain, even if the person thinks that they've canceled their Michigan voter registration. (And if) they've moved to New Jersey or Ohio somewhere, the other states usually don't bother to send back notice that the person has re-established themselves in another place and so the number of registered voters here is somewhat inflated. ...

I think that depending on how high of an estimate you make of the deadwood on the voter rolls, it could be more like, I'm guessing, more on the order of a 75 percent voter turnout (in Washtenaw County).

Q: There's no easy way to get those old names off the voting rolls?

A: No. Between state law and federal law and just the practicalities of trying to enlist the cooperation of other states, it is really quite cumbersome. I know that the state of Michigan has come under some criticism and some pressures from the Justice Department over just the sheer number of registered voters we have statewide. The number of registered voters is threatening to overtake the size of the eligible voter population. That is implying that we have tremendously more names on the rolls than we have people who are eligible to vote because of deadwood, because of registrations that have basically become outdated or spurious for one reason or another. The federal government's position is that having people on the rolls who are guaranteed not to vote is an invitation to, potentially, fraud.

Q: What's the trend you're seeing in terms of absentee ballots?

A: Absentee ballots are being used more widely over time and you can see the percentage creeping up little by little year by year. That may also have to do with the aging population as well. If you're 60 years of age or older you're automatically eligible to use an absentee ballot without having to state another reason.

And people certainly are aware of the fact that if you choose to vote absentee you can put down that, yes, you plan to be out of the jurisdiction on Election Day even if those plans later change. There has been a movement in the Legislature to enact basically freedom to use an absentee ballot instead of showing up in person without having to state a reason. That legislation, although supported by virtually all of the county and municipal clerks in the state and supported by the secretary of state, did not move forward in the Legislature in the last couple of years. It may in the next one.

Q: And you support that?

A: Oh, absolutely. ... If people want to vote absentee they should be able to vote absentee, and the notion of swearing to a reason is really pretty superfluous.

Q: How are absentee ballots processed?

A: Absentee ballots in almost all of Washtenaw County and probably now in most states are processed in the same precinct where you would normally vote if you were voting in person. They're delivered to the precinct, they're opened in the precinct, and the ballots are handled and processed in the precinct in the same way as other ballots. It's probably slightly more paperwork for the election workers. On the other hand, the people who vote in person need to be handled right away and the absentee ballots can be handled during slack periods. If it's an extremely busy day, that means that at the end of the day, the polls close and there's still absentee ballots to be handled and that may delay the results.

Also in the Sunday Ann Arbor News, a wrap-up article about the election results (not online), titled "Granholm's popularity only went so far Tuesday," pointed to the small number of counties to vote against Proposal 2, the anti-affirmative-action initiative, and quoted me as follows:

"Ingham and Washtenaw counties are the two most liberal counties in the state, so it's not unusual to se ethem go one way and everyone else the other way," said Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum, a former county commissioner in both constituencies.

"But it's hard to say, even imponderable to determine who and what issues Granholm brought along through the polls."

Kestenbaum said voters analyze candidates and proposals in different ways.

"People do pay attention to what newspapers and political leaders do say concerning candidates, but when it comes to rpoposals, people look at the paper ballot and the ballot language, and interpret what it means for them. That showed in the case of Proposal 2," Kestenbaum said.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, November 6, 2006, 8:00 pm

Yesterday (Sunday, November 5), the Ann Arbor News published my op-ed piece about election security:

Vote with confidence
State's optical scan system provides paper-trail backup

BY LAWRENCE KESTENBAUM

With congressional elections coming up, we've all heard a lot about the possibility of voting problems, glitches or even fraud. Many local residents have been concerned enough to contact me and ask about Washtenaw County's election procedures.

The good news is that every Michigan jurisdiction uses the optical scan paper ballot, similar to the forms used in standardized school tests. Candidate names and issues are printed directly on the ballot. This is the ideal "voter-verified paper trail": clear, trustworthy and fully recountable by hand. This is better than punch cards, better than old-style paper ballots and enormously better than unrecountable methods such as mechanical voting machines or touch-screen computers with internal counters.

Concerns have been raised over the optical scan ballot tabulating equipment, which some argue is open to manipulation, either by the vendor or by partisan computer hackers. I do wish the tabulators had been engineered with security in mind, and I would have preferred open-source rather than proprietary software on these machines. But there are safeguards against fraud.

First of all, every precinct has its own tabulator. These tabulators are each put through a public accuracy test before the election, and are under the direct supervision of a bipartisan team of election workers throughout the voting day.

When the polls close, the results in each precinct are printed out and posted or announced right in the polling place, where they are collected by campaign and media representatives. Those organizations maintain their own set of totals as a check on the official ones - an important security precaution.

A hypothetical conspiracy to steal a big election, without getting caught, would have to break into and modify hundreds of individual precinct tabulators. Such a task would require a whole lot of complicit technicians. The more people involved, the greater the chance that the secret would get out.

Decentralization of the counting process, which goes on simultaneously in every precinct, makes it inherently more difficult to steal an election, because the number of votes the thieves would need to change the outcome isn't available until the precinct results are reported. Polling is much too crude to tell this number in advance.

The vendors who provide the tabulators have not escaped suspicion, particularly Diebold, whose CEO was infamously quoted as "committed to helping'' Republicans win Ohio in 2004. Washtenaw County has used Diebold Accuvote tabulators for years.

But the sharpest concerns are with Diebold's no-ballot touch-screen voting machines, which are not used in Michigan. Moreover, if Diebold were caught fiddling with election results, that would be the end of the company, the end of the careers of its executives and the end of billions of dollars in shareholder value. By itself, that doesn't prove Diebold is trustworthy, but it sets up some powerful incentives against cheating.

Finally, if there is any doubt about what transpired during a Michigan election, the ballots themselves are fundamental and available to be counted. Any losing candidate can file for a recount; any citizen can file for a recount on a proposal. The fee is $10 per precinct, one of the lowest rates in the nation. Recounts are done by hand. And the results as certified in past recounts have been extremely close to the tabulator counts.

Ideally, there should be hand-count audits routinely after every election. In the absence of enabling legislation, recounts can serve this function.

With the 2002 Help America Vote Act, election consolidation, new equipment and new scrutiny, there have been a lot of changes in the conduct of elections in recent years. Washtenaw County has come through these changes ahead of the curve. We upgraded training for election workers and reached out to recruit more of them. In August, we did a pilot hand-count audit in five precincts. We have AutoMark machines in each polling place to help disabled voters mark their ballots. We have put up a Web site - WashtenawVotes.org - with sample ballots, so that voters will know what choices they have. And we have improved election night reporting of results.

When you vote in Washtenaw County, you can be confident that your vote will be correctly counted.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Sunday, October 22, 2006, 10:32 pm

One of the less noticed offices on the November ballot is Michigan Secretary of State. This is the position with authority over elections, voter registration, driver's licenses and many other things in the state.

I'd like to invite you to all to meet Carmella Sabaugh, our Democratic candidate for Secretary of State, Tuesday, October 24th from 5 to 7 PM at the Arbor Brewing Company, 114 E. Washington St. in Ann Arbor.

Sabaugh is the Macomb County Clerk/Register of Deeds, a position which has given her a dozen years of experience conducting elections (among many other duties) in the state's third largest county. Not only is she a successful innovator, but has had great success working with the Metro Detroit media and winning the confidence and votes of Macomb County's notoriously fickle "Reagan Democrats".

With your support on November 7th, Sabaugh will replace Michigan's Republican Secretary of State, Terri Lynn Land (see also this critical page about Land's record).

Sabaugh has proposed a number of changes to make registration and voting easier and election results more trustworthy.

This is an opportunity to meet the candidate, not a campaign fundraiser. Please join us at Arbor Brewing on Tuesday, 5-7 pm!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Sunday, October 1, 2006, 12:07 am

Political Graveyard in New York Times. Today's New York Times, in an historical sidebar to the Mark Foley scandal titled Hitting a Self-Destruct Button, cites Political Graveyard's trouble and disgrace page, and quotes me on the history of sexual scandals among politicians.

Here's the relevant excerpt, discussing "Washington's 'What On Earth Was He Thinking?' Caucus":

... But the sex subcaucus is easily the biggest.

"You always seem to have politicians doing bizarrely self-destructive things, especially involving sex," says Lawrence Kestenbaum, creator of "Political Graveyard," a history Web site that includes an exhaustive cataloging of transgressions by politicians.

Under the heading "Politicians Who Were Ever in Trouble or Disgrace," the section contains 420 entries, in chronological order, many of them involving present and former members of Congress. Among the escapades:

  • Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, was reprimanded when it was revealed that a male lover had been running a prostitution business out of his Capitol Hill apartment.
  • Donald (Buz) Lukens, Republican of Ohio, who was convicted of a misdemeanor for having sex with a 16-year-old girl.
  • Dan Crane, Republican of Illinois, and Gerry Studds, Democrat of Massachusetts, both of whom were censured by the House for having sexual relations with teenage pages — Mr. Crane with a female in 1980, Mr. Studds with a male in 1973.

The "Politicians Who Were Ever in Trouble or Disgrace" section comes with the devastatingly simple disclaimer "Very Incomplete!"

Mr. Kestenbaum says improprieties in the political realm tend to resonate more than in others. First, they tend to become public, necessitating apologies and, in many cases, resignations. He points out that if Mr. Foley were a purchasing manager at some store, he might actually keep his job.

"The political world tends to be very judgmental," Mr. Kestenbaum says. This creates towering spectacles of dishonesty, famous last words that are often caught on tape. Mr. Clinton created the gold standard for this when he looked into a camera and indignantly declared, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

Go read the whole piece.

The Political Graveyard has been online for ten years, has gotten at least 100 million hits, has been featured in many news media, but this is the first time that the New York Times has ever mentioned the web site.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, September 25, 2006, 1:53 pm

From the Clerk-Register: Justice Courts. Today's message to my staff.

Today's New York Times has a front-page story, based on a year-long investigation: Broken Bench: In Tiny Courts of N.Y., Abuses of Law and Power.

The article documents the problems with New York State's system of "justice courts", conducted by Justices of the Peace in every township of the state. Most of the justices are not lawyers, and many seem to have no idea of legal principles or procedure. The authors write:

The examination found overwhelming evidence that decade after decade and up to this day, people have often been denied fundamental legal rights. Defendants have been jailed illegally. Others have been subjected to racial and sexual bigotry so explicit it seems to come from some other place and time. People have been denied the right to a trial, an impartial judge and the presumption of innocence.

The article gives many examples of all these things.

Michigan, too, had justices of the peace until the 1960s. Most townships elected four justices on the partisan ballot; they held voting seats on the township board. Just as in New York, few were lawyers. They heard misdemeanor cases and small civil suits. They were paid from the fines or fees they imposed. And some of the justice they dispensed wasn't very good.

The story about how JOPs were abolished has a lot to do with a little town called Webberville, in Ingham County's Leroy Township. Webberville's main street, Grand River Avenue, was then U.S. Highway 16, the main road from Detroit to Lansing before I-96 was built.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Webberville's main industry was its speed trap. Practically anyone who drove into Webberville unawares was stopped, hauled off to a Leroy Township justice of the peace, and fined. The four justices made a lot of money.

In 1961-62, a state constitutional convention was held in East Lansing. All the Con-Con delegates from Southeast Michigan had to drive through Webberville to get there.

No surprise that the constitution they wrote — still in effect today — not only abolished JOPs, but required all judges to be lawyers, and prohibited them from being paid the fines they imposed. JOPs and other municipal courts were replaced with district courts.

I hope that New York, at long last, can find its way to the kind of solution Michigan developed forty years ago.

Individual meetings with nonsupervisory staff continue. If you receive a notice, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, September 11, 2006, 11:20 pm

From the Clerk-Register: September 11. Today's message to my staff.

I'm sure I don't need to remind anyone of the terrorist attacks five years ago today. During that scary time, and afterwards, we heard many times that the world is different now, in many different ways.

Five years later, it's fair to say that a lot of things are back to pre-9/11 normal. We have long since stopped holding our breaths waiting for the next massive attack. Ordinary political bickering resumed some time ago.

But for us in local government, some of the changes wrought by 9/11 are enduring.

Our courthouse entrance is being reconstructed in response to security concerns. Our vital records office has been redefined as a gatekeeper for identity documents, and the regulations are becoming steadily more stringent. Birth certificates are now issued on serially numbered safety paper. When you renew your driver's license, you will soon have to present your birth certificate, and the Secretary of State's office will check the document's serial number with us to make sure it's genuine.

Many of the 9/11 hijackers had Virginia driver's licenses, because those were very easy to get in 2001. New regulations are intended to prevent any state from being as easygoing as Virginia, but the requirements affect all states, and are turning the driver's license into a de facto national ID card.

The courthouse will soon have built-in security gates at the entrance, replacing the lobby. Certainly we hope the changes will make it quicker and easier to handle crowds. And though I don't expect terrorists to show up at the corner of Main and Huron, the long history of violent attacks on judges by disappointed litigants should be enough to justify this.

The remaining recounts from the primary election were completed today. The only outcome which changed: the Augusta Township fire millage, which had been tied, PASSED by one vote.

Meanwhile, the "Stop-Overspending" proposal at the state level was ruled to have insufficient signatures. So, November's ballot is pretty well set.

Individual meetings with nonsupervisory staff continue. If I haven't met with you yet, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Tuesday, September 5, 2006, 2:35 pm

From the Clerk-Register: Fall Arrives. Today's message to my staff.

My daughter Sarah started third grade this morning. The weather was perfect, and there was a big crowd of parents, teachers, and kids for the annual flag-raising ceremony signifying the opening of school.

School now starts the day after Labor Day because of a new law which prohibits public schools from starting the school year any earlier. Many of us were critical of this action; it openly placed a higher value on the tourism industry than on education. But now that it's done, I can't complain about not having to gear up for the school year while August is still on the calendar. Starting after Labor Day aligns the school year with the seasons.

Of course I don't mean the traditional definition of the four seasons as starting and ending on the equinoxes (March 21 and September 21) and the solstices (December 21 and June 21). The season is usually in full swing by the time we arrive at the "technical" start date. Who thinks of December 19, say, as an "autumn" day, when we may have had weeks of cold and snow? June 21, our official first day of summer, was known to Shakespeare as "Midsummer".

Here in Michigan, the coldest quarter of the year, based on average temperature records, runs from December 8 to March 8. Extending that definition to have four seasons of equal length, fall would begin this Friday, September 8. That makes a certain amount of sense.

But in the lives of most people in our region, the seasons are bracketed by major holidays. Fall is from Labor Day to Thanksgiving; winter is from the day after Thanksgiving to Easter or Passover; spring is from then until Memorial Day; and summer runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Following that schedule, I can now say: Welcome to Fall!

A couple of additional notes:

The Day of Caring donation boxes are located in all of the Clerk/Register offices until this Friday. Our Department is sponsoring three agencies, Hope Clinic, Family Life Services and the Humane Society. The wish lists for each of these agencies is attached to the box and on the e-central site. When you donate, fill out the goldenrod sheet and send it to Karen Edman in Court Services. You will receive the 2006 Day of Caring T-shirt via interoffice mail.

Individual meetings with staff members resume this week. I've been here 20 months, but I have not yet had an opportunity to meet separately with all of the nonsupervisory staff members. You can set this up yourself. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Thursday, September 1, 2006, 2:47 pm

County Board/Sheriff Controversy Boiling Over. In the last few days, the fight over policing contracts has reached a new level of acrimony.

The county board and Administrator (Bob Guenzel) are acting to lay off deputies and reduce service to the three townships which have refused to sign service contracts, and the Sheriff (Dan Minzey) sued to stop this action. A hearing is scheduled in October.

Some news stories:

The following letter from the Sheriff was faxed to local governments:

August 30, 2006

To the Community Leaders of Washtenaw County:

Today I appeared before Monroe County Circuit Judge Costello seeking a temporary restraining order to block the County's threatened lay-off of Sheriff's employees. Although this is only the first step in a lengthy process, I am pleased to tell you that the outcome of today's hearing was an ageement that there will be no lay-offs at this time. On October 10 and 11th, we will return to court with Judge Costello hearing testimony on both sides of this matter.

Additionally, we are in the midst of another jail overcrowding emergency. In the past, when we reached this stage of the overcrowding process, we boarded inmates at other counties. I had planned to proceed with the out-county boarding later this week, utilizing the same jails as in the past, to reduce the jail population to the mandated count of 322. However, Mr. Guenzel has taken action to prevent any transfer of inmates by canceling boarding contracts with the counties we have been using for temporary housing.

Once again, I would surmise that this action is politically motivated, as the boarding contracts were cancelled the same day I filed suit against Mr. Guenzel and the Board of Commissioners to stop the impending lay-offs. You will, no doubt, be hearing much more about this issue — as the overcrowding emergency has run full course and we will be forced to lock our doors. As of September 6th, we will have no choice but to follow the law. According to statute, the Sheriff shall defer acceptance for incarceration in the general population of the county jail persons sentenced to or otherwise committed to the county jail for incarceration until the county jail overcrowding state of emergency is ended, except that the sheriff shall not defer acceptance for incarceration all persons under sentence for or charged with violent or assaultive crimes, sex offenses, escape from prison or jail, controlled substance offenses, or weapons offenses.

Jail overcrowding is a critical public safety issue. We need immediate, temporary solutions as well as a long-range plan. The Board of Commissioners and Mr. Guenzel have left me with no option but to take court action to protect the citizens of Washtenaw County. I am deeply concerned that jail overcrowding has become another political football. I will do everything in my power to keep the citizens of Washtenaw County safe.

Daniel J. Minzey, Sheriff

Yesterday, Bob Guenzel distributed the following letter in response:

It has come to my attention that Sheriff Dan Minzey has sent out a FAX/IMPORTANT NOTICE to area officials concerning the latest mandated emergency overcrowding at the Washtenaw County Jail.

I am attaching two Updates that I've written for employees in the last few days concerning this and other matters. I've also made them available on our public web site as it has become clear that Mr. Minzey has widened the scope of his inaccuracies.

The Updates speak for themselves, but I would like to add some information by way of refutation, and for more complete understanding of the breadth of these falsehoods and what I can only deem self-promotion at the expense of the truth.

For more than three years, and I think I can speak for the Board of Commissioners on this point, we have poured our hearts and souls into finding a way to increase the size of the jail, easing overcrowding. We have put forth dozens of ideas and initiatives, and at almost every juncture, Sheriff Dan Minzey, the person one would think could gain most from our efforts, has been either a non-participant or an active opponent.

What is striking about the Sheriff's most recent message to local officials is that he is repudiating the one instance in which he was on the same page with the Board of Commissioners and with me by presenting a joint recommendation, passed as a Resolution at the June 7th, 2006 board meeting, to phase out the boarding of inmates at facilities in other counties.

The Sheriff made a strong presentation about facing the options of 1) Continuing to board out inmates as needed, 2) capping the number of boarded inmates; 3) ceasing immediately the boarding of inmates or 4) phasing the boarding of inmates. Sheriff Minzey gave his opinion that boarding inmates should be phased out with the end of terms for those then presently incarcerated at other jails.

Phasing out the practice of boarding out inmates was to be part of fixing the system of incarceration here in Washtenaw County. The Sheriff has been aware of many ideas and legal options that are now standard policy for other county jail facilities with similar overcrowding problems, and yet none has been implemented by this County.s Sheriff in anticipation of ending the boarding of inmates at external facilities, as he recommended in June.

  • "Good Time" — Allows for the reduction of jail time due to good conduct — almost every sheriff in the state of Michigan, approved by the Court a year ago — NOT IMPLEMENTED.
  • Work Release programs — NOT IMPLEMENTED.
  • The County's practice of holding all court-ordered misdemeanants — UNCHANGED.
  • Various methods of bond reduction at time of booking &mdash NOT IMPLEMENTED.
  • Expedition of prison-bound inmates who languish in the jail where they should no longer be after sentencing — NOT IMPLEMENTED.
  • A systematic review of offenders who may have warrants in other counties that could be sent to those counties or dismissed outright — NOT IMPLEMENTED.

Add to the list, Under Michigan Statutory Authority, the Sheriff has one major option to solve overcrowding that he refuses to take — a 30% reduction, across the board, of inmate [sentences] during an Overcrowding emergency.

Unfortunately, all that we're seeing during this emergency is more posturing and prevaricating from the Sheriff — and more time wasted.

Please feel free to contact me with your questions or concerns on this pressing matter.

Thanks,
Bob Guenzel

Right now, the county board is backing Bob Guenzel in this. But three of the board incumbents were defeated in the recent primary. Presumably the three townships are waiting for the new board to change course and restore the county subsidy for police services.

I attended previous workshops on jail overcrowding along with the sheriff, judges, commissioners and so on. Many different measures were discussed, but the only one which could provide instant relief was the sheriff's statutory authority to reduce sentences across the board by up to 30%.

General support was voiced around the room for this option for dealing with overcrowding emergencies, as opposed to the very costly outbedding of prisoners. I do not understand why Dan Minzey isn't using it.

Update, Sept 4: More background, and lively discussion, at Arbor Update: Sheriff's showdown: Minzey sticks to the fax.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Tuesday, August 8, 2006, 11:58 am

Don't Rely on Polls. Polling in the 4th Distict of Georgia shows congresswoman Cynthia McKinney trailing 39% to 52% in her runoff race with challenger Hank Johnson.

I'm not a fan of McKinney's. But I wouldn't count her out based just on a poll.

Look what happened in 2005 Detroit mayor's race: incumbent Kwame Kilpatrick, beset by troubles of his own making, trailed in EVERY poll to challenger Freman Hendrix. Polls of Detroit voters were done by all kinds of respected polling organizations. Right up to election day, there was NO poll showing Kirkpatrick leading. There was a very slight trend in his direction in the closing days, but not enough to make a dent in Hendrix's strong lead.

Yet Kilpatrick won by 14,000 votes. It was a historic failure of polling.

For all kinds of reasons, polling is getting harder and harder to do in this country. An increasing number of people, tired of telemarketers, and armed with Caller-ID, are not speaking to pollsters any more. Polling in person is pretty much precluded by gated communities and by general unwillingness to open doors to strangers.

These problems are masked if the people a pollster does get to speak with are not significantly different from the ones who are unavailable. But what if they ARE different?

Polling in low-income minority communities — such as the city of Detroit, or the 4th District of Georgia — faces precisely this difficulty. In those areas, the voters who pollsters can reach by phone ARE qualitatively different than the ones you can't. So poll results are going to be misleading.

Yes, some people in ALL demographic groups have gotten rid of "land line" (pollable) telephones, and switched to cell phones. But, in general, people who have ordinary cell phones, the ones which require a contract and monthly payments, are not really very different from people with land lines.

The problem is people who have no land line, no cell phone contract, but use instead those convenience store prepaid phones. These voters are not pollable using current methods, so their views don't count in any surveys. But many of them DO vote.

These are the poorest and angriest voters. And given a choice between a seemingly militant black candidate (like Kilpatrick or McKinney) and one who is moderate enough to get significant white support (like Hendrix or Johnson), they go with the militant.

I don't know if McKinney will win, but I bet she does significantly better than the polling seems to show.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, August 7, 2006, 8:11 pm

Primary Election Tomorrow. Here are a couple of things about tomorrow's election. First, today's message to my staff:

Subject: From the Clerk-Register
Date: August 7, 2006

Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 8, is the primary election in Washtenaw County and statewide. At stake are dozens of offices from township trustee and city council to U.S. Senator.

And with one party increasingly dominant in Washtenaw County, the primary usually determines who is elected. We have 28 contested primaries: in 17 of these, the winner will be unopposed in the November general election. There are also 15 tax proposals (each affecting certain areas) and three recalls in Pittsfield Township. I strongly encourage everyone to take a few minutes and vote tomorrow.

Elections are just a part of all the things we do here, but our office is most visible to the public at election time. Today's Ann Arbor News features a front page photo of our own Steve Kirschner demonstrating the AutoMark voting device.

Our Elections staff is facing many challenges all at once. The new AutoMark machines were rushed into our hands to meet a federal deadline, with limited time for testing and training. The discovery of longstanding errors in geographic coding necessitated reprint of some ballots. The recall in Pittsfield Township means that we step into the shoes of the township clerk and run those polling places on Election Day. Our tabulators were upgraded, also on a hurry-up schedule with very short notice. We will be piloting a hand-count audit in six precincts to check on the accuracy of the tabulating equipment. And because this is a primary, we have the usual issues with party voting rules — you can vote in only one party's primary, and some voters get angry or confused about that - and the election of precinct delegates, including probably hundreds of write-in candidates whose votes will have to be individually counted and entered into poll books.

Despite all these issues, I expect to have a smooth election. Whether or not we like the outcomes tomorrow, the public and politicos will be confident in our results. And that reflects well on all of us, even if your job is unrelated to elections.

Let's have a great week!

And here's today's message to all the county clerks in the state from Chris Thomas, the state Director of Elections:

From: Thomas, Christopher M
To: County Clerks
Sent: Mon Aug 07 17:56:56 2006
Subject: Election Day

Greetings,

I wish you all a good election day tomorrow. The weather seems to be cooperating as it will cool off tonight and be a low humidity day tomorrow.

The "News You Can Use" coming out late this afternoon has all the updated numbers on each vendor's help desk. Also, there is policy regarding news media in the polling place. Essentially, they must live under the same rules as poll watchers. They cannot roam around the polling place nor can they talk with voters in the polling place.

Under the state contract, the vendors are required to establish a level of election day support for you and the local clerks. If you are having any difficulties with any of the vendors please call this office. We will definitely intervene to get things on track.

I realize this has been a difficult transition for many of you as both optical scan and AutoMark are new in your county. I have confidence in the quality of the systems in place. It may take an election to work through some issues and the human interaction with these systems. In addition to the Federal mandate, we chose a lower turnout election for the first test drive.

Thank you for all you have done to prepare for tomorrow and to assist local clerks in their preparations.

Chris Thomas

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Wednesday, July 26, 2006, 12:28 pm

Personal TV History. I usually resist the "memes" that bloggers pass around, but this one looks like fun.

A close reading of my choices would reveal me as a baby boomer with an elementary school age daughter. Probably the bulk of my lifetime television experience was in 1963-73.

Instructions: Bold all of the following TV shows which you've ever seen 3 or more episodes of in your lifetime. Bold and Italicize a show if you're positive you've seen every episode of it. If you want, add up to 3 additional shows (keep the list in alphabetical order).

24
3rd Rock from the Sun
7th Heaven
Adam-12
Aeon Flux
ALF
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Alias
Allo Allo
American Idol /Pop Idol/Canadian Idol/Australian Idol
America's Next Top Model/Germany's Next Top Model
Angel
Arrested Development
Babylon 5
Babylon 5: Crusade
Battlestar Galactica (the old one)
Battlestar Galactica (the new one)
Baywatch
Beavis & Butthead
Beverly Hills 90210
Bewitched
Bonanza
Bones
Bosom Buddies
Boston Legal
Boy Meets World
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Bug Juice
Chappelle's Show
Charlie's Angels
Charmed
Cheers
Columbo
Commander in Chief
Coupling
Cowboy Bebop
Crossing Jordan
CSI
CSI: Miami
CSI: NY
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Dancing with the Stars
Danny Phantom
Dark Angel
Dark Skies
Davinci's Inquest
Dawson's Creek
Dead Like Me
Deadliest Catch
Deadwood
Degrassi: The Next Generation
Designing Women
Desperate Housewives
Dharma & Greg
Different Strokes
Doctor Who (new Who)
Doctor Who (series 1-26)
Dragnet
Due South
Dungeons and Dragons (old cartoon)
Earth 2
Emergency!
Entourage
ER
Everwood
Everybody Loves Raymond
Facts of Life
Family Guy
Family Ties
Fantasy Island
Farscape
Fawlty Towers
Felicity
Firefly
Frasier
Friends
Futurama
Get Smart
Gilligan's Island
Gilmore Girls
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
Green Wing
Grey's Anatomy
Growing Pains
Gunsmoke
Happy Days
Head of the Class
Highlander
Hill Street Blues
Hogan's Heroes
Home Improvement
Homicide: Life on the Street
House
I Dream of Jeannie
I Love Lucy
Invader Zim
Invasion
Iron Chef (Japan)
Iron Chef (USA)
Hell's Kitchen
JAG
Jackass
Joey
John Doe
Kath and Kim
LA Law
Laverne and Shirley
Law and Order
Little House on the Prairie
Lizzie McGuire
Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
Lost
Lost in Space
Love, American Style
M*A*S*H
MacGyver
Magnum P.I.
Malcolm in the Middle
Married... With Children
Melrose Place
Miami Vice
Mission: Impossible
Monk
Moonlighting
Mork & Mindy
Murphy Brown
My Family
My Favorite Martian
My Life as a Dog
My Mother the Car
My So-Called Life
My Three Sons
My Two Dads
Mysterious Cities of Gold
NCIS
Night Court
Nip/Tuck
Northern Exposure
Numb3rs
One Tree Hill
Oz
Perry Mason
Picket Fences
Pirates of Darkwater
Pokemon
Power Rangers
Prison Break
Profiler
Project Runway
Psyche
Quantum Leap
Queer As Folk (US)
Queer as Folk (British)
ReGenesis
Remington Steele
Rescue Me
Road Rules
ROME
Roseanne
Roswell
Saved by the Bell
Scarecrow and Mrs. King
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
Scrubs
Seinfeld
Sex and the City
Six Feet Under
Slings and Arrows
Smallville
So Weird
South Park
Spaced
Spongebob Squarepants
Sports Night
Star Trek
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Enterprise
Stargate Atlantis -- New season
Stargate SG-1 -- New season
Superman
Supernatural
Surface
Survivor
Taxi
Teen Titans
Teletubbies
That 70's Show
That's So Raven
The 4400
The Addams Family
The Andy Griffith Show
The A-Team
The Avengers
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Bionic Woman
The Brady Bunch
The Cosby Show
The Daily Show
The Dead Zone
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Flintstones
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
The Golden Girls
The Jetsons
The L Word
The Love Boat
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Mighty Boosh
The Monkees
The Munsters
The Mythbusters
The O.C.
The Office (UK)
The Office (US)
The Pretender
The Prisoner
The Real World
ROAR
The Shield
The Simpsons
The Six Million Dollar Man
The Sopranos
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
The Twilight Zone
The Waltons
The West Wing
The Wonder Years
The X-Files
Third Watch
Three's Company
Top Gear
Twin Peaks
Twitch City
Upstairs, Downstairs
Veronica Mars
Wings
What Not To Wear (US)
What Not To Wear (UK)
Whose Line is it Anyway? (US)
Whose Line is it Anyway? (UK)
Witchblade
Will and Grace
Wonderfalls
Young Hercules

I added My Favorite Martian, My Mother the Car, and Teletubbies.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Monday, July 17, 2006, 12:47 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

This past week brought news that the Michigan Supreme Court is considering some radical changes to the jury process.

Proposed court rules, now up for public comment, would make it possible for jurors to ask questions, take notes in court, visit crime scenes, and discuss the evidence with the rest of the jury before the close of trial. Judges would be allowed to .fairly and impartially sum up. evidence and comment to the jury about the weight of the evidence. Attorneys would be encouraged to distribute reference notebooks to jurors with exhibits and witness lists.

These are practical kinds of things that we often hear jurors ask for. After all, if you had to hear presentations and then make an important decision, wouldn.t you want to take notes, ask questions, receive written material, and so on? I think these changes would have the potential to improve the process and lead to more considered verdicts, and I.m happy to see them considered.

But in our system, practicality often takes a back seat to exacting standards for ensuring procedural fairness. Judges and lawyers are accustomed to treating juries as passive receptacles for evidence and argument, not as active participants in the process. So I expect these ideas will get a hostile reception.

You can read the complete proposal at http://www.courts.michigan.gov/supremecourt/Resources/Administrative/2005-19.pdf — and I invite you to send the Court your own comments, whether pro or con.

Let's have a great week — enjoy the hot weather and the Art Fairs!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum —


Sunday, July 16, 2006, 1:58 pm

Pittsfield Recall. Here's my overall take on the controversy,

Michigan voters have a costitutional right to recall public officials. As an activist and as a public official, I support and uphold this fundamental political right. I have even signed a recall petition or two myself.

I have long advocated that the clarity review process not be abused to frustrate the constitutional right of recall. And for at least 30 years, I have advocated that validation of recall and other petitions and signatures should be reasonable and not unduly stringent.

So, in Pittsfield Township, the proposed recall of the supervisor, clerk, and treasurer has gone to the ballot in the August 8 election. The choice is up to the voters now.

I don't live in Pittsfield any more, but I do have an opinion about the outcome. I strongly recommend a "no" vote on all three Pittsfield recalls.

I don't think that any of the claimed reasons for the recall justifies removing them from office.

First, I have a lot of experience watching local government in action. I can say that Pittsfield Township is much better governed than most, and the current officials do a better job than past Pittsfield administrations.

Second, Pittsfield is a large and growing jurisdiction with many challenges, and I don't think the compensation of these officials is out of line. Nor are they personally corrupt.

Third, the township had little choice but to approve the Wal-Mart project. The land was already zoned commercial, and refusal to allow a store to be constructed there would be fiercely and successfully contested by the developer.

I disagreed with and criticized the township's purchase of the Newmarket land ($11 million to stop a huge development), but I think the majority of township residents supported it.

The real reason for the recall is that many people see these officials as arrogant, bullheaded, and dismissive of others' opinions.

I can't argue with that. They certainly don't observe my ideal of the humility of a public servant.

But the recall, if successful, will only make this worse. In the short run, Pittsfield will get weak officials who will be run over by developers and interest groups. Some atrocious things will happen. When the outrage builds, the township will turn to even tougher, even more pugnacious, even more obnoxious leaders, who give even less credence to opposing viewpoints. A history of recalls over less than earthshaking issues will drive away other sorts of candidates.

The current officials aren't perfect. But they're doing a good job, and Pittsfield's interests would be best served by retaining them.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Sunday, June 25, 2006, 6:33 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Last Monday's message to my staff.

A lot of recall elections are in the works right now. Recalls are inherently tense and divisive situations, but dealing with the various contending parties is our job.

On May 2, we certified that sufficient signatures were presented to force an August 8 recall election against three officials of Pittsfield Township. The officials sued, and we were in court last Wednesday, June 7, on the plaintiffs' motion for a restraining order to stop the recall election. Less than 48 hours later, Judge Shelton issued a written opinion denying the motion, and praising the work of this office.

Today [Monday, June 19] at 12:30, the county Election Commission (myself as County Clerk; County Treasurer Catherine McClary; and Circuit Judge David Swartz) will meet to consider the clarity of reasons for recalling officials in three different units of government: Northfield Township, Lincoln Consolidated Schools, and Willow Run Schools.

It was unusual in the past to have two different sets of recalls come up for clarity hearings at the same meeting. Three is surely unprecedented.

In 1908, Michigan was one of the first states to provide a constitutional right to recall public officials from office. The recall power was significantly broadened in the 1963 state constitution, which provided that the reasons for recall "shall be a political rather than a judicial question."

It is frequently stated at clarity hearings that the role of the election commission is not to judge the truth or falsity of the reasons given by petitioners — only their clarity.

The legal guidelines for clarity give the commission a lot of room for subjective judgment about what is "clear" or "not clear".

I don't feel that the clarity process should be a roadblock preventing exercise of a constitutional right. Hence, if I can make sense of all the reasons proposed, regardless of arguable grammar or word choice, I vote to find it "clear". The other members of the Election Commission often disagree with me.

That being said, recalls, intended as an extraordinary last resort for voters, are now being wildly overused. During the almost eighteen months I have been Clerk, we have seen recall efforts against a dozen local officials.

I recently read about a survey of Michigan local officials who had been targets in recall campaigns. Their collective experience is summarized as "embarrassing, disappointing, painful, humiliating, devastating, hurtful, emotionally and financially draining." Most lost enthusiasm for public service, and saw emotional and financial effects on their families.

Elected officials gain office through an adversarial process. It is often their lot to decide controversial issues; we expect them to have thick enough skin to endure criticism from constituents who disagree. Still, it is already difficult to persuade capable individuals to put themselves forward for these posts. It certainly doesn't help when officials regularly get put through personal hell over political disagreements.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Sunday, May 28, 2006, 12:21 pm

Beverly Hills Supper Club. On this day, 29 years ago, a huge fire at a northern Kentucky nightclub killed 165 people. Here's what I wrote about it a couple of years ago:

When my wife was growing up in Northern Kentucky, the Beverly Hills Supper Club was a nightclub and a familiar venue for high school proms, wedding receptions, and so on. Many famous performers appeared there over the years. The original building was built in 1937, but it had been greatly expanded over the years with little or no safety inspection or enforcement. It postdated Prohibition, but locals thought of it as an old speakeasy, and it was said to be a headquarters for illegal gambling.

On May 28, 1977, a fire broke out in the building, apparently caused by faulty aluminum wiring. The cheap building materials burned rapidly and generated toxic fumes. In the vast, crowded Cabaret Room, the exits were unmarked and access to them was constricted.

About two thousand people escaped from the building that night, but 165 died — most of them in the Cabaret Room.

Wikipedia has an article about the fire. I had not known about Walter Bailey, a teenage busboy who saved hundreds of lives. More than a thousand people were packed into the Cabaret Room, watching a comedy act, unaware of the fire raging at the other end of the building. Bailey ran down the long hallway, jumped on stage, grabbed a microphone, warned the audience to evacuate, and pointed out the exits. Most of the crowd did escape safely. Two minutes after Bailey's warning, fire and thick smoke exploded into the room.

See the comment section below where a number of people have posted their memories of that night.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Laura, 5/29/2004: It looks like the poor Bohrer and Fryman families were completely wiped out in this fire, not to mention countless parents...What a haunting tragedy.

  2. Gene Fuller, 7/9/2004: The Fryman family was devastated. The daughter was in my home room at Harrison County High School. We had already lost a young man from our home room in December 1976. He died when the car he was riding in was struck by a train one week before Christmas. This event really hit hard. Our homeroom teacher called Tracey's name during roll call the first day back from the holiday. She just stopped and looked at all of us. I will never forget when she said "I am so, so sorry. I just am ..... She then ran from the room crying. R.I.P.

  3. Jody Ashcraft, 8/9/2004: My sister and her husband were supposed to go to the show that night. I had just recently had a baby and could not get out to go there, but I remember calling her house and getting no answer. The horror that those people went through was unreal and thank God my sisters son got sick so she was at the hospital......safe. I felt relieved , but sick at the same time that all of these people from everywhere were gone. Thanks to the brave fire fighters that gave there all to do what they could. I will never forget the brave people that died that night, you will be missed.

  4. Michael J. Coulter Coburn, 8/23/2004: Orville Coulter was my grandfather. He was a member of the "Tri-State Roadrunners" He took me with him on a trip to the UK. I am told that my mannerisms and expresions are just like him. I was 15 when he died at the Beverly Hills fire. He was so anxious for me to get my drivers license so we could go back to Maryland where he had been so long, and visit friends. His Wife Lucylle died in '74. These were my grandparents and my friends. My life.

    I was a paperboy in 1977 and was delivering the Columbus Dispatch to Mrs. Phillips when she met me at the door. Strange to see her at 6am on a Sunday. My mother had gotten a call from Millie Fowler (her husband was killed too) and called some of the people on my routelooking for me. Mrs. P told me at the door "you need to get home". My father was driving me around because he is a good father and 200 Columbus Dispatches take a car to deliver. I had no idea that Grandad was there but my father knew. We finished the route and went home.

    To this day I will think of memorial day as the day my grandad died. I am not sad anymore though. I have him in me, I have the Roadrunners in me. I have memories that I can share with my family and friends that will pass beyond me to future generations. SO My grandad is still here and will always be with us. And this forum allows his legacy to be carried forward. I thank you for the opportunity and wish you all peace and contentment. Remember Orville Coulter and remember the lives of all those we lost and cherished so much. They are alive in us always.

  5. Dave, 11/10/2005: My parents were there that night, after the fire, helping victims.

  6. Terry, 11/12/2005: I was in Cincinnati over the weekend & decided to drive to Southgate to see where the supper club was located. I wasnt sure if something had been built there or not. I never really found it. I drove along US 27 several times. Back & forth thinking I might see some type of monumuent or marker. I went past the Evergreen cemetary. The exit that I took off of 471 was Ft Thomas/Southgate. Was I in the vicinity of the supper club? Which side of I-471 was it located? Maybe you could tell me some of the businesses that surround it now.

  7. Jonathan Wye, 12/20/2005: At the time of this fire I was a volunteer firefighter in New Jersey, having taken a couple of years off from school. One of my good friends from college had continued straight on to his degree and then gotten a job as a Fifth Grade science teacher. The fire was of historical interest because of being a firefighter, and I was definitely not expecting the call I got two weeks after the fire from a college room mate telling me that Russel Gray, our friend, had been killed in the fire. He was at a retirement party for another teacher in the school system. The identification had been delayed in part because his girl friend/fiance (and I am ashamed to say I don't remember her name) had been killed with him. It wasn't until his mother realized a week or so later that she hadn't heard from him for a while that the alarm was raised.

    Russ knew from day one that he wanted to be a teacher and I'm sure he would have been a good one.

  8. Shayla Hampton, 3/21/2006: To Terry:

    Recently I have begun to research this heartbreaking tragedy. Based on various clues in the readings, testimony from relatives,and a half an hour of driving and searching I found the spot:

    Coming from Cincinnati, I took I-471 South and got off at the Ft. Thomas, Southgate exit.

    At the intersection, make a left. You'll be in Southgate on Alexandria Pike.

    Immediatly on the right hand side, there is a fairly new medical building. This building is sitting at the foot of the Beverly Hills Supper Club property.

    You'll notice that the building sits at the bottom of a hill of trees. On the left of the medical building is the long narrow driveway that leads up the hill to the site. However, there is a small gate closing of the driveway. I didn't see if the gate was locked though. I'm guessing that nothing has been built up there yet.

    I plan to walk up the hill (if I cannot drive up) and place flowers and 2 stuffed animals(for the unborn babies that died) on the site. I was also an unborn fetus at the time of this tragedy, but the family of all those victims, all the surviors, and the rescure workers will always be in my prayers.

  9. James Woody, 5/22/2006: Nothing has been built on the site of the Beverly Hills Supper Club, but the site is quite easy to find (see below for Shayla's directions). Apparently there are still pieces of some of the stone statues that were placed outside the facility for decoration. I watched it burn down that night in 1977. I helped with moving some of the corpses at the Ft. Thomas Armory into a large refrigerated Kroger's truck. For months, when you passed the supper club site you would be able to smell the stink of the charred remains. It took them about a year to knock the whole thing down - I'm not sure why it took that long. I'll never forget hearing about it, driving back from a day at King's Island amusement park. We had the radio on and they mentioned a fire at the Beverly Hills. We all thought "no big deal." They were always having fires there, it seems, but when we heard that at least 90 bodies had been recovered we high-tailed it over to Highland Avenue in Ft. Thomas to watch it burn from the hill side. The Enquirer had a gruesome picture on the front page next day. The whole event was a nightmare for me that I will never forget. Two good friends of my sister perished. I had plans on getting a job there as a busboy, since I heard they were hiring. I'm glad that never materialized. I just can't imagine the terror and pandemonium in the Cabaret Room that night...

  10. Terry, 5/24/2006: Hi Shayla & James
    thanks for the directions.

  11. LeAnn, 5/27/2006: It's been 29 years and it seems like yesterday. Mt grandparents went to the Supper Club to see my granmother's favorite entertainer, John Davidson. They were going with friends to celebrate my grandmothers retirement and my grandfather approaching retirement (he was due to retire that following Monday). We lived at the corner of 19th and Oakland avenue in Covington and could see the smoke from atop the flood wall in the distance. When we heard what had happened, on the T.V, my mother immediately starting calling to try and locate Maw Maw and Paw. Hoping they had stopped off for a drink, with their friends, before going to the club. I fell asleep around midnight and woke the next morning to my mom on the phone with the local hospitals trying to locate Maw and Paw. No one had heard from them as of yet.

    I knew they were dead, but I still was making secret bargins with God for it not to be true. 3 days had passed and still no word. Mom and Dad went to the Ft. Thomas Armory daily trying to identify them, but they returned home with no end to the nightmare. On the 4th day, she found Maw Maw. She said she looked at peace. Alittle swollen in the face and her hair was a little burnt around the edges, but she looked peaceful. The gentlemen they found with her could only be identified by dental records. It took a few days to confirm but Paw Paw was found with her. They never let Mom see Paw, they said it was best. They were fund in the Cabaret Room. All she was given were his and Maw's personal affects. It took years after the tragedy, but I finially found the courage to open the yellow manila envelope containing Paw's personal belongings and immediately broke into tears. The coins in his pocket, the rings on his fingers, the watch he was wearing were charred through. I can only imaging the condition he was found in.

    To this day I still cry on Memorial weekend. I miss my grandparents so much. They missed so much. They missed seeing their grandson being born. They missed the births and growings up of their 5 geat grand children (and 1 name sake)and their 1 grea-great grand daughter. Our children missed out also. They did not get to know their great grandparents, though they were told all about them and what wonderful peope they were. My grandmother was my best friend when I was very little, but as I grew up I found kids more my own age to replace her as my best friend and I saw less and less of her. The night before she died, I was suppose to go over to her house and spent the evening with her but I was 14 (A freshamn in High School) and my friends seemed like a more interesting time on a Friday night than my Maw Maw, so I promised to spend Saturday afternoon with her, but the next day it was unusually warm so instead I went to the pool with my sister and Aunt. When we stopped by to pick up my Aunt, Maw came out of the house with her hair freshly styled and her nails done. I remember asking Maw why she was so "styled up?" She said she was going that night to see John Davidson and asked if I was coming in. I told her no, I'm going swimming but I promise I would go to church with you tomarrow morning. Tomarrow never came (for her)and I haven't been to church that much since then. I was mad at God for a long time and i rarely spoke to him. The one, heart wrenching favor (to end all favors) I asked of him and he let me down.

    Life goes on, but memories live forever in our minds. I am thankful for the time I had with them and will tell them how much I miss them and love them when I go to their grave site tomarrow to place flowers on their head stone.

    Thanks for listening and my thoughts and prayers are with everyone who was touched by this preventable tragedy.

  12. Stephanie Barrington, 5/29/2006: My dad was a Southgate firefighter during the Beverly Hills fire. I remember him painting our house that evening when the alarm went off. He left in a hurry, fully expecting another false alarm as there were always calls to the club. As the night went on, I remember the wives of the firemen in town going door to door collecting blankets, water, anything else that may be needed by the victims or rescue workers. We could see the smoke rising from the hill from our backyard, and as kids we knew it was bad. Alot of us kids grew up together at the firehouse and stuck together as our dads were on the hill that night. Going from one house to another, watching news...and waiting. I remember it being hard to sleep that night not knowing when dad would come home. I think he finally came home sometime the next morning for a shower...but was gone for days...searching what was left of that building. He had nightmares for years...and although he will finally talk of certain aspects...usually technical...he never has let us know most of what he saw that night. He thinks of it every year, and as he recalls certain memories you can see the sadness in his eyes...you can almost see a glimpse of the person...the people...he left up on the hill that night in 1977.

  13. David Boyle, 5/30/2006: Thanks Larry for posting this. A sad story indeed.

    By the way, when are you going to write a book? You are a repository of so many anecdotes and historical events, it should not be hard for you...

  14. tm, 6/4/2006: I went up to the site today. You can walk up a driveway behind the new medical building. In fact the parking lot of the medical building has parking right up to the old driveway entrance. The walk up the entrance drive is pretty easy. After that, the site has become well overgrown. At this time of year (June 4), most of the growth is about chest high in the areas that used to be parking lots. These areas are easy to make your way through because the growth is mild weed type plants. Oddly enough there were daisies in bloom scattered throughout the weeds. I walked alot of the front area. It was difficult trying to find a landmark or to realize where the buildings used to be. there is alot of heavier growth were the buildings once stood. Not until I got home from this trip could I really figure out on Google Earth, where they were. Knowing what I know now, I would probably go back to find the right places. I'd like to find the place where the Cabara Room was and the circle garden near the chapel. I would suggest maybe going in March. That way the weeds are gone and you should be able to make your way around easier.

    I took an old pic and overlayed it on Google Earth. The link is below. It's not the best but it should help you see what it used to look like and where it was located. There are also some pics I took of things I found.

    I also created the building in 3-D and placed it on Google Earth. I hope it's in the right place.

    http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/435310/page/0

  15. Bob Schulenberg, 12/23/06: On Feb 1st 2007 I will have been a Northern Ky firefighter for 45 years. I will always remember the night that time stood still. I always and still do go to the Indianapolis 500. Saturday May 28th was a very warm and sunny May Saturday. As always I was filled with anticipation for the next days Indy 500 hoping my driver A.J. Foyt would win his 4th 500. A little after 9:00 word came out the the Beverly Hill Supper Club was on fire. The club was in Campbell County and I was in Kenton County. I responded to our Station #1 and we listened as more and more fire departments were being called to the fire. Then our fire tones dropped to respond to the fire. Upon arrival I was directed to go in for search and rescue. As described in many news articles the smoke was intensely black and thick. Finally I stumbled over a body. I remember make trip after trip in and out of the Caberet room taking victims out, never to know if they lived or died. Finally while I was inside the loud long blasts of the fire truck air horns signaled us to evacuate the building. I suddenly realized I had gotten turned around and was lost. Well, I told the Lord that if he took me now I would not be happy because I would miss the Indy 500. After gathering my thoughts and slowing my breathing as shallow as I could to conserve air I saw light ahead of me. Flowwing the light I escaped thru an opening that had been cut into the wall of the room. I will never forget that night as long as I live. In my entire career that is the most disappointing night of my career. I wanted to do more, I wanted to save lives, I wanted families to still have their loved ones. My heart was present at every funeral. My heart is still with all those who lost their lives and who were injured. My heart is still with all their families who lost so much. Yes, the night of May 28th 1977 goes down as the night I was a total failure. And I will live with that forever.

Tuesday, May 9, 2006, 5:19 pm

Life After Roe. The Atlantic Monthly (June 2006) has an intriguing cover story, by Jeffrey Rosen, about the political fallout of the Supreme Court's likely reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling. Rosen predicts political upheaval and voter rebellion that would be catastrophic for the Republican Party:

If Roe falls in June 2007, abortion will almost certainly become the central issue of the 2008 presidential election. And Republicans are already worrying about the political fallout. "We'd be blown away in the suburbs, and you wouldn't see another Republican president for twenty years," a pro-choice Republican congressman recently told Roll Call.

It's an appealing storyline: Republicans would finally receive their comeuppance via getting what they asked for.

But emotionally appealing predictions are usually wrong. As a firmly pro-choice Democrat, I don't buy it.

Before 2000, political scientists warned of the "time bomb" lurking in the Electoral College: that some day, in some close election, the country would stumble into a severe political crisis when a popular vote winner failed to win the most electoral votes. For example, a 1980 League of Women Voters report stated ominously:

The election of a President who received less than a popular vote plurality is perceived by some critics as a potential constitutional crisis of the first magnitude, an outcome that would not be acceptable to the American people.

And from Becky Cain's testimony in 1997 congressional hearings on Electoral College reform:

Picture if you will a future national election in which a presidential candidate receives a majority of the popular vote, but is denied the 270 votes necessary for election by the electoral college....Imagine the public outcry today, after a long primary campaign and a grueling race for the Presidency. Imagine the public's rage at being denied their candidate of choice.

Obviously the American people did not rise up in rage after the 2000 election and declare the outcome "not acceptable". Nor, contrary to predictions by many experts, did these events trigger any serious demand to alter the system. Indeed, any criticism of the Electoral College is now dismissed as a partisan effort to undermine George W. Bush's legitimacy.

I have written before (unfortunately not on this blog or anywhere I can find easily and link to) about why things turned out this way. Suffice it to say that the American public's inclination to take to the barricades (even figuratively) on issues of abstract principle is enormously overrated.

For another thing, there is a peculiar heads-I-win-tails-you-lose quality to the discussion of Roe. If the Supreme Court sustains the doctrine, then abortion rights are protected, so we (pro-choicers) win; if the doctrine is struck down, then the voters respond by throwing out pro-life politicians, so we win that way too.

One could reasonably ask: isn't there a scenario where we could lose abortion rights? Millions of right-to-life Americans do want that to happen. Wouldn't striking down Roe be a big step in that direction?

Rosen's vision of the political impact seems to be based on the idea that the electorate is closely divided between Democrats and Republicans, so the slightest little shift would change everything.

But if the "closely divided" model is accurate, why do Republicans control the presidency, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court? Even here in blue-state Michigan, the legislature is almost hopelessly Republican, and the (elected) state Supreme Court is dominated by five nakedly partisan members of the Federalist Society.

Yes, Al Gore did win a half-million more votes than GWB in 2000. But Gore was heir to an administration which was credited for a balanced budget and a sustained economic boom. Surely the economy is the most important motivator for swing voters; anyone who wanted to keep the economy under the same stewardship would have voted for Gore, regardless of their views on other issues.

And yes, John Kerry did get some 48% of the popular vote in 2004. But that was after it was obvious to anyone who was paying attention that the GWB administration was a catastrophe. Lots of avowed Republicans decided that Kerry was a lesser evil. Still, Bush won.

Like it or not, voters with even moderately liberal views are a minority in this country. The Supreme Court isn't going to change that by overruling Roe.

Yes, if abortion becomes more politically salient, people would be forced to face the conflict between their views on abortion and their party affiliation. Presumably, some pro-choice Republicans would start to vote for Democrats. Of course, at the same time, faced with the same stark choice, some pro-life Democrats would start to vote for Republicans.

But another effect would work to reduce both of those numbers. Most people who feel some loyalty to a political party have plenty of reasons for doing so that matter to them. Given a conflict between their views on abortion and their party's views on abortion, it's not necessarily the party loyalty that loses. They could change their views on abortion to conform to their party loyalty.

Indeed, we have seen this happen already. Among politicians, for example, Richard Schweiker (R) switched sides to become strongly pro-life, and Jim Blanchard (D) switched sides to become strongly pro-choice. Undoubtedly millions of voters have emulated them in the past thirty-plus years.

The more abortion views match party identification, the less the status quo could be disturbed by any Supreme Court ruling. And the status quo is political control by anti-abortion Republicans.

Hence, I think a woman's legal right to control her own body is in grave danger.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, May 2, 2006, 8:31 pm

Election Day: Much Happening. Today is Election Day in Washtenaw County, and most of the rest of the state, as school districts vote on board members and tax proposals. We also have a countywide proposal for 1/5 mill of property tax to pay for a new police and fire radio system.

At this writing we are waiting for results.

Today is also the 35th day from the submission of recall petitions against three Pittsfield Township officials, and the deadline for me to certify the sufficiency or insufficiency of signatures on those petitions.

For each of the petitions, 2,246 valid signatures were required. On petitions to recall Township Supervisor James Walter, we found 2,358 signatures to be valid. On petitions to recall Township Clerk Feliziana Meyer, 2,275. On petitions to recall Township Treasurer Cristina Lirones, 2,381. Hence, I certified that sufficient signatures were submitted for all three officials.

Here's the Ann Arbor News story about the certification.

In the normal course of things, an August recall election would be the next step, but litigation is expected, and the three officials will ask a judge to consider evidence that the entire petition drive was fraudulent.

And also today, on schedule (okay, a very tight schedule), the state rolled out its solution to the federal requirement (via the Help America Vote Act or HAVA) that disabled voters be afforded a private way to cast votes in polling places.

The "AutoMARK", as it is called, will be a new piece of voting equipment for each polling place. Equipped with a screen, headphones, foot pedal, suck and puff straws, etc., it will mark a standard ballot so that it can be counted by the tabulator in the same way that all other ballots are counted.

The good news for county and municipal clerks is that the machines will accept the same programming that is currently done for all three brands of tabulators in use in Michigan. Clerks had feared a doubling of ballot programming time and costs.

If these machines are delivered to local units, and are up and running properly for the August 2006 primary, Michigan will have just barely made the federal HAVA deadline.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, May 1, 2006, 8:03 pm

Women in Politics. Here's an editorial from the Ann Arbor News, Wednesday, April 8, 1931.

Why Not Have More Women in Politics?

Mrs. Ruth Bryan Owen, of Florida, member of the national house of representatives, advocates more women in public office. "It is time that Uncle Sam gets a wife," she said at a recent women's political meeting in Kansas City. "He has been a bachelor long enough. Woman's love of beauty and man's practical knowledge both are needed in the community. The community and the whole nation has become the home today, and the woman's place is in the home."

Representative Owen is right, in theory at least. More women in public office should have a tendency to remove the dirt from politics. The trouble is that many women are forced by domestic circumstances to keep house and look after children. Either of those occupations requires plenty of time, if it is rightly handled: the upbringing of children is more than a full-time occupation. Economic conditions will not permit maids and governesses in every home, and we doubt if it is a good idea, anyway, for governesses to mother the nation's children.

Men can learn to do housework, but few feel so disposed. The question of self respect sometimes enters the situation. And men simply cannot be the mothers. If the race is to continue, mothers must undertake most of the responsibility. Nature refuses to let men bring children into the world.

There are practically insurmountable drawbacks to a political life for a large percentage of the nation's women. The nineteenth amendment cannot endow physiological equality.

For that matter, there is no convincing evidence that women in general appreciate the franchise that was granted by the amendment. They do not vote in large numbers. Their place may not be "in the home," in the restrictive sense of the term, but too many are found there on election day. They should display greater interest in elections than they do, if all the time, pains, money, worry and energy spent in the crusade for suffrage is to be considered justified.

True, there are far too many men who do not vote. But that is no excuse for the small feminine vote at every election. If Uncle Sam needs a wife, she should set a good example at the polls, as a beginning of her political usefulness. Certainly she should not follow hubby's bad example.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, May 1, 2006, 2:52 pm

Restaurant inspection reports now online! I'm delighted to report that Washtenaw County (and several other counties on the same system) is making restaurant inspection reports available to the public via a searchable online database.

Here's an excerpt from today's letter to my staff in which I discuss this:

Readers of the Ann Arbor News are familiar with the typical content of these reports, but most newspapers don't choose to embarrass potential advertisers in this way.

More than 20 years ago, I attempted to do a very crude version of this in a portion of Ingham County. I went to the Environmental Health office, copied information from inspection reports, and posted them on a local public access computer system for others to see.

In those days, the inspectors would assign a numeric score to each food establishment based on the inspection report. A perfect score (no violations) would be 100. For each violation, a few points would be subtracted. A score like 97 or 98 would be "almost" perfect. A place with a lot of violations might have a score of 70. Anecdotally, a really bad restaurant had so many violations that the score was less than zero.

It was a simple, numeric summary of an inspection report. But sanitarians did not like the scoring system, because they felt it was misleading. A perfect score would be easy to achieve for a small place which specialized in a couple of easy pre-packaged foods, but almost impossible for a busy full-service restaurant that did a lot of its own food preparation.

Think of it this way: a score like "20 wrong" might be awful on a 30 question test, but pretty good if the test had 1,000 questions. Similarly, an inspection score of 80 (one hundred minus 20 points) would be shockingly bad for a snack bar, but excellent for a fancy restaurant.

So, some years ago, they did away with numeric scores.

Instead, on the new web site, for any restaurant or food service location, we can read of very specific problems found in inspections.

Every so often you find something appalling or almost amusingly bad — "SOCK FOUND IN SOUP USED AS WRAP FOR DRIED SPICES. THE SOCK IS PROHIBITED FOR USE AS A FOOD CONTACT SURFACE" — but most of it is very routine, everyday stuff, like hand washing supplies and the temperature of coolers.

The lack of numbers makes it hard to quickly compare one eatery with another, but you do gain some appreciation for what our fellow county employees in Environmental Health are doing on their workdays: measuring temperatures, looking under sinks and into floor drains, checking expire dates on packages, examining chemical test strips, and on and on.

Their dedicated work helps keep all of us safe and healthy.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Friday, April 21, 2006, 1:05 am

The "Matrimonial Market" in 1935. I came across the following little debate in the Ann Arbor News (March 27, 1935):

Is Grade B Spouse Better Than None?

by Dorothy Dix

"Is it better to have an indifferent husband--a sort of second-class instead of first-class husband, so to speak--than to have none at all?" asked a girl of a group of married women.

"Now," she went on, "I am financially independent. I have interesting work that I enjoy doing, that fills my time and makes me feel that I am of some use in the world. I am not in love and no Prince Charming has ever ridden down my street. But I am wondering if I am making a mistake in not marrying because I have not found my ideal and whether it wouldn't be better to marry some ordinary man whom I merely like and respect than to be an old maid."

"No. A thousand times no," cried one of the women to whom she was speaking. "A man can put up with a make-shift wife, ut a woman has to have the husband that she craves, or else marriage is cinders, ashes and dust to her. It doesn't matter so much to a man whom he marries because his life is lived mosly out of the home and his thoughts are filled with outside interests. His hopes and ambitions and struggles and triumphs and failures absorb him. But a woman's life is centered in the home. If she doesn't find her happiness there, she doesn't find it anywhere, and the core of a woman's happiness is always the husband who is her heart's desire.

"Of course, many women do marry their opportunities when they can't get their preferences. They take the men they can get when they can't get the men that they want and they live miserably and scrappily ever afterward. To this class belong the bored wives who yawn in their husband's faces and who always want to step out somewhere of an evening; the complaining wives who consider themselves martyrs because they have to keep house and rear children; the lazy wives who never think it worth while to make their husbands comfortable, and the whining wives who always tell you wnat brilliant careers they could have had if they hadn't got married.

"Marriage is full of sacrifices for a woman even at its best, an the only thing that justifies it and makes it worth while to her is for her to have married her own particular tin god that she can spend the remainder of her life worshipping. Believe me, there is a lot of peace and happiness and comfort in single blessedness and in having your own individual pocketbook and latchkey, and a woman is a fool who trades these off for anything short of the very best the matrimonial market affords."

"I don't agree with you at all," said another woman. "I think that almost any sort of husband is better than no husband at all. Marriage is the vocation to which God has called women and they are only content when they follow it. A woman's life without a man in it is an unflavored dish, flat and tasteless. She has to have a husband to pep it up, to give it some savor.

"Why, a woman even has to have a husband to cook for to put any punch in her housekeeping. It doesn't seem worth while to her to get up a good dinner unless a man is to help eat it. Three-fourths of the widows and old maids live on a tea-and-toast diet or something they can get out of a can.

"And women have to have husbands to dress up for after they begin to get to the time when corsets are a burden and a kimona looks good to them, to keep them from getting sloppy. And they have to have husbands coming home at night to put a point to their days, even if they know they are going to be grouchy or about as conversational as store dummies. For it is better to have somebody to quarrel wiith than nobody to speak to at all.

"Then, of course, there is the matter of money, and nobody can deny that a husband is a mightty handy thing to have around the house when bills come in, even if he isn't exactly the hero of your girlish dreams. Maybe he isn't all your fondest fancy painted, but is is somebody to stand between you and the world and you don't have that gone feeling that you used to have when you wondered what would happen to you if you got sick or lost your job.

"Furthermore, most married women are better taken care of than they could take care of themselves. It would take many and many a long year's work to get the average women to the place where she could have the nice little home and the car that she marries, if she had to earn them herself."

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Thursday, April 20, 2006, 10:11 pm

Barbara Bauer and other "Literary Agent" Scammers. Via Making Light, we learn of yet another little fraud subculture, in the form of "agents" who rip off authors while pretending to find publishing deals for them.

There's a list of 20 worst agents [link updated 5/26/06] from Writer Beware, which says:

None of these agents has a significant track record of sales to commercial (advance-paying) publishers, and most have virtually no documented and verified sales at all (many sales claimed by these agents turn out to be vanity publishers). All charge clients before a sale is made, whether directly, by charging fees such as reading or administrative fees, or indirectly, for "editing services."

See also Writer Beware and Preditors & Editors.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden published the list and then, like some others, she received a cease and desist threat from one of the notorious scammers, Barbara Bauer. Since exposing and ridiculing scammers is also an interest of mine, I am happy to support Teresa by linking to the sites she recommends on this.

These scam "literary agents" remind me of the Manutius "publishing house" in Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum.

It was more than just a vanity press. With fake, glossy "literary magazines" and staged book signings and social events, Manutius lulled its authors into an expansive belief in their own importance.

Then the publisher would quietly let slip to the author that the book wasn't selling as well as hoped, and all those newly printed volumes would have to be pulped unless, ahem, someone came up with the money to buy them all...

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, April 17, 2006, 3:45 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

Not long ago, I received a copy of a recent article [subscription site; click "cancel" on password dialog to see citation] sent by our Public Defender, Lloyd Powell. "Thought provoking," he said.

The article describes the unhappy tendency in schools, organizations, and workplaces for specific individuals to become identified as scapegoats, leading all the others to gang up against them, usually over vaguely defined offenses or problems. The targeted person may be ostracized, or even humiliated, in an attempt to isolate them and drive them out of the class or club or office.

I'm sure all of us have seen examples of this phenomenon in our own experience, whether we have taken part in it, been victimized by it, or both.

Once again, I am reminded of the old Jewish parable that Heaven and Hell are exactly the same - except for the way the inhabitants treat one another.

No one deserves to be mistreated or harassed. And everyone loses when the tone of a social environment degenerates into ugly scapegoating.

But you can be part of the solution.

When you come to work here in the Clerk-Register's office, or really in any office, part of your job is to get along with your co-workers, to treat every one of them with courtesy and respect.

Perhaps there is something you dislike about one of your colleagues. That's inevitable in any group of people.

But here at work, it is your responsibility to put that dislike aside, and treat the person as a valued member of your team. Focus, instead, on what you like about them.

If someone in your office has a behavior that annoys you, quietly take it up with them directly. Don't gossip about it to other staff.

Perhaps you feel that a co-worker has wronged you in some way. If so, you should try to find it in your heart to forgive them. Do you really want to spend the rest of your work life seething at the person at the next desk?

Each one of you took a solemn oath to "faithfully discharge the duties" of your position.

"Faithful," that is, not just to the details of the work you do, but to the integrity of the office and the work environment.

"Faithful" means showing courtesy and respect every workday, not just to our customers, but to our co-workers.

Let's take that oath seriously.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Thursday, April 13, 2006, 10:44 pm

Lisa Radtke. Just one week ago this evening, I attended the honors banquet for the Political Science department at Eastern Michigan University. I was the guest speaker, and I talked about the world of politics and my own experiences in it.

Lisa Radtke, a 23-year-old graduating senior, was one of the honorees, as president of the Public Administration Club. She stopped at the table where I was sitting and chatted with us. I was impressed with her.

One of her professors wrote:

She was in my 100 student introductory class perhaps 3 years ago and stood out in my mind as energetic, animated, and engaged. Very sweet young woman. It was nice to continue to know her as an advanced student in our department, and the work she did ... on the Public Administration Club really made a nice contribution to the department.

The following evening, Lisa Radtke was shot and killed by her own mother.

Here are some of the headlines in local media:

The causes of this senseless tragedy are not hard to find. According to the Ann Arbor News:

But as [Lisa] Radtke's future came together, police and family members say her mother's life was unraveling.... Sharon Radtke, 56, had lost her job as a legal secretary in February and was having trouble making ends meet. With the job went her health insurance and ability to afford medication for depression that had been prescribed for her a few years earlier.
[Sharon Radtke] suffered from depression and had taken medication until her insurance ran out, and she couldn't afford the $200 a month for the pills....

Here, in other words, we have a person with mental illness who was apparently helped to maintain an even keel through medication. After the job disappears, her life comes apart. Unmedicated, increasingly agitated (e.g., "she was getting more devastated all the time"), and in distress over the prospect of becoming homeless, she kills her beloved daughter.

I supppose technically Sharon Radtke might have been eligible for Medicaid. But the devil is in the details, and poor people are served slowly and badly. Continuity of medical care from private insurance to Medicaid would be difficult under the best of circumstances, and impossible for a person under emotional and financial stress.

Needless to say, this wouldn't have happened under the kind of comprehensive health insurance system that exists in nearly every industrialized country besides the U.S.

UM law student Kurt Hunt has links to almost two dozen bloggers who wrote about their memories of Lisa Radtke.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Sunday, March 26, 2006, 10:23 am

Local School on Comics Page. This morning's Speed Bump comic strip, on the first page of the Ann Arbor News Sunday comic section, shows several kindergartners in "letter jackets". On the left edge of the panel, the back of one jacket is partly visible with "Eberw-" and "Element-".

Is this a reference to Ann Arbor's own Eberwhite Elementary School? Yes! Turns out the cartoonist, Dave Coverly, lives in Eberwhite's attendance area. And the sign on the left edge of the panel looks like it has the Ann Arbor Public Schools logo.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, March 13, 2006, 3:45 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

Most of us came to work through the rain this morning. The rain has stopped for the moment, but another line of storms will be here soon. A tornado watch has been called.

It's pretty easy to feel downcast on a gray day when rain is falling on your head, when passing cars and trucks splash dirty water on your clothes or your windshield. Unless we are farmers or gardeners, we don't usually consider the lifegiving aspect of rain. Wet, annoyed, and in a hurry, we all think first of our own inconvenience and discomfort.

At least we don't take it personally. Setbacks and frustrations and accidents are part of the human condition, as are joys and accomplishments, and we learn to take the bad with the good.

But some people don't see it that way. Bad things don't happen by accident; they're all arranged by an evil conspiracy. Every small disaster is seen as further proof of this. There are no coincidences in the world of a paranoid person, no loose ends. Everything means something, because the conspiracy controls it all.

The word "paranoid" is not a synonym for "fearful". Paranoid people are very sure of themselves. They know what is going on, and see the rest of us as naïve or ignorant.

Nor does paranoid mean "crazy". Though paranoia can be a delusion, a symptom of mental illness, it certainly affects a lot of otherwise normal and rational people.

Paranoia is rampant in competitive endeavors like business, sports, and politics. After all, the other team certainly doesn't have your best interests at heart, and it's a short step from there to seeing the "enemy" as having hidden alliances and powers to control all kinds of things.

Paranoid explanations of world events may seem nonsensical at first glance, but they gain unexpected credence because they're neater and more emotionally appealing. Instead of multiple independent actors capable of doing evil, a paranoid sees them all working together in an all-powerful secret organization.

Of course, like anyone, paranoid individuals come to the Clerk-Register's office to transact business with us. In extreme cases, they may be condescending (if they see you as an innocent dupe) or hostile (if they see you as part of the conspiracy).

But regardless of deluded motivation, they are still our customers. If someone brings you an impossible request, calmly explain that you cannot fulfill it. These situations can be stressful; it is important to keep your cool and treat the customer with courtesy and respect.

And maybe some day they will come to realize we weren't plotting against them after all.

Let's have a great week!

Update, March 16: Following a comment pointing out the issue, I changed "unusual or impossible request" to simply "impossible request". "Unusual" requests should be no problem in my office.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Tuesday, March 7, 2006, 9:05 pm

MARD v. MLTA, continued. For those of you who were still curious after the last installment of this soap opera, here's more:

Conflict has escalated between the Michigan Association of Registers of Deeds (MARD), representing the 83 county officials whose offices maintain the state's land records, and the Michigan Land Title Association (MLTA), a trade group representing title insurance companies.

Most Michigan counties have two separate positions of "County Clerk" and "Register of Deeds"; Washtenaw County has combined them, so I am both County Clerk and Register of Deeds, and thus a member of MARD.

Title companies are the most avid users of land records, especially the most recently filed land records, since they want to be sure that the titles they are insuring are safe from last-minute liens or other encumbrances. Obviously they want to get access to the information as cheaply as possible, and they are frustrated by the smaller counties which continue to charge the statutory rate of $1 per page, even if the page is delivered as a digital image. Counties that do "bulk sales" of deed images at a reduced rate often restrict resale of the information, so as to maximize the number of entities buying directly from the county.

The title companies have been pushing legislation (House Bill 5124) to put some of their desires into law, and this has been strenuously opposed by MARD. A hearing of the House Local Government Committee had been scheduled in Lansing tomorrow morning on the bill, and both sides were organizing to get lots of interested folks to show up and testify. Suddenly, this afternoon, the hearing was canceled.

Earlier, MARD president Lori Wilson (Montcalm County Register of Deeds) sent the following to a legislator, copied to other Registers of Deeds:

President of MLTA Jerome Jelenick call me last week with a threat, if we don't support HB5124 then are hurting our Counties. That the Register of Deeds offices will be getting sued and not only a couple of them, all of them! He said we will have more in attorney fee's than we would ever lose in bulk sales. I think he is getting scared that his bill isn't going anywhere so he is trying the scare tactic. I told him that with the law suits that are facing the Register's and now with his treats I didn't feel that we could ever negotiate and come up with wording that we agree on therefore I would see him in Lansing. He couldn't even agree to disagree, must be he is losing lots of money and wants to make it up at the taxpayers expense.

Today, just after 5:00 pm, MLTA president Jerome Jelinek sent the following reply to the Registers of Deeds (along with a copy of Lori Wilson's message quoted above):

Subject: Response to Lori Wilson E-mail

Dear MARD Members:

I just received a copy of the attached e-mail attributable to your president, Lori Wilson. Given the gross inaccuracies contained in the e-mail and the overall irresponsible action of distributing such misinformation, I feel it necessary to respond.

As you may read for yourself, Lori indicates that I threatened mass litigation if HB 5124 was not supported by MARD. First, I have not and would not make any "threats" regarding this issue. I have and will continue to conduct MLTA business in a professional manner.

Second, additional litigation and continued escalation of acrimonious behavior between Register of Deeds and those in the title industry is exactly what I have been fighting against since my term as president of the Michigan Land Title Association began last summer. Litigation is a wasteful process and should be avoided if at all possible. Furthermore, Register of Deeds and title companies have worked well together for decades; many still do. We are, in many ways, mutually dependent. Efforts by those to distance and destroy these long standing relationships are extremely regrettable and, in my opinion, constitute poor leadership.

What I most recently communicated to Lori Wilson was in response to her informing me that MARD was not in any way going to attempt to compromise and resolve this dispute. I informed Lori that as presidents of our respective associations, I felt it our obligation and in the best interests of both associations to resolve this matter through compromise and get back to our long history of working together to resolve common issues. A legislative compromise is our best hope of avoiding the current dark environment of lawsuits and appeals leading to more lawsuits and more appeals. I assured Lori that doing nothing, affecting no compromise as Lori indicated MARD supports, would not end the litigation mess that currently exists. I told Lori directly, if that happens, I would equate it as failure on my part and hers.

Reasonable people and groups may disagree. In the grand scheme of things, this is a mighty small issue that professionals in your organization ought to be able to resolve with the professionals in my organization. It does not warrant and we should not permit the type of emotion, false information and demagoguery that clouds the minds necessary to resolve this dispute. On behalf of the members of the MLTA, we would welcome your constructive efforts to fix this problem so we may proceed to mutually address others confronting the real estate industry. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Jerome E. Jelinek
President, Michigan Land Title Association

Update, March 10: I received this yesterday, from the president of MARD:

To MARD Members,

I would like to thank every Register who sent letters, made phone calls, met with their Representative asking them to oppose HB5124. With all your hard work we were successful, the committee hearing was canceled because they knew they didn't have the votes to get it out of committee. A few of us met with Lew in Lansing yesterday, the work isn't over, they are working on some kind of amendments and they will try and bring this up again. So at a moments notice I might be asking you all once again to come to Lansing. They know what they are doing, between MARD and MAC we had to many members that were going to be in Lansing opposing HB5124. The next time they might not give us as much notice so we can't have as many people there to oppose it. I would like everyone who has a Representative that sits on the Local Government and Urban Policy Committee to send out a letter to their Representative and thank them for their support and ask them if this is going to come up again for a vote to please contact you before the meeting.

As many of you know from all the emails that you have been getting it is an extremely emotional time. I have not and will not respond to Jerome Jelineks email, I do not feel that I need to defend myself or our Association to him. He knows full well were our Association stands on HB5124 and he doesn't like it that we are winning the battle and protecting our Counties that put us in Office.

I hope to see everyone in Clare on April 9 & 10. I will have an agenda for you soon.

Again I can't thank you all enough. Remember TEAM work is Together Everyone Accomplishes More.

Lori Wilson
President

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Wednesday, March 1, 2006, 2:32 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Yesterday's message to my staff.

Today is Election Day in Augusta Township, where they're voting on the recall of two officials, and in the parts of Ypsilanti and Salem townships which are in the Northville and Van Buren school districts.

Across the state, I think people are coming to know and appreciate the new schedule of (only) four elections per year: February, May, August, and November. I'm very disappointed that the Governor ignored this schedule when she set a special primary and special election to fill a state senate vacancy. Under the law, she has broad discretion to set special election dates, but she could have used that discretion to reinforce a consistent message about when voting takes place.

We have, in effect, a hierarchy of elections, with levels of participation such that we also have a hierarchy of voters.

If you vote in presidential elections in November every four years, you're a foot soldier in the great army of democracy. You have a voice in the final round of choosing the world's most important elected official. In Washtenaw County, there were 174,061 of you who voted in the last one.

If you also vote in the congressional and gubernatorial elections in November every two years, you've promoted yourself to corporal, a step more influential, helping decide who runs the state capitols, the U.S. House and Senate, the state House and Senate. In November 2002, this county had 108,382 "corporals" take part.

If you vote in the August primary elections every two years, you're like a sergeant, helping set up the choices that everyone else will have in November. In 2004, we had 36,794 "sergeants" making those critical selections.

If you vote in your local school elections, or in city or village elections for mayor or village president and city or village council, you're like a major, with a large voice in the world of education, or in the operation of your local government. The last round of city and village elections drew just 15,119 voters; the 2005 school board elections, only 17,778.

If you relate those last numbers back to the first one, that means that about 90% of the presidential election voters get no say in school and local elections.

Election consolidation is at least an attempt to change that ratio. Starting last year, school elections are no longer held in mid-June, after the school year is over, when many families are on vacation, but rather, in early May. They're now held on Tuesdays, like all other elections. For most people, school elections are now held in the same polling places as used in presidential elections.

In short, we have taken away some of the stumbling blocks which kept people away from taking part, and made it easier for a broader cross section of voters to participate.

But this year's school board elections (most of them will be on May 2nd) are not likely to draw many voters - because the candidates didn't show up. About half of the school board members whose terms are up this year are unopposed. That can't mean that everyone is happy about the state of the schools - a glance at any local newspaper in recent weeks would demonstrate otherwise. But few are willing to step up to the challenge of seeking election and serving on these boards.

The best chance of changing that is to expand the pool of people who participate in these local elections. When the whole community takes part, when knowledge is not confined to the few, better decisions result.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Thursday, February 16, 2006, 11:00 am

You're invited! It's time to get started on getting re-elected as County Clerk and Register of Deeds. My First Annual President's Day Fundraiser will be held on Monday, February 20, 2006, starting at 5:30 pm, at the home of Al and Mary Hegerich, 5195 Pontiac Trail, Ann Arbor (3 miles north of Dhu Varren Road, on the left).

Here's my letter:

Dear Friends,

It was just over a year ago that I took office as your Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds, the first Democrat to hold either position in seven decades.

I've had a great first year, with many accomplishments.

First, we had an orderly transition to the new management team, consisting of myself and my Chief Deputies Jim Dries (Deeds and Vital Records), Derrick Jackson (Elections and Administration), and Karen Edman (Court Services).

Starting on the first day, we worked with the townships and cities and schools to negotiate implementation of the "election consolidation" law, avoiding the lawsuits and recriminations which plagued nearby counties.

As a result of the new law, all elections are now on Tuesdays. Most voters no longer have different polling places for different types of elections. These changes helped boost voter turnout in school elections last year.

We improved the training of poll workers. Instead of dry lectures full of legalese, we provide hands-on experience with the equipment and forms they will use on Election Day. We also refocused the training toward the kinds of issues and problems that poll workers are likely to see in a real election.

I didn't get to choose the tabulators used in precincts for counting our optical scan paper ballots, but I advocated the use of hand counts of randomly selected precincts as a check on the equipment and programming. I'm happy to report that the Secretary of State is now supporting legislation to mandate this statewide.

My office was tasked with the job of reviewing and validating 20,000 petition signatures submitted in opposition to the jail bond issue. We accomplished this big job with fairness and efficiency, and received praise from both sides for our work.

During the past year, groups in three Washtenaw jurisdictions launched efforts to recall a total of seven local officials. To assist the press and public in tracking this complicated story, I made all the proposed versions of recall language and other material available online on the county's web site.

In the Register of Deeds office, we greatly reduced (from about 60 days to about 10 days) the lag time for processing deeds and mortgages and other documents. Delays tie up financing, so quicker processing helps reduce costs and make mortgage money more available to prospective homeowners in Washtenaw County.

In the Vital Records office, we improved the handling of marriage licenses by putting postage on the return envelopes. Ministers and other marriage officiants are required to send back the completed marriage licenses, but the search for the right amount of postage often led to greater delays, and not uncommonly the license would be put aside or even lost. That doesn't happen any more.

On behalf of the Jury Board, my office chooses and summons potential jurors for circuit, probate, and district court. Our new approach to managing these lists has eliminated weeks of tedious work purging duplicates by hand, and reduced by thousands the number of jury questionnaires we need to send out.

Formerly, circuit court jurors were paid in paper checks mailed four to six weeks after they served. We wrote over 600 checks a month to jurors, most of them around $20 each. Many of those checks would come back undeliverable from the post office; many more were never cashed; the funds had to be labor-intensively escheated to the state. No longer. Now, we pay jurors immediately in cash, using a special purpose ATM in the courthouse. Other courts around the state will soon follow our lead.

And we have many more things to work on. As I start my second year in this position, the honeymoon isn't over yet!

In addition to all the management tasks that the job entails, the County Clerk is one of a five-member board which draws county commission districts after each decennial census. Moreover, the County Clerk is one of a three-member committee which fills vacancies in county elected positions. That committee had a Republican majority until I took office.

Many thanks for your past support. It's now time to start preparing to win re-election in 2008. I hope to see you on President's Day!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Thursday, January 26, 2006, 1:18 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Last Monday's message to my staff.

It has happened to all of us: an alarming message arrives in email. Often, it is forwarded by a friend or relative. Sometimes it warns of a dangerous new computer virus, or a scary new scam used by criminals. Other times, it brings news of a previously unknown threat to our health, or warns that the government is about to do something really nasty to us. Frequently, it calls upon the reader to pass along the message to others.

Experience with email and the Internet has taught most of us not to trust such messages, or to check it on an urban legends web site like snopes.com. But millions of people do take these messages seriously, and are motivated to forward them on to alert their friends and relatives, spreading false information and needless alarm.

As Mark Twain is supposed to have said, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes" — and that was long before the Internet was created.

But even without email, rumors — true or not — spread with astonishing speed among a population that is interested and willing to believe them. We would all, I think, be surprised if we could hear all the things others are saying about us. In the process of passing from person to person, the interesting or alarming aspects of any story become exaggerated little by little, and something which started out as a piece of factual news can become distorted almost beyond recognition.

We don't have a useful web site like Snopes to check out rumors about the county government or our co-workers. But a little common sense goes a long way. The more interesting a rumor is, the more important it is to ask the teller how he or she knows. Remember that your own personal credibility is hurt when you disseminate a rumor that turns out to be false.

The temptation to share news about our co-workers' lives can seem irresistible, but imagine the person who is the subject of the rumor listening in on the conversation. How would you feel if you were in his or her shoes? Even if it has a grain of truth, is it something you'd want people to be talking about?

Just as we are with email, let us be calm, sensible, and skeptical about unverified news we hear from our friends, co-workers, and customers.

The chief deputies and I are in East Lansing until Wednesday, meeting with other county officers from around the state.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Monday, January 9, 2006, 5:11 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

Happy 2006!

I know the holidays are really over now, because my daughter Sarah is back in school this morning.

Her current fascination is the Harry Potter series of books by J. K. Rowling, and the movies based on them.

The books are set in the present, but portray life in an insular "wizarding" subculture with little interest in new technology. The title character attends a boarding school for witches and wizards. Writing is by quill on parchment; chemistry is done in iron cauldrons instead of test tubes; messages are delivered by carrier owls rather than by the Postal Service; computers are not even mentioned. They have their own bank (run by goblins), their own sports champions (a game like soccer played on flying broomsticks), even their own brands of candy.

The wizards of the story are careful not to attract the attention of "Muggles" (non-wizards). But conflict in the magical world has a way of spilling over.

Almost the same could be said of almost any group or subculture in society, whether ethnic, religious, professional, fraternal, social, cultural, or even family. Each has its own jargon, its own peculiar rules and norms. Humans are social creatures, and in-groups satisfy innate needs for belonging. But more than that, the people who work together on a specific kind of specialized task tend to become an in-group as well.

And just as our physical infrastructure is invisible to most people until it breaks down, we don't even notice most of the in-groups around us until conflict breaks out. Even then, or perhaps especially then, the group is likely to be misunderstood.

One such subculture we all know well is the legal profession.

Like the fictional wizards, lawyers use archaic language and old-fashioned manners, make a sharp distinction between insiders and outsiders, spend hours in libraries in search of obscure knowledge, and share a value system founded on ritualized combat.

Most lawyers read the same specialized magazines and newspapers, and like to socialize and talk with other lawyers, all of which help propagate characteristics that distinguish lawyers as a group from other people.

These same differences foster widespread resentment toward lawyers, who are seen not only as cliquish but mysteriously powerful. In past centuries, people suspected of engaging in witchcraft (thought to be mysteriously powerful) were put to death; our culture is still full of murderous fantasies about lawyers. Shakespeare's famous line — "The first thing we do, we kill all the lawyers" — is echoed by innumerable lawyer jokes which deny the humanity of lawyers — like, "What's 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start."

Lawyers take an oath to abide by a fairly stringent standard of ethics. In practice, however, the public is dubious, because lawyers are nimble at taking advantage of exceptions and loopholes and interpretations. A lot of lawyer jokes take the dishonesty of lawyers for granted, such as this riddle: "How can you tell a lawyer is lying? His lips are moving."

Perhaps the most telling lawyer joke is the one about the wealthy man on his deathbed who wants to be buried with his money. He puts all his cash in three envelopes; before dying, he gives them to three trusted professionals, to drop into his casket during his funeral. Afterwards, the doctor and priest both admit that they found more important uses for the money (medical research, helping the poor of the parish), and dropped empty envelopes into the casket. The lawyer scolds them for breaking their promise and disregarding the man's last wish. So what did the lawyer do? "I wrote him a check," he says.

Most lawyers don't make as much money as most non-lawyers assume. The glamorous image of lawyers in the popular culture is belied by the surplus of people contending for jobs in the profession. Even lawyers who have plenty of work can find themselves very pinched: in every economic downturn, the first thing people do is to stop paying their lawyers. I think Border's has a whole rack of books about alternative careers for lawyers.

Many of the customers we see every day are lawyers, and not just in Circuit Court. Indeed, two of our leadership team (Chief Deputy Karen Edman and myself) are lawyers. We are all accustomed to their quirks, and know many of them as individuals. We uphold many of the values important to lawyers: the rule of law, due process, freedom of speech, preserving records, fair trials for persons accused of crimes, and so on.

Just a few weeks ago, I participated as Clerk in the swearing-in of a large group of new attorneys. I was impressed with their seriousness and dedication, and with the varied credentials and experience each bring. But all of them face the daunting task of getting established and making a living in the profession, starting out with hard work and very long hours.

I know that deputy clerks who work in this office often know a whole lot more about courts and civil procedure than some brusque young lawyer across the counter. Arrogance and ignorance can be a really irritating combination!

But it's our job to refrain from fighting fire with fire. A lawyer is not some species of cockroach, nor a pampered member of the elite. Think of the lawyer, instead, as being a harried working person trying to make a living. Like all customers, the key is to treat them with courtesy and respect. And, who knows, maybe next time, they'll reciprocate.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Temple Stark, 1/19/2006: Ah this is where you are !!!.

    Hope you're looking back at PolState as we are officially (without the stuffiness that "official" implies*) hopping. I'll have to read around later.

    This jump to Quick topic is rather interesting, too.

    -Temple
    PolState dude

    * Just pulling your elected official leg.


Sunday, January 1, 2006, 11:50 pm

More on the 9/11 narrative. As mentioned in the postscript to my earlier posting about 9/11 (December 30), Adam de Angeli has posted a rebuttal.

My original posting was not a smackdown of any notion that there is more to the 9/11 story than was originally reported in the media. Rather, I'm saying that the advocates of alternate versions will have to come up with a story that makes sense if they want to be taken seriously.

I'm not looking to debate over this, but I do want to respond to some of his points. Where I don't respond, that means I have nothing further to add, not that I concede.

Adam writes:

A "contrarian" is one who disagrees with people for the sake of disagreement. People are not questioning the official explanation because they enjoy doing so...

No, I don't accept that characterization. I'm a bit of a contrarian myself. What contrarians really enjoy is being proven right.

[Kestenbaum] is assuming that I am being paranoid.

No clinical diagnosis of anyone was intended or implied. Rather, I'm saying that the critique of the mainstream narrative of 9/11 fits into the paranoid style in American politics, in seeing major historical events driven by secret acts by a single, huge, powerful, evil or amoral conspiracy.

People ... are questioning the official explanation because it is full of internal contradictions, factual errors, physical impossibilities, and countless other reasonsable doubts ... the arguments against the official explanation are not "emotional pulls," they are facts.

Life is untidy. History is a mess of contradictions, loose ends, and unexplained circumstances. A paranoid view has a simple answer which explains it all, and as such, is immensely appealing on an emotional level. That emotional appeal often overrides logic, so the logic claimed to support a paranoid view should always be scrutinized carefully.

Just because Serendipity has a more complex and sometimes speculative theory than other sites does not mean everyone in the 9/11 Truth Movement believes it.... it's assumed that Serendipity speaks for all 9-11 research.

I quoted two different critics with differing points of view — specifically the two who had been brought to my attention recently. Any assumption that either one "speaks for all 9-11 research" is Adam's, not mine.

The amount of hard evidence of government perpetration of the events makes it irrelevant as to whether or not the hijackings were faked.

Adam disclaims Serendipity's theory that military drones, rather than hijacked planes, hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And certainly there are difficulties with that idea: the drones would be incriminating if discovered in the rubble, as would be personal effects or dental work of passengers from the other flights discovered among the wreckage of Flight 93.

Moreover, I know someone in the building trade who, that morning, was working on a swing stage, 60 floors up, on the exterior of the former Pan Am Building (above Grand Central Station in midtown Manhattan). Here's an excerpt of what he wrote a day or two later:

Tiny (who weighs 275) breaks conversation and sez "Getta load of this asshole"

With that all eyes focus on this incoming 757 wagging its wings coming over the Pan Am just 200 feet from our deck.

As the huge jet approached it veered slightly to the right; the sparkle of the sun glistened its wings and the rays warmed its fuselage

our men who hang precariously off the sides of buildings are outraged at the total disregard for safety; stand and yell obscenity at the pilot shaking their trowels as the jumbo careens over Broadway just broadside of us.

The sun is very bright just now we can see the white shirt of the pilot(?) and in the direct sun we can see the heads of passengers at their assigned windows. I distinctly see a blond woman at her seat.

My friend is not part of any conspiracy, so that puts the drone theory to rest as far as I'm concerned.

But if it is conceded that the planes were hijacked by terrorists and crashed, then different problems arise.

Two fully loaded jumbo jets colliding with the World Trade Center surely did grievous damage even without any collapse. The towers would still have been gutted by fire, unsafe to enter or re-use, and seen as a total loss. The political effects would have been the same.

So, why would a hypothetical conspiracy have needed to run huge risks to plant explosives in the tower, and coordinate timing with the terrorists, in order to bring about a collapse that seemed to be caused by the plane crashes?

Adam answers as follows:

Because the frame-up couldn't have worked any other way.

But if Islamic terrorists really did hijack the planes — even if they were put up to it by the CIA — then it wasn't a "frame-up".

Adam continues:

There is no easy way to blow up the World Trade Centers. If they had demolished the buildings without crashing the planes, nobody would be gullible enough to think the terrorists had the ability to coordinate such a complex task on such high-security buildings. Even since 9/11 it's become abundantly clear that the terrorists do not have large bombs sufficient to demolish the Twin Towers. All of the Al Qaeda attacks have used much smaller bombs.

Using the plane crashes, they've gotten the public to believe and accept the myth that plane crashes could have knocked down those skyscrapers. It's a much easier myth to swallow than Al Qaeda having access to the necessary demolition points for weeks on end.

The traumatic event was the deliberate crashing of planes; collapse of the damaged structure was ancillary. Most of the tens of thousands of people who worked in the WTC complex had evacuated before that happened.

Referring specifically to Serendipity's theory about faked hijackings, I wrote: "Yow. If true, that would be the crime of the century." Adam responds:

The illegal invasion of Iraq was the crime of the century. But, the 9/11 attacks were an essential component of the pretext for it (and so much else). More importantly though, 9/11 was a crime of historical proportions whether or not the Serendipity theory about it is correct or not.

No, military invasions, even if horrible and wrong, are not "crimes". Even at Nuremburg, Nazi leaders were not charged with the invasions of Poland or Czechoslovakia or France as such. In general, national leaders who send their troops into another country to kill and be killed, even if in defiance of national or international laws or treaties, do so openly and with the support of their constituents.

By contrast, if George W. Bush were ever to be shown convincingly to have had explicit foreknowledge of 9/11, let alone to have brought it about, he would instantly become the most reviled man in all of American history. "Criminal" would be one of the milder words used for him. Everyone in his campaign, Administration, and party would be disgraced, whether they were complicit or not.

That kind of downside risk, for a temporary political gain, would be pretty daunting to even the most amoral White House. And the risk is multiplied as the number of people involved rises.

It's a necessary article of faith for theories of vast conspiracies that large organizations (such as governments) are capable of keeping big secrets. Sometimes they can for a short time, especially in a crisis. But people change over time. If dozens or hundreds or thousands of people know some terrible secret, pretty soon word of it is going to leak out.

And because this is such a predictable result of a conspiracy to secretly do some monstrous evil deed, it's pretty unlikely that any rational president would get involved in one.

Adam takes me to task for not personally examining evidence, but that's not my department. There are lots of experts who examine blast shards and metal fragments under microscopes and understand what they mean, thousands of others who match burnt pieces of teeth with dental records, still more thousands who know all the ins and outs of aircraft and transponders and radio frequencies and flight trajectories and many, many other things.

No one has enough money to buy silence from all of those experts, or enough force to intimidate every one without anyone noticing.

A thousand different "loose ends" or claimed contradictions don't add up to very much, if few of them are taken seriously by experts. On the other hand, a dozen clues raised by amateurs could be the key to a hidden truth — if they point to a consistent, plausible theory of what happened and why.

A revisionist theory of events with no coherent story line and little expert support isn't going to convince many people.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Saturday, December 31, 2005, 6:00 am

In yesterday's post (scroll down to read it), I discussed theories about an American conspiracy to bring about 9/11. A friend asks:

So how do you read the Kennedy Assassination? Was it other than Oswald alone? Oswald for CIA, for Rich Texans, for Castro? Was there another gunman? Or more than two?

For years I maintained a position of spiteful skepticism, based on the refusal of certain agencies to release their files on the assassination.

Perhaps emblematic of my feelings was the passage in the 1987 sf novel Replay, by Ken Grimwood, where the protagonist (having been put back in time through no fault of his own) is determined to prevent the assassination. He goes to Dallas, finds a typewriter shop with demos sitting out front, and types a letter from Oswald to JFK, concluding with the friendly warning "I will murder you."

He mails the letter; Oswald is arrested; and our hero returns in a leisurely way to his hometown, feeling pretty good about changing the course of history. Unfortunately, when he arrives, he is greeted by the news that the president has been shot in his motorcade in Dallas by a lone gunman named Nelson Bennett, who in turn is shot to death by Jack Ruby. I suppose history was not amenable to being messed with.

But I also got pretty tired of the over-the-top claims of the conspiracy theorists who couldn't seem to get over it. Oliver Stone in particular.

My account of the death of John F. Kennedy, which appears in his Political Graveyard entry, went through a series of versions as I debated with many correspondents as to how definite it should be. The original was larded with equivocating weasel words, but I ended up with the following:

Shot by a sniper, Lee Harvey Oswald, while riding in a motorcade, and died in Parkland Hospital, Dallas, Dallas County, Tex., November 22, 1963. Oswald was shot and killed two days later by Jack Ruby.

For a while, I received a lot of email sneers about this, along the lines that "everybody knows" there was a second gunman, but nothing that changed my mind about it.

I shared some of these letters with the Political Graveyard email list (which has over 300 members, including current and past politicos, historians from Left to Right, librarians, etc.) and the points raised by the critics were rejected by almost everyone.

Interesting to relate, the hubbub has died out. I don't think I have received any complaints about JFK's entry in at least a year. I still get plenty of email commenting on the site -- just not about that detail.

My friend continues:

Just curious. I've always been dubious of it being Oswald alone with that weapon, distance, lack of skills, trees, moving target, etc. However, I've also never seen anything else that I've found convincing.

I'm definite that Oswald did it. His reasons, or who was behind him, are still open to debate.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Friday, December 30, 2005, 4:30 pm

Notes from the world of conspiracy theorists. In the course of a contentious comment thread at the Ann Arbor Is Overrated web site, local lefty infoshop founder Adam de Angeli writes as follows:

I have no patience for people who dismiss hard factual evidence of deep corruption as "conspiracy theories" (especially since the official explanation of the events of September 11th is the most retarded conspiracy theory ever concocted — the whole American defense apparatus being totally blindsided and the Towers falling straight down at the speed of gravity.how stupid are you?!?!)

Yes, there are now some contrarians out there who dispute the accepted narrative that Al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center.

The problem with paranoia is that paranoid explanations of events are both logically tidy and emotionally appealing. In the paranoid worldview, there are no coincidences, no loose ends, a reason for everything.

Occasionally the paranoid view turns out to be correct, but not often. The emotional pull of the paranoid view should always be resisted.

It is tempting, for example, to look back at catastrophic events which turned out to advantage a specific group and find some reason to believe that the advantaged group deliberately caused the catastrophe.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 obviously rescued GWB's popularity and increased the power of his administration. There was the suspicion among some (parallel to claims about about FDR and the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack) that the president and his advisors knew in advance about the attacks and did nothing to stop them, rather, they sat back, let them happen, and reaped the political rewards.

Morgan Reynolds, a retired academic economist, takes this a long step further. The planes weren't enough, he says, to knock down the towers. Rather, he concludes, it was a professional demolition job with explosives carefully installed in critical places to bring all three buildings (including WTC 7) down very neatly into their footprints.

He marshals a lot of plausible-sounding engineering evidence for this, and points to what he describes as FEMA's tight control over the debris to prevent it from being examined.

Another web site, Serendipity, has a more complex theory. Not only were the WTC towers brought down in a controlled explosive demolition, in this view, but there weren't any Arab terrorists.

Instead, says Serendipity, the planes which crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were remote-control drones, and the near-death cell phone conversations with passengers on those planes were faked. The real flights were diverted to a military base in West Virginia; all the innocent passengers were transfered into Flight 93, which was deliberately crashed in Pennsylvania.

Yow. If true, that would be the crime of the century.

Even for those of us with a very low opinion of the current adminstration's moral compass, that is very hard to swallow.

But if it was really an evil conspiracy involving agents of the U.S. government in the deaths of almost 3,000 people, it has to make sense going forward as well as backward. And this is where it breaks down.

In advance of 9/11, it certainly wouldn't be obvious that a devastating terrorist attack would redound to the benefit of the president and party in power. In fact it did, but it didn't have to. Moreover, the administration was at the time downplaying and shrugging off the risk of just such an attack, openly rejecting the advice from its predecessors to take this threat seriously and make it a priority.

That didn't end up being much of an issue, but it could easily have been.

I would have thought that even a paranoid view would have to take account of Al Qaeda as a real organization with real terrorists, and that the hijackings were a genuine terrorist act, but that was before I saw Serendipity's web site.

Still, whoever was in charge of crashing those planes into the WTC, it is also plainly the fact that the plans and preparations for the attack started during the Clinton Administration, long before a hypothetically super-evil stop-at-nothing Bush junta could have anticipated the political benefits to be gained from such an attack.

Moreover, these theories posit that the plotters needed the Twin Towers to be destroyed in order to create the desired political effect and/or to cover up the conspiracy. Somehow, they knew in advance (without any precedents) that the fires caused by the planes would burn out without causing a collapse.

So, rather than simply choosing a different type of attack that might have destroyed the complex by itself, they secretly supplemented the coordinated crashing of two aircraft with a commerical style controlled demolition — thus making the whole job immeasurably more complicated to pull off.

To do this, they found demolition experts who were willing to be mass murderers. Amidst the hubbub of the World Trade Center, a team of surely at least twenty engineers and technicians, who had to know what they were doing, somehow quietly set up the buildings to implode neatly, without anyone noticing the weeks of extensive work that is usually required to accomplish this, including drilling and notching beams and installing lots of explosive charges.

Such a demolition job would have left behind lots of evidence in the rubble, scattered unpredictably all over the site. Even a major government would have trouble securing and covering up, what, millions of tons of debris in the middle of a big city. Still, presumably they would have plenty of time to put a plan in place to take total control of the site, a control that would probably have raised few questions at the time.

But that did not happen. If you read the accounts of what really happened at Ground Zero in the days and weeks after 9/11, the chaos and confusion and ad hoc organization bears no resemblance at all to what a hypothetical evil conspiracy would have arranged to cover up its crimes.

I'm all for examining evidence, but this whole theory makes no sense to me at all.

Update 1/1/06: Adam de Angeli has posted a point-by-point rebuttal to this. Of course, I don't agree, and I will have more to say about this soon.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, November 28, 2005, 12:38 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.

But this past week has been a bad time for elected officials in Washtenaw County.

Our Probate Judge, John Kirkendall, has announced his resignation. Local media coverage of this event has been unjustly negative toward him, with the clear implication that he was somehow under fire. He has been an outstanding judge during sometimes difficult circumstances, and I keenly regret his decision to leave the bench. We will all miss his wisdom.

Three other officials have been affected by charges of drinking and driving, including U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, whose son Todd was recently arrested in Ypsilanti; Webster Township Supervisor Dean Fisher, who resigned his position after a second drunken driving arrest; and our Drain Commissioner, Janis Bobrin, who was arrested following an automobile accident earlier this month.

The last two were highlighted on the front page of the Ann Arbor News on Thanksgiving Day.

Janis Bobrin, it need hardly be mentioned, is the state's best and most environmentally sensitive drain commissioner, who has put together an outstanding office. I am glad to report that she has confronted this issue directly. In an email sent over the weekend to all county department heads, she invited questions and comments, writing that she didn't want any "elephants sitting in the living room." The reference is to a situation where family members and co-workers dare not bring up a problem that everyone knows about.

My own history led me to be somewhat Puritanical about substance abuse. Growing up in a university town in the 1960s and 1970s, I saw the impact of the rampant use of illegal drugs during that period. I knew people who were damaged or destroyed by drugs or alcohol — some of them brilliant folks who might otherwise have made significant contributions to society. Moreover, my mother, a very heavy smoker, died at age 57 from lung cancer. Appalled by heavy drinking among local politicos in the 1970s, I was part of the informal "Teetotaler's Caucus" of the Democratic Party.

Driving under the influence of alcohol is not only self-destructive, it is community-destructive. I can only add my voice to so many others, to warn against getting into the driver's seat when your faculties are impaired in any way. We in county government should be acutely aware of the consequences: we handle those felony case files and dramshop lawsuits; we see the anguish of the defendants and victims and families in our courtrooms; we file the death certificates for accident casualties.

But I do have compassion for those who struggle with addiction. It must be horribly difficult.

For county employees and family members who have a problem with any sort of substance abuse, there is an Employee Assistance Program which can provide confidential help; you can find contact information in the Employee Zone of the county's web site. Indeed, most larger employers have such a program available. Making that contact can be the first step in taking back control of your own life.

Let us extend our good wishes and prayers to those who are having difficulty in their lives, and let us serve our customers with a renewed sense of purpose.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Wednesday, November 23, 2005, 1:18 pm

In his column in Monday's Ann Arbor News, Geoff Larcom urges a change to nonpartisan elections for city council.

Now that all eleven members of the council are Democrats, such calls are only to be expected. And indeed, maybe this is a time to think about how we elect our city officials. But first, we should consider how we got here.

Fifteen years ago, when I moved to Ann Arbor, it was a veritable museum of archaic political structures. It wasn't just the old-style lever-handle mechanical voting machines, fascinating but scarily unreliable. This was just about the only city in the state still holding annual elections on the traditional Monday in early April; most cities had moved to biennial elections in odd-year Novembers. Ann Arbor's ward system, with two members elected per ward and none at large, was typical in the 19th century, but increasingly rare since the 1950s, at least in Michigan. And Ann Arbor was and remains one of the last cities in the state with partisan city elections.

Because the city elections were annual, partisan, always contested, and not held at the same time of year as other elections, both parties had active organizations in the city which were generally regarded as more important than (and totally independent of) the county political parties. In most parts of Michigan, the county party is where the action is, but among Ann Arbor Democrats in 1990, involvement in the Washtenaw County Democratic Party was considered a kind of offbeat interest. The city Democratic Party had a lot more going on. Each ward had an active Democratic Party organization, too, and the ward chairs had positions of considerable influence.

Those internal party dynamics are all changed now, perhaps because the city elections were moved from April to November, and because a number of key local party activists now live outside the city. The Ann Arbor Democratic Party is just a shadow of the organizational powerhouse it used to be; the energy which used to animate it has been transferred to the county level.

Larcom writes:

local moderate Republicans wear the Scarlet "R,'' the perception they subscribe entirely to the state and national GOP view on social issues. That's now a ticket to oblivion in this town.

Changes at the national level have consolidated and sharpened the concept of what it means to be a Democrat, and what it means to be a Republican. Ann Arbor's political establishment was long accustomed to treating state and national parties as irrelevant, but our voters have embraced what might be called The New Partisanship. Which is to say, given the scant appeal of national Republicans in Ann Arbor, they have embraced the Democratic Party.

Larcom asks:

Why not make these local elections non-partisan? What do the basic municipal questions of water rates, leaf pickup, police patrols and tree taxes have to do with being a Republican or Democrat?

The short answer is that all these issues, not to mention questions of development, transportation, law enforcement and city resource allocation, implicate the values of the decisionmakers, and one of the rules of the New Partisanship (on both sides) is that you can't trust the other party's values.

It may not be literally true that a Republican council member would invariably vote to widen major streets, regardless of trees and neighborhoods, whereas a Democrat will invariably vote against, regardless of traffic congestion, but it's not a bad first approximation for the priorities a "typical" Republican or Democrat might bring to the table.

We ask a lot of our voters. For example, my personal vote, in southwest Ann Arbor, helps choose almost a hundred elected officials: five federal (president, vice president, two U.S. Senators, one U.S. Representative), six state (Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, state senator, state representative), 32 members of state education boards (eight each for U-M, MSU, Wayne State, and the state board of education), 24 judges (seven Supreme Court justices, seven Court of Appeals judges in our district, five circuit judges, two probate judges, three district judges), six county officials (sheriff, prosecuting attorney, clerk-register, treasurer, drain commissioner, and county commissioner in my district), three city officials (mayor and two ward council members), and 21 others (seven school board members, seven community college board members, and seven district library board members). If you're keeping score, that adds up to 97 officials theoretically answerable directly to me as a voter.

When it comes to election time, it's not easy even for an activist to cast an informed vote on every single one of those races. Hence, party labels are a labor saving device for voters. Straight ticket voting is often criticized, but it is very much on the upswing. With the new polarization, growing numbers of Democratic and Republican voters see the other party's values as being fundamentally wrong, so ticket splitting has little appeal.

Larcom points to other nonpartisan boards as an example of what the city council could become:

Reid, who served two terms on council and became the lone remaining Republican, points to local nonprofit organizations and school boards, which draw a broad segment of capable people from the town's university and business communities.

Those people can make decisions without the business or personal risk of tying themselves to one party. Asks Reid: "Are we operating under a system that substantially reduces our available pool of talent when we need it?"

Non-elected boards of directors are not a fair comparison; school boards are very narrowly focused compared to city council, and are elected by a very small constituency of school board voters.

The problem with the talent pool for city council is that few people are really interested in serving. City council, partisan or not, is rightly seen as being Real Life Politics, under the hot lights of media scrutiny and the pressures of interest group lobbying. It is a myth that a change to nonpartisan elections would suddenly unleash a flood of highly qualified candidates. If political parties no longer had the incentive or responsibility to recruit candidates, we might well end up with fewer candidates instead of more.

The funniest part of Larcom's piece is his slam on the ward system and student voters:

A geographic strike against the GOP is Ann Arbor's pie-shaped ward system. Wards emanate from the city's center, so each holds a section of students who vote Democratic and often go straight-ticket.

First of all, the "pie-shaped" wards are mandated by the City Charter, which provides as follows:

SECTION 1.3 (a) (2): The five wards should each have the general character of a pieshaped segment of the City with the point of such segment lying near the center of the city so as to make each ward a very rough cross section of the community population from the center outward.

As far as I know, that language is original to the 1956 city charter. In other words, it was written at a time when Republicans were the majority party, and they chose this arrangement.

Further, until the 1970s redistricting, there was indeed a ward (the old 2nd) which was dominated by student voters. Around 1975, the wards were extensively redrawn, by Republicans over Democratic opposition, to eliminate the student ward and concentrate nonstudent Democratic areas in the 1st Ward. At the time, this was seen as a gerrymander to cement Republican dominance of the city council. And with very slight changes, those are the ward boundaries we still have today.

Perhaps UM students and today's city Republicans could make common cause to amend the charter and create a mostly-student ward in the center of town, removing student areas from the other four wards. But that wouldn't actually elect any Republicans. Student votes are not what made Ann Arbor overwhelmingly Democratic.

It's a surprisingly common misconception. Whenever I mention that Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County have become gradually more and more Democratic over the last thirty years or so, many otherwise intelligent people immediately say, "Oh, you mean because of the student vote."

Um, no. If anything, students as a group are more conservative and Republican today than they were, say, in 1972. And they make up only a small portion of the city's vote, and a tiny portion of the county's vote.

You'd think someone would have learned from Joan Lowenstein's election to the (formerly safe Republican) 2nd Ward city council seat over Jeff Hauptman in 2002. Republican poll watchers were all over the student precincts, obviously fearing that a wave of student voters would overwhelm their candidate. But the Democrat won every precinct, including all the completely nonstudent ones.

All that being said, I do recognize disadvantages to partisan election of the city council. In a one-party town, it means the "real" race happens during the August primary. That's not such a problem in even years, when there are many other partisan primaries going on. But in odd-numbered years, city council primaries are alone on the ballot, and draw few voters. If every ward has a primary, that single purpose election costs some $50,000.

The even-year and odd-year council seats are already somewhat different because of the lower turnout and greater focus on individual candidates in the odd year election. We could accentuate this difference, perhaps giving voice to a wider variety of interests and perspectives, while saving the cost of the August primary, by using nonpartisan "Instant Runoff Voting" (IRV) for the odd-year November seats.

IRV — already enacted in Ferndale and in San Francisco, and used to choose science fiction's Hugo Awards and the president of the American Psychological Association — is the system where voters indicate fallback choices if their first choice candidate is eliminated. If one candidate gets a majority of first choice votes, he or she is elected. However, if no candidate gets a majority among first choices, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and his or her votes are redistributed to the other candidates based on second choice votes. Repeat until one candidate has a majority.

IRV has its critics and drawbacks, as does every possible voting method including the one we commonly use. Many of IRV's backers see it as a way to get rid of the two-party system, which it most certainly is not.

But the most cogent objection is that Ann Arbor's Accuvote ballot tabulators do not have enough memory to accumulate all the possible combinations needed for IRV, or for any other ranked-vote system.

That's why I'm suggesting IRV only for the five city council seats elected in the lower turnout odd-year elections. The electronic tabulators would sum up the first-choice votes, which probably would yield a majority winner in most races. If no candidate had a majority, then the city board of canvassers would supervise a hand count of that ward's ballots to determine the IRV winner. Given typical turnout per ward in an odd year city council race, this would not be a very big job.

By contrast, Condorcet, which is arguably a superior voting method, would always require a hand count to determine the winner. And a hand count for city council among the tens of thousands of ballots cast in an even-year or presidential election would be a nightmare. IRV in odd-year races is very limited and practical by comparison.

Back in the 1970s, Ann Arbor briefly had partisan IRV for mayor only. The goal was to allow voters to support the Human Rights Party candidate without electing the Republican. Ballots were counted by hand; the HRP candidate was eliminated, and almost all of her votes went to the Democrat, who won a majority by a tiny margin. The process was orderly and fair, but the then-city-clerk was strongly opposed, and portrayed it as a mess; soon after, Republicans successfully sponsored a charter amendment to repeal it.

Many things have changed since then. The rationale for using IRV for the odd-year council seats would not be to guarantee any particular result. Rather, the goal is to get rid of the August odd-year primary. That would save money and broaden effective participation in choosing city leaders and policies.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, November 14, 2005, 12:29 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Today's letter to my staff:

During the last week of October, I visited Florida for the first time in my life. Yes, we took Sarah (age 7) to Disney World and Epcot Center. We arrived just hours after Hurricane Wilma left the state, but we saw no damage in the Orlando/Daytona area. The weather during our stay was mostly in the 60s Fahrenheit, which is to say, bitterly cold by Florida standards, but comfortable for us Michiganders.

The hallmark of the Disney operation is customer service and attention to detail. I was awed at how well everything was put together, from the transportation to the architecture to the lighting to the landscaping to the crowd handling. In one area normally reserved for "cast members only" (but opened temporarily to accommodate the flow of people bypassing a crowded parade route), I saw a sign which laid out seven customer service standards, each one based humorously on one of the Seven Dwarfs. All were plainly calculated to keep the staff cheerful and help park visitors to have an enjoyable time. Disney calls its personnel "cast members," because each puts on a kind of performance, from the joke-telling tram drivers to the popcorn sellers.

While I was in Florida, I had the opportunity to see early voting taking place for the November 8 election in Volusia County. For the two weeks preceding the election (up to Friday before the election), they had polling places set up in the county library and several other places in various parts of the county. It was set up just like a regular voting precinct, but each one had all 21 ballot styles available for the various municipal elections going on in various parts of the county.

After voting, each voter's ballot was fed through an Accuvote tabulator, which would signal if there were any problems with the ballot such as overvote or undervote, but not count it. The voter would have the opportunity to correct any such problem. Then the completed ballot would be sealed in an envelope; it would end up in the precinct to be processed the same way absentee ballots normally are.

I had heard about food buffets at early voting polling places, but I didn't see any. Of course, the one I visited was in a library where food wouldn't be allowed anyway.

Outside the building, 100 feet from the door, there was the usual cluster of campaign signs, just as we see on Election Day. The difference is that these signs were for candidates running in different cities all over Volusia County. And instead of being up for a day, presumably, these signs lingered for the entire two week voting period.

I also did some historical research for Political Graveyard, and encountered a very odd customer service situation. I was looking for some election returns for early 20th century mayoral elections, and the Volusia County elections office confirmed that they had those records.

Could I come to the office to see them?

She replied very sternly: "Sir, you need an appointment to see those records!"

How could I make such an appointment?

Long pause. "Um — er — we don't know. No one has ever asked to see those records before."

In the end, I gave up on seeing them in the short time I had. But I sure hope nobody has this kind of experience with our office!

On Saturday morning, October 22, the Washtenaw County Election Commission (Judge Kirkendall, County Treasurer McClary, and myself) held a clarity hearing on the text proposed as reasons for recall of three Pittsfield Township officials. We unanimously decided that the reasons proposed did not meet the legal standard for clarity. New language has been submitted, and the Election Commission will meet tomorrow morning, Tuesday, November 15, at 11:00 am in the Board of Commissioners room, 220 N. Main, to consider and rule on it.

This is the time of year for many meetings and conferences, and I have been called upon to attend or speak at several of them over the last few weeks. Often, preparing something to say to a group, to explain aspects of county government or elections or the court system is an opportunity to think about those issues in a new way, to find new insights, and I'll be sharing some of those with you in coming weeks.

I am continuing individual meetings with staff members. If you haven't heard from me yet, you will soon — I'd like to have seen everybody once before the end of the year, so I can start the second round in January. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let.s have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Sunday, October 23, 2005, 1:48 pm

From the Clerk-Register. Two recent letters to my staff:

Tuesday, October 11:

The County spends $30,000/year on a filter to keep unwanted spam out of our email system, but it has slipped up a little. I personally have received several "phishing" scams in the last couple of weeks. Probably you have, too.

For those not familiar with the term, "phishing" refers to emails which pretend to be from your bank or from Ebay or PayPal. The corporate logos are all in place, and the message can look highly authentic.

The approach varies, but one way or another, the email tells you that there has been some kind of problem, and you need to "update" your personal information. Just "click here," it says, on a link which looks totally legitimate — as does the web site it takes you to. But it's a fake site controlled by the crooks! As soon as you enter your social security number, credit card, bank account, whatever, they'll use your identity for nefarious purposes, making purchases, withdrawing money from your bank, applying for loans, and so on.

When you have a phishing message staring you in the face, you know it came from somewhere — so why can't the crooks be caught and punished? The problem is that they are very good at covering their tracks. Very likely the message to you was sent through some innocent person's home or office Windows computer, made vulnerable by a computer virus and taken over remotely by the crooks. (If you're not running adequate security software, and keeping up with all the required security and virus updates, it could be YOUR machine which is silently pumping out thousands of spam/scam messages.)

Alternately, the originating mail server and the fake web site could be somewhere overseas, perhaps in Russia or Malaysia — even if the crooks themselves are Americans.

Another type of fraud email has been around so long, and seen so often, that it has become a bit of a joke: the letters from Nigeria asking for your help to transfer millions of dollars of ill-gotten loot to your bank account. The real goal, of course, is to get you to come up with money for various "expenses" required to get the big money out of Nigeria. Or, failing that, armed with account information you provide, they'll drain your bank account. Sometimes, they lure the victims to Nigeria and hold them for ransom. Sometimes, the writers claim to be from Sierra Leone or South Africa or Russia or Taiwan, but the style is instantly recognizable as the product of a group of Nigerian criminal gangs that have been nicknamed "the Lads from Lagos".

My personal email account has been public for years, and therefore gets lots of spam, including these Nigerian scam letters. Back in 2002, some of my friends had still never seen one, and were curious about them. So, I put up a web page cataloging a bunch of scam letters that I had collected (wallpapered with FRAUD in big green letters). I called it the Nigerian Fraud Email Gallery — and I included informational links as well as a bunch of examples.

After a while, the incoming flood of Nigerian mail became just too overwhelming. I had posted some 500, but had more than 40,000 more examples waiting. I gave up on cataloging them all, and mostly neglected the site, posting only a few more every now and then.

I'm sure the web page helped alert a few people to the fraud (some wrote to thank me). But now, suddenly, it's flooded with visitors.

Last Thursday, October 6, the 15th Annual IgNobel Prize ceremony was held at Harvard University. The IgNobels are a silly parody of the Nobel prizes, but the awards are presented by actual Nobel laureates under the auspices of a major university, and received some national media coverage.

This year's awards included the IgNobel Prize in Literature to:

The Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters — General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others — each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them.

And on the official IgNobel web site, the link is to my low-tech little compilation of Nigerian fraud email.

I think whole world has now been saturated by these fraud letters. A naïve person might be taken in by the first one he ever got, but how likely is anyone to fall for the fifteenth or the eighty-third? There is one report that the scam is no longer making much money for the perpetrators. Perhaps enough people worldwide have learned to be cautious about the authenticity of stuff that arrives by email. I hope that my fraud gallery site will soon become just a historical curiosity.

As a general rule, if you receive a spam message of any kind at a County email address, forward it to SPAM@MAIL-FILTERS.COM so that our filters can be updated.

Validation of jail bond referendum petition signatures is ongoing, even on Columbus Day. Over 9,000 signatures have been typed in and checked against the Qualified Voter File, and 74% matched. We should be finished before the 35 day deadline we set. Many thanks to everyone who is helping with this important task.

This Thursday is Yom Kippur, and I will be out of the office. For those who asked: Yom Kippur is a solemn day which involves atonement and a 24 hour fast — no food or water. Chief deputies Jim, Derrick, and Karen can handle anything that comes up while I'm out.

Let's have a great week!

Monday, October 17:

Here's a couple of nice recent comments from customers of our Deeds and Vital Records offices:

The following was posted anonymously in the comments section of the local weblog Ann Arbor Is Overrated, in regard to researching the history of houses:

Your best bet is to go to the county deed office on Main and search it all the way back. There are some records available electronically but they go back only a few years. The folks there are freakishly helpful and patient, but they won't do the work for you. You'll need the address and possibly the parcel id (you can get that by doing a Property/Parcel Lookup). From there, you'll have to look through the giant deed books (called "libers") back to when the subject house isn't listed anymore. It's time consuming but kind of cool, in a geeky sort of way.

"Freakishly" helpful and patient — "cool in a geeky sort of way" — who could ask for higher praise? Apparently our office is NOT overrated!

A visitor from Illinois wrote to me as follows:

Dear Mr. Kestenbaum,

Last Thursday, Oct 6th, I ventured into the Vital Records department to gather genealogical information. I had not done such searches before, so I did not know exactly what to do or how to do it.

All of your staff in Vital records were extremely helpful and very happy to assist me. They made my time there not only productive but very enjoyable. Please commend them all for their knowledge and the service they provided.

After almost all day in Vital records, I had about two hours left downstairs searching through old deeds. Again, your staff excelled in their friendliness and service.

Please extend my thanks to each of them.

Kind regards,

Kudos to the staff in both divisions. Keep up the good work!

We now have two Hurricane Katrina evacuees from New Orleans working as temps in our Elections office, validating signatures on the jail bond issue referendum petitions. The work of typing in all the names to compare with the Qualified Voter File is nearly complete.

Next Saturday morning, October 22, at 9:00 am, the county Election Commission (myself, County Treasurer Catherine McClary, and Judge John Kirkendall) will convene a clarity hearing on the proposed language for the recall of three Pittsfield Township officials. We are to decide only whether or not the language is "clear", not whether it is true or false. Though it's unusual to hold a public meeting over the weekend, all three of us wanted to be there in person, and it wasn't possible to schedule it during the week. The meeting will be held in the lower level meeting room at 200 N. Main.

Previously, on August 11, the Election Commission approved (simply as being "clear") recall language against two Augusta Township officials.

Meanwhile, we and the local clerks expect to be ready for the upcoming election on November 8, 2005, which will involve the cities of Ann Arbor, Chelsea, Milan, and Saline, the village of Dexter, the Dexter library district (same territory as the Dexter school district), Northfield Township, and the South Lyon and Northville school districts.

Preparations are also underway for the Clerk-Register's annual holiday breakfast for the entire staff, in mid-December. More details will be announced soon.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Efe O., 12/1/2005: I hope you realise that refering to Advance fee fraud as Nigerian Scams is racial/tribal profilling.

    This should please be stopped.


Thursday, October 6, 2005, 11:53 am

From the Clerk-Register. The latest installment, from Monday, October 3:

Last Monday, as expected, the Elections office received a filing of petition signatures in opposition to the proposed bond issue for jail expansion and court renovation at the Service Center. Under the law, 15,000 valid signatures would force a countywide vote on the bond issue; about 23,000 were filed. Validation of these petitions started immediately and is progressing. Many thanks to those of you who are helping with this task!

If the petitions are validated, the Board of Commissioners can either schedule an election, probably in February, or perhaps cancel the bond issue.

Preparations are also well underway for the November 8th election in the cities of Ann Arbor, Chelsea, Milan, and Saline, the village of Dexter, the Northville and South Lyon school districts, and the Dexter library district (same boundaries as the Dexter school district).

Congratulations again to the Deeds staff for their achievement in reducing the time from filing to recording of a deed from more than 60 days to just 7 days over the past few months. I am very proud of your dedication and teamwork!

Since a long lag time ties up mortgage money and raises costs for lenders and realtors, quick work in our office helps make home loans more available and housing more affordable in Washtenaw County.

Also last week, several of us, including Chief Deputies Karen Edman and Jim Dries, and Jury Clerk Yvonne Boyd, met with Judge Don Shelton, who is our Jury Judge, to finalize new ways of handling the jury list for circuit and district courts in Washtenaw County.

Since the law was changed in the 1980s, jurors are selected from the list of licensed drivers in the county. That creates some problems, because the driver's list is not managed and updated the same way that the voter list is. For example, the state apparently does not consider death a reason to cancel an individual's driver license. Therefore, those names are still included on the jury list they send us. That means we get unhappy calls from widows and widowers, asking why we're sending jury mail to someone who has been dead for years. Using the Social Security Death Index, we have removed more than 600 names of deceased individuals from the list; that will reduce the number of anguished phone calls, and save on postage and mailing costs for jury questionnaires.

Also, the driver's list doesn't include any code for which court district the person lives in, so we have assigned that information based on their address. From now on, we will have four separate jury pools — one for each court — so that mailings of jury questionnaires can be precisely targeted to the territory and juror needs of the particular court. That will also reduce postage and mailing costs. Since everyone on the list will be assigned at random either to the circuit or district pool, there will no longer be any duplicates to purge — saving three weeks of tedious hand work.

Some scheduling notes. This morning, I will be attending the funeral in Chelsea of Herman Koenn — I sent a note about his passing last week. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, starts this evening and continues tomorrow, so I will not be in the office tomorrow.

My individual meetings with staff members will resume starting on Wednesday.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Dave Cahill, 10/8/2005: Larry, what method are you using the validate the petition signatures? Are you doing sampling, or are you checking each signature?

    When will we know if there are enough valid signatures?

    If there are enough, then would you guess that the Board of Commissioners will set the referendum, or will cancel the bond issue?


Thursday, October 6, 2005, 9:27 am

From the Clerk-Register. A couple of recent messages to my staff.

September 12:

On Saturday, there was startling news about our county in the Japanese media.

A report on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Japan Today noted the following:

But in a largely-deserted uptown neighborhood in Washtenaw county, where county sheriffs wearing flak jackets and carrying assault rifles were knocking on doors, officials said a forced evacuation was yet to begin.

No, it's not another place with the same name: we live in the only Washtenaw County on earth. Louisiana doesn't even have counties.

What obviously happened is that the Japanese reporter came across our Washtenaw County sheriff deputies, helping to protect New Orleans, and assumed the geography from the badges, equipment, and uniforms.

Despite Gov. Granholm's generous offer, it doesn't look like Michigan will be hosting 10,000 evacuees from the Gulf Coast. I suppose the hurricane survivors from Louisiana and Mississippi really don't need to be put through one of our winters. But it is still a point of pride that some of our people are providing needed help, and working so smoothly and efficiently with the other authorities on the scene that they were mistaken for locals.

Individual meetings with staff members continue. I will send notices to the people who I'd like to meet with this week. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week!

September 19:

Twelve years ago, in July 1993, the Mississippi River valley was hit by devastating floods. Levees were overtopped or broken, and even some areas which had never flooded before were hard hit.

Almost three months later, in late September 1993, I flew into St. Louis, Missouri, for a conference, and from the plane, I was stunned to see that some neighborhoods in the St. Louis metro area were still under water. Dewatering and recovery from a flood situation can take a long time.

Just as we hear that some residents are returning to parts of the New Orleans area, Hurricane Katrina evacuees are arriving here in Washtenaw County. Let us be mindful that this crisis is far from over, especially for those who have lost everything in the disaster.

We in the Clerk-Register's office will be providing some tangible help for evacuees who need Louisiana birth certificates. Last Friday, just before 5pm, I received a call from Richard Wheat, manager of Vital Records for the State of Michigan. He asked us to assist Louisiana by accepting applications for birth certificates from evacuees in this area. The applications will be funneled through our state office to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the certificates will be issued and sent to us by the same route.

These applications can only be accepted in person — not by mail. Evacuees who were born in Louisiana can come to our vital records office to apply, or potentially, we could send a staff person to any shelters or gathering places for hurricane survivors in this area.

But the victims of Hurricane Katrina are not the only people who need our help. The United Way fund drive is now underway. It's a broad based community effort to raise funds to sustain a wide range of organizations and services. I realize the form is a bit confusing; if you need help with it (I did), ask Karen Edman or Jim Dries. Even one dollar per paycheck would be a very small sacrifice, and a big help to our community.

This Thursday afternoon, September 22, Chief Deputy Derrick Jackson and I will be "arrested" for the Muscular Dystrophy Association "lock-up". We each need to raise $1,000 for "bail" — all of which goes to support muscular dystrophy research and programs. If you can help with even a small donation, bring a check to the Elections/Admin office by Thursday noon.

And speaking of the Elections office, we are expecting to get the job of validating thousands of petition signatures in coming days: the referendum petitions on the jail and courts bond issue, and the Augusta Township recall. We may need to bring people in from other divisions of the Clerk-Register's office to help with this work.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Sunday, September 25, 2005, 1:30 am

Expelled. A friend writes:

Hi Larry,

Do you have time to post something about that forum you just left? It would be nice to have a little spot on your blog for others to mourn the loss of your participation.

Clearly, the gods are fickle over there. I have wanted to phone the powers that be many times over the years, but they live in some sort of impenetrable bubble. If you find a penetration, send it to me--you have my email.

I will miss your wit and wisdom over there. I hope we can still get together for the occasional luncheon -- you make me laugh, and I've seen you laugh at me, too.

Warm Regards,

Horatio.

The reference is to the MLIVE Ann Arbor Town Talk forum (sponsored by the Ann Arbor News), from which I have apparently been expelled.

This is pretty baffling. I don't believe I ever did anything to violate the Forum rules.

Many users of that forum evade explusion by creating another ID and wading back in until being expelled again. I did create a second ID (Ephraim2), but just to let others know what had happened and to say goodbye. I'm not interested in getting zapped again and again.

As I think about this, a perfectly reasonable explanation occurs to me.

Most people outside politics probably don't realize that the Ann Arbor News has a policy against publishing any letters-to-the-editor from elected officials. (Under rare circumstances they will publish an "Other Voices" piece to allow a politician to respond to something negative.)

Perhaps this same policy also restricts the participation of known political figures in the MLIVE forums.

In any case, I have plenty of other places to express myself online, notably Arbor Update, Ann Arbor Is Overrated, and Grex.

Update. The goodbye message I posted on Mlive was deleted, so I reposted it, and it was deleted again; I don't think I'll bother to try any further.

Further Update. I received the following message:

From: Eric Braun
Subject: MLive.com forum

Hello Larry,

I saw the posting on annarborisoverrated.com that you had been booted from our forums. I checked into this for you and it appears there was a system-wide screw-up that booted, many, many people the other day ... as my e-mail can attest to.

Anyway, they have no record of any block or hold on your account so it should be free and clear now.

Our forums are actually moderated out of our New Jersey offices, so I don't deal with them on a day to day basis.

I hope you continue to post on the forum and let me know if anything else like this happens to your account.

Thanks,

Eric Braun
Editor-in-Chief
mlive.com

It's odd that the "system-wide screw-up" lasted for days, and didn't affect any of the other regular users of the Ann Arbor forum that I know of. Nor have my deleted postings been restored — not that they need to be at this point.

All snarkiness aside, I did sincerely thank Mr. Braun; and now that my account has been restored, I will return to my semi-occasional participation there.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Friday, September 9, 2005, 10:33 pm

Mandatory evacuation &mdash here? Japan Today reports on the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, and makes a startling reference to local geography:

But in a largely-deserted uptown neighborhood in Washtenaw county, where county sheriffs wearing flak jackets and carrying assault rifles were knocking on doors, officials said a forced evacuation was yet to begin.

I wonder what kind of translation error would substitute the name of our Michigan county for some place a thousand miles south of here. Especially given that Louisiana doesn't have counties or "county sheriffs" as such.

Or maybe the Japanese reporter got on the wrong plane and ended up in Ann Arbor instead of New Orleans? (Certainly I could have made the same kind of error trying to find my way in Japan.) No wonder he didn't see forced evacuations!

Update: Undoubtedly the Japanese reporter encountered the ten Washtenaw County sheriff deputies who volunteered for Katrina work, and assumed the geography from the agency name on their uniforms and equipment!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Tuesday, September 6, 2005, 11:15 am

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

More hurricane aftermath. Help is starting to arrive in flooded New Orleans, but southern Mississippi, which received the brunt of the hurricane force winds, is still desperate, with houses flattened, roads blocked by debris and fallen trees, emergency vehicles destroyed, food and water running out, gasoline scarce.

A friend of mine in Jackson, Mississippi (she's a retired professor from Mississippi State University in Starkville) was asked whether it was the case that devastated areas in Mississippi are not attracting attention and help. She replied:

IT HAS BEEN VERY MUCH THE CASE. The people in Mississippi don't care about being on tv. The point isn't about the media. Naturally the media would pay more attention to the drama of New Orleans. But what people in Mississippi care about is that indeed it very much has extended to the government. Not only did Pass Christian and Gulfport get slower responses, not to mention the now-almost-non-existent Hancock County, where at least as recently as yesterday somebody who made it there and then back out to report said that the submerged police station at Waveland had no communication equipment at all and was BEGGING for at least one satellite phone, but people in the inland towns in south Mississippi have been TOTALLY IGNORED. You ought to hear some of the things the mayor of Hattiesburg has had to say on the subject. And Hattiesburg now has a FEMA representative available -- after a mere week of hunger and thirst. People in smaller towns are still without ANYTHING. And people in rural areas are, well -- who cares -- there aren't enough of them for it to matter. If any of them are still alive, they won't be much longer, so what's the point in worrying about them.

Here in Michigan, Gov. Jennifer Granholm has offered to accept as many as 10,000 refugees from the South. That sounds like a lot, but it's only 1% of the estimated one million made homeless by Katrina. And I heard this morning that the Ingham County Board of Commissioners is considering a small millage on November's ballot to help pay for support services for the expected influx of refugees.

We will be hearing about this hurricane and its impact for a long time.

Our customers may be under stress as well. Though we haven't seen actual refugees arrive here yet, people at our counters and in our offices and courtrooms may have family or close friends who were directly affected by the hurricane. Moreover, we will always have customers whose lives have just been disrupted by more local, personal catastrophes, such as house fires or automobile accidents. The key is to treat everyone with courtesy and respect, even if (especially if) they seem distracted or irritable.

Individual meetings with staff members continue. I will send notices to the people who I'd like to meet with this week. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Anna, 9/26/2005: What does it mean to "accept refugees"? Last I checked, anyone could move to Michigan any time they wanted. Does it mean Michigan will "accept" them as in provide food, shelter, and jobs?


Monday, August 29, 2005, 10:56 am

From the Clerk-Register. Today's message to my staff.

This morning, we are apparently on the verge of the worst natural disaster ever to hit this country: the total destruction of an important city; as many as one million homeless; damage measured in the trillions of dollars.

Sustained winds of over 100 miles per hour can demolish a lot of buildings. Worse yet for New Orleans is the "storm surge" of waters which are likely to overtop levees and flood the low-lying city to depths of 20 feet or more. Still worse are the many poorly secured chemical plants and oil storage tanks there, which will release their contents and foul this water with toxic and flammable substances; anything still above water is likely to burn.

Louisiana is a distinctive place, but unfortunately the very things that make it unique make it harder to prepare for this kind of disaster. The state's tax system and legal system are radically different from any other state. Local and state governments, police forces, schools, all suffer from graft and entrenched corruption. Meanwhile, the state has tremendous social problems: Louisiana has the highest poverty rate of any state, the highest percentage of single parent families, and it has among the highest rates of sexually transmitted disease and homicide.

No doubt the failure of New Orleans and Louisiana to come up with the political will and resources to build higher and stronger protective levees (especially on the Lake Pontchartrain side) will be criticized in the wake of this disaster. But before we look down our noses at Louisiana, consider that we here in Ann Arbor have been equally reluctant to address the likelihood of a catastrophic flood along Allen Creek downtown.

Moreover, we as a nation have also failed to come up with the political will to address global warming, which causes more severe hurricanes and storms.

Closer to home, the big homicide trials are ongoing this week in the Courthouse, and security has been stepped up. Our new juror-pay ATM is working, and has received some friendly press coverage. The Deeds office is on track to reduce the document filing backlog to 14 days by the end of August. Chief Deputy Jim Dries is on vacation this week.

Individual meetings continue: I'm looking to schedule meetings this week or next with [list of names redacted]. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Our friends, family, and fellow citizens in New Orleans are in our thoughts and prayers.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Friday, August 26, 2005, 3:03 pm

MARD v. MLTA. Since I am Register of Deeds as well as County Clerk, I'm a member of the Michigan Association of Registers of Deeds (MARD).

("County Clerk" and "Register of Deeds" are separate elected positions in 50 Michigan counties; the remaining 33, including Washtenaw County, have combined them as "County Clerk and Register of Deeds".)

Title companies make up most of the business at a Register of Deeds office, and the title companies also have a trade group, the Michigan Land Title Association (MLTA).

In the past few months, the relationship between MLTA and the Registers has become strained. Some of the Registers are baffled by the actions of the MLTA, and wonder whether the members know what their association is doing. Today, the president of MARD sent a remarkable letter to each of the members of MLTA, as follows:

Dear MLTA Member:

You know us, you work with us regularly, and we recommend your services to the people of Michigan. We are the Registers of Deeds in the State of Michigan. Our service is to all of the people of Michigan, and yet for some reason Michigan Land Title Association has decided to single us out and challenge what we do for the people.

In the past year, MLTA has filed a multitude of lawsuits against various county Registers of Deeds. MLTA has attempted to defame our names with our State Legislators by claiming we are monopolizing records and using unfair pricing. MLTA has sent press releases to local newspapers attempting to influence the people of Michigan and inflict Registers in a negative light.

Some of your larger members whose main offices are not even located in the state of Michigan have filed lawsuits against Registers in the United States District Court stating Registers are in violation of federal anti-trust laws, monopolization, due process, and unauthorized establishment and maintenance of abstracts of title. This was decided in favor of the county Registers, and yet your association continues to spend money to appeal the Court's decision.

Title companies have filed suit against some counties who have requested if a customer is purchasing consecutive, contiguous copies of records in a bulk format for a reduced fee, that the customer sign a "no resale" clause. Although this practice has been upheld in the Michigan Court of Appeals, MLTA continues to call this unlawful and is appealing to a higher court.

Some members of MLTA want to purchase the images at a discounted rate and resell them regardless of the cost to the County and smaller MLTA members. Your own members may be driving the smaller MLTA members out of business. They want to purchase the images for next to nothing and resell at a huge profit, at the expense of the local taxpayer, County government, and you.

MLTA has become a very litigious organization. Rather than working in cooperation with Registers, Treasurers and other local officials, your association has decided to challenge all we do. MLTA has demanded FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests from Clerks (five years of logs, records, and reports), Treasurers, and Registers ("received" instrument and "entry book" information). This action ties up our offices with busy work when we should be placing more instruments on public record; we are then chastised if we are behind.

It seems the bottom line is that the larger title companies and batch plants are nervous and vindictive of the Register of Deeds becoming more user-friendly. With county records on the Internet where all have access to the images at the statutory one dollar per page copy fee, they are concerned with their profit margin, regardless of cost to the county or to smaller title operations.

Perhaps you may want to evaluate if this is what you want of your organization. Is this where you want your membership dollars invested — in more lawsuits? A few members are using your association.s good name to their interest, not for the interest of all MLTA members. In the past, the Registers and MLTA members have had an amicable and friendly relationship. That relationship is in crisis. This continued animosity is only harmful to your industry and to the people of Michigan.

Sincerely,

Lori A. Wilson, President
Michigan Association of
Register of Deeds

I won't argue with the strategy here, but I should say that I'm accustomed to receiving Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests; making sure they're quickly and appropriately fulfilled is part of my job, not "busy work".

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Friday, August 26, 2005, 10:32 am

From the Clerk-Register: A few more letters to my staff:

Thursday, July 28:

I returned last night from the 97th annual meeting of the Michigan Association of County Clerks.

At the conference, we discussed many issues affecting county clerks' offices.

In particular, he drive for greater security of identity records is going to affect all of us directly. Quite soon, the state will require people to provide a recently issued birth certificate for renewal of a driver's license. And there will be a process, similar to checking a credit card, for verifying that a driver's license or birth certificate is valid, or at least, corresponds to one on file. Of course, anyone applying for a driver's license renewal (presenting a birth certificate) or a copy of a birth certificate (presenting a driver's license) would be subject to this.

What about people, like my late father, who have lived their lives under a name different from the one on their birth certificate? Glenn Copeland, the state registrar of vital statistics, said that under these new rules, if my father were living today, he would not be allowed to obtain a copy of his own birth certificate!

So, what do we tell someone like that who shows up at our Vital Records counter? "Good question," he said. That was all.

Karen Edman made a brief presentation to the Clerks about our county ATM, soon to be installed in the Courthouse lobby, which will dispense cash payments to jurors, eliminating the need to write thousands of small checks. The cost savings is very significant (not to mention the greater convenience for jurors), and I expect that many other counties and courts will follow our lead on this.

The Deeds world has also been turbulent lately. The president of the Michigan Association of Registers of Deeds has resigned, and there has been a lot of conflict within the organization. At the same time, the Land Title Association has sent Freedom of Information Act requests to every county in Michigan, asking for detailed information on Deeds office finances, cost allocation studies, the technology fund, and the documents which were filed in each office last May 9 and 10. Many Registers expect the information obtained will be used to attack the $1/page image fees charged by Deeds offices.

Here in Washtenaw County, our Deeds office, while adapting to a new computer system and various problems encountered along the way, fell behind on filing deeds, to as much as 35 days. Yesterday, the office met its July goal of reducing that backlog to 21 days. In August, the goal will be 14 days. Congratulations to all the Deeds staff!

Our new 2005-06 county directories are back from the printer, and are available at the Elections office. We're already thinking ahead to the 2007 directory, so your comments or ideas for content or design would be very welcome.

My individual meetings with staff members continue. Currently up: [list of names redacted]. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Monday, August 1:

Welcome to the new month!

Tomorrow, Tuesday, is Election Day, for Webster Township and the even numbered wards of the City of Ann Arbor, as well as many jurisdictions in surrounding counties.

On Friday, Deeds Chief Deputy Jim Dries and I met in Detroit with the Registers of Deeds of Wayne and Oakland counties (Carmella Sabaugh of Macomb County would have been there but wasn't feeling well), and their chief deputies, to discuss pending legislation and the recent requests from the Land Title Association.

Today, our Elections office received proposed recall ballot language for two officials in Augusta Township. We have scheduled the Election Commission's clarity hearing for Friday, August 12th at 10:30 am. The three members of the Election Commission are Judge Archie Brown, County Treasurer Catherine McClary, and myself.

I'm hearing many positive comments about the look of the new county directory, as well as suggestions for things we should include next time. Among other things, we should definitely include detailed pages for school districts (including a countywide map showing school district boundaries), and perhaps special units such as downtown development authorities and YCUA. I'd also like to provide some concise but readable tables of population and SEV by jurisdiction. If you have further comments or suggestions, please let me know.

The new county ATM is scheduled to be installed in the Courthouse lobby this week, perhaps on Thursday. This will make it possible to pay our circuit court jurors in cash, rather than writing thousands of paper checks.

My individual meetings with staff members continue. Currently up: [list of names redacted]. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Many, many thanks to everyone in the office, for striving to treat every customer with courtesy and respect, even when the weather is unbearably hot.

Let's have a great week!

Monday, August 15:

(1) The ATM is working! I'm very pleased to announce that the demonstration of our new Courthouse ATM for paying jurors went well this morning, and there should be something about it in the Ann Arbor News shortly.

Karen Edman gets full credit for her persistence over more than a year and a half in bringing this effort to fruition.

The big test will be next Monday, when we have a number of jury trials starting. These will be the first jurors to be paid with a plastic card instead of a check. The ATM will dispense the appropriate amount of money to the juror the first time the card is used. Jurors will have cash to pay for lunch or parking, rather than having to wait 4-6 weeks for a paper check in the mail.

Of course, that will also save the county from writing and processing more than 600 juror pay checks per month.

Very likely our new system will get statewide and national attention from other courts interested in more customer-friendly and economical ways of doing business.

You can also use the ATM to get cash from your checking account. The fee per withdrawal is $1.50.

(2) New Work Rules. Following several months of consideration and rewrites, I am also pleased to announce new work rules for the Clerk-Register's office. A copy will be provided in a separate email. The new work rules resemble the old 2003 work rules, but there are some important changes.

First, the new rules state that "Professional development is encouraged." You may attend up to four training classes per year, not including mandatory classes, if it would add to your ability to do any job in county government — it's no longer limited to just your present job.

Second, the dress code of August 12, 2002, which lists dozens of specific clothing items and details as acceptable or unacceptable, is superseded by a simple statement in the new rules:

You should dress every day in a manner that shows your respect for the people we serve. Your choice of clothing should reflect your professional status, and should never distract or distress any visitor. "Blue jeans" may only be worn on Friday, and must never be worn in court.

The interpretation of this standard will differ from setting to setting, where work needs and customer interactions are different. Consult your supervisor if you are in doubt about any clothing item.

Third, we have clarified the gift section with the following:

Seasonal gifts from the people and firms we regularly serve shall be shared by all office staff.

One section of the Work Rules has not changed at all, but bears repeating here.

The Clerk/Register's Office is comprised of various divisions but we are one office. All staff members are expected to work together in a friendly, positive, cooperative and professional manner. We are all part of the Washtenaw County Team and we are here to serve the public in the most prompt, courteous and effective manner possible.

(3) Individual meetings. I'm looking to schedule meetings this week or next with [list of names redacted]. When the workload permits, please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook) for a meeting in my office.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Wednesday, July 13, 2005, 11:34 pm

From the Clerk-Register: More letters to my staff, one of which I missed posting in the last batch:

Monday, June 6:

A storm passed through the area last night, leaving many residents without electric power. Our neighborhood, on the west side of Ann Arbor, still has no power. In this heat, the food in our refrigerator is spoiling, and we are not looking forward to the task of throwing it all away. Sarah's elementary school, like many others, is without electricity and closed today; my wife and I have to scramble to find child care.

A power outage is a very selective kind of catastrophe. On our block, there are no lights, no hot water, no television, no fans or air conditioning, no refrigeration. The nearby traffic light is dead, and temporary four-way stop signs have been posted by police. But a few blocks away everything is completely normal.

Just last month, I wrote about how dependent we are on the people who maintain the intricate systems that sustain our daily activities, from the water supply to the telephone network to the Internet. These systems have become so reliable that we take them for granted, and rarely think about the complicated and hard work required to keep them going. That is, until something goes wrong.

Today, the electric utilities in southeast Michigan are faced with the urgent and colossal task of restoring service to more than a hundred thousand households. Under the scrutiny of unhappy customers, impatient reporters, and probably panic-stricken executives, they are calmly and methodically trying to set things back to rights.

It's easy to be angry about the disruption. But we should have some empathy for these hard working folks who maintain our electric system.

Let's have a great week!

Monday, June 27:

Now that election consolidation, the February and May elections, the county directory, and some other urgent issues are over with, and the budget is on hold for the time being, I'd like to get started on something I promised to do when I was a candidate: to sit down and have regular individual meetings with each of the 57 people (besides myself) who work in this office.

I'm looking to hear your honest assessment of how we're doing as an organization, and how you think it could be improved. I'd like to hear about your own job and how we can help you do it better. If there are problems, hazards, or opportunities affecting your workplace, I want to know about them.

I know that many of the staff were very apprehensive about what would happen in January. I hope the chief deputies and I have been able to calm those fears and gain your confidence. My sense is that things are going pretty well right now, but we may have to weather some storms together in the future. It's critical that we establish open communication now.

Additionally, we're putting together a wall display with pictures of everyone in the Clerk-Register's office. When you come in for your meeting, or perhaps another time as arranged, Stephanie from the Deeds office will take a quick photograph.

I'm starting with the nonsupervisory staff. Some time this week, I'd like to meet with [list of names redacted]. Please arrange a half-hour with your supervisor and my schedule (perhaps via Outlook).

A management analyst once wrote that "The hallmark of a great organization is how quickly bad news travels upward." To help make the Clerk-Register's office a great organization, I hope you will be willing to share your complaints and criticisms with me.

Enjoy the hot weather, and have a great week!

Tuesday, July 5:

I hope everyone had a pleasant holiday weekend. I walked in the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti parades yesterday.

Tomorrow, I leave for Kentucky, to attend (and speak at) a memorial service for a friend of mine in Lexington. I will visit some relatives and do some research along the way, and will return on Saturday.

Copies of the new county directory will be available soon, perhaps this week. The cover photograph shows the old Washtenaw County Courthouse, which used to stand on the middle of the block occupied by the current courthouse. In the 1950s, they built the new courthouse around three sides of the old one, and then demolished the old one to make room for a parking lot.

Probably most county seats in America have a courthouse in a courthouse square in the middle of town; the courthouse is typically an older classically styled building with tall columns and a tower. Our old courthouse fit that pattern.

The tradition of a courthouse square is thought to symbolize American democracy, and the aspiration for local self-government. But the concept is not as obvious as it seems at first glance. For example, there is no comparable tradition of a city hall or a township hall being placed on a block by itself, though some city halls are sited that way.

The tradition is thought to have started with Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, which was planned in the 1700s with a central square for the courthouse. Even now, a courthouse square is sometimes called a "Lancaster Square".

So how did Lancaster come up with this? Some of the settlers there had come from Ireland, and remembered a similar arrangement. Indeed, many Irish cities and towns have a government building in the middle of the town square. Why? Well, when the English conquered Ireland hundreds of years ago, they needed places to put their military garrisons, and town squares were obvious sites. Those garrisons eventually became government offices.

It's ironic that something built for a military occupation in Europe became a symbol of democracy in America.

Here in Washtenaw County, we don't have the courthouse square any longer, but we still carry on the tradition of service to the people in our county. We maintain the records, we manage the systems, and we strive to treat every customer with courtesy and respect.

Individual meetings with staff members continue. Since I'm going to be away tomorrow through Friday, these are the people I'd like to meet with during the next two weeks: [list of names redacted].

Let's have a great week!

Monday, July 11:

I just received word that Bob Harris died yesterday.

Bob was a law professor and lawyer; he was once one of [County Administrator] Bob Guenzel's law partners. He was best known for being mayor of Ann Arbor in 1969-73, but he didn't like being introduced as a "former mayor". He'd rather describe himself as a guy who made model airplanes.

Bob was originally from Boston. His family was Lithuanian Jewish, but he had the easygoing charm of a Boston Irish politician - a charm that probably served him well in Ann Arbor's contentious politics thirty years ago. When he spoke to you, it was impossible not to like him.

He was articulate and strongly opinionated - you've probably seen some of his many letters to the editor - but he was also a practical fellow who believed in compromise and democracy and getting things done. Even in the heat of argument, he would be gentle and self-deprecating.

I know he was happier in recent years, helping care for his grandchildren and working for Food Gatherers, than he had been at any time in his earlier career. Being happy in retirement came as a surprise to him. He was an inspiration to those who might have seen it as a dismal stage of life.

And he was a great friend and mentor and supporter of mine. When I last spoke with him a few weeks ago, he was eager to hear all about how my now job was going, and solicited my ideas for new projects he could work on.

The funeral will be on Wednesday, July 13, at 4:00 pm at Temple Beth Emeth, 2309 Packard Road, in Ann Arbor.

May his memory be for a blessing.

Back here in the Clerk-Register's office, individual meetings with staff members continue. This week, I'd like to meet with [list of names redacted].

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Monday, June 20, 2005, 3:52 pm

From the Clerk-Register: I keep thinking of things I ought to blog about, and I keep not getting around to it. In the meantime, here are a couple more letters to the County Clerk/Register of Deeds staff.

Tuesday, May 31:

Last week, I received a note from a customer:


I Love Washtenaw County.

I Love the clerks who are always helpful & friendly.

I'll never go back to Wayne County.

Over the weekend, I also heard from some folks who appreciated the service they'd gotten from the office.

"I'm sure you most of what you hear are complaints," one of them said, "So I thought I'd let you know how impressed I was."

Of course complainers tend to be more motivated communicators than satisfied customers. But in truth I have heard few complaints and many favorable comments from our constituents.

I can take very little credit for this. Rather, it reflects the wonderful job that all of you are doing, which I appreciate beyond words.

Washtenaw County received another boost recently with a high bond rating from Fitch Ratings.

According to the report, "Washtenaw County's strong tax base and prudent budget practices have produced consistent financial operations and solid reserve levels over the past eight years. . . . The county's debt burden is low."

Credit for the sound management of our finances goes to county treasurer Catherine McClary, county administrator Bob Guenzel, and the county commissioners.

Let's have a great week!

Monday, June 20:

I hope you had a good Father's Day yesterday.

Father's Day is one of those "minor" holidays, along with Halloween, Valentine's Day, Ground Hog Day, St. Patrick's Day, April Fool's Day, and of course Mother's Day, which are observed by tradition, but are never listed in labor contracts or official work schedules.

When I started working at the University of Michigan in 1998, I was startled to see decorations for each of these holidays, and others, appear in turn in the workplace, including around doors and mirrors of the men's room. Apparently many University bathrooms were done up this way, as staff members looked to remember and enjoy each of these small occasions, as well as staff birthdays and so on.

There are many such special days, but each one comes but once a year. Whether it's your birthday, or Halloween, or the (soon to arrive) Summer Solstice - we come to work as usual, but we anticipate a nicer day; ordinary work becomes a sharing of a pleasant occasion with our co-workers.

What if EVERY DAY was a small holiday?

The French revolutionary calendar, used in France and its colonies from 1793 to 1806, seems far-fetched to us now, but the folks who invented this also gave us the metric system which is still in use.

Each month in the French calendar was 30 days long (they had pretty names based on the seasons and weather) and consisted of three 10-day weeks. At the end of the year there were a varying number of extra festival days depending on whether it was a leap year.

But the most intriguing aspect of the calendar is that each day of the year had its own name. The days were named for plants, foods, flowers, crops, animals, minerals, farm tools, among other things.

Imagine what life would be like under such a calendar! Every day would automatically have a "theme".

Surely we would have dessert potlucks on Strawberry Day, or Orange Day, or Cherry Day. One day in the autumn (around the same time as Thanksgiving) was literally called Turkey Day. People would say "I don't smoke any more, except on Tobacco Day."

I'm not as sure what kind of observance would occur on Iron Day, or Salt Day, or Plaster of Paris Day, or Broccoli Day, or Dandelion Day, but I bet somebody would be ready.

There's a web site which claims to calculate the French calendar date for any day since 1792 (though obviously any dates since 1806 are pretty much moot). According to their calculations, today is the 1st day of the month of Messidor, which is "Seigle", or Rye Day.

Did you have a rye bread sandwich at lunch?

Tomorrow, the 2nd day of Messidor, is "Avoine" (Oats Day), perhaps a good morning to have oatmeal for breakfast.

Every day is an occasion to celebrate. But it's easier when the sun is shining.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Laura, 7/7/2005: (taps foot impatiently) Where's the "Fourth of July" update?

Thursday, May 26, 2005, 3:14 pm

From the Clerk-Register: More letters to my staff.

Monday, May 9:

On Friday, April 29, just over a week ago, Washtenaw County held its annual Employee Recognition Breakfast. Among those honored were Sherry Deeds of Court Services for 25 years of service, and Linda Clark, of the Deeds office, for 20 years of service. Congratulations to both!

During the event, [Deputy County Administrator] Frank Cambria spoke for all of us when he praised the many honorees for their dedication, for the institutional memory they make possible, and for the positive organizational culture each of them has helped to create in our county government.

This dedication and longevity make Washtenaw County very different from most other workplaces.

Fifteen years ago, I came out of graduate school into the 1990 recession. I ended up working for several months on the loading dock at the Lord & Taylor department store in Briarwood Mall. When I wasn't unloading trucks, I did a lot of cleaning and vacuuming and emptying trash bins around the store.

I think Lord & Taylor is one of the more enlightened retail operations around, and working there taught me a lot about customer service. But one incident from my time working there came to mind during that recognition breakfast.

It was a small retirement party for a woman who had worked at Lord & Taylor for years — in the dress department, I think. The store had been there for ten years, and thousands of people had worked there, but remarkably, it was the very first time anyone had retired. No one else had ever kept working there long enough.

I think that kind of turnover is a lot more typical of American workplaces than the long dedication we have seen in the County. And it's not because our jobs here are easy. We work with the public every day. We face and overcome challenges day after day.

The difference, perhaps, is that what we do here is critically important for this community and for every individual whose life touches Washtenaw County. Lord & Taylor's Briarwood store is gone now, and its space has been gutted and completely redone twice since I worked there. But Washtenaw County is here to stay.

We had our first consolidated school board election last Tuesday, and all things considered, it went well. The voter turnout was well above the average of turnout that school board elections have drawn for the last several years. Many thanks to everyone who went beyond their ordinary work (and workload) to make the election a success. The Board of Canvassers is working right now on certifying the results.

Our Court Services office is coping this morning with the changeover from the old Fulcrum computer system to the new eNACT system. The new system will be more intuitive for our customers and occasional users, but it may take some getting used to for those who were accustomed to Fulcrum. The people who use this system are likely to be even more stressed than usual, so please be especially kind and tolerant with them.

Let's have a great week!

Monday, May 23:

The Onion (which gleefully dubs itself "America's Finest News Source") reported recently that, as a follow-up to the successful 50 State Quarters program, the U.S. Mint will now issue a commemorative penny for each of the more than 3,000 counties in the United States. The plan is to issue five new county pennies every year for the next 629 years, starting with the penny for Kent County, Delaware.

Washtenaw County is singled out for special mention:

"I hope they get the old stone water tower just right," Ypsilanti, MI resident Gina Dalton said. "It's the most well-known landmark in Washtenaw County, so it's definitely what they should use."

While Fore [U.S. Mint director] agreed that Ypsilanti's historic water tower-completed in 1890, boasting an 85-foot-tall base made of Joliet limestone, and standing at the important intersection of Route 17 and West Cross Street-is a good suggestion, she cautioned Washtenaw County residents that their penny is scheduled for release in 2315.

"We're encouraging counties, especially those beyond the first 50 or so, to think creatively to find a truly unique representative icon for their penny," Fore said. "Water towers-along with mountains, covered bridges, and lighthouses-will be among the first images to get snapped up. We'll need to see some shoe factories and cell-phone towers, too."

It's all a joke, of course, but it raises the question of what could possibly serve as an image or symbol of our diverse and many-faceted county. We don't have an instantly recognizable county courthouse any longer to serve as a unifying piece of architecture. No doubt people in various parts of the county would dispute whether the Ypsilanti water tower, UM's Burton Tower, or the Chelsea clock tower would be the best symbol of the entire county. Maybe the artistic zigzag cell phone tower on US-23 at Domino's Farms?

About thirty years ago in another county, the commissioners decided to create a new county seal. A committee was appointed, and did what committees usually do. One member wanted the seal to reflect manufacturing and industry. Another wanted the seal to recognize farmers and agriculture. Still another wanted the seal to symbolize higher education. A fourth member thought the seal should reference state government.

So, they divided the seal into quadrants, and each member picked a symbol: a mortar board for education, a corn plant for agriculture, some cogs for industry, and the capitol dome for state government, each poorly drawn and sealed up in a separate part of the circle. It looks awful.

Here in Washtenaw County, the designer of our county seal was considerably more clever. The oil lamp in the center symbolizes education, and the two flames stand for UM and EMU. The border around the lamp represents industry (the cog teeth on the upper half) and agriculture (sheaves of wheat on the lower half). It's one composition instead of four - but it's still a collection of nods to economic interests rather than a unified symbol.

Perhaps this is inevitable given the geography. Counties in the Midwest encompass arbitrary rectangles of territory, with no concern for whether all the people living in each rectangle would have anything in common - let alone the land and farms and rivers and economic activity.

Cities and villages incorporate, annex territory, and structure themselves by the vote of their people. But communities don't get to choose which county to belong to, or which county offices to elect: those decisions were made a century and a half ago, with only a few details left to local choice.

We have much to be proud of in Washtenaw County; our people and landscape and resources and economy are the envy of the whole state. But the only clearly unifying element within our rectangle of geography is the county government. Few people outside county government and politics think of our county, or any county, as a unified whole that "belongs" together. That realization should make us humble in our service to our neighbors and constituents.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Monday, May 2, 2005, 9:22 pm

Legalize Busking! Local musicians report that busking (performing, usually music, on city sidewalks) has been interpreted as illegal panhandling by Ann Arbor police. Local accordionist Shaun Williams spoke at city council this evening to urge that this policy be changed.

Among the links in that item, I was startled to see, was a strongly worded 1981 East Lansing City Council resolution which resulted from my own efforts to legalize street musicians almost a quarter century ago.

WHEREAS, it is the intent of the East Lansing City Council to encourage within the central business district and other public places a free exchange of social, cultural and entertainment opportunities between members of the public,

NOW, THEREFOR [sic] it is resolved as follows:

1. Street musicians, mimes, dancers and theater groups shall be permitted to perform for the public upon the public streets and within the public places of the City of East Lansing, and shall be permitted to solicit and accept voluntary contributions from members of the public who wish to reward such activity.

2. For purposes of this Resolution street musicians are defined as follows: a composer, conductor, or performer of vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony.

3. The above permitted activities shall not be considered "begging" in connection with the City enforcement of its Disorderly Conduct Code being section 9.102(5), nor shall they be considered a "trade or business" for which a license might be required under Chapter 71 of the City Code.

4. Street musicians and other performers shall at all times comply with all other provisions of the East Lansing City Code, specifically including the City Noise Ordinance and Code provisions prohibiting the obstruction of sidewalks and public passage.

Oddly enough, part of the argument in East Lansing at that time was that street musicians were legal in Ann Arbor. Now the shoe appears to be on the other foot. Contact your city council members to urge adoption of something like the above.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, May 2, 2005, 8:35 pm

From the Clerk-Register: Latest letters to my staff.

Tuesday, April 26:

Last Friday and Saturday, I met with many of the county clerks from around the state, to discuss election consolidation and other issues. Apparently implementation of the new election law (changing dates and responsibilities for school board elections) is being actively resisted by some school districts around the state; a lawsuit in Calhoun County led to a restraining order on election preparations. Fortunately, that was overruled by the Court of Appeals.

More controversy is expected when the local and county clerks submit bills to the school districts for the school board elections. Faced with charges of thousands of tangible dollars for election costs, some school administrators may forget the considerable savings in staff time and legal fees, and focus on the added cost of bringing school elections into line with all other elections. Moreover, almost every school district opted to continue annual elections, declining to cut their election expenses in half or more by shifting to odd year elections.

The amounts of money at issue, however, are not large in the context of school or county budgets. You wouldn't think that this would inspire a storm of litigation. But some schools don't like losing control over the election process, or fear what larger voter turnouts might bring to school elections. And the savings in legal fees mean that the law firms which advise school districts are losing revenue.

I am hopeful that we in this county can overcome these challenges, and continue to have a very positive and constructive relationship with our local schools. Once the new election system has been in place for a while, people will wonder why we did it any other way.

Enjoy the last of the snow, and have a great week!

Monday, May 2:

Tomorrow is Election Day for school boards throughout the county (except South Lyon). This will be the first May school election under the new election consolidation law.

From an election administration standpoint, this is a far more demanding election situation than the one we faced in February. For one thing, we have many more ballot styles to provide, listing the candidates who are running in each school district. Because the election is nonpartisan, the order of names must be rotated from one precinct to the next. Voters accustomed to school precincts must be notified that this election will be held in regular city and township precincts. Many of those precincts are split by school district boundaries, and so have to provide more than one different kind of ballot for voters in the different areas.

And given that some of the local clerks declined to take on full responsibility for the school election, we in the County Clerk's election office are obliged to step into the township clerk's role on the front lines of the election: to hire and pay election inspectors, to arrange polling locations, to transport voting equipment, to process absentee ballots, and so on.

Perhaps it was inevitable that something would go wrong. You may have read in Tuesday's paper that a polling place change notice intended for about 600 voters in one Pittsfield Township precinct was mailed instead to 21,000 other Pittsfield voters. Fortunately, there was time to send a correcting postcard, and (since it wasn't our mistake) we will not have to pay for the erroneous mailing. I hope and expect it will turn out to be one small ripple in an otherwise smooth election.

The media and most of the public pays little attention to the Clerk-Register's office when things are going well. But we are not alone in being taken for granted.

Consider the fabulous network of wells and reservoirs and pipes which provide abundant clean, clear, soft water to our communities, and carry away and treat our wastewater. We only read about it in the newspaper when dioxane contamination forced the city to close the Montgomery Street well. But the careful and dedicated work necessary to develop and maintain this system must be enormous; hundreds of people in Washtenaw County alone must spend their entire working lives devoted to it. We rely on them without ever thinking of them.

And that's just one of many such vital and under-appreciated functions. My father-in-law was a telephone engineer; he worked all his days on an even more complex system. Fire fighters, mail carriers, computer operators, farmers, and on and on, are all in the same boat. And these folks are not just our friends and relatives: they are also our customers, the same people we serve at our counters, our courtrooms, and our polling places.

They may not take much notice of what we do, but each and every one of them has some important role in our community, state, and country. To treat each customer with courtesy and respect goes at least a little way to express our appreciation.

Let's have an uneventful election, and a great week!

An excerpt from the Ann Arbor News story mentioned above (since it will disappear shortly from their web site):

Notices misinform voters

Thousands of registered voters in Pittsfield Township erroneously received notices over the weekend that their polling place for the May 3 school elections had changed, Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds Larry Kestenbaum said Monday....

The error, reported to Kestenbaum's office by several citizens Monday morning, could further confuse voters who are adjusting to a new voting system being implemented for the first time statewide with just a week left before the election, he said.

"We've got a lot of damage control to do in terms of letting people know where to go in a situation where there is already some confusion because of the changes in election law," Kestenbaum said....

Kestenbaum said he ultimately takes responsibility for the error, but indicated the county will contest the costs of the initial mailing because the printer assured county staff that it had the correct lists of whom to notify...

Liz Margolis, spokeswoman for the Ann Arbor Public Schools, said the district was not aware of the problem Monday afternoon, yet was confident the county would fix it in time to minimize any impact on the election.

She said she anticipated some problems implementing the new system.

"An amazing amount of coordination went into this between the schools and the county, and I don't think it would be realistic to think there were not going to be glitches the first time around," Margolis said.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Thursday, April 21, 2005, 7:58 pm

From a webmaster's inbox. Those of you who don't own web sites probably don't get spam like this:

Farm equipment?


Hi,

I took a look at your site a couple of hours ago...
and I want to tell you that I'd really love to trade links with you. I
think
your site has some really good stuff related to my site's topic of farm
equipment
and would be a great resource for my visitors as it deals with some great
aspects of farm equipment that I'd like to give my visitors more
information
about.

In fact, I went ahead and added your site to my Farm Equipment HQ Resource
Directory at...

Marble?


Hi,

I took a look at your site a couple of hours ago...
and I want to tell you that I'd really love to trade links with you. I
think
your site has some really good stuff related to my site's topic of marble
and would be a great resource for my visitors as it deals with some great
aspects of marble that I'd like to give my visitors more information
about.

In fact, I went ahead and added your site to my Marble HQ Resource
Directory at...

Fire fighters?


Hi,

I took a look at your site a couple of hours ago...
and I want to tell you that I'd really love to trade links with you. I
think
your site has some really good stuff related to my site's topic of fire
fighters
and would be a great resource for my visitors as it deals with some great
aspects of fire fighters that I'd like to give my visitors more
information
about.

In fact, I went ahead and added your site to my Fire Fighters HQ Resource
Directory at...

And thousands more, but you get the idea.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Wednesday, April 20, 2005, 10:08 am

Letter to David Harris: Fugitives and the county jail.

Professor David A. Harris
College of Law
University of Toledo
Toledo, OH 43606-3390

Dear Professor Harris:

I stopped in Toledo on the way to Cincinnati last weekend, and picked up a copy of last Friday's edition of the Toledo Blade.

One front page story, titled "Dragnet snares 10,000 fugitives," quoted you as follows:

"The dirty little secret is that there usually is not enough effort and manpower put into apprehension of fugitives," said David Harris, a law professor at the University of Toledo who studies criminal justice issues. .Most fugitives are aware of this, and it makes the system a joke ... It's never been a top priority."

I'm not sure if you were quoted accurately, but if so, I'm startled that you don't seem to be aware of the reason why outstanding warrants are not a priority: there is no place to put the people who are arrested.

Here in Washtenaw County, Michigan, the shortage of jail and prison space is so severe that the kind of roundup of fugitives described in the story would be inconceivable. Our sheriff is forced regularly to release many inmates early to relieve the pressure on the facility. Moreover, sentencing alternatives to jail are meaningless without any effective sanction: defendants know to choose jail time (from which they will be quickly released) rather than treatment they may badly need.

Last February 22, we went to the voters to ask a small tax increase to fund additional space at the jail. Despite practically unanimous support from local officials, the judiciary, and the newspaper (one headline: "Criminals Love Overcrowded Jail"), the proposal was rejected by a margin of 62% to 38%.

But the county does not have the option to decline to provide an adequate jail. Indeed, state officials are redefinining the parameters of the state prison system to force thousands of inmates into local jails, tremendously increasing the pressure on our cells. Hence, we are preparing to make deep cuts in other county services in order to fund the jail expansion. In particular, a great many sheriff's deputies are likely to be dismissed; the county may even cease to provide any police services — by far the largest discretionary item in our budget.

We're very disappointed by the decision of the voters, but the questions raised by our critics are valid ones. We as a state and as a society have spent billions on jail and prison construction in the last two decades. The incarcerated population has risen to levels never before known, either in absolute terms or per capita, and continues to grow explosively. Yet this rapid growth does not seem to be driven by crime rates. Indeed, yesterday's front-page headline in the Ann Arbor News, summarizing 2004 statistics, was "Crime in city falls sharply".

My own explanation is that crime, at least as measured in homicide death rates, roughly tripled between 1960 and 1975, fluctuated within a narrow range from then until the 1990s, and then declined. But the shock of that enormous increase in 1960-75 left a permanent mark, with new laws and ballot initiatives requiring much greater imprisonment per offender. Ultimately, the culture of the criminal justice system changed permanently in the direction of much greater incarceration. It is hard to conceive of any path back to the level of sentencing per crime that was typical in the U.S. in the 1950s, or in the rest of the world today. No one would dare propose a reduction in sentences across the board.

But all this has a cost which is very palpable at the local level. Many of the services people are accustomed to receiving from state and local governments are being sacrificed to pay for the ongoing expansion and operation of prisons and jails. And some of these cuts feed the problem: our state mental health system was gutted in the 1990s, and now at least 25% of our jail inmates have documented mental illness.

I'm curious as to where you think we could come up with "enough" effort and manpower to pursue fugitives, when the only solution to the shortage of jail cells to hold those fugitives appears to be severe cutbacks in police personnel to apprehend them.

Sincerely,

Lawrence Kestenbaum
County Clerk-Register

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, April 18, 2005, 7:19 pm

From the Clerk-Register

Monday, April 18:

A friend of mine who grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, once described to me the impact of taking a southward trip with her high school band in April. It was like seeing spring in fast motion: going from bleak scenes of dirty snow to flowering tulips and leafy trees in a matter of a few hours on a school bus. The return trip re-ran those same scenes in reverse, like going back in time from May to February.

My weekend wasn't as dramatic as that — I returned last night from three days in northern Kentucky — but certainly that area is farther along in the spring process than we are. And I did get the disorienting sense of coming back to a somewhat earlier time of year.

It's commonplace now to equate time and distance. All of us have heard places being located by the time it takes to get there — "It's an hour north of Lansing," say. And the distance to stars is measured in light-years, the distance you'd travel in a year at the speed of light.

American county government was conceived precisely in these terms of time and distance. The concept was that almost everybody could get from their home to the county seat within a day, and perhaps even return home that same day, and the geographic boundaries were designed accordingly. A person accustomed to getting places on foot could arise at dawn in Manchester [i.e., in the farthest corner of Washtenaw County], walk to the county courthouse in Ann Arbor, and transact business there before it closed. In the 1820s, when our county boundaries were planned, this was indeed a relevant consideration. This was the way that each state put its courts and recordkeeping functions within easy reach of its citizens.

Many things have changed since those days, especially the speed of transportation and communication. Nonetheless, our accessibility and service to our constituents and customers continues to be our most solemn obligation.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Thursday, April 14, 2005, 7:25 pm

From the Clerk-Register. More letters to my staff.

Wednesday, February 23:

Good afternoon!

We had a smooth, almost trouble-free election yesterday. Congratulations and abundant thanks are due to the elections staff, to our township and city clerks and their staffs, and to the hundreds of election workers.

Of course, I'm very disappointed in the election result. The downside of being the least visible level of government is the difficulty of establishing and implementing a community consensus for any kind of project or action. Most voters have little contact with the justice system. And apparently thousands are still angry at the county's decision, four years ago, to require townships to pay part of the cost of police services.

The loss sets the stage for some very difficult budget decisions for the county.

As a member of the Criminal Justice Collaborative Council, I am sure I will not be alone in striving to find a way to meet the urgent needs of the criminal justice system with the least possible impact on other county services.

Our vital records office deals with the deaths of individuals on a day to day basis, but recently it seems that death has struck down a number of people who have been part of the scene in county government and the court system.

Former assistant prosecutor Lynwood Noah and local attorney Jack Garris are two who will be missed, though I did not know them well personally.

I also recently attended the funeral, in Mason, of Frank Guerriero, once my colleague on the Ingham County Board of Commissioners. He owned an insurance agency and many businesses, including a bowling alley, yet found time for many service groups and every community project. He never hesitated to speak his mind (at length), to ask difficult questions, to force us to think about what we were doing. He was a royal pain — but he was also highly admired and respected.

Frank was 85 and had suffered from Alzheimer's in recent years.

May their memory be for a blessing.

Monday, February 28:

The process for creation of the 2006-07 county budget is now under way. Our office has been grouped with the Equalization department and the County Treasurer's office as one "community of interest" for budget purposes. We are preparing a joint presentation for the Board of Commissioners and will be working together on budget issues.

Chief deputy Clerk-Register Jim Dries is working with chief deputies from the other two offices to shape our presentation and strategy.

One aspect of this year's budget process, for every county department, is to identify and work with constituency groups whose interests are most directly affected by the work of the office or department. Those groups may have valuable ideas, and presumably are in a position to know about and articulate an agency's strengths and unmet needs.

Our Deeds office has been holding meetings with the title companies for some time, and our Elections office works closely with all the township and city clerks. We would like to broaden our outreach to other groups of customers, to organize meetings with their leadership, to hear their concerns and receive their advice. And each such line of communication that we open and maintain will strengthen our case during the coming budget discussions.

Among those suggested so far: funeral directors, clergy, physicians, realtors, genealogists, news media, judges, and attorneys.

If you have any thoughts about how best to engage (or not?) the leadership of these various groups, or perhaps others we should be thinking about, please pass those ideas along to Jim Dries or myself.

Of course, in addition to identifiable groups whose job it is to interact with us on a regular basis, we see almost every citizen in our offices at some time or other. It's not possible to bring the public at large into the budget process, but it is our job to serve them well, and to treat every customer with courtesy and respect - whether or not they fit into an interest group.

I deeply and personally appreciate the work that each and every one of you does to meet those goals.

Monday, March 21:

The buildings left by the ancient Greeks and Romans serve as architectural models for every generation since then. In their attention to detail and proportion, they give us what is called the classical language of architecture, a set of rules as detailed a cookbook for making a building as a computer programming language is for making software.

Over the last few centuries, classical architecture has come to be seen as symbolic of democracy and law, so it was a natural choice for many public buildings until Modern architecture displaced it in the 1950s. Moreover, majestic classical buildings are thought to inspire — or perhaps intimidate — visitors into their best behavior.

One of my first assignments in graduate school was to select a classical style building, draw a picture of one representative corner of it, from top to bottom, and "label ALL the parts." Every one of those moldings and surfaces and angles and indentations in stone has a particular name. Those three basic types of columns (Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian) are only the beginning.

Classical style buildings can be as grand as Angell Hall on State Street, with its huge columns, or as relatively humble as our own county administration building (former post office) at 220 North Main. For the assignment, I selected the New York Public Library, at the corner of 42nd Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan, New York City. It was an ambitious choice, because the Library is a fully elaborated, absolutely top-of-the-line classical building, and its entabulatures are enormously complex. With all the parts labeled, my drawing was covered in fine print. But that didn't mean the building was fussy or overdone. If the details are like instruments in an orchestra, the classical language is the music.

I remembered that assignment last week, when I visited the National Archives in Washington DC, a building which strongly reminded me of the New York Public Library.

On a larger scale, the staff of the National Archives has the same job that we do in this office: that of storing and indexing and protecting and making available a whole lot of public records. Undoubtedly they deal with a lot of the same problems that we have, from rude visitors to budget cuts to water leaks in the basement. And they, too, are urged through mission statements and memos and emails to treat all customers with courtesy and respect.

Here in the Washtenaw County clerk-register's office, we don't have Corinthian columns or twenty foot ceilings to impress our visitors with the majesty of law. We don't have world-famous historical documents on the premises. But in recording documents and serving customers, we can choose to work together as harmoniously as the instruments in an orchestra, or the details of classical architecture — an accomplishment which can be just as impressive.

A personal announcement. Yesterday, I completed the first complete update since September 2003 of my personal web site, PoliticalGraveyard.com. The site has listings and brief biographical information for U.S. political figures, living and dead, from Colonial times to the present.

Thursday, March 29:

Yesterday morning, my wife mentioned an old saying, but her version sounded wrong to me.

No, I insisted, it actually goes like this:

Libraries can get you through times of no money
better than money can get you through times of no libraries.

I saw it many years ago in the Whole Earth Catalog. And that slogan has been picked up and used in campaigns for libraries ever since.

But when I did a Google web search, I found just how adaptable this phrase has been. There were thousands of search results.

I found some which seemed paraphrases of the library saying:

Books can get you through times of no money
better than money can get you through times of no books.
Knowledge will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no knowledge.

(attributed on that page to Lewis Carroll)

There were some which seemed pretty universal — I think we could all agree on these:

Hope will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no hope.
(pdf)
Laughter will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no laughter.
Self-control will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no self-control.
Love will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no love.
Music will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no music.

And then there were a whole lot of others — here are just a few (leaving aside many drug references):

Whistles will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no whistles.
Bikes get you through times of no money
better than money gets you through times of no bikes.
Bull Terriers will get you through times of no money, better than money will get you through times of no Bull Terriers.
Skiing gets you through times of no money
better than money gets you through times of no skiing.
Trucks will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no trucks.
Guns will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no guns.
Nutmeg will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no nutmeg.
Fiddlin' will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no fiddlin'.
A laptop computer will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through time of no laptop computer.
Environment will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no environment.
Games will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no games.
Banjo will get you through times of no money
better than money will get you through times of no banjo.

But somebody did see the humor in this:

Money will get you through times of no money
better than no money will get you through times of no money.

That's something we will surely be mindful of during the impending budget negotiations.

Have a great week!

(Web update. Of course I now know this saying (as to "dope") was popularized by the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, but that wasn't something to discuss in an official Washtenaw County communication.)

Monday, April 11:

Elections. Our preparations continue for the Tuesday, May 3 school elections. School board members will be chosen in every Washtenaw County school district except South Lyon. This will be the first school election under the new election consolidation law. In most areas, voters will be casting their ballots at their regular city or township precinct locations instead of the old school district precincts.

Long meetings and negotiations, led by our elections director, Derrick Jackson, have settled the polling locations and assigned responsibility for each of the myriad tasks of holding an election. We owe a lot to our township and city clerks for working with us on these critical tasks.

Meanwhile, we have been able to replace all of the voting equipment countywide under a Help America Vote Act (HAVA) grant. Some areas will be able to use the new equipment in the May election.

This morning (Monday) at 9:00 am, at Salem Township Hall, we will be training municipal clerks to conduct the Public Accuracy Test of the tabulating equipment.

I think holding school elections on a Tuesday in early May is likely to draw more participation than the traditional Monday in mid-June. However, several of the school districts don't have contested races this year, so it will take some time for the difference, if any, to be apparent.

Directory. Our biennial county directory will soon be published in an initial run of 10,000 copies. We are still accepting advertisements for the directory — the ads pay for the printing cost. The price this year is $500 for a full page ad, $250 for a half page ad. The directory is very popular around the county, and thousands hold on to it for reference. If you know of business which would like to take out an ad in the directory, please have them call our office at 734-222-6730 as soon as possible.

ATM. After years of determined effort by Karen Edman, it looks like Court Services will soon have an automatic teller machine in the County Courthouse first floor hallway. The main purpose will be to pay our jurors in cash rather than with paper checks (a win for everyone involved). However, the machine will also be available for anyone to use as a cash machine, like any bank ATM. The fee for withdrawals has not been set, but it may be the same or a little less than the $2 charged by commercial ATMs in our vicinity.

Computer Stress. Some of our offices have been plagued by computer and network problems recently. In particular, the Vital Records office had a tough week but, as Bonnie Smith wrote, "because we all worked together to help each other we got through it with laughter and fun."

That reminds me of the old parable about someone who was permitted to visit Heaven and Hell. Of course, he found that the people in Hell were unhappy, and that the people in Heaven were happy. But, strangely enough, Heaven and Hell had exactly the same facilities and amenities. The only difference was the way the inhabitants treated one another.

It's up to each of us to decide whether our workplace will be heavenly or hellish.

Let's have a great week!

Also on April 11:

Today, April 11, marks my one hundredth day in office as Clerk-Register.

Looking back on these 100 days, I am struck once again by how helpful, friendly, and welcoming everyone in the office has been.

Your hard and careful work, your dedication to courteous and respectful customer service, are appreciated and highly regarded in the various communities we serve. I hear this all the time from constituents.

We have overcome some challenges in this brief time so far, and I'm sure we will be confronted with many others in the years ahead, as we strive to uphold and improve on the high standards we have set for ourselves.

For all of this, I am very, very grateful to each of you. Thank you.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Thursday, March 31, 2005, 8:22 am

The jail millage. This is extremely belated, but should be noted here.

On February 22, Washtenaw County held an election to vote on a proposed property tax increase ("millage" is the Michigan term) to fund jail renovation and expansion, renovation of space to relocate the 14A District Court, and mental health services for the 25% of jail inmates who are mentally ill.

The proposal was voted down 62% to 38%.

I strongly supported the millage, and I'm very disappointed (though not surprised) that it failed. I apologize to my readers for not expounding on this here before the election. I did write a lot of post-election commentary in the jail millage item at ArborUpdate.

The county is required to provide an adequate jail. The current, overcrowded jail fails that test, both because of the lack of facilities (prisoners sleeping in the gym, hence, no exercise space, and many other problems) and its small size. Indeed, due partly to population growth, we have the smallest jail per capita of the 83 counties in Michigan.

Since the millage failed, the county will now be forced by the state and/or the courts to cut deeply into other programs to build a new jail anyway. The current jail, built in 1978, was also forced on the county, because the old downtown jail was ruled to be inadequate. That history is about to be repeated.

In retrospect, the ballot proposal had no chance of success because of the confluence of three factors.

First, voters in general are not interested in voting increased taxes to fund jails and courtrooms that most of them never see. Even in this highly educated county, many people have the notion that incarceration should be cheap and brutal, and that any money spent to build or maintain jail facilities, or to do anything whatever with the jail population, is "coddling criminals." And in any case, property taxes are already high here.

Second, liberal voters in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti are skeptical of any increase in jail capacity. For some, this is linked to frustration that the medical marijuana decriminizalization passed by Ann Arbor is not being taken seriously by law enforcement authorities. Others, perhaps, are concerned about the growth of the incarcerated population and the "prison industrial complex" that serves it. (More about my own perspective on this another time.)

Finally and perhaps most important, voters in the rural western townships of the county are still angry about the county's decision, four years ago, to force townships to pay for sheriff's department services. Those townships have high voter turnouts, and voted "no" by margins ranging from 3:1 to 11:1.

Ironically, the most direct result of the vote is that the county's remaining subsidy for sheriff's road patrol will be deleted from the budget to pay for the required jail capacity. Possibly some townships will get together to create police departments, but the cost of funding those services will undoubtedly be much more than the 0.75 mill asked for jail expansion.

Since there is zero funding and zero political salience, the crisis of thousands of mentally ill caught up in the criminal justice system will not be addressed. The state has closed its mental hospitals and has pretty much abandoned funding mental health services. I don't think it's a good thing to house the mentally ill in county jails, but that's the course our electorate has chosen, and it certainly is cheaper than treatment.

However, jail overcrowding is a pressing reality, and the county's legal obligation to provide capacity creates an imperative which overrides other policies. Meanwhile, to relieve pressure on state prisons, many prisoners are being shifted to county jails, and counties do not have the option to refuse them.

I expect construction to begin on the new cells next spring at the latest.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, Febuary 14, 2005, 10:30 am

From the Clerk-Register. Two more weekly letters to the staff:

Monday, February 7 (fifth letter):

Fifteen years ago last month, on January 15, 1990 — a date etched in computer history — most of the AT&T long-distance telephone network suddenly stopped working. The crash lasted nine hours and inconvenienced millions of people. It cost the company at least $60 million in lost revenue, and did incalculable damage to its touted reputation for reliability.
At first, corporate and law enforcement officials were convinced that computer "hackers" had maliciously crashed the system. But what really happened was even more scary.
A small error, perhaps a typo, deep inside a computer program, led to a cascading failure which took out 114 switching centers nationwide. And this was just the first in a series of similar catastrophes to befall the phone system.
The software that controls each telephone switching center consists of some ten million lines of program code. Even the systems we use in this office every day are very big. When new programs are written, or old ones modified, extensive testing takes place to make sure it works right — and it is absolutely essential that this be done. But it isn't possible, much less feasible, to test every combination of events, to ferret out every single bug in millions of lines of code. Software, at the level of complexity needed for many common tasks, simply cannot be perfect.
As a system is used by more people and exposed to more different situations — more complicated transactions, or even different speeds of mouse clicks — new bugs may show up. And attempts to modify the system to fix old bugs often create new ones.
Our Deeds office is running on new software, which is to say, a system with many bugs and problems still not fully worked out. Last Tuesday morning, after a software upgrade provided by our vendor, the system stopped working properly. Customers brought deeds and mortgages to our counter, but we couldn't process them or issue machine receipts. For two full days, unprocessed documents stacked up.
The staff responded to this crisis with characteristic energy and resourcefulness. Time that would have been spent processing and receipting new deeds was devoted to reducing other backlogs. Sonia Castleman and Karen Evanski stepped up to the complicated job of testing new versions of software provided by the vendor. Once we got the right software identified, configured, and installed, the whole staff pitched in and got rid of the incoming backlog in a little over a day.
I'm grateful to Jim Dries and Susan Bracken, to Karen Evanski and Sonia Castleman, to all the Deeds staff, for their great work in handling what could have been a very disruptive problem, both for us and for our citizens. If you happen to visit the Deeds office this week, be sure to say thank you.
Have a great week!
[employee names retained in public version with their permission]

Monday, February 14 (sixth letter):

Happy Valentine's Day!
Last night, I helped my daughter prepare valentines for all of her first-grade classmates.
This is only her second classroom Valentine's Day — before kindergarten, she went to a Jewish preschool where Valentine's Day and Halloween are shunned as "Christian" holidays — but she didn't need to be reminded that she had to make one for everybody. Even the kids she doesn't get along with.
She had chosen Scooby-Do valentines, with messages along the lines of "I like you even more than a Scooby Snack!"
I insisted that she had to write all the names of the recipients herself, so she assigned me the job of writing "Sarah K" in the "From:" panel on each one. I tried to imitate her writing, but my adult habits showed through: "Don't put a period after the K," she said.
I wouldn't have objected if she had personalized them, but she didn't. Rather, she went systematically through the list of first names provided by the teacher. Some of the valentines from the package were larger than the others; she used those for kids with longer names.
No doubt this scene was repeated in the home of every one of her classmates, indeed, in millions of homes around the country. Some time today, every child in every participating classroom will receive a pile of mass-produced and dutifully addressed valentines. Obviously this is better than to have the popular kids getting many handmade love notes, while others get nothing. But why do it at all?
What Sarah is learning is that you need to appreciate, and acknowledge, all of the people you work with. Just because that kid in the back of the classroom doesn't talk to you doesn't mean he isn't there. Your ongoing feud with the red-headed girl doesn't relieve you of the obligation of making her a valentine. Once a year isn't often enough to pay attention to each one of the people you spend your day with, but it's a start.
Beyond elementary school, we tend to see Valentine's Day as a celebration of romantic love, which indeed was the original point: "Be My Valentine" used to mean "Marry me!"
But childhood experiences leave a big impression. Addressing valentines in grade school may have been like taking a census — but it's a census we need to take every now and then. Most days, we spend half our waking hours in the workplace, and our relationship with co-workers affects the quality of our own lives.
We don't send valentines any more, but we should not forget to show our regard and respect for each of the people we work with.
Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Saturday, Febuary 12, 2005, 10:12 pm

Catching up. Several notable things which I had meant to write about at the time:

  • On January 22, I participated in a panel about blogging at ConFusion (Ann Arbor's science fiction convention, despite the fact that it has been held for years many miles from here).

    The session, "Blogging: News, Opinions, People, Life", was described as follows:

    Blogging as a replacement for actually seeing people. Blogging to tell people your opinions and ideas. Blogging to get the news. Blogging is here, but what does it accomplish?

    The official panelists included John Scalzi, Kathryn Cramer, and myself. Patrick Nielsen Hayden was invited up from the audience to replace the then-ill Jeri Smith-Ready.

    An interesting discussion ensued. Pseudonymous blogging, argumentative or hateful responses from readers, the relationship between blogging and professional writing, political blogging, and other topics came up.

    In the course of writing this, I was very startled to discover that a page of the ConFusion web site lists me among the "Big-Name Fans" expected to participate in the convention.

  • On February 5, I attended a concert titled "Festival of Psalms", featuring the choirs of Temple Beth Emeth and St. Clare of Assisi Episcopal Church.

    If you clicked through on those links, you'd notice that both web sites feature a drawing of the same building, and that both congregations are at 2309 Packard Road in Ann Arbor. The property is shared between the two, through a joint corporation called Genesis, and an intricately worked out arrangement of who gets to use what when. The specially designed sanctuary can be easily converted between church and synagogue use.

    The time-sharing agreement is so well put together that most TBE members rarely see Episcopalians on the premises. It's very easy to think of the place as just being our synagogue, and forget about its parallel life as a church.

    The few joint events, including the annual Erev Thanksgiving service, naturally tend to focus on what we have in common, which is to say, the Jewish scriptures. In this case, the Psalms.

    Ths concert featured a wide variety of settings and interpretations of various particular Psalms, most done by one choir or the other, with just a few numbers done by the choirs together. Janice was a soloist on a setting of the 23rd Psalm.

  • On February 6th, I attended the last contra dance at Lovett Hall.

    Contra dancing is a New England tradition; though it nearly died out in the first half of the 20th century, it has been repopularized since then. Most large cities and college towns across the country have regular dances. Contra dancing resembles square dancing in form, but the social environment is much more informal, and the music is always live.

    Lovett Hall, adjoining the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, was built by Henry Ford in 1937 as a venue for contra dancing, and named for his dancing master Benjamin Lovett. It has a large, elegant ballroom with chandeliers and a teak dance floor supported by carriage springs.

    The dances at Lovett Hall, held on eight Sunday afternoons per year, with calling by Glen Morningstar and music by The Old Michigan Ruffwater Stringband have been a staple of the contra dance community in the region.

    Recently, the Henry Ford Museum announced an abrupt and unexpected end to the series. Apparently this is part of a larger refocus of the museum toward money making activities, such as renting out Lovett Hall for wedding receptions.

    It seems ludicrous that a lovely hall built specifically for contra dancing, and owned by an institution with a mission of promoting American history, would no longer be used for the purpose. The decision plainly flies in the face of what Henry Ford intended.

    And yet, and yet — I don't want to get too close to Henry Ford's original intent. Yes, we owe him a lot for helping revive traditional dance. But his motivation for that is hard to separate that from his virulent anti-Semitism and racism, and specifically, his hatred of "Jewish Jazz".

    Since those days, Ford's grandson, Henry Ford II (also known as "Hank the Deuce") made outreach to the Jewish community an urgent priority. And Jews in Michigan, who used to shun Ford products, have long forgiven Ford Motor Company for the sins of its founder. Many Jews even work for the company now; a former president of our synagogue was a Ford exec.

    As a Jewish contradancer — one of a great many! — I suppose I'm qualified to celebrate Henry Ford's personal contribution to the world of traditional dance while putting aside his open hatred for my kind. And, indeed, I have been doing this without hesitation for 25 years now.

    But when my six-year-old daughter asked me about the painting, in the Lovett Hall stairwell, of Henry and Clara Ford (a well-wisher had placed a rose at their feet), I had to sit down with her and explain that the story was complicated.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, January 31, 2005, 7:00 pm

From the Clerk-Register. I've been in the habit of sending a weekly email message to the more than 50 Clerk-Register staff in five locations. Here's the first four letters:

Monday, January 10 (first letter):

Good morning!
Thanks to everyone for the nice welcome I have received as your new Clerk-Register. It's been a lot of fun already, and I'm very much looking forward to the year.
But thanks most especially for all the great work you do! I know that sometimes the people who come through our office may seem indifferent, but believe me, there is a lot of appreciation among citizens throughout the county for your hard and careful work.
Of course, as you know, it's never enough just to complete all our tasks accurately and quickly. We must always remember to treat everyone who comes into the office with courtesy and respect. That means focusing on the customer, paying attention and listening. People can tell when you're preoccupied, when your mind is wandering. To gain their confidence, you have to put other concerns aside while you're helping them. Sometimes that's not easy, I know. But it should be our goal.
In the coming weeks, after the election consolidation brouhaha is settled, I will meet with each of you individually.
I think there has been just a bit of confusion about my name. The following should clear that up:
  1. In person, or informal notes, everyone here is welcome to call me Larry, or Lawrence.
  2. In formal documents, of course, use Lawrence Kestenbaum.
  3. I don't have a middle name. I thought I had one (Carl) when I was growing up, but it doesn't appear on my birth certificate, and I stopped using it at age 18. So "Lawrence Kestenbaum" is my full, legal name.
  4. It's not necessary to use my name in the greeting when answering the phone.
Let's have another great week!

Tuesday, January 18 (second letter):

Good morning!
Within living memory of our oldest citizens, Washtenaw County had about a hundred and fifty school districts. Most consisted of four sections of land, with a few dozen farm families, a three-member school board, a teacher, and a one-room schoolhouse. Each district had an annual June meeting at the schoolhouse to choose the school board members.
Rural students who wished to attend high school had to travel to the nearest city which had one. As demand grew for education beyond eighth grade, more cities and villages began to build high schools. Rural districts were annexed to bolster the tax base. When all the one-room districts were absorbed, each community with a high school was at the center of a consolidated school district, roughly circular in shape, superimposed on our checkerboard of square townships.
As the school districts grew fewer and larger, the June annual meeting became the June school board election. And that grew into a whole school election infrastructure, duplicating the one organized by cities and townships for holding federal, state, and local government elections. School districts have been maintaining a duplicate set of registration cards for authenticating voters at the polls. They have a duplicate set of election precincts, and a duplicate structure for hiring and training and paying election workers.
No one says that school districts were doing a bad job at holding elections. But they were doing the exact same job as our township and city clerks, and often repeating the exact same clerical tasks, like updating a voter's address.
The Legislature has now declared an end to this untidy dual system. No longer will school districts maintain voter registrations and hold elections. No longer will any elections be held on Mondays. No longer will there be two completely incompatible kinds of elections. No longer can elections take place just about any day of the year.
There is a lot of controversy about the new election consolidation law. I think the Legislature made some big mistakes, and we are in for some administrative headaches. But it is our duty to follow the law.
Probably the biggest problem is that the responsibility for school board elections (which will now be in May) is left hanging.
It makes the most sense for city and township clerks to run these elections within their jurisdiction, just as they do all other elections. The local clerks are already equipped to do every required task. And each voter would have a single polling place for all elections.
But the local clerks are not required to participate (to "opt in" for school board elections), and some don't want to. It means holding elections regularly every year instead of every other year. It means two or more different ballots in the many precincts split by school district lines. It may mean hiring additional staff — though the cost would be covered by the schools.
If a city or township clerk declines to hold school board elections, the responsibility falls to the county clerk. We can do it. And the school districts will pay our expenses. But it's not a good idea.
First of all, we would have to re-create the election infrastructure that already exists in every township and city. We'd have to rent polling places, hire election workers, process absentee ballot requests, etc., etc. And we'd have to hire many more county clerk staff to accomplish it all. This can't possibly be the most economical way to hold a school election.
Second, if any non-school ballot issue or office vacancy is on the ballot, then the affected cities and townships have to hold the May election anyway, in their regular precincts. That means our preparation goes to waste, and our costs won't be covered by the school districts. Voters will also be confused if the May polling place is subject to change depending on what's on the ballot.
Third, once the county clerk's office has worked out how to hold a regular local election, bypassing the cities and townships, the Legislature is going to notice that we are back to a dual election system, with different government agencies duplicating efforts. It will seem very logical to take election authority away from the cities and townships, and let counties run the entire process.
This may not be a disadvantage, if you'd rather that Michigan be like most other states, where all election matters are handled at the county level. But it would seriously erode the powers and reason for being of township governments. That's why the Michigan Townships Association has recommended that all townships "opt-in" to take responsibility for school board elections. I hope our townships are listening.
All this will be decided by the end of January — so stay tuned!
This is an admittedly longwinded message at the beginning of a short — but very busy — week. Undoubtedly a lot of business which accumulated on Monday will show up at our counters today, perhaps as much as doubling the normal load. Meanwhile, the extreme cold weather, slippery driving conditions, and short daylight hours add to the stress.
It takes extra effort to be kind and patient with customers — and one another — on days like today. I am grateful to each and every one of you for making that effort.

Monday, January 24 (third letter):

Good morning!
(1) Last Wednesday, as part of the election consolidation process, we brought together the city and township clerks and school district representatives at Pittsfield Township Hall, in order to convene meetings of the Election Coordination Committee of each school district within the county.
None of us is entirely happy with the election consolidation law, and all of us (myself included) had gaps in our knowledge of the process. New duties are being imposed, new arrangements have to be made, and deadlines are very tight. I have heard about "ugly" confrontations over consolidation among officials in other counties. But Washtenaw's meetings proceeded in a calm and constructive spirit that is a credit to our community.
Not everything was resolved, but I think everyone came away with the sense that we'll be able to conquer this problem.
(2) The United County Officers Association (UCOA) is meeting in Lansing this week; the chief deputies and I will each be attending at least part of the sessions. I'll be there (and out of the office) on Tuesday.
(3) My daughter has been learning in school about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and the civil rights movement. When she and I talked about this, I remembered an experience related by a friend of mine, who attended high school in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, an affluent Detroit suburb.
In March 1968, a few months after the Detroit riots, and three weeks before he was assassinated, Dr. King came to Grosse Pointe High School to give a speech. Apparently he was not well received at first; some of the high school students yelled insults and curses to shout him down. It must have been a very tense scene, in a crowded gymnasium. Rather than ignore the disruption or respond in kind, he invited the hecklers to stand with him at the podium.
I don't know if they accepted the invitation, but this act transformed the crowd's mood and the moment, and it made a deep impression on my friend. It was a dramatic demonstration of the power of listening and paying attention.
In any interaction, is human nature to mirror the attitude and behavior of the person you're dealing with. Rudeness is reflected with rudeness. It takes inner strength and will to overcome the vicious circle, to respond to difficult people with courtesy and respect. It doesn't always work, but it is wonderful when it does.
Have a great week, and keep warm!

Monday, January 31 (fourth letter):

This morning brings news of the opening of Michael Jackson's trial on child molestation charges in California. Undoubtedly we will be hearing much more about this through the media in the coming months, whether we want to or not.
In the legal system, which includes each of us in the Clerk-Register's office, we strive every day to conduct fair trials and impose just punishments. In theory, the system is the same for the rich and the poor, the friendless and the well-connected. But highly publicized celebrity trials challenge this theory, and sow cynicism, division, and misconception among the public about the courts.
We involve our citizens in the process as jurors, as witnesses, as constituents, as taxpayers. It can be maddening when saturation media coverage of a far-away criminal case changes their attitude toward us, and affects their behavior in our courthouse.
But consider how much harder it is to play host to such a trial, to live for months under intense national and international media scrutiny.
When it happened in the county where I used to live, the picture of our circuit court which splashed onto television sets all over the world (including through a made-for-TV movie about the case) was almost unrecognizable. The whole outside world came to conclusions about our judges and procedures which were the opposite of the ordinary truth. Locals called it "the reality inversion."
Keep this in mind as you hear cable TV "experts" dissect the courts and judges and prosecutors and procedures in Santa Barbara County in the next few weeks.
Washtenaw County may not be home to figures like O. J. Simpson, Martha Stewart, or Michael Jackson. But we do have a much higher profile in the world than other counties our size. And of course we deal with local and Detroit news media all the time. It's only a matter of time before CNN finds some reason to bestow attention on us.
It's not enough just to strive for justice and fairness. We also need to strive for grace under pressure.
Have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Sunday, January 16, 2005, 3:43 pm

Post-Transition Notes. In the end, the transition went smoothly, the new chief deputies have been well received, and everything seems to be going well.

Despite adverse weather, the swearing-in ceremony had an overflow crowd. Many thanks to all who attended, or wanted to.

The Ann Arbor News has run a couple of articles about the Clerk's office recently:

The biggest Clerk-Register issue so far is election consolidation, of which more later.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, December 20, 2004, 1:05 pm

Transition Notes. I take office as Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds on January 1st, and start work on Monday the 3rd. However, according to tradition, the public swearing-in ceremony and reception for all the countywide officials (prosecutor, sheriff, clerk-register, treasurer and drain commissioner) is held a few days later.

You're invited to my swearing-in!

Wednesday, January 5th, 4:30 pm
200 N. Main St. (lower level)
One block north of Main & Huron
Downtown Ann Arbor.

Refreshments will be served

The Clerk-Register has three chief deputies who are each "at-will" political appointees.

  • Chief deputy for deeds and vital records will be Jim Dries (rhymes with "trees") of Scio Township, formerly with Polk & Company, and a current township trustee.
  • Chief deputy for elections and administration will be Derrick Jackson of Ypsilanti Township, currently education and outreach director for Ozone House, and candidate in this year's primary for township trustee.
  • Karen Edman will continue as chief deputy for court services.

All other staff of the office will continue, as far as I know.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Tuesday, December 14, 2004, 9:50 am

Presidential Electors Meet. For the third election in a row, I went to the state capitol in Lansing yesterday to watch Michigan's presidential electors cast their votes. I also had lunch with the electors and assorted hangers-on, including Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Lt.Gov. John Cherry, and state Democratic chair Mark Brewer.

Much has changed in Lansing since my last visit. The Michigan National Tower, the tallest building on the Lansing skyline, built by auto magnate R. E. Olds for (what became) the Michigan National Bank, has been taken over by the state and renamed. The "Senate Hearing Room" where the electors lunch was held (very fancy, with walnut paneling and high coffered ceiling) is the former banking room.

Apparently Michigan National Bank no longer exists. It used to be the state's banking behemoth, at least geographically. In the 1930s, they persuaded the Legislature to grant them an exception to the regulations that limited the branching of all other banks.

The meeting of the electors was held in the state senate chamber at 2:00 pm. Lt.Gov. Cherry presided. A rabbi and a minister gave invocations. One elector was absent, and a replacement was elected. Gov. Granholm gave a short speech. The electors voted by ballot for president: 17 votes for John Kerry. Then they voted for vice president: 17 votes for John Edwards. Then U.S.Sen. Debbie Stabenow gave a short speech. An imam (Islamic) and a priest (Episcopal) gave closing invocations. The meeting was adjourned.

In theory, Michigan cannot have "faithless" electors who vote in unexpected ways, because state law provides that "refusal or failure to vote for the candidates for president and vice president appearing on the Michigan ballot of the political party which nominated the elector constitutes a resignation from the office of elector; his/her vote shall not be recorded, and the remaining electors shall forthwith fill the vacancy." This law is probably unconstitutional, but it has never been challenged.

Update: An Outrage in Minnesota. Minnesota did have a "faithless elector" on Monday, who failed to vote as expected. However, since the state allowed the electors to vote secretly, we will never know who it was!

I strongly agree with Timothy Noah's argument that presidential electors should NOT be allowed to hide their choices.

I call upon the Congress to reject Minnesota's electoral votes unless and until the votes of each elector are identified.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Friday, November 19, 2004, 7:37 am

Northern Neighbor. I was up in Clare, Michigan, Wednesday and Thursday for a meeting and training sponsored by the Michigan Association of Registers of Deeds. This morning, I found the following in the comments section, signed "Northern Neighbor":

Larry,
Your tone is ridiculous. Ms. Haines has been nothing but 100% professional to everyone. I wouldn't let you in to my office either before I was required to. First of all you're an Ann Arbor Democrat and secondly an Attorney, oh boy, it is clear that trust would be a HUGE issue. Just because you want to take office before your term begins and Ms. Haines has a responsibility to continue to operate her office through the end of the year, you attack her. She offered you the opportunity to transition once you take office. Then, your comments about Northfield Township are ridiculous as well, you weren't at the meeting, where transition was discussed and you have no idea what was said unless you operate on word of mouth. If this is the way you plan to communicate, the people of Washtenaw County are going to be gravely disappointed in your lack of ability to deliver even half of the services that were provided by Ms. Haines and ethics obviously are not a concern of yours. Just be aware, we will all be watching your budget and your actions. Let's see if you can amaze us all and perform your duties ethically when you are sworn in, thus far with your actions, I have little hope that you will live up to the level of professionalism that Ms. Hanes has operated at for a number of years. Who knows, maybe I'm wrong and you might learn from your mistakes. I doubt it. What a shame.

Okay, I should admit right away that I haven't been directly involved in Northfield Township's transition. What I know about that situation comes from the newspaper and as reported to me by trustworthy folks on the scene. I also noticed the bitterness between the factions when I campaigned door to door in Northfield Township. If the initial hard line taken by the outgoing supervisor has been softened since the election, I applaud him for that.

Of course, Peggy has the responsibility to operate the office through the end of the year, and I gave her my support for whatever decisions she deems necessary during that time, including the implementation of the new computer system in the Deeds office. By no means was I looking to take over before the legal date.

Based on events since I wrote that item, I am hopeful that the transition will be more cooperative than I feared. However, I have not yet heard anything definitive.

Some additional thoughts. A friend of mine grew up in Mississippi. From the way the people around her used the word "Yankee", she assumed it was a slur. When she grew up, she was startled to discover that the targets of the supposed slur didn't think of it that way at all.

Northern Neighbor writes: "First of all you're an Ann Arbor Democrat and secondly an Attorney, oh boy, it is clear that trust would be a HUGE issue." This may sound like a non sequitur, but I don't think that was intentional. The writer was polite enough to avoid the heavy-duty smear word "liberal", but angry enough to use an expression ("Ann Arbor Democrat") which meant the same thing.

At the same time, many others locally have an equal lack of trust in Republicans and Bush supporters. See the Ann Arbor News letters column since the election for plenty of examples.

Obviously the tensions of the national election, and the local results, are getting to people. Let us have some perspective here. Whatever goes on in Washington DC, we here in Washtenaw County have to live and work together. Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, city and township residents, all are part of this community, and none of those groups are going away. It's time to focus on our common goals.

Some mistakes are inevitable in any complicated transition. But my goal as Clerk-Register will be to provide all the services the public expects and deserves, with courtesy and respect to everyone.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Sunday, November 14, 2004, 9:56 am

The Problem With Electronic Voting Machines. Computer security expert Bruce Schneier has posted an essay about voting technology. I think he's asking the right questions, but I'm not sure he has all the answers.

Perhaps even more interesting are the comments, which appear further down the page. Many different points of view are represented. A few excerpts:

  • Software simply cannot be trusted when the software itself may be tainted by a relatively small handful of people behind the software.
  • No "open source" scrutiny can ever prove anything. You must check the compiler, and the compiler's compiler, and the compiler's compiler's compiler, ad infinitum. "Open source" does NOTHING for proving the code that is being used in the voting machine is actually the code that was published.
  • People are the problem, not computers. Software vendors generally "advise" how to install and secure their product, but it is the ultimate responsibility of the user to secure the hardware and operating system on which that software runs. The vendor will not take on that liability. A tv spot earlier this year highlighted how easy it would be to change a vote tally by hacking the database residing on the "pc" that tabulates the votes in a DRE system. You are assuming that the people who work these machines will have the knowledge to secure them.... Hardware security is a very complicated process and requires in depth knowledge of computer systems and network protocols.
  • One very important piece missing from the "voter verified paper trail" requirement - the requirement that there be some mechanism in place to correct the problem if something does go wrong. There were numerous instances in this election of voters stating that the machines didn't get respond to their votes correctly and how they were ignored or laughed at when they took those concerns to the voting authorities. Those individuals likely did not have their intent recorded properly.
  • VOTER CONFIDENCE is ommitted from 'four essential characteristics'. Whether the DRE works or not, voter perception is essential: We must perceive that it's accurate, anonymous and fair is essential.
  • The real problem facing electronic voting isn't anything that has been mentioned on this page. The problem is money. Very few in this country are willing to pay what it will cost to have the kind of accuracy and security that is demanded by the neophyte/luddite 'so-called' voting systems experts.
  • It's really very simple. The legal and binding result of the voting transaction needs to be the paper ballot generated. not bits flipped invisibly on some storage media. Why? Because it's human verifiable. Not only by the voter but also by anyone desiring to recount the ballots.... We technology minded people need to resist the temptation to over-engineer the voting process.

Michigan will be using optical-scan paper ballots in all elections statewide. This is a wise decision. My only quibble with this is that "blacken the oval" has been mandated instead of "connect the arrow". I think the latter creates fewer ambiguous cases.

However, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) apparently mandates costly DRE voting machines in every polling place, to accomodate blind and handicapped voters. Very likely this will force a radical consolidation of polling places in order to minimize the expense. But how many jurisdictions have venues available which can accomodate many thousands of voters in one room?

The DRE machines will be rigged to generate printed ballots which are supposed to be indistinguishable from voter marked ballots. That will be a neat trick.

Update. See also my past comments about voting technology, in October 2003 and May 2003.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Thursday, November 11, 2004, 11:40 am

A Rocky Transition. [Deleted. The outgoing incumbent is now cooperating in the transition.]

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Wednesday, November 10, 2004, 10:07 pm

Job Description. My new job in detail:

CLASS TITLE: COUNTY CLERK / REGISTER OF DEEDS
FLSA STATUS: Exempt

JOB SUMMARY
As an elected official, manages the Office of the County Clerk/Register of Deeds, which includes the Court Services, Public Services, and Administrative Divisions. Serves as Clerk of the Circuit Court, Chief Elections Officer, Clerk of the Board of Commissioners, Registrar of Vital Statistics, and Chairperson of the County Plat Board. As Register of Deeds, serves as the legal custodian of records and documents pertaining to the ownership and location of real and personal property in Washtenaw County. Maintains permanent records and furnishes copies and information to the public. Develops programs and policies to carry out the mission of the Department, determines appropriate staffing levels, hires employees, and represents the County to other governmental entities and the general public.

EXAMPLES OF DUTIES

  • Directs the activities of the Office of County Clerk by developing short- and long-term goals and objectives. Serves as liaison with other county department directors on issues that impact the Register of Deeds Office. Represents the County at meetings with local, state, and federal officials and speaks before interested groups on topics related to the County Clerk/Register of Deeds Office and county government in general. Orients local officials to county operations and informs them of relevant legislation. Serves as Chairman of the County Plat Board, which reviews, approves, or rejects proposed plots of land according to the Subdivision Control Act.

  • Regularly meets with division supervisors to review activities, coordinate work effort, discuss and resolve problems and assure adherence to departmental goals, objectives and policies. Perform various personnel functions in collaboration with division supervisors, such as interviewing, hiring, training, assigning, evaluating personnel problems and counseling staff.

  • Prepares periodic financial and activity reports and an annual budget, receiving input from division supervisors, finance personnel and the County Board of Commissioners. Oversees the maintenance of required account records and the preparation of semi-weekly and monthly reports to the County Treasurer.

  • Supervises the records and preparation of minutes and reports of official actions of the County Board of Commissioners, the Plat Board, the Board of Canvassers, the Concealed Weapons Board, the Allocation Board, the Special Elections Scheduling Committee, and so forth. Provides support, documentation and carries out related assignments.

  • For the County Board of Commissioners, oversees the scheduling of resource persons and speakers to appear before the Commissioners, hosts meetings and notices the presentation of common actions to the Board.

  • Directs employees in the filing, docketing and recording of all Circuit Court cases. Serves as Custodian of all Circuit Court records and papers related to divorce, civil and criminal cases, as well as the Court seal and County seal.

  • Supervises employees in the receiving, processing, filing and reviewing of legal records and documents. These include birth, marriage, death certificates, passports, gun permits, legal judgments, service discharges, assumed name certificates, professional registrations, partnership certificates, campaign finance filings, farmland agreements, deeds, mortgages, land contracts, leases and security agreements that convey title on real or personal property. Directs the receipt of materials over the counter and by mail to assure orderly processing, and oversees the collection of fees chargd for recording all legal documents and instruments.

  • Serves as Chief Elections Officer supervising voter registration, processes nominating petitions, trains elected officials, trains election workers, and the orderly conduct of elections. Arranges facilities for voting and aassures that adequate supplies and ballots are available. Calls special election meetings and records results for processing and distribution. Administers Campaign Finance Act reviewing financial documents of candidates.

  • Attends seminars, conferences, and professional meetings and reads various trade publications to keep informed of current legislation and professional concerns.

  • Meets with high officials of various state departments to coordinate record keeping procedures and review proposed state policies and rules. Assists in developing legislation.

  • Serves as Clerk of the Jury Board to select jurors from all registered voters according to predicted needs. Summons, records, and pays jurors for their service.

  • Directs microfilm work and the index system to ensure archival quality, provides safe storage of film, ensures conformity to laws and provides for the efficient retrieval of records.

  • Performs a variety of related duties as required.

The above statements are intended to decribe the general nature and level of work being performed by employees assigned this classification. They are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of all job duties performed by personnel so classified.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS
Duties require sufficient mobility to work in a normal office setting and use standard office equipment including a computer, vision to read printed materials and a VDT screen and hearing and speech sufficient to communicate in person or over the telephone. Sit at a desk for long periods of time in front of a computer screen.

These requirements may be accomodated for otherwise qualified individuals requiring and requesting such accomodations.

EMPLOYMENT QUALIFICATIONS

EDUCATION
Possession of an Associate's degree or its equivalent in business management or a related area.

EXPERIENCE
A minimum of five (5) years of experience in governmental operations or business, or the equivalent. Six- to twelve- month break-in period.

This class description intends to identify the major duties and requirements of the job and should not be interpreted as all-inclusive. Incumbents may be requested to perform job- related duties other than those outlined above and may be required to specific job-related knowledge for successful job performance.

(Odd grammar and syntax in the original.)

The text above is outdated in many ways. For example, jurors no longer come from voter lists. Positions mentioned as "chairman" and "chairperson" have long since been updated to simply "Chair".

The education and experience requirements are of course unenforceable for an elected position, and probably written to match the credentials of the incumbent at the time. I believe I will be the first County Clerk since 1934 who holds a bachelor's degree.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Thursday, November 4, 2004, 11:29 pm

Ann Arbor News Reflects on Clerk's Race. Our local daily paper calls my election a surprise which was caused by straight-ticket voting, but also editorialized as follows:

Fortunately for county residents, the Washtenaw County clerk's office won't be left to a novice. Haines' successor is learned in elections operations and the technology that's so important to running a large clerk's operation like Washtenaw's. We expect Democrat Lawrence Kestenbaum, an attorney and former county commissioner, should perform ably in his important new post.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Wednesday, November 3, 2004, 6:45 am

Elected. Reasonably final results for Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds are as follows:


       Lawrence Kestenbaum (D)  81,322 (52%)

       Peggy M. Haines (R)      75,425 (48%)

Hence, I am elected, and will take office January 1st.

Many thanks to everyone who helped or supported my campaign.

The depth of my mixed feelings at this moment can only be imagined.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, November 1, 2004, 7:00 am

Downballot Races. A lot of folks have asked for advice on the candidates and issues on the nonpartisan section of the ballot. Here are some thoughts:

  • Michigan Supreme Court: The candidates are nominated by parties, and then "pretend" to be nonpartisan. Marilyn Kelly and Deborah Thomas are the Democratic nominees.

  • Court of Appeals, Circuit Court, District Court: In Washtenaw County, they're all unopposed. Voting or not voting for them makes no difference, and write-ins don't count. [But see late update below.]

  • Washtenaw Community College Trustees: There are no "bad" candidates running. However, Alfred Johnson has withdrawn (his name remains on the ballot). I recommend Stephen J. Gill and Roger W. Lane.

  • Proposal 1, Limit Gambling by Requiring Local and Statewide Vote on New Casinos: Vote Yes!.

  • Proposal 2, Ban Same-Sex Marriage and Many Other Unspecified Things: Vote No!

  • County Proposal, WCC Proposal, City Proposal: Vote Yes on all these.

LATE UPDATE: Jane Bassett has registered as an official write-in candidate to oppose Archie Brown for 22nd Circuit Court.

Local activist Martin Contreras writes:

We are supporting a write-in campaign to unseat Judge Archie Brown, conservative-activist judge of the circuit court.
He is running unopposed and is responsible for denying same-sex couples from joint custody and adoptions. A little history, previously Judge Sheldon of Ann Arbor had been the only judge in the state of Michigan granting same sex couples' adoptions.
Judge Brown imposed his belief structure and relieved Judge Sheldon of all adoption case load effectively killing the only judicial venue for same sex parents.
We are writing-in "Jane Bassett for 22nd Circuit Judge of the Circuit Court."
Jane Bassett is a long-standing local attorney who has been an advocate and very involved in family law and adoptions within the GLBT community.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, November 1, 2004, 6:36 am

Election predictions. My guesses about the outcome are as follows:

  • The Kerry/Edwards ticket will win both the popular and electoral vote.

  • The vote for Washtenaw County Clerk-Register will be approximately 75,000 for me, 70,000 for my opponent.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Sunday, October 31, 2004, 3:55 pm

Michigan Daily Won't Cover County Races. Citing a lack of staff and column space, the Michigan Daily student newspaper will not cover any of the Washtenaw County races in Tuesday's election.

Two editors I spoke with this afternoon acknowledged that U-M students play a big role in county politics, but politely declined to do anything to inform them.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Sunday, October 31, 2004, 1:19 pm

Ann Arbor News Endorses, um... The Ann Arbor News has a very liberal readership and a very conservative publisher. So how do they come down in the presidential race?

Fascinating to relate, they endorsed George W. Bush — but left his name out of the headline!

Unlike their other endorsements, there is no photo of the chosen candidate alongside the headline.

It reminds me of those oddball Michigan Supreme Court decisions where a vote changed at the last minute, and the dissent, almost unedited, is presented as the majority opinion.

Earlier, the News endorsed my opponent (no link, because they didn't put it online), but did say some nice things about me:

Peggy Haines faces a challenge Nov. 2 from Democrat Larry Kestenbaum, a prinicipled technology and elections expert with a solid background in county government... We're convinced Kestenbaum's experience in elections administrations, computer databases and security would prove an asset to any county clerk's office.

Meanwhile, Greg Hlatky, my politically conservative mentor in blogging, who earlier endorsed my candidacy for County Clerk, posts an (apparently unserious) endorsement of John Kerry.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Friday, October 15, 2004, 10:13 am

You're invited! Please join David Bonior, former Democratic Whip of the U.S. Congress, at a rally for the Kestenbaum for County Clerk/Register campaign, at 6:00 pm, Thursday, October 28, at UAW Local 849, 454 Chidester, Ypsilanti, Michigan (click address for location map). Entertainment, cider and donuts, donation requested.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Friday, October 8, 2004, 8:07 am

New Aspect of Campaigning Door-to-Door. Voters who immediately blog about it!

Belated thanks, as well, for AnnArborIsOverrated's endorsement of my candidacy.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Wednesday, October 6, 2004, 11:42 pm

Proposal 1. One of the two statewide proposals on Michigan's ballot November 2 is as follows:

No law enacted after January 1, 2004, that authorizes any form of gambling shall be effective, nor after January 1, 2004, shall any new state lottery games utilizing table games or player operated mechanical or electronic devices be established, without the approval of a majority of electors voting in a statewide general election and a majority of electors voting in the township or city where gambling will take place. This section shall not apply to gambling in up to three casinos in the city of Detroit or to Indian tribal gaming.

I'm voting "yes" on this.

Casino gambling destroys lives and corrupts politics. I strongly opposed the original gambling ballot proposal, which passed on a close vote and allowed the creation of several casinos in Detroit. This new proposal doesn't undo the damage caused by the original, of course, but limiting the opening of new casinos is a good thing, even if it means the existing ones make slightly more money.

I grew up in mid-Michigan, at a time when large-scale gambling was a distant rumor. It didn't affect anyone I knew.

But my wife comes from Kentucky, where betting on horse races is embedded in the culture. Just about every male in her ancestry, on both sides, going back generations, had a gambling problem. In other words, they had an addiction to betting on horses with money they couldn't afford to lose, and their wives and children suffered.

You can see this kind of family drama being played out again wherever casinos are. The whole point of a casino is to fool people and take their money. Folks who lightheartedly bet a few dollars when they're on vacation in a casino town are not the ones paying for all those fancy palaces.

Nor does gambling deliver on promises of being an economic panacea to depressed urban areas. Detroit and Atlantic City are both examples of how little good casinos do for a community.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, October 4, 2004, 12:52 pm

Two Faces. Digby has a great essay about GWB. Some excerpts:

...after 9/11, the media cast Bush in the role of strong, resolute leader, perhaps because the nation needed him to be that, at least for a little while. And the people gratefully laid that mantle on him and he took it because the office demanded no less. The narrative of the nation at war required a warrior leader and George W. Bush was all we had. Karl Rove and others understood that they could use this veil to soothe the American people and flatter the president to take actions that no prudent, thoughtful leader would have taken after our initial successes in Afghanistan. This “man with the bullhorn” image of Bush crystallized in the minds of many Americans and has not been revisited until now....
On Thursday night sixty-one million people watched George W. Bush for the first time since 9/11 not as that symbol, but as a man. And for those who had not reassessed their belief in his personal leadership since 9/11, it was quite a shock. Their strong leader was inarticulate, arrogant, confused and immature. They must be wondering who that man was.
The truth is that since George W. Bush entered politics he has always had two faces. In fact, virtually everything you know about his public persona is the opposite of the real person....
George W. Bush is a man with two faces— a public image of manly strength and a private reality of childish weakness. His verbal miscues and malapropisms are the natural consequence of a man struggling with internal contradictions and a lack of self-knowledge. He can'’t keep track of what he is supposed to think and say in public.
Go read it all..

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, September 13, 2004, 11:32 pm

Uh-huh: Frog/Mouse Courtship. One of my daughter's favorite songs goes approximately as follows:

Froggie went a-courtin' and he did ride,
Uh-huh, uh-huh,
Froggie went a-courtin' and he did ride,
Uh-huh, uh-huh,
Froggie went a-courtin' and he did ride,
A sword and pistol by his side
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

It goes on in this form for many verses. Stripped of the uh-huhs and repetition, the lyrics are as follows:

Froggie went a-courtin' and he did ride,
A sword and pistol by his side.

He saddled and bridled a big striped snail,
And rode between the horns and tail.

He rode his snail to Miss Mousie's door,
Where he had often been before.

He called, "Miss Mouse, are you within?"
"Yes sir, for I've sit down to spin."

Froggie took his mouse upon his knee,
And asked, "My dear, will you marry me?"

"Without my Uncle Rat's consent,
I'm not marry-ing the President."

Frog jumped on his snail and rode away,
Vowed to come back another day.

Now, Uncle Rat when he came home,
Asked "Who's been here since I've been gone?"

"A very fine frog's been calling here,
And asking me to be his dear."

Uncle Rat, he laughed and shook his sides,
To think his niece would be a bride.

This is, I believe, a folk song which exists in many versions and variations, amended many times to match changes in tastes and technology.

Still, the version above is the one in Wee Sing's tape "Wee Sing in the Car". Those of you without young children may not be aware of Wee Sing, a firm which is plainly more concerned with Keeping The Old Songs Alive, often in stiffly formal original lyrics and pronunciation, than in maximizing profit. Since this is the version Wee Sing is vouching for, it undoubtedly has a distinguished lineage.

The story as presented seems highly ridiculous, even from a kindergarten perspective. A frog wanting to marry a mouse? Seen this way, the seven uh-huhs in every verse are a kind of skeptical mock agreement.

But the characters are so highly anthropomorphic that the story could better be understood as being about human characters with funny names. And no doubt real horses have been called Snail. Only the line about riding the snail "between the horns and tail" injects a teasing note of animal fantasy realism.

The politics and technology of the text, as given, locates it in a narrow band of time and place. The reference to "the President" puts it in the USA after 1790. Miss Mouse is sitting down to spin, presumably at a spinning wheel, a home activity which faded away in the early 19th century as cheap manufactured thread and yarn replaced "homespun". It was a time when swords and pistols coexisted as personal armaments, because the latter were not yet reliable enough alone.

This is not to say that the text necessarily dates from that time — it could be much earlier or later. Perhaps "the President" replaced a reference to royalty or some hero. And backward-looking song lyrics frequently contain howling anachronisms.... But I digress.

The dramatic tension of the story is the contradiction between Miss Mouse's willingness to entertain Froggie's visits (visits, plural, because he had "often been before", "vowed to come back another day", and has "been calling here") and her refusal to consider his marriage proposal. She invites him in, she sits on his knee (do frogs actually have knees?), but she disclaims authority to agree to what Froggie has in mind. What's going on here?

At the very end of the song, Uncle Rat appears in person. With a name like Rat, we're not supposed to like him, but all he really does is laugh.

Left unanswered is the nature of the relationship between Uncle Rat and Miss Mouse — and why specifically Uncle Rat is laughing.

One assumes that Uncle Rat is her foster father, replacing deceased parents, and taking on the traditional parental role of approving suitors. Since Miss Mouse has specified that only suitors approved by Uncle Rat are acceptable, and Uncle Rat is so amused at the notion of his niece as a bride, apparently he plans to withhold that consent indefinitely.

He may be playing the role of the overprotective father. Or, perhaps he benefits too much from having Miss Mouse doing household chores (like spinning) that he is reluctant to give her up.

Yet the image of the selfish, restrictive father figure doesn't really fit. For one thing, he has been away from home so much that he has completely missed Froggie's series of courting visits. And Froggie, we are told in the first verse, is well armed. Presumably, if Miss Mouse chose to elope with him, he could protect her from Uncle Rat.

Another possibility, since this is after all a child's song, is that Froggie and Miss Mouse are young children, not of marrying age. But this doesn't really work either, since Miss Mouse (with a title!) has been left in charge of Uncle Rat's household, and runs a spinning wheel by herself. Certainly in the social environment of 150 years ago, marriage would not be seen as laughably far off.

Moreover, Uncle Rat does not hide his amusement; he "laughed and shook his sides," openly before his niece. He does not pretend to take offers of marriage seriously; Miss Mouse must see this, and perhaps she doesn't mind. In other words, perhaps Miss Mouse doesn't take suitors seriously either. Though she apparently enjoys Froggie's attention, she has no intention of giving up her place in Uncle Rat's household.

Seen this way, her invocation of Uncle Rat's authority is an excuse rather than a barrier. And note how she expresses it: without his consent, she wouldn't even marry a head of state. She is announcing unwillingness to disregard her uncle's consent, even in the case of the most powerful suitor she can imagine. She isn't saying that she is bound by her uncle's word in every possible case. Rather, she is saying that, contrary to what Froggie or the listener may think, she won't circumvent the approval process no matter how good the suitor. Of course, that implies that she could.

Hence, Froggie is the ridiculous figure here: trying doggedly to get Miss Mouse to marry him, while she and her uncle laugh behind his back.

Okay, a wildly whimsical post, but it's my birthday, so I'm allowed.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, September 13, 2004, 8:49 pm

Voting Against. On an election-related mailing list, one Bush supporter, rebutting another writer's anybody-but-Bush posting, wrote:

It is not what you are against that counts. It is what you are FOR.

My response to that was inexplicably blocked by the moderator, so I'll post it here:

No. The problem is that the Bush Administration has been governing through secrecy and lies and destructively short-term priorities, and silencing critics through aggressive defamation. These things have not been unknown in the past, of course, but the current administration has brought them to a new level.
We count on our leaders to step outside the politician mindset and help us think about the future. We count on presidents and governors and mayors to set budgets and exert leadership to restrain the spending of Congress and legislatures and city councils. The Bush Administration has defaulted on these critical responsibilities.
If George W. Bush is re-elected, he will have proven that his irresponsible approach is acceptable and successful. All future presidents, regardless of party, will copy the Bush style in arrogant secrecy, disinformation, and disregard for the future of America and the world. Governors and mayors will learn from his example, too. And when democratic leaders fail to govern responsibly, eventually the lesson will be that democracy is a failure.
The balance wheel of our democracy is the two-party system. Indeed, the winner-take-all presidency pretty much mandates the emergence of two grand coalitions. If one party fails, voters can turn readily to the other.
This year, many voters, normally Republican, people with no love for the Democratic Party, are planning to vote for Kerry as a rejection for the way George W. Bush is leading the country.
Voting against (rather than for) is a perfectly legitimate and intellectually defensible approach to making political choices in a system where the choices are necessarily limited to A or B.

Some time after I wrote that, I came across a collection of essays at the Washington Monthly's web site, exploring what a Bush win in 2004 would mean, by people ranging from Paul Begala to Grover Norquist. A varied and interesting set of ideas and predictions.

The first essay listed — The Triumph of Anything Goes, by David Greenberg — takes a point of view very much along the lines of what I wrote above, and expresses it far better than I could have:

[A] Bush victory in November would change the fundamental practice of democracy in Washington. If the public were to award Bush a vote of confidence on the basis of his first-term record, it would amount to a ratification of the ruthless style and philosophy that have underpinned Bush's presidency--what Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention called "the politics of anything goes."
An oft-quoted quip of Bush's--"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator"--certainly doesn't reflect any plan of his to abolish democratic procedures or principles. But it does reveal his impatience with those procedures and principles. Bush and his team have shown contempt for many of the bedrock elements of liberal democracy, including public access to information; a press that interrogates its leaders; a give-and-take between parties that represent different interests; a separation of powers among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches; the preference for reason over the use of force; and the support of legal safeguards to prevent the arbitrary exercise of power by the executive. They have routinely violated the bounds of acceptable political behavior in a democracy....
Should Bush win a second term, the politics of anything-goes would only intensify--because it would no longer be seen as controversial. It would no longer be noteworthy that an administration declassifies documents to embarrass opponents, as when John Ashcroft released a memo by former Clinton administration official and 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick. It would become more or less acceptable to threaten the jobs of bureaucrats who won't play ball in misleading Congress, as happened with chief actuary Richard Foster, who wanted to answer congressional questions about the price tag of the administration's Medicare plan. Or to toss aside legal and constitutional rights of the accused, as at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Or to interfere with the public's right to know, as the administration did in ordering federal agencies to provide fewer records under the Freedom of Information Act.
Fifteen years ago, conservatives put forth the "broken windows" theory of crime. If small street crimes are tolerated, the theory went, neighborhoods begin to accept them as normal and the result is more lawlessness. The same thing will happen if a democracy tolerates Bush's ruthless behavior as business as usual. If voters validate this modus operandi, it won't just accelerate; it will cease to draw even the modest level of scrutiny and outrage that the administration's transgressions have attracted so far. Failing to protest these breaches of the norms that govern political conduct will encourage more such violations.

The broken windows theory comes from James Q. Wilson, a conservative who has greatly influenced (and enhanced) my own thinking on crime and justice issues. Application of "broken windows" to the George W. Bush presidency is highly apropos.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Saturday, September 4, 2004, 11:37 pm

An Oddly Lifeless Speech. James Wolcott has a blog now, and his comments about George W. Bush's convention acceptance speech capture my own observations:

My clinical evaluation. I don't know if Bush is going to lose the election. But I think he thinks he's going to lose. His eyes were lifeless, devoid of spark. His smiles were forced, his expressions of gratitude for the audience applause more of a mechanical pause than a transference of energy from him to the crowd and back again. When the camera cut to the audience they were doing their orchestrated bit, holding up those dopey signs, but there wasn't the ebullience you saw among the Democrats. Bush seemed to know this speech simply didn't have it, and he didn't have it in him to put it over.
The[n] when it was over the family trooped out. More fascinating repressed psychodrama it would be harder to imagine. The Bush twins came out and embraced their dad, but it was an affectionless embrace, like those brief pats the American girl gymnasts gave each other after one of them after a routine, and immediately broken. Was he upset with their ditzy embarrassing performance?—there was none of the warmth and giddiness one saw with the Kerry and Edwards clans. His hugs of his father and mother were equally perfunctory. Everyone looked ill at ease, and yet when I tuned to PBS and switched on the sound they were blathering about the confetti and the balloon drop, ignoring the stilted pageant below.

Yet for all that, the convention seemed to play well with voters, giving GWB an unexpectedly large bounce in the polls.

Now I hear about what may have been worrying him. Kitty Kelly, a decidedly unauthorized biographer, a kind of private-sector Ken Starr to celebrities, is coming out with a new book: The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. It comes out September 14, and its Amazon sales rank is already #12.

No doubt the book will be controversial.

Discussion of libel law as it relates to public figures deferred to another time.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Sunday, August 8, 2004, 11:14 pm

Challenge-response spamblockers. We're all trying to cope with the ever-rising flood of spam and viruses, but some are doing better than others.

Quite frequently, I receive email from a user of my web site, often with a question or comment. I write a reply, send it, and receive an autoreply from a spamblocking program.

The autoreply contains instructions: in order to my mail to be delivered, I must click on a certain several-lines-long URL. So I painstakingly paste the URL together in my browser's address bar — and get an error message. Unable to process your request or similar.

It never fails.

I think from now on, I won't bother to deal with these. You're the one who started the conversation. If my reply to your letter gets vaporized by your spam blocker, then I guess we're not communicating.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Friday, August 6, 2004, 5:32 pm

Good signs from the primary. Tuesday, August 3rd was primary election day in Washtenaw County. As a candidate, I was unopposed in the primary, of course, as was my opponent, but the numbers bode well for November:


   Lawrence Kestenbaum (D) 16,886

   Peggy M. Haines (R)     11,362

Put those together, and I got nearly 60% of the total vote for County Clerk — despite the fact that Republican turnout, traditionally high in primaries, was bolstered by the big 7th District congressional primary, while Democratic Ann Arbor was extremely quiet.

I also did very well relative to the other countywide candidates — a key measure of holding the Democratic base.

In partisan primaries, voters have a demonstrated tendency to cast votes for unopposed candidates if they plan to support them, and to "skip" voting for unopposed candidates when they plan to vote for the other party's nominee in the general election.

Brian Mackie, our county prosecutor, traditionally gets the most votes; his vote in the primary is the yardstick for any Democratic countywide challenger. Here's how past candidates have measured up:

  1. In August, 1996 (PDF), 16.4% of the Democrats who voted for Brian Mackie in the primary "skipped" voting for the Democrat running for County Clerk. That same weakness showed up in November, when she ran well behind the Democratic baseline, and lost.

  2. In August, 2000 (PDF), 8.4% of the Democrats who voted for Brian Mackie in the primary "skipped" Dan Minzey, who was running for Sheriff. Minzey ran only slightly behind the Democratic baseline in November, and won by 8,000 votes over a well-known and popular incumbent.

  3. In August, 2004, only 6.4% of the Democrats who voted for Brian Mackie in the primary "skipped" voting for me. That low fall-off suggests that I am very well positioned to hold the Democratic base in November, and win the election, just as Dan Minzey did four years ago.

Not only is Washtenaw County voting more and more Democratic from year to year, but Democratic voters are now more partisan, and less inclined to make exceptions for a few Republican candidates.

Moreover, I have been able to articulate to a wide audience my vision for the Clerk-Register's office: more efficient workflow, an ethic of unfailing courtesy and respect for every customer, election administration geared to greater inclusiveness and participation, and an end to seven decades of one-party control.

Many thanks to everyone for the great support!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Lynne Fremont, 8/8/2004: That is awesome Larry. Good for you!

  2. parade fan, 9/13/2004:your vision and ambition for the office notwithstanding, will you look good in old glory-inspired apparel as you (choose one: a. waddle, b. strut, c. march) in local parades?

  3. John J Walton, 10/23/2004:I know Brian Mackie a little ..but it seems he has changed..something like being in office so long he thinks he is king. Brian, you should quit. you are there to inforce the law, not comment on it or fight it.. its simple..but when you go against our 2nd amedment it is wrong. where is the crime spree from the ccw holders Brian..crime is down all right..but not because of you king Brian... its time for a change.. you don`t have the right to speak for others.. just uphold the law I am ashamed of you


Wednesday, July 28, 2004, 9:02 am

All In The Family? As part of building my web site, PoliticalGraveyard.com, I've been incorporating delegate lists from past Democratic and Republican national conventions into my database. At last count, I had more than 55,000 delegates listed.

The 2004 Democratic delegate list is now online at the convention's official web site. The most striking aspect of this new list, compared with past conventions, is the much greater number of delegates who appear to be related to one another. Same surname, same hometown, same candidate preference, hmmm.

Just a small piece of the list, up through Colorado:

  • Alabama:
    • Maudie Bedford and Roger Bedford, of Russellville, AL
    • Beatrice Brooks and Bernest Brooks, of Enterprise, AL
    • Artur Davis and Carolyn Davis, of Birmingham, AL
    • Tyna Davis and Warren Davis, of Montgomery, AL
    • Grover Dunn and Priscilla Dunn, of Bessemer, AL
    • Jim Folsom and Marsha Folsom, of Cullman, AL
  • Alaska:
    • Carol Anderson and Willie Anderson, of Juneau, AK
  • Arizona:
    • George Miller and Roslyn Miller, of Tucson, AZ
    • Ed Pastor and Laura Pastor, of Phoenix, AZ
    • Carmen Prezelski and Theodore Prezelski, of Tucson, AZ
    • Evangeline Rios and Joe Rios, of Kearny, AZ
    • Ash Silverburg and Barbara Silverburg, of Tucson, AZ
    • Karl Tucker and Sue Tucker, of Tucson, AZ
  • California:
    • Floyd Allen and Maureen Allen, of Norwalk, CA
    • Eugene Benavides and Vida Benavides, of San Leandro, CA
    • Caren Bolinger and Robert Bolinger, of Westminster, CA
    • Dean Florez, Elsa Florez, and Fran Florez, of Shafter CA
    • Maggie Florez, Nina Florez, and Rudy Florez, of Visalia CA
    • Erika Girardi and Thomas Girardi, of Pasadena CA
    • Carl Henley and Cynthia Marroquin-Henley, of Los Angeles, CA
    • Bradley Johnson and Nicole Johnson, of West Covina CA
    • Greg Morgan and Kathleen Morgan, of Palmdale, CA
    • Christine Pelosi and Nancy Pelosi, of Washington, DC
    • Carmen Stone and Lawrence Stone, of Sunnyvale, CA
    • Antonio Villaraigosa and Corina Villaraigosa, of Los Angeles, CA
    • Fabian Wesson and Herb Wesson, of Los Angeles, CA
    • Ernest Winslow and Laura Winslow, of Lafayette, CA
    • Barbara Yaroslavsky and Zev Yaroslavsky, of Los Angeles, CA
    • Betty Yee and Leland Yee, of San Francisco, CA
  • Colorado:
    • Josie Heath and Rollie Heath, of Boulder, CO
    • Bill Moore and Patricia Moore, of Westminster, CO
    • Alexis Perlmutter and Ed Perlmutter, of Golden, CO

There is certainly nothing new about husbands and wives (or fathers and sons, or whatever) serving as party convention delegates. And indeed, it should be no surprise that people in political families are involved in politics.

Nonetheless, there are now so many related delegates that it is getting worrisome. It begins to suggest either a shortage in the pool of potential delegates, or a delegate selection process so open to manipulation by insiders that it's easy for a politico to get voting credentials for family members.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Wednesday, June 30, 2004, 12:21 pm

Attention campaign volunteers! Come march with me in the Ann Arbor 4th of July Parade, and get a cool blue-and-white KESTENBAUM for County Clerk & Register of Deeds t-shirt. RSVP via email for precise time and location.

Also, I have a fundraising party scheduled for Monday evening, 6-8 pm, July 12, at 1506 Granger Ave. in Ann Arbor (east of Packard, four blocks north of Stadium Blvd). I still have some more invitations to be addressed and sent out, if you're available to help tonight (Wednesday) or possibly tomorrow.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. mythago, 7/3/2004: Ooh! Hey! How do I get one of those shirts?

  2. mitten, 8/3/2004: Hey - I saw your name on the ballot this morning! And I voted for you! :)

    http://blog.mittenartworks.com
    http://martinirepublic.com

  3. Laura Larson, 8/4/2004: Congratulations on "securing" the democratic nomination in yesterday's primary. If the turnout yesterday is any indication, you are headed in the right direction to hand out a November SMACKBOTTOM.

    To echo my namesake, how exactly *does one* get a cool Kestenbaum t-shirt? Is there a quota for envelopes licked/doors knocked/phones banged??

    Whoops, I am making the business of campaigning sound a tad bit naughty...

  4. mythago, 8/12/2004: Yes, as my namesake already asked, where do we get one of these shirts?

    I'm all for naughty campaigning, but what do you expect from someone living near San Francisco.

  5. Lawrence Kestenbaum, 8/13/2004: Remote supporters can obtain a shirt for $16 including shipping. Use PayPal or send a check. Specify size: S/M/L/XL/XXL. A picture of the shirt will be posted on the campaign web site soon.


Sunday, June 13, 2004, 12:45 pm

Campaign web site. My campaign for Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds now has an official web presence: KestenbaumCampaign.com.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Laura, 6/13/2004: Nice work, Larry! Keep us posted on what we can do to help (emergency babysitting, "harmless" fireworks, etc.)

  2. Laura, 6/17/2004: Thanks for adding me to the endorsements!

  3. mythago, 6/30/2004: I'd be happy to endorse you, but I think it might have the opposite of the intended effect ;)

  4. S. Lynne Fremont, 6/30/2004: Yeah, I endorse you totally but since no one knows me, it would hardly be useful to you. :)


Thursday, June 10, 2004, 12:03 am

Salon and Me. Recently, as noted in Common Monkeyflower, ArborBlogs, and Arbor Update, I was interviewed for an article in Salon: "Invasion of the Spambots".

The reporter came to me because of this posting about referer log spam, from way back in January 2003.

I'm quoted, but the author got many details wrong. Excerpt:

For Lawrence Kestenbaum, the realization that a new species of intelligent agent — or "bot" — was prowling the Internet first dawned about two years ago.
It was about that time, Kestenbaum says, that a series of "fluke" addresses started popping up in the HTTP referrer log of his personal Web site, the historical cemetery database Political Graveyard.
"If you're at all concerned with how your Web site is being received, you're almost compulsively checking the logs to see who's coming in and from where," says Kestenbaum, laying the scene. "You get to know what sites are linking to you. Anything new gets your attention."
Even more attention-grabbing, Kestenbaum adds, was the fact that the fluke referrals came in bunches. Curious, Kestenbaum pasted in the URL and went to look. His disappointment was immediate. Expecting something interesting, he instead found a page filled with nothing but banner and pop up ads.
For a moment, Kestenbaum says, he suspected a glitch. How else could one explain a dozen or so Internet browsers flipping directly from a site boasting zero unpaid content to one documenting historical graveyards? It didn't make sense.
"That's when I had this 'Aha' moment," says Kestenbaum. "I'd visited the site because of the very technique they'd used to advertise it. Somebody had taken the trouble to write a program that would plant strange links in referrer logs knowing that the people curious enough to check those logs would also be curious enough to follow the link.
Scary as it may seem, spam is evolving....

What I meant was this: some company was advertising "neural marketing," i.e., spamming referer logs, by spamming referer logs. I had suspected that something like this was going on, but didn't expect to see such direct evidence.

Since January 2003, referer-log spam has become a widespread and taken-for-granted reality — hardly something so new and dramatic as to justify breathless coverage.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Wednesday, June 9, 2004, 11:40 pm

Letter from Little Rock. From Ken Parker, retired Arkanas newspaper editor, comes the following:

Subject: State Funerals (or slightly less)
This week, while watching the obsequies for Ronald Reagan, I could not help thinking about another funeral. Like Reagan's, it was painfully orchestrated.
Undoubtedly, the grandest funeral ever in Little Rock was that of Senator Joseph T. Robinson. He was the Democratic nominee for vice president (running with Alfred Smith) in 1928 and, at the time of his death in 1937, the majority leader of the United States Senate. A special train brought members of Congress and other VIPs from Washington for the funeral.
S. J. (Stonewall Jackson, of course) Beauchamp owned a moving and storage company at Little Rock. Stoney told me that, when Joe T. died, the undertaker called him and asked that he have a van at the church to get the flowers from the church to the cemetery before the cortege got there.
Stoney Beauchamp said he picked out his newest, shiniest van and had it washed and polished. Then, he picked his two best-looking drivers and made certain they had new uniforms and fresh haircuts. Then he took those drivers on dry run after dry run so they would know how to take a truckload of flowers from the church to the cemetery and get there before the funeral procession.
Everything went beautifully—except that the van ran out of gas en route to the cemetery.
Stoney said, "That was embarrassing."

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Friday, May 28, 2004, 8:11 am

Bloggers in the News. My old friend Rich Wiggins (and Wigblog) was featured in a New York Times story yesterday.

Indeed, if a blog is likened to a conversation between a writer and readers, bloggers like Mr. Wiggins are having conversations largely with themselves.
Mr. Wiggins, 48, a senior information technologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing, does not know how many readers he has; he suspects it's not many. But that does not seem to bother him.
"I'm just getting something off my chest," he said.

Grim anniversary. When my wife was growing up in Northern Kentucky, the Beverly Hills Supper Club was a nightclub and a familiar venue for high school proms, wedding receptions, and so on. Many famous performers appeared there over the years. The original building was built in 1937, but it had been greatly expanded over the years with little or no safety inspection or enforcement. It postdated Prohibition, but locals thought of it as an old speakeasy, and it was said to be a headquarters for illegal gambling.

On May 28, 1977, twenty-seven years ago today, a fire broke out in the building, apparently caused by faulty aluminum wiring. The cheap building materials burned rapidly and generated toxic fumes. In the vast, crowded Cabaret Room, the exits were unmarked and access to them was constricted.

About two thousand people escaped from the building that night, but 165 died — most of them in the Cabaret Room.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Laura, 5/29/2004: It looks like the poor Bohrer and Fryman families were completely wiped out in this fire, not to mention countless parents...What a haunting tragedy.

  2. Gene Fuller, 7/9/2004: The Fryman family was devastated. The daughter was in my home room at Harrison County High School. We had already lost a young man from our home room in December 1976. He died when the car he was riding in was struck by a train one week before Christmas. This event really hit hard. Our homeroom teacher called Tracey's name during roll call the first day back from the holiday. She just stopped and looked at all of us. I will never forget when she said "I am so, so sorry. I just am ..... She then ran from the room crying. R.I.P.

  3. Jody Ashcraft, 8/9/2004: My sister and her husband were supposed to go to the show that night. I had just recently had a baby and could not get out to go there, but I remember calling her house and getting no answer. The horror that those people went through was unreal and thank God my sisters son got sick so she was at the hospital......safe. I felt relieved , but sick at the same time that all of these people from everywhere were gone. Thanks to the brave fire fighters that gave there all to do what they could. I will never forget the brave people that died that night, you will be missed.

  4. Michael J. Coulter Coburn, 8/23/2004: Orville Coulter was my grandfather. He was a member of the "Tri-State Roadrunners" He took me with him on a trip to the UK. I am told that my mannerisms and expresions are just like him. I was 15 when he died at the Beverly Hills fire. He was so anxious for me to get my drivers license so we could go back to Maryland where he had been so long, and visit friends. His Wife Lucylle died in '74. These were my grandparents and my friends. My life.

    I was a paperboy in 1977 and was delivering the Columbus Dispatch to Mrs. Phillips when she met me at the door. Strange to see her at 6am on a Sunday. My mother had gotten a call from Millie Fowler (her husband was killed too) and called some of the people on my routelooking for me. Mrs. P told me at the door "you need to get home". My father was driving me around because he is a good father and 200 Columbus Dispatches take a car to deliver. I had no idea that Grandad was there but my father knew. We finished the route and went home.

    To this day I will think of memorial day as the day my grandad died. I am not sad anymore though. I have him in me, I have the Roadrunners in me. I have memories that I can share with my family and friends that will pass beyond me to future generations. SO My grandad is still here and will always be with us. And this forum allows his legacy to be carried forward. I thank you for the opportunity and wish you all peace and contentment. Remember Orville Coulter and remember the lives of all those we lost and cherished so much. They are alive in us always.

  5. Dave, 11/10/2005: My parents were there that night, after the fire, helping victims.

  6. Terry, 11/12/2005: I was in Cincinnati over the weekend & decided to drive to Southgate to see where the supper club was located. I wasnt sure if something had been built there or not. I never really found it. I drove along US 27 several times. Back & forth thinking I might see some type of monumuent or marker. I went past the Evergreen cemetary. The exit that I took off of 471 was Ft Thomas/Southgate. Was I in the vicinity of the supper club? Which side of I-471 was it located? Maybe you could tell me some of the businesses that surround it now.

  7. Jonathan Wye, 12/20/2005: At the time of this fire I was a volunteer firefighter in New Jersey, having taken a couple of years off from school. One of my good friends from college had continued straight on to his degree and then gotten a job as a Fifth Grade science teacher. The fire was of historical interest because of being a firefighter, and I was definitely not expecting the call I got two weeks after the fire from a college room mate telling me that Russel Gray, our friend, had been killed in the fire. He was at a retirement party for another teacher in the school system. The identification had been delayed in part because his girl friend/fiance (and I am ashamed to say I don't remember her name) had been killed with him. It wasn't until his mother realized a week or so later that she hadn't heard from him for a while that the alarm was raised.

    Russ knew from day one that he wanted to be a teacher and I'm sure he would have been a good one.

  8. Shayla Hampton, 3/21/2006: To Terry:

    Recently I have begun to research this heartbreaking tragedy. Based on various clues in the readings, testimony from relatives,and a half an hour of driving and searching I found the spot:

    Coming from Cincinnati, I took I-471 South and got off at the Ft. Thomas, Southgate exit.

    At the intersection, make a left. You'll be in Southgate on Alexandria Pike.

    Immediatly on the right hand side, there is a fairly new medical building. This building is sitting at the foot of the Beverly Hills Supper Club property.

    You'll notice that the building sits at the bottom of a hill of trees. On the left of the medical building is the long narrow driveway that leads up the hill to the site. However, there is a small gate closing of the driveway. I didn't see if the gate was locked though. I'm guessing that nothing has been built up there yet.

    I plan to walk up the hill (if I cannot drive up) and place flowers and 2 stuffed animals(for the unborn babies that died) on the site. I was also an unborn fetus at the time of this tragedy, but the family of all those victims, all the surviors, and the rescure workers will always be in my prayers.

  9. James Woody, 5/22/2006: Nothing has been built on the site of the Beverly Hills Supper Club, but the site is quite easy to find (see below for Shayla's directions). Apparently there are still pieces of some of the stone statues that were placed outside the facility for decoration. I watched it burn down that night in 1977. I helped with moving some of the corpses at the Ft. Thomas Armory into a large refrigerated Kroger's truck. For months, when you passed the supper club site you would be able to smell the stink of the charred remains. It took them about a year to knock the whole thing down - I'm not sure why it took that long. I'll never forget hearing about it, driving back from a day at King's Island amusement park. We had the radio on and they mentioned a fire at the Beverly Hills. We all thought "no big deal." They were always having fires there, it seems, but when we heard that at least 90 bodies had been recovered we high-tailed it over to Highland Avenue in Ft. Thomas to watch it burn from the hill side. The Enquirer had a gruesome picture on the front page next day. The whole event was a nightmare for me that I will never forget. Two good friends of my sister perished. I had plans on getting a job there as a busboy, since I heard they were hiring. I'm glad that never materialized. I just can't imagine the terror and pandemonium in the Cabaret Room that night...

  10. Terry, 5/24/2006: Hi Shayla & James
    thanks for the directions.

  11. LeAnn, 5/27/2006: It's been 29 years and it seems like yesterday. Mt grandparents went to the Supper Club to see my granmother's favorite entertainer, John Davidson. They were going with friends to celebrate my grandmothers retirement and my grandfather approaching retirement (he was due to retire that following Monday). We lived at the corner of 19th and Oakland avenue in Covington and could see the smoke from atop the flood wall in the distance. When we heard what had happened, on the T.V, my mother immediately starting calling to try and locate Maw Maw and Paw. Hoping they had stopped off for a drink, with their friends, before going to the club. I fell asleep around midnight and woke the next morning to my mom on the phone with the local hospitals trying to locate Maw and Paw. No one had heard from them as of yet.

    I knew they were dead, but I still was making secret bargins with God for it not to be true. 3 days had passed and still no word. Mom and Dad went to the Ft. Thomas Armory daily trying to identify them, but they returned home with no end to the nightmare. On the 4th day, she found Maw Maw. She said she looked at peace. Alittle swollen in the face and her hair was a little burnt around the edges, but she looked peaceful. The gentlemen they found with her could only be identified by dental records. It took a few days to confirm but Paw Paw was found with her. They never let Mom see Paw, they said it was best. They were fund in the Cabaret Room. All she was given were his and Maw's personal affects. It took years after the tragedy, but I finially found the courage to open the yellow manila envelope containing Paw's personal belongings and immediately broke into tears. The coins in his pocket, the rings on his fingers, the watch he was wearing were charred through. I can only imaging the condition he was found in.

    To this day I still cry on Memorial weekend. I miss my grandparents so much. They missed so much. They missed seeing their grandson being born. They missed the births and growings up of their 5 geat grand children (and 1 name sake)and their 1 grea-great grand daughter. Our children missed out also. They did not get to know their great grandparents, though they were told all about them and what wonderful peope they were. My grandmother was my best friend when I was very little, but as I grew up I found kids more my own age to replace her as my best friend and I saw less and less of her. The night before she died, I was suppose to go over to her house and spent the evening with her but I was 14 (A freshamn in High School) and my friends seemed like a more interesting time on a Friday night than my Maw Maw, so I promised to spend Saturday afternoon with her, but the next day it was unusually warm so instead I went to the pool with my sister and Aunt. When we stopped by to pick up my Aunt, Maw came out of the house with her hair freshly styled and her nails done. I remember asking Maw why she was so "styled up?" She said she was going that night to see John Davidson and asked if I was coming in. I told her no, I'm going swimming but I promise I would go to church with you tomarrow morning. Tomarrow never came (for her)and I haven't been to church that much since then. I was mad at God for a long time and i rarely spoke to him. The one, heart wrenching favor (to end all favors) I asked of him and he let me down.

    Life goes on, but memories live forever in our minds. I am thankful for the time I had with them and will tell them how much I miss them and love them when I go to their grave site tomarrow to place flowers on their head stone.

    Thanks for listening and my thoughts and prayers are with everyone who was touched by this preventable tragedy.

  12. Stephanie Barrington, 5/29/2006: My dad was a Southgate firefighter during the Beverly Hills fire. I remember him painting our house that evening when the alarm went off. He left in a hurry, fully expecting another false alarm as there were always calls to the club. As the night went on, I remember the wives of the firemen in town going door to door collecting blankets, water, anything else that may be needed by the victims or rescue workers. We could see the smoke rising from the hill from our backyard, and as kids we knew it was bad. Alot of us kids grew up together at the firehouse and stuck together as our dads were on the hill that night. Going from one house to another, watching news...and waiting. I remember it being hard to sleep that night not knowing when dad would come home. I think he finally came home sometime the next morning for a shower...but was gone for days...searching what was left of that building. He had nightmares for years...and although he will finally talk of certain aspects...usually technical...he never has let us know most of what he saw that night. He thinks of it every year, and as he recalls certain memories you can see the sadness in his eyes...you can almost see a glimpse of the person...the people...he left up on the hill that night in 1977.

  13. David Boyle, 5/30/2006: Thanks Larry for posting this. A sad story indeed.

    By the way, when are you going to write a book? You are a repository of so many anecdotes and historical events, it should not be hard for you...

  14. tm, 6/4/2006: I went up to the site today. You can walk up a driveway behind the new medical building. In fact the parking lot of the medical building has parking right up to the old driveway entrance. The walk up the entrance drive is pretty easy. After that, the site has become well overgrown. At this time of year (June 4), most of the growth is about chest high in the areas that used to be parking lots. These areas are easy to make your way through because the growth is mild weed type plants. Oddly enough there were daisies in bloom scattered throughout the weeds. I walked alot of the front area. It was difficult trying to find a landmark or to realize where the buildings used to be. there is alot of heavier growth were the buildings once stood. Not until I got home from this trip could I really figure out on Google Earth, where they were. Knowing what I know now, I would probably go back to find the right places. I'd like to find the place where the Cabara Room was and the circle garden near the chapel. I would suggest maybe going in March. That way the weeds are gone and you should be able to make your way around easier.

    I took an old pic and overlayed it on Google Earth. The link is below. It's not the best but it should help you see what it used to look like and where it was located. There are also some pics I took of things I found.

    I also created the building in 3-D and placed it on Google Earth. I hope it's in the right place.

    http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/435310/page/0

  15. Bob Schulenberg, 12/23/06: On Feb 1st 2007 I will have been a Northern Ky firefighter for 45 years. I will always remember the night that time stood still. I always and still do go to the Indianapolis 500. Saturday May 28th was a very warm and sunny May Saturday. As always I was filled with anticipation for the next days Indy 500 hoping my driver A.J. Foyt would win his 4th 500. A little after 9:00 word came out the the Beverly Hill Supper Club was on fire. The club was in Campbell County and I was in Kenton County. I responded to our Station #1 and we listened as more and more fire departments were being called to the fire. Then our fire tones dropped to respond to the fire. Upon arrival I was directed to go in for search and rescue. As described in many news articles the smoke was intensely black and thick. Finally I stumbled over a body. I remember make trip after trip in and out of the Caberet room taking victims out, never to know if they lived or died. Finally while I was inside the loud long blasts of the fire truck air horns signaled us to evacuate the building. I suddenly realized I had gotten turned around and was lost. Well, I told the Lord that if he took me now I would not be happy because I would miss the Indy 500. After gathering my thoughts and slowing my breathing as shallow as I could to conserve air I saw light ahead of me. Flowwing the light I escaped thru an opening that had been cut into the wall of the room. I will never forget that night as long as I live. In my entire career that is the most disappointing night of my career. I wanted to do more, I wanted to save lives, I wanted families to still have their loved ones. My heart was present at every funeral. My heart is still with all those who lost their lives and who were injured. My heart is still with all their families who lost so much. Yes, the night of May 28th 1977 goes down as the night I was a total failure. And I will live with that forever.

Wednesday, May 12, 2004, 7:49 am

Zogby and Blogiversary. Pollster John Zogby says the election is Kerry's to lose:

Have you recovered from the shock? Is this guy nuts? Kerry's performance of late has hardly been inspiring and polls show that most Americans have no sense of where he really stands on the key issues that matter most to them. Regardless, I still think that he will win. And if he doesn't, it will be because he blew it.

I have had similar thoughts: that the biggest imponderable in predicting this year's election results is Kerry himself. Political self-destruction is an unfortunate habit of presidential candidates.

Greg Hlatky had this take on the race:

Hmmm, incumbent president running against a lugubrious senator during a period of sustained growth. How'd that turn out the last time?

I enjoy the very apt comparison of Kerry with Dole, but I think their differences are significant here. Bob Dole was a man of the Senate in a way that fatally undermined him as a presidential candidate. John Kerry is a Senator, but critics find little substance in his legislative career; ironically, his disengagement from the Senate may make him stronger as a candidate for president.

Zogby compares the economy of 2004 with the recovery which he says was well underway in 1992, yet didn't help GHWB.

A small blogging milestone. I posted the first entry two years ago today: an account of my throat surgery. Brief excerpt:

So, Wednesday morning, flat on my back on a gurney, I was wheeled into the operating room. Even in my addled state, I could see the architectural features: this was plainly a special, ceremonial space, a focal point to which much else was ancillary. It had a very high ceiling, and the walls were done all the way up in tan ceramic tile of a kind I had not seen elsewhere in the building. The elegance and intense focus of activity, and the hushed crowd of doctors and retainers in immaculate uniforms, made me think of a corporate board room, or perhaps the inner sanctum of the grand lodge of some great secret society.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Tuesday, May 11, 2004, 10:32 pm

Nominated. As of the filing deadline, 4:00 pm today, I was the only Democrat to file for the office of Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds. For practical purposes, I am now the party nominee.

I can also say that the clerk's office during last hour before the filing deadline is no longer the social gathering it used to be, since interested politicos and media can follow the filings on the Web. At 3:30 pm, I was the only member of the public present. From then until 4:00, less than a dozen political folks, and no reporters, came by.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Thursday, April 8, 2004, 7:06 am

Idaho Denial. It's pointless to debate with those who deny the existence of Idaho.

If you would ask any schoolchild how many states there are in the United States, you will get the same answer: 50. Fifty states in the Union. It is simply an accepted "fact." If you would disagree with this supposed "fact," you would be branded insane or worse.
However, mounting evidence shows that there are in fact only 49 states in the US, and the "state" of Idaho is a baseless myth.
We have been trying to distribute and publish this information for over *two years*, but our scholarship has not been given any respect. We have been censored, vilified, ridiculed and spat upon by the "traditional" geographers and historians, but WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED!
All we ask is that the existence of the state of Idaho be debated, as every other historical and geographic "fact" can be debated. Time after time, our opponents have refused to debate us on the FACTS. This alone should tell you something about the people who support the "existence" of this "43rd state."
Do you know anybody from Idaho? Do you know anybody who knows anybody from Idaho? According to the 1990 "census," there are over one million (1,000,000, or 1 x 10^6) people living in Idaho. But if there are so many Idahoers, where are they?
Some people have come forward and claimed that they were born and raised in "Idaho." But every single person who made this claim have been shown to be frauds and charlatans. These "Idahoan wannabes" are invariably inconsistent with each other about the size (in square miles or square kilometers) of "Idaho," about various town and village names, and even about the names of "Idaho's mighty rivers."

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Thursday, April 8, 2004, 6:25 am

Passover. This poem by Primo Levi has become a fixture of many American Seders.

Tell me: how is this night different
From all other nights?
How, tell me, is this Passover
Different from all other Passovers?
Light the lamp, open the door wide
So the pilgrim can come in,
Gentile or Jew;
Under the rags perhaps the prophet is concealed.
Let him enter and sit down with us;
Let him listen, drink, sing and celebrate Passover;
Let him consume the bread of affliction,
The Paschal Lamb, sweet mortar and bitter herbs.
This is the night of differences
In which you lean your elbow on the table,
Since the forbidden becomes prescribed,
Evil is translated into good.
We will spend the night recounting
Far-off events full of wonder,
And because of all the wine
The mountains will skip like rams.
Tonight they exchange the questions:
The wise, the godless, the simple-minded and the child.
And time reverses its course,
Today flowing back into yesterday,
Like a river enclosed at its mouth.
Each of us has been a slave in Egypt,
Soaked straw and clay with sweat,
And crossed the sea dry-footed.
You too, stranger.
This year in fear and shame,
next year in virtue and in justice.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, March 22, 2004, 5:20 pm

Giving Voters More Choices. Last night, an Ann Arbor activist challenged my commitment to an open process with regard to ballot access for parties and proposals. Here's some of what I told him, and some subsequent thoughts on the subject.

My interest in these issues is one of the reasons I'm a candidate for County Clerk and Register of Deeds. The county clerk is the lead local election official and has a significant influence over the whole process both directly and indirectly.

I have always been opposed to laws which make it unduly difficult for new parties or independent candidates to obtain a place on the ballot. In the 1970s, I was strongly opposed to the so-called McCollough Act, which imposed such a high standard on small parties that all were eliminated from the Michigan ballot in 1978. (Eventually it was struck down by the Michigan Supreme Court: Socialist Workers Party v. Secretary of State, 412 Mich. 571, 317 N.W.2d 1 (1982).)

In the 1990s, I assisted the Green Party in its challenge to Michigan's prohibition of local political parties; only statewide parties can be listed on the ballot. The Green Party (which at the time had ample local support, but not enough to get on the ballot statewide) challenged this in court. I prepared evidence showing the abrupt decline in the number of candidates in the early 1960s, when the no-local-parties rule was suddenly imposed on Michigan village governments. Many villages had active and ongoing competition between local parties with names like "Citizens" and "Independent"; this active politics often vanished when candidates could only run as Democrats and Republicans. (Michigan didn't have any provision for independent candidates in partisan elections until forced to by court decisions in the 1980s.)

Recall elections have something of a bad reputation among educated and liberal folks, but I don't see why this should be. Obviously a drive to recall officials from office creates conflict and bad feelings, can be motivated by very short term considerations such as unpopular tax hikes, and can lead to decisionmaking in low-turnout special elections. On the other hand, not all of these things are necessarily characteristic of recalls: for example, the California gubernatorial recall generated plenty of interest and voter turnout.

Uneasiness with recalls has led to the enactment of a number of legal limits on the recall power. In Michigan, recall organizers now have to submit petition language (stating the reasons for the recall) to an election commission to determine if it is sufficiently "clear". I think some have abused this "clarity" proceeding to delay and frustrate recalls.

Indeed, not just in recalls, it is tempting to politicos (especially entrenched insiders) to abuse the process to deny their adversaries access to the ballot. In New York, with perhaps the nation's worst election law, it is routine for candidates and parties to go to court over petition technicalities to get opponents thrown off the ballot; many elections are effectively decided by judges and lawyers based on the degree of precise adherence to a law which is full of absurdly intricate requirements not seen in other states.

Unfortunately, due to the short-term interests of specific politicos, Michigan has moved in New York's direction. In 1986, a number of candidates affiliated with Lyndon LaRouche filed to run for Congress as Democrats. Efforts by lawyers for the Democratic Party to expunge the LaRouche names from the primary ballot were successful, and created some awful precedents for severe scrutiny of petition details.

Of course, the temptation to fraud in petition circulation is strong, and no one should be allowed to obtain ballot access through identity theft or forgery. However, a diligent and attentive clerk's office has the tools to detect and act on this.

I believe in representative democracy, but in general I don't think that blocking or withholding choices from the electorate is constructive. I do admit that there are specific areas where other considerations take precedence (at least among my personal priorities) over offering maximum choices.

One of those issues is the death penalty. In 1846, Michigan was the first English speaking jurisdiction to abolish the death penalty. I think this was a wise move; the availability of capital punishment is, I think, corrosive to a polity. But over the last thirty years, there have been numerous efforts to bring the death penalty back to Michigan, either via the Legislature or through a petition drive. Polls usually show that a majority of Michigan voters are inclined to vote in favor of the death penalty; hence opponents, including myself, fear seeing it on the ballot.

That being said, even in the case of the death penalty, if the advocates collected enough signatures or enough support in both houses of the Legislature to force a vote, they would be entitled to that vote; we opponents would have to make our case to the people. And perhaps we would prevail.

Similar concerns arise in the current case of the amendment to ban affirmative action in Michigan.

Another kind of limitation on electoral choice which I support is the rule in most states, including Michigan, which prohibits candidates from running on multiple party tickets. I was very relieved when the Supreme Court, in the Timmons decision, declined to strike down the rule and extend the "fusion" system to all states.

Of course it sounds like an appealing idea. Advocates point to New York State, where one candidate might be nominated by the Republican, Conservative, and Right-To-Life parties, while his opponent might run on the Democratic, Liberal, and Working Families lines. And obviously each of these parties (and more) would be able to coalesce in different combinations or run their own candidates if they chose to. The ability for these groups to give or withhold electoral support, and hence advance their agenda, would seem like a hallmark of democracy.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really work that way, even in New York where the small parties are well established, and it was even worse in Pennsylvania and California, when those states allowed it.

The problem with the ability of parties to cross-endorse is that it creates a political culture of interparty dealmaking — leaving the voters out. Incumbents in this system often manage to obtain both major party endorsements, which insulates them from effective accountability and makes the election irrelevant. For example, Richard Nixon, hardly a consensus figure, won re-election to Congress in 1948 as both a Republican and a Democrat.

I lived and voted in New York State for two years. It is remarkable how little democracy happens there, and what meager choices voters get. I was appalled at how few incumbents faced any effective opposition.

I feel similarly about proportional representation schemes which attempt to emulate European models for fair distribution of seats in legislative bodies. The problem is that the unitary elected presidency and the Electoral College has hardwired the two-party system into our political culture. Any electoral scheme that doesn't take this reality into account will lead to unintended bad consequences: it will insulate officeholders from the electorate, reward strategic voting, or create perverse incentives for parties and candidates.

See my discussion of proportional representation in May 2002, and (following a contrary view from another weblog) my rebuttal with discussion of strategic voting.

However, there is one innovative voting scheme which holds a lot of promise for improving elections: Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).

IRV is already used in many organizational elections, such as for the presidency of the American Psychological Association and the choice of winners for science fiction's Hugo award.

The basic premise is that each voter may rank his or her choices from 1 to however many. Only the "1" counts as a vote initially; a candidate who wins a majority of the 1st-place votes is the winner. However, if no candidate wins a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and his or her votes are redistributed based on the second choices of the voters. Repeat until one candidate has a majority.

There are some limitations to this approach. It would work well in high visibility single positions (with multiple viable candidates), not so well in multi-seat races. It obviously would encourage small parties, but it would not change the fundamental two-party reality of our system; in a two-candidate race, it would make no difference at all. And it requires some rethinking of appropriate election technology.

Ann Arbor once, briefly, had IRV for mayoral elections. A group of people has proposed amending the charter to bring it back. From their announcement:

A group of us, originally spurred by the Huron Valley Greens, have been planning an Instant Runoff Voting campaign in Ann Arbor for a long time. We are kicking off this exciting campaign at 7:00pm, Monday, March 22, at Leopold Bros on S. Main St. Our goal is to collect sufficient petition signatures from Ann Arbor registered voters to put the question of enacting Instant Runoff Voting for future city elections on the November 2004 ballot.

See also the A2IRV web site.

Update. Year of Nixon's bipartisan re-election corrected. Thanks to Greg Hlatky for the catch.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Sunday, March 14, 2004, 10:36 am

Ink. A brief item about my campaign appeared in the Ann Arbor News today: Democrat seeks clerk's post held by the GOP for 70 years.

The Ann Arbor lawyer and curator of the Political Graveyard Internet site has recently ramped up his grassroots campaign by making public appearances in recent weeks in preparation for a tough race against entrenched Republican incumbent Peggy Haines.
Rather than criticize Haines, whom he said he likes and respects, Kestenbaum plans to run a positive campaign that focuses on providing an alternative and his knack with computers and archiving information.

The unexpected line "'Madman' in the Fold" (shortly after that paragraph) refers not to me or to my opponent, but to Ted Nugent, featured in a following story.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Tuesday, March 9, 2004, 11:00 pm

Brief notes from the last several days:

  • Chelsea becomes a city. Chelsea, a village in Washtenaw County about 15 miles west of Ann Arbor, held its last village election yesterday. More than 1200 voters came to the polls to choose whether to become a city, to select a mayor and city council (in case it passed), and to select a village president and village council (in case it failed). The vote on the plebiscite was overwhelmingly "yes", so Mayor Ann Feeney and the city council winners will take office.

    Every square inch of Michigan is either in a city or a township, never both; villages are subsets of one or more townships. Chelsea was part of two townships, Sylvan and Lima. Many of those who advocated the change to city status pointed to the difficult relationship between the village and Sylvan Township.

    I stood outside Chelsea's single polling place all day meeting voters and passing out literature for my campaign for Washtenaw County Clerk-Register of Deeds. During the course of the day, I got to meet almost all of the candidates on the two competing slates, who also braved the cold and snow to distribute campaign literature.

  • Blog weddings. Congratulations to local bloggers Aaron Larson, Steven B. Cherry, and Hillary J. Blough, who all married recently.

  • News from Nowhere. Urban critic and writer James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere and other interesting books, spoke at the U-M Art and Architecture building on Friday, March 3rd. Brandon (of Past the College Grounds) had announced the event the day before in his weblog, and I hastily changed plans to go see it.

    I had no idea where in the AA building the talk was taking place. I expected to see announcements posted on bulletin boards, but there were none; by the time I found the room, I was late. Given the lack of publicity and what I assumed to be Michigan's low interest in the subject matter, I was stunned to find an overflow crowd.

    Brandon posted a good summary which I won't attempt to replicate, especially since I arrived late and had to leave early to attend a 7pm meeting in Ypsilanti.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Sunday, February 22, 2004, 11:48 am

George Steinbrenner and Howard Dean. Rick Heller of Centerfield, no fan of Howard Dean, has been reading the campaign finance disclosures, and discovered that the chief funder of notorious anti-Dean attack ads was none other than New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Thursday, February 12, 2004, 12:13 pm

Internet voting did NOT go well. The Michigan Democratic caucus offered online absentee voting. I didn't try it myself, but I certainly heard from/about a lot of folks who tried and failed. I also heard about many problems with the online interface — that it was full of Javascript errors, didn't work with Netscape browsers, etc.

Indeed, trying to validate voters based on free-format (but case sensitive) place of birth seems very chancy to me. How many ways can YOU spell and punctuate, say, "Mount Clemens, Michigan"?

  • Mount Clemens, Michigan
  • Mt. Clemens, Mich.
  • Mount Clemens, MI
  • MT CLEMENS MI
  • and so on, and on...

Now I receve the following from Mark Grebner of Practical Political Consulting:

Subject: preliminary result from Caucus survey
Based on just 20 calls, one really obvious conclusion is the people who failed to vote all wanted to, but were thwarted by various failures -didn't receive a ballot, the internet site didn't work or rejected their login, etc. Not one so far has said they decided not to vote, and everyone named a plausible barrier. This puts a whole new spin on the fact less than 50,000 votes were received from the 126,000 applications - it wasn't lack of interest.
We'll probably do 50-100 calls over the next week, and I'll write a semi-formal summary.

Wow — it sounds like 76,000 people tried and failed to vote online. More about this as it develops.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Monday, February 9, 2004, 12:07 am

Ahead of the Curve. History may not repeat itself but, as Mark Twain is supposed to have put it, sometimes it rhymes.

Right now, as John Kerry gains momentum toward the Democratic nomination for president, and as the value of that nomination is on the upswing, I imagine that somewhere deep in the political apparatus of the Right, someone is now laying plans for activities during 2005.

It must be very secret, because this Google search still gets zero results today.

I'm a Democrat and I expect to vote for and support the guy. But I know that regardless of how well or how poorly his presidency goes, or what the issues of the day happen to be, next year's right-wing battle cry of "IMPEACH KERRY!" is eminently predictable.

Update, April 27. (from comments) "As of today, your google search returns 41 hits. You may have given them some ideas..."

Update, October 8. More than three months remain until Kerry's inauguration, but the Google count for "impeach kerry" (see link above) is already up to 185.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Sunday, February 8, 2004, 10:22 pm

Great day for campaigning. The Michigan Democratic presidential caucus was held yesterday. My volunteers and I distributed thousands of my campaign flyers to voters at caucus sites in Washtenaw County. The response from voters and politicos was very positive.

Big thanks to Eric, Brian, Aaron, Lynne, Katherine, and many other volunteers!

Next steps: fundraising, and a campaign web site.

Update. The caucus results were no surprise: John Kerry won by a wide margin. At my own caucus site, after long indecision, I cast my vote for John Edwards. But Edwards got only 14% in this congressional district, failing to reach the 15% viability level, and hence got no delegates here.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Leighton, 2/10/2004: Picked up your flier at the Ypsi Township caucus.

  2. Eric, 2/10/2004: Cool, that means I gave Leighton their flyer!

    Eric
    http://astrogibs.com/eric/

Comments


Thursday, February 5, 2004, 12:45 am

Seeking campaign volunteers. The Democratic presidential caucus (actually, a party-run primary) will be held this Saturday, from 10 am to 4 pm. I'm still seeking a few more volunteers to hand out my campaign flyers at caucus sites.

As previously announced, I will be a candidate for Washtenaw County Clerk/Register of Deeds, in the Democratic primary on August 3rd, and the general election November 2nd.

This Saturday, each site wll be open for six hours, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It will be an exciting and very political day, and by volunteering, you'll be in the thick of it. If you're in or near Washtenaw Couty, and can help, let me know via email (see my address at upper right).

Many thanks!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Anna, 2/5/2004: I can't help, for obvious reasons, but best of luck.

  2. Neal Traven, 2/5/2004: Hey, best of luck, Larry! Obviously, I can't help you in Washtenaw County on Saturday, any more than you can help me pull Dean supporters into my precinct caucus here in Seattle. I've been doing some work with Andy Stephenson (http://www.andystephenson.com), Dem candidate for WA Secy of State, whose campaign is based largely on clean election/balloting procedures with paper trails.


Friday, January 30, 2004, 1:26 am

Who owns facts? A very worrisome development in Washington: the U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved and sent to the House floor a bill which is claimed to "curb database copying".

The Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act of 2003 would make it possible for facts to be "owned". Disclose owned facts, and face a federal lawsuit from the "fact owner".

Previously, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 1991 decision Feist v. Rural Telephone, had declared that facts are not copyrightable. This new legislation is an attempt to overturn the Feist decision.

My Political Graveyard web site has a link to the Feist ruling at the bottom of every page. If facts become property, compilations like mine will be placed in severe jeopardy.

For example, I have found many politician birthdates and birthplaces in Marquis Who's Who publications. Under this law, Marquis would own that information, and be entitled to sue me for damages. Moreover, while the suit is pending, they could seize ("impound") all my computers.

The bill is opposed not only by the American Library Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and the ACLU, but by Amazon.com, AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Google, Yahoo, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

However, the combined effort of these organizations (the NetCoalition) was not sufficient to educate the committee on the costs and risks of this idea.

In support of the bill are database and software firms, including the owners of Lexis/Nexis.

The Association for Computing Machinery is the leading organization of computer professionals. Currently they're polling the membership on whether to take a stand against the legislation. The following comes from that page:

It is common practice in science, education, government, and business to create data collections and make them available for others to use. Under current US law, once data and information are distributed to the public, they enter into the public domain. Researchers and consumers are then free to reuse them in countless ways.
Some commercial interests are concerned that their data collections will be used contrary to their interests, and are proposing changes to US law that would create new ownership rights in a wide variety of the data and information collected and contained in online databases. They suggest that the current array of existing US laws are inadequate in that they fail to provide protection from acts of unauthorized uses of data contained in databases.
A diverse coalition of database producers and users (the NetCoalition) opposes the broad legislative effort to expand legal protections for collections of data. They have concluded that the proposed legislation will lead to the growing monopolization of the marketplace for information, threatening the freedom individuals have to search, gather and exchange information over the Internet.

The bill, H.R. 3261, was reported out by the House Judiciary Committee on January 21, by a vote of 16 to 7. The sponsors are Howard Coble (R-NC), Lamar Smith (TX), James C. Greenwood (PA), F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Michael R. Turner (OH), William D. Delahunt (MA), David L. Hobson (OH), W. J. (Billy) Tauzin (LA), Robert Wexler (FL), and Rob Portman (OH).

Many thanks to Declan McCullagh for his reporting on this and related issues.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Friday, January 30, 2004, 1:05 am

Between "would" and "will". Brian and Murph both point to an interesting essay by Clay Shirky, Is Social Software Bad for the Dean Campaign?.

"Would you vote for Howard Dean?" and "Will you vote for Howard Dean?” are two different questions, and it may be that a lot of people who “would” vote for Dean, in some hypothetical world where you could vote in the same way you can make a political donation on Amazon, didn’t actually vote for him when it meant skipping dinner with friends to drive downtown in the freezing cold and venture into some church basement with people who might prefer some other candidate to Dean.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Thursday, January 29, 2004, 12:33 pm

Hill and Coathooks. A few days ago, my wife and I attended the inaugural concert in the newly renovated Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan. Designed by Albert Kahn and built in 1913, it is often compared to Carnegie Hall and other famous venues.

The renovation architects were Quinn Evans of Ann Arbor, a firm which includes friends of mine.

A principal charge to the renovators was to increase the supply of toilets in the building, especially for women. And indeed, in lots of unexpected corners, there are restrooms now. For example, the grand series of five entry doors across the front was shortened, with the leftmost and rightmost replaced (on the facade) by brass dummies; behind the dummies are now bathrooms.

And the style of all these new bathrooms is remarkably like the 1913 originals, with period fittings and marble partitions between the stalls. Not Napoleon Gray (a now-unavailable marble which was often used in early 20th century bathrooms), but I don't think the originals were Napoleon Gray.

One criticism of the new bathrooms I heard from men and women alike: the lack of coat hooks in the stalls. Some of those complaining blamed the absence of coat hooks on what they assumed to be a misguided concern for historical accuracy.

But I can't imagine that the originals were without coat hooks. Of course, over the years since 1913, undoubtedly the original coat hooks were systematically broken or stolen by vandals, as they are in most public toilet facilities — at least in those designated for use by men.

I'm not sure why vandals are so angered by the presence of bathroom coat hooks. Nonetheless, the audiences who attend concerts at Hill these days seem very well behaved. To leave out the bathroom coat hooks is a pre-emptive surrender to vandals who may not actually exist in this population.

I was urged to point out to the architects that men's dress suits often involve suspenders, so that one must remove one's jacket (and hang it where?) before lowering the pants. I am also told that women sometimes face a similar clothing problem. Moreover, women typically come into bathroom stalls armed with shoulder strap purses, and prefer not to set them on the floor.

So, both genders wish for coat hooks in bathroom stalls at Hill Auditorium.

Update, Friday, January 30: Architect Ilene Tyler of Quinn Evans responds as follows:

Coat hooks, schmoat hooks! Goodness gracious! If we hadn't solved some of the bigger problems, then I would be responding to things like, "why can't I open the stall door past the toilet?" and "why aren't there any Men's toilets on the main floor?" and "where is the coat check room?" etc. There are some things that just didn't happen. But, hey, the acoustics are excellent, the colors and lighting are breathtaking, and it is comfortable at the upper reaches of the upper balcony. Annual Folk Festival this weekend should be lots of fun, can't wait! Larry, go pick on some other budget-crunched theater...and I'll pass along your comments, as appropriate, and let you know if I get a definitive answer.
New Flash!!!
Coat hooks are being installed this week. They will be "wardrobe hooks" mounted on the marble between the stalls. However, these are being added by request, as the original Hill did not have hooks; they relied on the coat check, which we have indeed lost to providing more toilet rooms, etc.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Thursday, January 29, 2004, 12:03 pm

"Doorbell heterogeneity." As someone who has done extensive door-to-door political campaigning, this intriguing phrase brings many images to mind. Not only is every house different, every door different, but every doorbell is different.

Sometimes the muffled sound of the doorbell, as heard on the front porch or stoop, gives a hint of the resident's personality: melodic chimes, ethereal bong, ringing schoolbell, brisk buzzer. Or perhaps it says more about the ambitions of the builder or developer who shaped the streets and houses to express a marketable concept, a New Neighborhood (at the time) as inventive in its way as a New Town.

So you can imagine that my interest was piqued when I received an email message this morning with the Subject: "doorbell heterogeneity".

Hmmm, I wondered, a campaign volunteer, or a weary political activist? Someone from a building preservation list contacting me backchannel? An Ann Arbor historic district issue?

Alas, none of these. It was only an ad for "Gewnejric Vijagxra".

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Sunday, January 25, 2004, 11:39 pm

Joe-jobbed. I regret to announce that I have been "joe-jobbed".

I didn't know before this that there was a word for it.

What happened is that a spammer forged my email address in the From: and Reply-To: lines of thousands of fraudulent spam messages advertising some product which is claimed to increase the size of a body part.

Hence, my email has been deluged with vast quantities of bounce and rejection notices. The first wave subsided, and I thought I was okay, but then the second and much larger wave of spam bounces arrived.

But, I am not alone in this. Like I said, there's even a word for it. Apparently millions of people have been joe-jobbed; I'm a bit late to the party.

The spammer's web sites are registered in Kuala Lumpur. The actual messages are routed through hijacked machines, ordinary people's DSL or cable-internet connected computers which have been remotely taken over to act as spam forwarding centers. Obviously the spammer has access to hundreds of these, thanks to the insecurity of MS-Windows and the carelessness of most users.

And ISPs like Verizon and Adelphia and RoadRunner and Bellsouth — all of whom have hundreds of customers unknowingly forwarding spam which claims to be from me — are apparently doing nothing about this. My complaints to ISPs were answered (if at all) by form letters; in once case, the canned text advised me to wait 5 days for the spam bounces to subside. But it's been 18 days, and the bounces keep pouring in.

What makes me the most angry are quantities of rejection messages from supposedly reputable spam-filter companies. They know the message is spam; they know the From: line is forged. So why the hell are they sending nastygrams to uninvolved third parties like me?

And I have no recourse whatever against any of those resposible. Indeed, people tell me that I should consider myself lucky not to be getting hundreds of millions of bounce messages, overloading my connection and the server.

Well, I suppose if I was extremely litigious and had a lot of time and resources to hassle people, I could follow RIAA's lead. I could serve subpoenas on Verizon, Bellsouth, Comcast, and all the rest, listing IP addresses and demanding to know whose machines those were. After all, presumably the owners of those computers are negligently ignoring rudimentary computer security, and are legally responsible for whatever vile slanders their computers are pumping out across the world.

But there are serious issues of proof. All I have as evidence are the bounce messages, which by definition never reached anyone else. And everything on my server is under my control and hence suspect as evidence in the eyes of a court.

And if anything I did served to annoy the spammer himself, then I would be joe-jobbed but good, with hundreds of millions of bounces instead of thousands.

Meanwhile, my domain name will now be added to spam blacklists, so that my own outgoing mail will be blocked in many places as presumed spam.

This kind of thing (not to mention ordinary spam and viruses) is going to destroy email as a useable communications medium.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments


Sunday, January 4, 2004, 11:00 pm

A Political Announcement. It's an election year, and I have been induced to re-enter the political fray. Here it is:

I will be a candidate for Washtenaw County Clerk/Register of Deeds, in the Democratic primary on August 3rd, and the general election November 2nd.

County Clerk and Register of Deeds have different responsibilities, and are two distinct positions in most Michigan counties; in Washtenaw County they have been merged into a single elected position.

The Clerk-Register is the chief local election official, is custodian of a vast array of public records from birth certificates to mortgages, and mediates a lot of the public's dealings with the local court system.

I have a lot of interest and background in each of these areas. I have worked in local government as a county commissioner in two different counties. In Ingham County, I was chair of the Personnel Committee, which directed labor negotiations and arbitrated grievances for the county's 800-plus employees, and of the Administrative Services Committee, which handled budget and policy issues for the County Clerk and Register of Deeds. I have also been a member of many appointed boards and as a director and officer of several nonprofit corporations.

As an election inspector (at the city, township, and county level), poll challenger, candidate, elected official, and attorney in recounts, I have participated in nearly every aspect of the election process, and I have written articles and given speeches about problems in election administration, voter authentication, tabulation, and voting systems (see, most recently, this op-ed piece). I have worked with deeds and other land records literally since boyhood. I'm an attorney. Plus, I have a good deal of background in computer databases, networks, and security, all relevant to the work of the Clerk-Register.

Another requirement for this job is a determination to provide excellent customer service. Dealing with the public day after day is not easy work. The inevitable hassles and headaches tend to create a defensive, "customer-is-the-enemy" mindset in even the most well-intentioned organizations. That tendency must constantly be resisted. Washtenaw County's official slogan is "World Class Service": that should mean each and every person who comes to the Clerk-Register's office is treated with the utmost courtesy and respect. To achieve this requires an ongoing commitment, including adequate training and active support for front-line staff.

Democracy is simple in theory, but administering elections is a complex process. Every step must be completed with care, and handled in such a way that all sides are fully satisfied with the fairness, efficiency, security, integrity, and transparency of the entire system.

Among county election officials, the Clerk leads the way on issues from choosing voting technologies to training election workers to coordinating the tabulation and certifying of results. Our next county clerk will implement the new state election laws, which change election scheduling and consolidate authority over local and school elections.

It should be the goal of election administration to be inclusive, to reduce or eliminate barriers to voting. The Clerk should be an advocate for necessary changes to election law to help maximize voter participation.

Similarly, though the final authority rests with the judges, the Clerk administers many aspects of the jury system for local courts, and is in a position to recommend changes to make jury duty as flexible and hassle-free as possible.

The Clerk is elected on a partisan ballot and does handle some partisan issues, including county redistricting and the replacement of other county elected officials when a vacancy occurs. The county is now predominantly Democratic in its partisan preferences, but has not had a Democratic county clerk since 1934.

I have an excellent chance to change that this year. I'm putting together a solid, grassroots campaign, with support from many party and community leaders. Parma Yarkin has agreed to be my treasurer. As far as I know, I'm the only Democrat running. Mine will be a positive campaign; I look forward to many debates or joint appearances with the incumbent.

If you'd like to help out the campaign, I have an immediate need. On Saturday, February 7th, the Michigan Democratic Party will be holding a presidential preference caucus, essentially a party-run presidential primary. Though some will vote on-line, thousands will come to caucus sites (polling places) to cast their votes, and campaigning to them is encouraged.

I'm going to need probably a couple of volunteers at each of 17 caucus sites in Washtenaw County to distribute campaign flyers to voters. Each site is open for six hours, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It will be an exciting and very political day, and by volunteering, you'll be in the thick of it. If you're interested, let me know via email (see my address at upper right).

Check this blog (and the soon-to-appear campaign web site) for further news.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. mythago, 1/8/2004: Sadly, I will not be anywhere near Washtenaw County on that day. However, is your campaign taking donations?

  2. Aaron Larson, 1/10/2004: Hey Larry - how about an update? ;-)

  3. Lawrence Kestenbaum, 1/10/2004: What I should probably do is set up a PayPal donation page for the campaign. But we need to open a bank account first ...

  4. mythago, 1/11/2004: *taps foot*

  5. Eric, 1/29/2004: I'll help with your campaign.

    Eric Goldberg
    http://astrogibs.com/eric/

  6. Aaron Larson, 2/4/2004: How's it coming?

  7. Lawrence Kestenbaum, 2/4/2004: The flyers will be ready at the printers on Friday. The EIN has been obtained for the bank account; we just have to take the forms back to the credit union, probably Thursday. Setting up the PayPal page can happen after the account is open.


Monday, December 29, 2003, 10:48 pm

Apologia for Buchanan. Back in August, Greg Hlatky of A Dog's Life, my politically conservative mentor in blogging, compiled a list of the 20 worst Americans ever. One of the names on his list was President James Buchanan.

I don't believe Mr. Buchanan deserves that dubious distinction. He certainly wasn't one of our most successful presidents, but he deserves better than to be placed among the very worst Americans of all time.

On Buchanan, Greg writes: "The Log Cabin Democrats ought to have him as their icon. Did exactly nothing as the United States slid toward the Civil War."

Those views are popular nowadays. Buchanan is often blamed for the Civil War. The speculation that Buchanan was a homosexual (most recently retailed in a book by James Loewen) has risen almost to the level of conventional wisdom. But neither assertion is well founded.

My source for a more nuanced view of Buchanan is Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), a staunch antislavery Republican who knew and opposed Buchanan. A. D. White was a professor at the University of Michigan, the first president of Cornell University, a New York state senator, and a diplomat. He detailed all of these experiences in a fascinating two-volume autobiography published in 1905. I bought a copy in a used book shop, years ago, but I just discovered that the text is now online: Volume One; Volume Two.

White was generally a very sensible guy; in many ways, he was ahead of his time. Even from a 2003 perspective, he is right about the politics of his time much more often than he is wrong.

In the 1850s, White was not an "abolitionist" — that was a radical position taken by very few before the Civil War. Rather, he was opposed to the pro-slavery policies of the federal government at that time, and what he saw as Northern "doughface" politicians who constantly yielded to the demands of the Southern slaveowners.

After college, White had gone overseas to work as a diplomatic attaché and met Buchanan, of whom he wrote: "he was one of the most attractive men in converstion I have ever met, and that is saying much."

In the 1856 presidential election, White was a supporter of John C. Frémont, the first nominee of the new Republican party, against James Buchanan, the nominee of the then-pro-slavery Democrats. He writes:

Mr. Buchanan, though personal acquaintance had taught me to like him as a man, and the reading of his despatches in the archives of our legation in St. Petersburg had forced me to respect him as a statesman, represented to me the encroachments and domination of American slavery, while Frémont represented resistance to such encroachments, and the perpetuity of freedom upon the American Continent.

At the polls, young A. D. White (a first-time voter) turned away advocates for other candidates, saying, "No. The question of all questions to me is whether slavery or freedom is to rule this Republic," and cast his vote for Frémont, who was defeated by Buchanan.

Writing nearly fifty years after the 1856 election, White is glad his candidate didn't prevail:

Certainly Providence was kind to the United States in that contest. For Frémont was not elected. Looking back over the history of the United States I see, thus far, no instant when everything we hold dear was so much in peril as on that election day.
We of the Republican party were fearfully mistaken, and among many evidences in history that there is "a Power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," I think that the non-election of Frémont is one of the most convincing.
His election would have precipitated the contest brought on four years later by the election of Lincoln. But the Northern States had in 1856 no such preponderance as they had four years later. No series of events had then occurred to arouse and consolidate anti-slavery feeling like those between 1856 and 1860.
Moreover, of all candidates for the Presidency ever formally nominated by either of the great parties up to that time, Frémont was probably the most unfit. He had gained credit for his expedition across the plains to California, and deservedly.... But his earlier career, when closely examined, and, even more than that, his later career, during the Civil War, showed doubtful fitness for any duties demanding clear purpose, consecutive thought, adhesion to a broad policy, wisdom in counsel, or steadiness in action.
Had he been elected in 1856 one of two things would undoubtedly have followed: either the Union would have been permanently dissolved, or it would have been re-established by anchoring slavery forever in the Constitution. Never was there a greater escape.

Though bitter at the time about Buchanan's victory, White went to Washington in March, 1857, to witness his inauguration. He writes:

Having taken the oath, Mr. Buchanan delivered the inaugural address, and it made a deep impression upon me. I began to suspect then, and I fully believe now, that he was sincere, as, indeed, were most of those whom men of my way of thinking in those days attacked as pro-slavery tools and ridiculed as "doughfaces." We who had lived remote from the scene of action, and apart from pressing responsibility, had not realized the danger of civil war and disunion. Mr. Buchanan, and men like him, in Congress, constantly associating with Southern men, realized both these dangers. They honestly and patriotically shrank from this horrible prospect; and so, had we realized what was to come, would most of us have done. I did not see this then, but looking back across the abyss of years I distinctly see it now. The leaders on both sides were honest and patriotic, and, as I firmly believe, instruments of that "Power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness."
There was in Mr. Buchanan's inaugural address a tone of deep earnestness. He declared that all his efforts should be given to restore the Union, and to re-establish it upon permanent foundations; besought his fellow-citizens throughout the Union to second him in this effort, and promised that under no circumstances would he be a candidate for re-election. My anti-slavery feelings remained as deep as ever, but, hearing this speech, there came into my mind an inkling of the truth: "Hinter dem Berge sind auch Leute." ["Behind the mountains there are people to be found."]

As tensions grew during his years in office — culminating in the outbreak of fighting over Kansas and Nebraska, and John Brown's attempt at violent revolution — President Buchanan constantly attempted to reassure and placate the South. In terms later made familiar by figures like Neville Chamberlain, Buchanan was an appeaser.

But what else could he have done? The Southern States had threatened secession before; events and rhetoric beyond the president's control were driving them to carry it out this time. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Buchanan accurately foresaw the bloody consequences. He tried to forestall the catastrophe, using the only tools that were available to him.

Almost a century and a half later, with the assurance of hindsight, we can say that the Civil War was a necessary ordeal, and that Buchanan's efforts to prevent it represented morally wrong appeasement. But I suspect most of the people who lived through those events would not have agreed.

Update: In the comments to this posting, historian and former ambassador Peter Bridges has this to add:

I agree with you that James Buchanan was not one of the twenty worst Americans. But he was not a good President--and before that, although he had already served as Secretary of State, he was not a very good Minister to England, as I have brought out in some detail in my Pen of Fire: John Moncure Daniel (Kent State Univ. Press, 2002). Daniel, who became our Minister to the Kingdom of Sardinia in Turin when Buchanan was in London, caught Buchanan out in a passport fraud. More importantly, Buchanan imprudently attended a dinner in 1854 given by his Consul, George Sanders, where the guests were leading Europe revolutioniaries--Garibaldi, Mazzini, Herzen, Kossuth and others. Europe then badly needed democratic reform, but if governments had learned about this dinner they might well have cooled if not broken relations with the United States, which I do not think President Pierce or Secretary of State Marcy would have thought in our overall interest.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Saturday, December 27, 2003, 10:07 am

Reading the tea leaves. The Washington Post/ABC News poll came out a few days ago — probably the last significant poll of 2003. The headlines reinforce the conventional wisdom all around, i.e., Howard Dean will get the Democratic nomination, but will lose to GWB in November. The details are more interesting, though.

For the nomination, the new poll shows Dean leading all the other candidates by a wide margin: Dean 31%, Lieberman 9%, Gephardt 9%, Kerry 8%, Clark 7%. Edwards 6%. More remarkably, Dean's lead is pretty even across regions and demographic groups.

Though Dean does better among college graduates than among those with less than high school (39% vs. 24%), that differential is much steeper for Kerry (12% vs. 5%) and Clark (11% vs. 6%). This would seem to disconfirm the notion that Dean is exclusively the candidate of a highly educated Net-aware minority.

Nor is Dean's support concentrated among young people, as is widely believed: he gets 26% of the 18-30 age group, 30% of 31-44, 34% of 45-60, and 31% of 61-plus. By region, he gets 32% in the Northeast, 32% in the Midwest, 30% in the South, and 29% in the West.

I'm still a neutral among the Democratic candidates, but those numbers are pretty compelling. The caucus and primary schedule is more brutally front-loaded than ever — it will be all over in just a few weeks. I can't see how anybody else could break out so quickly.

Meanwhile, the November horse race question shows Bush 55%, Dean 37%. As I keep pointing out, the end-of-the-previous-year conventional wisdom is usually wrong, but numbers like these are certainly enough to put us contrarians on the defensive.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, December 9, 2003, 10:07 pm

Street Naming Idea. Ann Arbor is the sort of place which is always full of visitors and newcomers trying to find their way around. Further, Ann Arbor is big enough that even longtime residents aren't familiar with every neighborhood. Perhaps the city might want to consider changing a couple of street names which are almost pathologically confusing to the uninitiated.

I refer to Fourth and Fifth Avenues downtown.

What's now downtown Ann Arbor was originally laid out with numbered streets. First Street is the only one of the original set which wasn't changed. Second Street is now Ashley Street, Third Street is now Main Street, Fourth Street is now Fourth Avenue, Fifth Street is now Fifth Avenue, Sixth Street is now Division Street, and so on.

To ramp up the confusion level, the tract west of First Street also, later, was developed with numbered streets, starting with that selfsame First Street, and continuing to Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Streets. Those streets now make up the Old West Side neighborhood.

At some point, to cope with the confusion of having two Fourth Streets and two Fifth Streets, the ones east of Main Street were renamed Fourth Avenue and Fifth Avenue.

That may have worked in another century, or in a place like New York City where there are plentiful numbered streets and/or a universally understood distinction between Streets and Avenues. Ann Arbor simply doesn't have the right orientation for this.

Hence, it is commonplace to hear Fourth and Fifth Avenues referred to as simply Fourth or Fifth, or worse yet, as Fourth Street and Fifth Street.

Pity the poor visitor who is trying to find the corner of 4th and Liberty — there are two of them. Or 5th and Jefferson. Or 4th and William. Or four other "duplicated" intersections.

What to do? Normally when a city has duplicated street names, the less important street gets a new name. Fourth and Fifth Streets on the Old West Side are lightly-trafficked residential streets. But they're part of a system of numbered streets, right between 3rd and 6th, and near the well-known 7th. Fourth and Fifth Streets are right where they belong.

It is Fourth and Fifth Avenues which need to change. And indeed, this would complete the work, started in the 19th century, of giving names to all the numbered streets from Ashley east.

I propose that Fourth Avenue be renamed Wheeler Avenue. There are several reasons for this. Fourth Avenue was the "black Main Street" of Ann Arbor; it would be appropriate to name it for Al Wheeler, the city's only African-American mayor. Moreover, Wheeler Park is on Fourth Avenue. This underused park would benefit from being better known and easier to find — on Wheeler Avenue.

Fifth Avenue's new name is less obvious. The library is its main landmark, but Library Avenue would be confused with Liberty Street. The library site was donated by the Beal family, but there already is a Beal Avenue.

Hence, I propose that Fifth Avenue be renamed Wallenberg Avenue, for international hero Raoul Wallenberg, who lived just off Fifth Avenue when he was an architecture student at U-M in the 1930s. Wallenberg, as a Swedish diplomat, saved about 100,000 people from the Nazis in Hungary during World War II, only to be arrested by the Soviets at the end of the war; his ultimate fate is unknown.

The downside, as always with street name changes, is that people and businesses living along the renamed streets would have to update their addresses.

Among the advantages:

  • Fourteen Ann Arbor intersections, now with confusingly duplicate names (Fourth and Liberty, William, and Madison; Fifth and Liberty, William, Madison, and Jefferson) would become unique locations.
  • Visitors, newcomers, dispatchers, delivery people, etc., would all gain from the reduction in confusion.
  • Ann Arbor City Hall and the Ann Arbor Public Library would gain addresses on Wallenberg Avenue, rather than 5th Avenue.
  • The alliteration between Fourth and Fifth would be maintained in the alliteration between Wheeler and Wallenberg.
  • The "Avenue" designation which the two streets have had for decades would be maintained.
  • The street names would commemorate aspects of Ann Arbor's history, including Ann Arbor's connection to world history.

During the upcoming election year, I probably will have little time to attend a lot of city council and DDA meetings to advocate renaming streets. But if somebody wants to take the lead on this, I'd be happy to help.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Sunday, December 7, 2003, 10:16 am

It's Dean. Josh Marshall, a Democrat but not a fan of Howard Dean, relates the following:

I had lunch today with someone who is not a politician but a fairly prominent Washington Democrat — certainly not someone from the party's liberal wing. And in the course of answering a question, I said "If it [i.e. the nominee] ends up being Dean ..." At which point, with the rest of my sentence still on deck down in my throat, my friend shot back : "It's Dean."
It was effortless. He wasn't happy or sad about it. He wasn't trying to convince me — more like letting me in on something I apparently wasn't aware of yet.

The Democratic presidential nomination process used to be a months-long slog from caucus to primary to caucus, from state to random state to another random state across the country, culminating in California's primary in June. Each state's turn was a legitimate news event, testing the candidates in a different cauldron of issues and interests, against the responses of real voters casting ballots.

No more. The process has been utterly transformed as individual states have each decided that earlier is better. The whole thing is now so brutally "front-loaded" (with candidate selection events rescheduled earlier and earlier in the year) that it is practically a national primary.

Now, the process that matters happens in the national media during the previous year. The chemistry of the moment in late 2003 (which strongly favors Howard Dean) is unlikely to be overriden by the events of a few weeks in very early 2004. There just isn't time.

That being said, I think Dean probably would have been the nominee in any event.

American presidential campaigns, especially primaries, so often seem to resolve into contests between Exciters (edgy, charismatic, usually iconoclastic candidates who stir up genuine fervor both pro and con) and Calmers (comparatively dull, cautious, experienced politicians with close ties to the party establishment).

Examples of Exciters include John McCain, Jesse Jackson, George McGovern, Gary Hart, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, John B. Anderson, Ross Perot, Barry Goldwater, John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and Jerry Brown.

Calmers include Bob Dole, Walter Mondale, Ed Muskie, George H. W. Bush, Al Gore, Richard Nixon, Michael Dukakis, Gerald Ford, and Hubert Humphrey.

Exciters defy conventional wisdom and status quo politics. Exciter supporters, often new to politics, dismiss skeptics who tell them their candidate can't win; sometimes they prove the skeptics wrong.

The Calmers are safe bets who behave in predictable ways. They position themselves as the obvious choice, choose mainstream issues, recruit tried-and-true staff and consultants, carefully assemble establishment support, and win party nominations. But the Calmers in the current Democratic race (Gephardt, Lieberman, Kerry) have failed at this, maybe because there are three of them.

And so we have Wesley Clark, a kind of nonpolitician Calmer. But the standard Calmer strategy isn't available to him: he started late and has to run against three other Calmers. So, he's being cast as an establishment Exciter, an oxymoron. Almost all of the Clark supporters I know are party insiders who favor Clark as having the best chance to beat Bush. The hoped-for wave of excitement for Clark-the-man among non-insiders has just not materialized.

If indeed Dean has already prevailed, this will be the first time since 1980 that I didn't take part in the Democratic presidential melee by backing a candidate.

In any case, the conventional wisdom about 2004 now seems to have jelled: The economy is resurgent; Dean is too far to the left; hence Bush wins in November. But the conventional wisdom this far out has been wrong about the outcome of every presidential election since at least 1980.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Saturday, December 6, 2003, 12:56 am

Worth Reading. If you're a geek, or socialize with geeks, you'll want to take a look at Five Geek Social Fallacies.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Friday, December 5, 2003, 1:33 am

Downbeat. Steve Cherry has nominated John Prine's "Sam Stone" as "The Most God Damned Depressing Song Ever Written". The chorus opens with the famous line "There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes."

Some of the commenters on that thread mentioned other Prine songs, including "Paradise" ("Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away") and "Christmas in Prison". One wrote: "Until now I never noticed how depressing so much of the Prine catalog is." Amen to that!

Back in the day, Prine was an outcast among country musicians because he opposed the war in Vietnam, and he was an outcast among antiwar folks because he was a country musician. I'd be pretty irritable too, in his shoes.

When I was in law school in Detroit, I also got to know Tom Waits' music, which certainly has a lot of depressing material. But Waits isn't angry like Prine; his characters usually figure that what's happening to them is their own damn fault.

Another more recent song which I find pretty heart-rending is Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car", where hope is pathetically unrealistic: "I know things will get better ... We'll move out of the shelter/Buy a big house and live in the suburbs...."

And then there's the most chilling passage in all of popular music, from Pink Floyd's "Us and Them":

Listen son, said the man with the gun
There's room for you inside.

I have always understood this as a reference to the Holocaust. The death camp guard ("man with the gun") is ushering a group of Jews into the gas chamber, which isn't quite full yet ("there's room for you inside"). The special edge of horror is the way the guard gently addresses a young boy ("listen, son"), in a way that implicitly recognizes their common humanity, and the innocence of a child on his way to be murdered.

But, on consideration, no song quite gets to me like Woody Guthrie's "Deportee".

My father's own father, he waded that river
They took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters came working the fruit trees
They rode on that truck 'til they laid down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and others not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

And of course, the story doesn't get any happier from there.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, November 24, 2003, 7:15 am

A Tale of Two Cities. When I was moving back to Michigan after grad school, I had to go back and forth a couple of times; I made one of those trips by train. During the trip, I got talking with an older lady fellow passenger.

She asked me from where, and to where, I was moving.

I said, from Ithaca, New York, to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

She said: "Oy, that must be the life!"

I suppose she was thinking I was in transit from one ivory tower to another. But in truth Ithaca and Ann Arbor do have a lot in common.

From a political standpoint, both cities are very liberal even by college town standards. Both cities have the same old-fashioned structure of an elected mayor, five wards, two council members per ward, all elected on a partisan ballot (typical in New York State but almost unique in Michigan). Both city councils regularly consider measures intended to influence national or international affairs.

Both cities like to proclaim their different-ness. According to the T-shirt slogan, Ann Arbor is "24.5 Square Miles Surrounded By Reality". Ithaca takes pride in its no-expressway isolation; if you travel there, your last hour of driving is on winding two-lane roads through a region of Appalachian rural poverty.

There's also the fact that Cornell University's Ithaca campus and the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor campus are similar in size and as close to identical in national rankings as two sizeable schools can be. They are peer institutions in a very precise sense.

(Okay, some quibbles: Cornell straddles the division between public and private universities, in that some of its colleges are "statutory" (being part of SUNY) and others are "endowed", i.e., private. Michigan is fully a state university, though some say it pretends to be a private school. And MSU, up in East Lansing, is a more precise analogue to — and historical partner with — Cornell's agricultural and hotel-school elements.)

Overall, it is really impossible to say definitively that either Cornell or U-M has more to boast about in academic prestige terms. Yet the way this level of prestige has been internalized by their respective communities is very different. Ann Arbor thinks of itself as the "Athens of the Midwest," with hauteur to match; Ithaca thinks of itself as the bottom rung of the Ivy League, and feels appropriately humble.

This has operational relevance especially for newcomers and visitors. Ann Arbor, despite its transience, despite being in the unpretentious Midwest, is a difficult place to "break into". Ithaca, despite being in the East and the Ivy League, struck me as much more friendly and welcoming.

Some of this may boil down to football. In Ithaca, nobody I knew seemed to mind very much that Cornell was always losing in every sport. In Ann Arbor, U-M football is like a civic religion, and the outcome of a big football game affects the local mood for days.

I don't remember Cornell having any hated rival schools. It's a different story here. My wife, invited as a guest speaker to a U-M undergrad class, was literally hissed and booed when the professor mentioned the university where she earned her Ph.D.

Ann Arbor is a community that thinks very highly of itself; it's tempting to point and laugh. In this vein, be sure to check out Ann Arbor Is Overrated (as well as its old site until the move is completed).

Still and all, for a person of my tastes and priorities, Ann Arbor is a pretty good place to live.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Wednesday, October 29, 2003, 11:15 pm

Wild, fun, amazing concert. This isn't a music blog; I don't have the requisite knowledge or sophistication. Still, I can't help but report on last night's concert at the Michigan Union Ballroom, billed as An Evening of Bulgarian Gypsy Music. The six performers included Yuri Yunakov, saxophone star, and Ivo Papazov, a clarinetist of worldwide fame.

Balkan music is known for its asymmetric meters, such as 11/16 or 9/8 (one-two, one-two, one-two, one-two-three). The beats correspond to the footwork of traditional line and circle dances.

According to the program notes:

The Yuri Yunakov Ensemble performs Romani (Gypsy) music from the Balkan countries of Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, and Turkey. This music is renowned for its hauning melodies, dense ornamentation, complex rhythms, and stunning improvisations. The geographical position of the Balkans in southeastern Europe and hundreds of years of Ottoman Turkish rule have created a wealth of influences from both East and West. The ensemble plays in a contemporary style called "wedding music", named for its ubiquitous presence at life cycle celebrations ... where dancing and music are a requirement. This style, which gained popularity in the 1970s, emphasizes virtuosic technique, improvisation, rapid tempos, daring key changes, and eclectric musical literacy. A multiplicity of styles, such as jazz and rock, and a multiplicity of sources, such as Turkish and Indian music, are combined with Balkan rural and urban folk music.

The concert was not widely publicized, but it drew an audience of some 250, of whom only a handful appeared to be immigrants from the Balkans. I recognized several prominent local musicians. Quite a few folks came down from the Lansing area, including old friends I hadn't seen in years. About half of the audience took part in line dancing.

The music exceeded everyone's expectations; two musicians separately told me they could die happy now, having heard this concert.

All told, it was nearly three hours (with one brief intermission) of exciting and sophisticated music, played by internationally famed stars. An expensive ticket? Well, no. The concert was free and open to the public.

Ann Arbor may indeed be overrated, but events like this don't happen just anywhere.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, October 28, 2003, 5:30 pm

A Vignette of My Father. It seems that each expansion of online search capabilities brings new finds and surprises.

Amazon.com now offers a function to "Search Inside The Book", a full-text search on 33 million pages in 120,000 books. On my very first search, I found a vignette about my late father's boyhood — something I never knew.

It's in Ellis Island to Ebbetts Field: Sport and the American Jewish Experience (1993). The author is discussing various events which demonstrate the popularity among Jews of Marshall Goldberg and Sid Luckman, two Jewish football stars:

Reports of thousands of New York Jewish fans packing Yankee Stadium to see Goldberg's Pittsburgh team battle the Fordham Rams or similar accounts of Jewish fanatics who followed the professional football careers of Goldberg and Sid Luckman when they both played in Chicago provide additional testimony. So too does Justin Kestenbaum, my colleague at Michigan State, who fondly remembers reading about both men when they played for the Columbia Lions and the Pittsburgh Panthers. Born in New York City, Kestenbaum spent a good deal of his childhood at the Pleasantville Cottage School, a home for some 300 Jewish boys and girls whose parents were unable to support them in the Depression. With obvious warmth and detail, he recalls that in 1938, the year of his Bar Mitzvah, the Pleasantville boys were invited to a Jewish temple in nearby White Plains, New York, to hear Sid Luckman, then a junior at Columbia, talk about sportsmanship, the importance of a college education, football, and his pride in being a Jew.

Pleasantville was also something of a reform school for juvenile delinquents, and my father, who had been in a series of foster homes, landed there after getting in trouble. But he did go on to graduate from Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx, and after serving in the Pacific in World War II, he went to college (University of Illinois) on the G.I. Bill, and graduate school (Northwestern University) on a William Randolph Hearst fellowship. From 1963 until his death in 1995, he was a professor of American history at Michigan State University.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Saturday, October 25, 2003, 9:26 pm

The Stopped Clock. My friend Aaron Larson, a wise and hugely knowledgeable young Michigan attorney, has finally given in to peer pressure, he says, and started a blog.

Among his first topics are: the search for unbiased sources on the Middle East; Iran's nuclear program; and the eerie similarity between Ann Coulter and Ed Anger.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, October 21, 2003, 9:08 am

Art Pumpkins. Last weekend, I attended a pumpkin carving party.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Sunday, October 19, 2003, 12:07 pm

Voting Systems. Today's Ann Arbor News published my op-ed piece on voting systems. To my surprise, they did not cut even one word from my text; one paragraph break was added.

I'd include a link to the editorial I was responding to, but it's already gone.

Voting improvements needed
But just eliminating punch cards won't solve all the problems

I very much agree with your editorial (Oct. 2) calling for action on updating and improving voting systems, and I second your call that the president name his nominees to the Election Assistance Commission.
However, I think your deep concern over punch card voting and "squinting" at ballots is somewhat misplaced. Yes, we should move to newer voting systems. But there are a number of other, far more critical, issues to be addressed -- including how we choose those new systems.
The punch card was invented by Herman Hollerith more than a century ago, as a way to facilitate tabulating the 1890 U.S. Census; the cards matched the dimensions of the paper money of the time. Today's punch card ballots are still that same size and shape.
Punch card voting came to Michigan in the 1970s, and in comparison to other voting systems of the time, it worked well. In particular, punch cards performed far better in recounts than the systems they replaced.
Paper ballot counting and recounting generates endless arguments about whether the X crosses inside the square. Lever-handle voting machines are subject to malfunctions that can invalidate hundreds of votes. By contrast, at least in Michigan, punch card election results have been very solid in recounts. Ambiguous ballots ("hanging chads") are extremely rare, and the state has clear rules for resolving those cases. Normally a recount changes the original result by at most a vote or two.
Why did Florida have such a bad experience in 2000? The biggest reason was the lack of maintenance on equipment. Apparently in Florida it was not standard practice to empty the chads from the voting devices; the machines were often packed with old chads. That made it difficult to punch cleanly through the card, and resulted in a great many "pregnant" or partially punched-out chads.
Florida also had the "butterfly ballot," which exposed what a poor user interface the punch card voting device is. Since the lists of candidates and the arrows are in a different plane than the punch card itself, anyone who is above or below average height will experience parallax, that is, the arrows and holes don't line up.
But the biggest problem with punch card voting is the centralized handling and ballot counting they require, which entails risks of loss, mishandling, error, and fraud. Better voting systems provide for vote counting in the polling place -- like the optical scan system Ann Arbor uses now.
A secondary problem with punch cards, along with many other computerized voting systems, is the use of secret, proprietary software to do the counting. Voters and election officials should demand that vote tabulation software be open to scrutiny by all interested parties, to ensure the absence of "back doors" and Trojan horses. In computer security, peer review is always preferable to trade secrets.
Proposals to send votes over the Internet should be rejected. There is no practical way to simultaneously ensure voter authentication and a secret ballot in the online world. Nor should we use "touch screen" voting machines with internal counters. We should have a tangible record of each vote, to act as a check on any automated system.
Further, let's not confine our focus to the narrow issue of how voters mark or punch their choices. Errors in counting individual votes are dwarfed by gross errors in tabulation. Examples from elections in recent years abound. Here are just a few:
  • Marquette County's precinct returns were entered into a spreadsheet; because of an error in the summing formula, the certified totals didn't include all of the absentee voter counting boards.
  • The city of Northville's entire vote for statewide offices was included in Oakland County's certified totals, even though the south half of the city was also counted in Wayne County.
  • Amboy Township, in Hillsdale County, certified vote totals that left out a large number of "yes" votes on a statewide ballot proposal.
  • Certified totals from the city of Wyoming, in Kent County, implied that an improbable 7,500 voters (40% of the total) had neglected to vote for Governor.
"Pregnant chads" get ample news coverage, but problems like these -- no doubt caused by fatigue, poor training, awkward systems, and inattentiveness by election officials -- affect vastly more votes.
To achieve fair, accurate elections for all offices is within our reach, but it requires more than just getting rid of punch cards.
Lawrence Kestenbaum is a former Washtenaw County Commissioner (2000-02) and Ingham County Commissioner (1983-88). He has participated in many recounts as an election worker, challenger, or attorney. He's the author of two articles on voter authentication for the ACM Risks Digest, and creator and Web master for PoliticalGraveyard.com. He's also a staff member at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.

Two things I would have changed.

First, the 7,500 voters in the city of Wyoming were among people who actually cast ballots in the 1994 election. Of course it wouldn't be improbable at all that a lot of people neglected to vote in a gubernatorial election; what happened here is that the total number of votes recorded for candidates for governor was enormously less than the number of ballots.

Second, in my rush to get the piece in, I misstated one of my credentials. Of the five contributions I have made to the ACM Risks Digest since 1989, only one was specifically about voter authentication. One other was about vote tabulation problems. I meant to refer to those two articles, and I should have used a broader descriptor such as "voting and election issues." My apologies.

Update: a third point. A correspondent writes that I should "connect the dots" more explicitly: all of the tabulation errors I pointed out in the article remain in official results to this day, uncorrected. In other words, these problems were not caught at the time, and the official, final, vote totals are thousands of votes wrong as a direct result.

I don't think any results would have changed if these particular errors had been avoided or caught in time. However, it is appalling that so many votes were miscounted.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Wednesday, October 15, 2003, 4:06 pm

Old Grange, New Grange. As I mentioned earlier, I am a member of the Grange, also known as the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, a venerable agricultural organization.

The Pittsfield Union Grange #882 has a hall on Ann Arbor-Saline Road in Pittsfield Township, just south of Ann Arbor. The Pittsfield Grange is a venue for folk dances and many other community events.

But the existence of the hall depends on the existence of the local chapter (or "Subordinate Grange"). Over the past twenty or so years, individual dancers and musicians were encouraged to support the Grange organization itself by becoming dues paying members. Eventually, some of the dancers came to take a greater interest in the Grange and its philosophy, history, and activities, came to know the families who had belonged to it for decades, and took leadership positions.

At the last meeting, Robin Warner, a dance caller, was installed as Grange Master, or chair. The October newsletter includes Robin's thoughts about his new role and the challenges facing the Pittsfield Grange:

As I think about what I have taken on as the new Chair of Pittsfield Union Grange, I see the next year as a time of significant change. I want to share a little of my view of the junction that we are currently facing.
There is a picture hanging upstairs in the Grange of the members in 1950. Most of them are farmers, or tradesmen whose principal customers were farmers. Many of them met at Grange functions and as families the Grange has been a central institution in their lives. Many of these members have been active at the State level and all of them have long experience with the Ritual and traditions of the Grange. Today, 53 years later, several of these people are still active members of the Grange.
Their children and grandchildren who we might expect to see as the young members preparing to carry on the Grange traditions are curiously missing, having decided not to make the Grange the focus of their social lives. In their place is a new group of younger folks who have not been introduced to the Grange as a family tradition and are not necessarily from farm backgrounds. For the most part these members have been introduced to the Grange through use of the building for various kinds of dancing and related activities.
The principal motive for joining has been a concern to preserve the hall by preserving the organization that owns and operates it. Over the last 10 or 15 years this group has grown from a small minority of members taking minor roles to a majority of the members and officers. While a few people from this group have participated in State Grange activities, for the most part participation has been kept to the local level.
Now we are at a critical junction. The people with long experience in the traditions of the Grange are becoming fewer every year. Those who are left are participating less and less actively. During the last 10 or 15 years the Ritual has not been emphasized. Participation at the Stte level and visitation to other Granges has been limited among the younger Grangers. A lot of the history and tradition of the Grange will be lost to us going forward if we don't make an effort to pass it down from the older generation before they stop actively participating in Grange activities.
So why should we care if this tradition is lost? One reason is that Pittsfield Union Grange doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is one of many Granges in Michigan and across the country. To some extent we need to work together with these organizations. Most other Granges are more traditional than we are, and we are going to challenge them with the changes that we are making. It is going to be absolutely necessary to have as much understanding of what the tradition is, and why people feel that it is important, in order to understand other people's responses to our suggestions.
Another reason to understand what the Grange has been is the fact that Pittsfield Grange is one of a small number of Action Granges. The Action Granges have been established to experiment with new ways of holding meetings and new ways of relating with the wider fcommunity. Our charge is to change the 130-year-old traditions to make them relevant in the new millenium. Our job is not to create a new organization that has nothing to do with the past organization. Our job is to take the good core of the old organization, and refocus and restate it in a way that is relevant to today, and at the same time recognizable to the people who have grown up with the Ritual and traditions.
I am looking forward to working with all Pittsfield Grangers, old and new, to meet this challenge. I believe that we will act together to combine the best of teh Grange's traditions with the best ideas of our newer members to prosper going forward.

(Reprinted with permission.)

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Thursday, October 9, 2003, 10:39 pm

Mr. Nine. I don't have any links to point to right now, but in the wake of California's special gubernatorial election, a number of reports in the national media listed the Top Eight (Schwarzenegger, Bustamante, McClintock, Camejo, Huffington, Ueberroth, Flynt, Coleman) and #10 ("Mary Carey" Cook), while ignoring the ninth place finisher.

The fellow who finished ninth got more than ten thousand votes. Among the hundred-plus "unknowns" on the ballot, he finished first by a wide margin. He even outpolled the highly publicized porn star, and former GOP nominee Bill Simon.

How did he do it? A compelling platform? Great TV commercials? An inspiring stump speech? A local base of support?

Nope. It was his name: SCHWARTZMAN. On list of 135 names in perversely random order, I suspect a great many people looking for Arnold Schwarzenegger picked George B. Schwartzman by mistake.

On his web site, Mr. Schwartzman denies this:

The 9th place success realized by my candidacy demonstrates that a little known, but determined issue based candidate, can be successful when you are innovative, common sense oriented, hardworking, and well organized.
Although some attribute my success in part to my ballot position and somewhat similar name association with Arnold Schwarzenegger, be assured this was not the case. Counties where I actively and extensively campaigned produced my best results. Counties where I minimally, or did not campaign at all, produced less impressive results. The success enjoyed by my candidacy is directly related to the issues presented, and the campaign efforts as they were directed.

I'm very skeptical of his analysis. I don't see anything about the man or his platform that would enable him to break out of a noisy field of 134 other candidates.

I suspect he got his best percentages (1) in precincts where he had the most favorable ballot position relative to Schwarzenegger; (2) in counties where the ballot layout and typography were the most confusing — e.g., with the candidates' names printed in narrow and tightly crowded bold capital letters; and (3) in areas with low educational attainment and literacy.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, September 29, 2003, 7:45 am

A quick word to the wise. If you've been meaning to put a web site online, something quirky and full of interesting free content -- your analysis of Carpathian poetry or Hudson Valley Italianate scrollwork or Maltese baseball players or antique screwdrivers -- now is the time.

Get your stuff together, write your text, scan your photos, find a server, and get your labor-of-love online for others to share. Now.

The economics of this kind of enterprise has changed radically in just the last few weeks. As long as your site is heavy on content, and light on sex/crime/death/disaster, it is now possible to cover your expenses, and more, just through placing a few unobtrusive text ads.

Due to the secretive terms-of-service, I can't discuss numbers, but let's just say I'm pleasantly astonished, and so are many other clueful web site owners I know.

Free content sites were a financial drag on those unlucky enough to be obsessed with building them, like me. Now, all of a sudden, they pay surprisingly well. Not enough to make you rich, or let you quit your day job, mind you, but nothing to sneeze at.

See http://www.google.com/adsense/ for details.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, September 29, 2003, 7:13 am

Leave-taking. A colleague on an email list described taking his son ("BOY") to college at Dartmouth. I wrote:

I missed this scene from BOY's perspective, since I attended the hometown university, with which I was already intimately familiar; when I moved out of my father's house a couple of years later, no one took any notice.
Rather, just four weeks ago, we achieved the kindergarten version of this milestone.
SGSK, our one and only child, fresh from her fifth birthday, is already eye-rolling at her parents in public. "LOOK," she hissed at me in a crowd recently, as I made faces to entertain a nearby infant, "Do you see anyone ELSE doing that?" I suppose almost everyone of sufficient age is accustomed to getting urgent deportment guidance from a young person with less than one-ninth one's real world experience, but it was new to me.
So here she is, SGSK, now a "big kindergarten girl", mandatory backpack in place, eyes darting toward the beckoning classroom door as we try to take a few pictures to commemorate the occasion.
Despite the very self-assured prediction of the kindergarten teacher, delivered in previous parent meetings, there are no tears on either side. Indeed, I didn't see any tears shed anywhere.
It's very different from my own first day of kindergarten, which occurred in the waning months of the Eisenhower Administration, in the days when kids starting school were being ripped for the first time away from full days with family, and kindergarten was scheduled on the half-day to allow them to "adjust". Nowadays, most kids by age five have had years in day care, preschool, and day camp. Kindergarten half-days are now an inconvenient anachronism: working parents must seek for-pay options to cover the other half-day.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Friday, September 19, 2003, 1:12 am

Why things have changed. In 1958, the federal budget was $82 billion. In constant dollars, adjusted for population growth, that would be about a third of what the federal government spends today.

Calpundit muses on this point, listing all the important things which would have to be scrapped to reduce the federal budget by two thirds in order to return to 1958's spending level; he imagines a much less appealing society for most people. And I would certainly agree with that.

His commenters, in a wide ranging discussion, argue the pros and cons of living in 1958 versus now, and why it is that our federal government costs three times as much now as it did then.

My take on why things are different now: massive cultural change.

In the decades since 1958, we have become a much more atomized, individualistic society. Civic participation and joining and taking part in community activities has plummeted since then. Charitable giving may be "up" in dollars collected, but it's way down in percentage of income. And no, these changes were not brought about by any government policy. See Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone for vast documentation on all these points.

Yes, individuals in our society became much freer than ever before, and the ethic of individual freedom to do one's own thing became a part of the culture like never before. This is such a powerfully good thing in so many ways that it's easy to forget the downside. Some, freed from social constraints on their behavior, did bad things: the homicide death rate more than doubled from 1960 to 1975, and other crimes rose in similar proportion.

What used to be considered obligations to family and community were redefined as optional choices. Social mores no longer dictated that you had to bear some responsibility caring for disabled or mentally ill relatives, let alone one's neighbors. Technological and social and economic change combined here. If your disabled and unemployed parent or sibling ran up a $55,000 hospital bill, would you choose to shoulder that debt — or let Medicaid (i.e., the government) pay it?

In this heady atmosphere of I-can-do-whatever-I-want, leave-me-alone, I-have-no-responsibility-for-you, libertarianism as a mass phenomenon was born. But libertarians seem to forget that somebody has to pay those bills.

Another point: improvement in transportation and communications have increasingly centralized our news and our culture at the national level, while eroding local and regional culture or even awareness. This greatly increased mobility has fueled a tendency to think of the United States as all of a piece. The news media, now concentrated into national chains, already had plenty of incentive to cut back on labor-intensive reporting on local and state politics. People today are more likely to hear about, or care about, trivial events in the U.S. Congress, than momentous ones in their own state legislature.

No wonder that anyone who sees a problem requiring government intervention is likely to think first of the federal government. Not just social programs: look, for example, at the enormous expansion of the federal criminal code into areas that used to be considered the province of states. The culture, perhaps inevitably, has come to see state capitals as just branch offices, with the real power center in Washington. Naturally, the Congress has written that assumption into more and more laws.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, September 16, 2003, 2:11 am

The Carter Model. Conservative commentator David Brooks has an op-ed column in today's New York Times, detailing the glee among Republican pollsters and strategists over Howard Dean's surge in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

You would have thought I had asked them if Danny DeVito would be easier to beat in a one-on-one basketball game than Shaquille O'Neal. They all thought Dean would be easier to beat, notwithstanding his impressive rise. Some feared John Kerry, others John Edwards, because his personality wears well over time, and others even Bob Graham, because he can carry Florida, more than Dean. As their colleague Bill McInturff put it atop a memo on the Dean surge: "Happy Days Are Here Again (for Republicans)."

I myself haven't settled on a candidate to support. But the nominating process has been so brutally front-loaded that there isn't much time for sorting out or rethinking: it will be all over by early March, just six months from now. Wesley Clark is an intriguing but unlikely possibility. Assuming Dean doesn't screw anything up badly, he's probably going to get the nomination.

So is Dean really so beatable? True, he hails from an obscure and (some say) loony little state far into the Northeast. True, he has little foreign policy background. True, he is more negative, critical, and partisan than the other candidates. Still ...

The 2000 election led many to imagine the American people as closely divided and deeply polarized. Half the country are conservative Republicans, we are assured; the other half are liberal Democrats. But the snapshot resulting from that one forced choice under that year's circumstances is not necessarily an accurate picture.

Though Brooks is certainly correct that political activists are increasingly polarized, the non-activist public remains staunchly inscrutable. A substantial portion of the electorate probably doesn't recall with any clarity who they voted for back in 2000, let alone why. It's folly to assume that they are already certain to line up the same way next year.

The 2004 election is a whole new roll of the dice, and there is no reason to assume that it's going to be close. I'm expecting an election decisive enough that it won't really matter whether the Democrats pick Kerry, or Dean, or Edwards, or Clark, or Lieberman, or Gephardt. In the end, it will be clear that any of them would have lost, or that any of them would have won.

Moreover, the conventional wisdom about a presidential election, one year before the fact, has been pretty consistently wrong. In 1987, a Democratic win was expected; in 1991, GHWB was obviously unbeatable; in 1995, Clinton's defeat was already taken for granted; in 1999, the analysts confidently predicted an easy win for Gore.

With that awful track record in mind, here's what I'm thinking about the presidential race.

My model is that GWB is a Republican version of Jimmy Carter. Think of the parallels. Elected on a very thin margin. A less moderate administration than what the campaign led people to expect. Trouble managing the economy. Grandiose foreign policy goals, but (arguably) poor results. Evangelical Christians lend electoral support, but are alienated by policy choices. Party ideologues get impatient; some talk about bolting.

Then, suddenly, the embattled president gets a lucky break: the other party goes and nominates a candidate from what the White House regards as the extreme ideological fringe. The President and his advisers become arrogant and overconfident: they can't see how they could lose. But they do.

The Republican pollsters and strategists, quoted by Brooks in the NYT piece, are quietly hooting with glee over Howard Dean. I remember their Democratic counterparts saying almost precisely the same things, in precisely the same tone, about Ronald Reagan in 1980.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, September 16, 2003, 1:09 am

Web advertising. I started The Political Graveyard web site in 1996. Once it had developed a substantial flow of traffic, many people urged me to sell advertising on the site.

I was reluctant, but I thought one ad per page wouldn't be too intrusive. And indeed, the 468x60 graphic banner ad at the top of a web page had become a de facto standard, widely used on all kinds of sites. It didn't require much work: you could put a snippet of HTML on your page, pointing to an ad network's server, and they would find the advertisers, supply the ads, and send a check for your share.

In February 1999, I signed up with ValueClick. I tried a lot of other advertising networks, but for various reasons, I ended up staying with ValueClick for more than four years.

Web publishers are usually paid for advertising on a CPC ("cost-per-click") or a CPM ("cost-per-thousand") basis. There are also commission-based plans, but in my experience they generate only tiny amounts of money.

CPC-based ad networks, like ValueClick, tend to be solid and reliable; CPM-based ad networks are usually the reverse, making big but vague promises, retroactively lowering their rates, and taking months to issue checks.

ValueClick paid 12 cents per clickthrough (briefly 15 cents before the dotcom crash). But though my traffic kept rising, the clickthrough rate fell steadily. The ads had little relevance to the average user, and most people tuned their eyes to not see banner ads. Popup ads were touted as an alternative, but I declined to have them on my site. ValueClick started running some CPM based ads, but they continued to pay reliably every month; my check was usually around $100.

But then, on August 8, I unexpectedly received a notice from ValueClick terminating my account. It was plainly a mass mailing; five "reasons" were given, none of which had to do with my site. When I asked, they offered a more plausible reason: the presence of links soliciting monetary contributions from users. Not that this issue had ever been mentioned in ValueClick's terms of service.

But by that time, I had already found a greatly superior advertising service, sponsored by a very well known firm, which provides groups of small, context-relevant, text ads — less intrusive and more lucrative than the blinking graphic banners. Look at the page tops in The Political Graveyard and you will see what I mean.

You may have noticed similar ads replacing graphic banners on all kinds of sites recently. The terms of service limit what I can say about it, but the economics of building content-based web sites has changed radically in the last few exciting weeks.

When I received another copy (only slightly modified) of the same misleading termination notice from ValueClick, I wrote the following farewell letter:

Dear ValueClick,
Since my time as a ValueClick publisher is at an end, I wanted to share a few thoughts. I have a lot to thank you folks for, and some lingering questions.
I do appreciate the more than four and a half years that I was part of the ValueClick network, and all the money I earned through your ads during that time.
I very much appreciate the fact that ValueClick, unlike other web advertising networks, kept its promises and issued checks on time. When other webmasters shared their latest horror stories of dealing with other ad networks, I could smile and say, "ValueClick is not like that."
I especially appreciate that ValueClick, again unlike other ad networks, allowed me to opt out of ads for online casinos and material I didn't want on my site.
I realize that my site is a fairly small one by your standards, with only 20,000 or so page impressions per day. And of course it is your right to terminate publishers at any time for any reason. Nevertheless, I'm dismayed at the way my account was terminated.
The letter I received in early August listed five reasons for termination, none of which even remotely applied to my site. In subsequent correspondence, I learned that there was an entirely different reason, not mentioned in the letter: your quality assurance committee had objected to the Amazon Honor System and PayPal donation links on my pages.
I appreciate that your representatives were willing to share the real reason with me. However, the ValueClick terms of service makes no mention of this as being a problem, let alone one which is fatal to a site's participation in the network. So I had no warning about this.
Today, weeks after I thought my departure was all settled, I received a SECOND termination letter from ValueClick which recites the same five reasons, none of which applies to me. It appears that ValueClick is experiencing some difficulty framing open and effective communications with its publishers. Receipt of the second, duplicative letter makes me wonder what sort of turmoil and disorganization is going on in your offices.
However, I am very grateful that you allowed my account to remain until the end of August. It would not have been possible for me to cancel a family vacation and instantly redo the tens of thousands of pages on my site.
Over the past few weeks, I removed all ValueClick code from my pages as you requested. That job was completed at 5:00 pm Eastern time on Tuesday, September 2nd. I replaced ValueClick's banners with code from another provider.
Your termination led me directly to the unexpected realization that groups of page-targeted text ads are enormously more profitable for me as a web publisher than graphic banner ads. It was also much simpler to install code which is identical from page to page.
Though it pains me to admit this, you did me a huge favor with the termination of my account. So, thank you for that as well.
Best wishes!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Saturday, September 6, 2003, 12:15 pm

Miniature trains: The Minneapolis Star-Tribune profiles my English brother-in-law and the St. Croix Railroad in Hudson, Wisconsin.

These are not model trains, club president Tim Kirby will tell you. They are miniatures, faithful to the massive engines that are their inspiration, mostly in one-eighth and one-twelfth scale.
"Everything about it is exactly like the real thing," Kirby said, standing over his black steam locomotive. "Well, it is the real thing, except that it's small."
Some of the dozen or so engines have only enough room for an engineer and one passenger. But others, such as the steam locomotive Kirby shares with club vice president Cliff Hudson, can pull 10 gondola and flatbed cars, with room for as many as 30 passengers perched on empty milk crates, padded boards and motorboat seats. Other trains include miniature dining cars, coal cars and tankers.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, August 26, 2003, 12:05 pm

Trick question. What city in Michigan has the highest percentage of no-car households?

Ah, you think, it must be a dense urban setting with a lot of very poor people. The city of Detroit, in other words. But Detroit only ranks 4th highest in the state; 21.9% of the housing units there have no vehicles available, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.

If you know the Detroit area well, you know that there are some old suburbs and enclaves which are denser than Detroit. And indeed, they are strong choices. The city of Ecorse has 19.8% no-car households, and ranks 8th; Hamtramck has 20.5% and ranks 7th; River Rouge has 21.1% and ranks 5th; and Highland Park has 39.4% and ranks 2nd highest in the state. But what city is 1st?

Another thought would be one of the poorest outstate cities. Muskegon Heights has 20.7% and ranks 11th; Benton Harbor has 31.5% and ranks 3rd. Still not the answer.

What of college towns? Most university students used to go without cars, but not any more. Of Michigan cities with state universities, Big Rapids (Ferris State University) ranks 25th with 14.3%, and all the others (Detroit excepted) are less. Ypsilanti (Eastern Michigan University) is 29th, Kalamazoo (Western Michigan University) is 44th, Marquette (Northern Michigan University) is 63rd, East Lansing (Michigan State University) is 102nd, and Ann Arbor (University of Michigan) is 108th, with only 9.5%. This is a dramatic change: as recently as the 1980 census, Ann Arbor was in the top ten!

Okay, enough teasing. The Michigan city which ranks #1 on this statistic, where 54.4% of households have no car, is the city of Mackinac Island. Which is pretty good, considering that it isn't legal to bring automobiles onto the island. (Presumably the residents who have cars garage them in nearby Mackinaw City or St. Ignace, accessible from the island by passenger ferries.)

I mention this because I just returned from a visit to the famous island (phonetically "Mackinaw"), just east of the Mackinac Bridge which connects Michigan's two distinct regions, the Upper Peninsula and the Lower Peninsula.

Mackinac Island is not the preserved 19th Century setting promised by tourist brochures. Most of the old houses have been crudely redone with vinyl siding, losing whatever architectural features they may have had, or demolished to make way for new condo complexes. The place has changed a lot since I last visited some thirty years ago.

But it is still a place where the horse rules transportation; even garbage is collected by horsedrawn vehicles. Motorized golf carts are permitted only within golf courses. There are three emergency vehicles on the island, but they are rarely seen.

Unlike the horses of New York City's Central Park, Mackinac Island horses work au naturel, with no diapers. The horse dung on the roads is quickly attended to. Even so, it's a reminder of how dirty every road and street used to be in the horsedrawn era. A citizen of 1900, suddenly transported to 1950, would have been astonished at the cleanliness of city streets. A citizen of 1950, suddenly transported to 2000, would also have been astonished by clean streets, because we no longer have cars which routinely drip oil everywhere they go. If you're as old as I am, you remember the greasy black stripe down the middle of every traffic lane. We think fondly of horsedrawn carriages and old-fashioned cars, and treasure places like Mackinac Island, but surely we are better off with cleaner technologies.

When you take the carriage tour of the island, the guide introduces the horses, and says a bit about their respective personalities. The horsedrawn tour has to make periodic stops, not just to see sights, but to rest the horses. Unlike a car, you can't just park a horse and leave it overnight; there has to be a stable, staffed with handlers to attend to feeding, watering, and cleaning.

A century ago, every city had this kind of infrastructure for routine horse care. In downtown Ann Arbor, Ashley Street (parallel with Main, one block west) was lined with livery stables and the like. Nowadays, it would probably be regarded as animal cruelty and a violation of zoning laws to keep horses in a downtown building.

But life on Mackinac Island still seems to revolve around horse handling, stabling, training, feeding, and so on. Seeing it makes clear just how much labor, how much time and effort, how many skilled people, are required to keep this all going day after day. No doubt it's a major reason why things on the island are so expensive.

More about my trip later.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, August 11, 2003, 12:29 pm

It's The End Of The World As We Know It. Before R.E.M. came along with a catchy song that both satirized and popularized the phrase, it was already known to countless science fiction fans.

I still don't know specifically where it got started, but I imagine two grim-faced scientists in some cheesy 1950s b&w sci-fi movie, or novel, or maybe a comic book, with one saying to the other: "It's the end of the world—as we know it." In other words, the Earth is not actually exploding, but from now on, the giant cockroaches are the dominant life form, and it's humanity's turn to hide in the woodwork.

One source attributes the line, unspecifically, to a script in the Star Trek television series (presumably, the original series). I can believe that the words were spoken in an episode, but I am dubious that Star Trek was the original source. Indeed, I would not be very surprised if it turned out the phrase goes all the way back to Jules Verne. La fin du monde telle que nous la connaissons, perhaps?

Before the turn of the millenium, The End Of The World As We Know It was acronymed as TEOTWAWKI, as shorthand for the collapse of civilization which was anticipated when computer systems failed to cope with the rollover to the year 2000. The Usenet News frequency of both terms, from May 12, 1981 to August 11, 2003, can be tracked through Google Groups, as follows:

Year end of the world
as we know it
TEOTWAWKI
1981 - -
1982 - -
1983 - -
1984 1 -
1985 4 -
1986 - -
1987 1 -
1988 5 -
1989 34 -
1990 70 -
1991 96 -
1992 262 -
1993 456 -
1994 1,020 -
1995 984 2
1996 2,030 177
1997 2,220 2,060
1998 3,470 5,760
1999 5,650 8,560
2000 4,920 2,070
2001 4,100 723
2002 2,810 736
2003 1,860 486

August 26 update. I came across a book of political humor published in the mid-1960s, which referenced the phrase the end of civilization as we know it as a cliché. Further evidence that the line predates Star Trek.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, August 6, 2003, 10:28 pm

Carnival of the Vanities. I found the 45th edition of this long-running weekly series at Dan Gelfand's Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics. It's a kind of moveable feast (hosted at a different blog every week) of self-nominated best-of postings from the blogosphere. Hey, why not?

For the 46th edition, I nominated my article about the South Pennsylvania Railroad which preceded the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

The 47th edition will be hosted at Right We Are.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, July 29, 2003, 1:32 pm

The Funeral Business and the Death of Professionalism. I received a note from someone who was seeking a source and date for some comments I wrote last year on the Grave-L mailing list. I found a copy of the posting, sent it to the requester, and decided to feature it here as well.

Another poster had commented on the economics of funeral homes. He wrote that 25% of existing funeral homes are projected to disappear in the next few years, and that funeral homes were trying to acquire local cemeteries. I responded as follows:

When I was a candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives, in 1998, I received considerable material from the for-profit cemeteries association trying to convince me to support their drive to repeal the Michigan law that prohibits funeral homes from owning cemeteries or vice versa.
Obviously the push for this repeal came from SCI and the other big funeral companies. Their whole business model was to look for ways to charge more than traditional family-owned funeral homes did (the exact reverse of Wal-Mart). They would even lure family members back years after the death and "pound on them" (not my term) to pressure them into buying still more stuff.
Obviously, too, they have been looking to snap up not-for-profit community cemeteries and turn them into profit centers. One unhappy victim of this process is historic Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago. Out-of-state corporate owners have zero regard for a cemetery's historic value and zero interest in good stewardship of historic structures and monuments.
The pricing model that was described earlier — figure the total costs, and spread them over the number of services — is stunning proof of how little the funeral business resembles a "free market". In fact, it is the exact same model used traditionally by monopoly public utilities in pricing phone service, electricity, etc.
By contrast, most businesses have to meet a market price for each of the goods or services they provide. If they can't make a profit selling at the market price, they go out of business. They don't get to calculate their costs in advance, and expect consumers to pay assigned prices or else.
I suppose morticians claimed a kind of societal exemption from those kinds of market strictures, along with doctors and lawyers and accountants, based on the notion that they were ethical professionals who could be trusted to help people to make the right decisions and not take undue advantage of the lack of opportunity for consumers to price-shop. And indeed, in a community where the doctors and lawyers and morticians were all well known figures who cared about their reputations and adhered to professional standards, that probably worked pretty well.
But dramatically improved communications and transportation have broken up a lot of what used to be self-attentive and self-policing communities. We get our goods and services and information from a much wider field now, and are less likely to have contact with or knowledge about the providers outside of the specific interaction. Every professional field has been transformed by this.
The strategy of SCI and the other companies was to quietly buy up the formerly family owned funeral homes, which presumably at least on the average were run in the traditional way, and turn them into profit centers, jacking up prices by factors of four or more. In essence, it was a bald-faced grab for money, protected by the shell of the reputations of the former funeral directors. But it works, because bereaved families are notoriously disinclined to price-shop or to question the bills.
What's more, charging extremely high prices for funeral home services is a market advantage — because then you have even more resources available for marketing! If 25% of funeral homes are expected to disappear in the next few years, presumably they are the ones which stuck to the traditional model and hence got out-marketed by their much-better-funded rivals. They're out of business because their price structure is too low.
The arrogant contempt for consumers and the public interest that has come to dominate the funeral business is grim indeed.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Sunday, July 27, 2003, 11:42 pm

The Grange. A few months ago, I became a member of the Grange — a venerable agricultural organization also known as the Order of Patrons of Husbandry. Specifically, I joined the Pittsfield Union Grange #882, located in and named for Pittsfield Township, Washtenaw County, Michigan. The Pittsfield Grange, as it is usually called, organized in 1901, is the only survivor of a dozen or more Granges that used to exist in Washtenaw County.

Pittsfield Township used to be like many Midwestern rural townships, six miles square. In 1900, it had a population of 1,050; in 1950, it had 5,369; in 2000, despite having lost its northern section to city annexation, the population was up to 30,167. Indeed, it is one of the fastest growing communities in Michigan. I don't live in Pittsfield Township, myself, but in the adjoining city of Ann Arbor.

The Pittsfield Grange Hall, a simple white gabled structure resembling an old one-room schoolhouse, is located on what used to be a rural road between Ann Arbor and Saline. For an Ann Arborite like myself, it's on the left just past Meijer's [a Michigan-Ohio superstore chain]. Over the last 25 years, the Grange Hall, which is available cheaply for rentals, has become Ann Arbor's most important venue for folkdances — contradances, square dances, ballroom dances, English country dances, etc. It is also used for wedding receptions, concerts, parties, and so forth.

As the dance community came to rely on the Grange Hall, individual dancers and musicians were encouraged to support the Grange organization itself by becoming dues paying members. After all, if the Grange disappeared, so would the hall. Eventually, some of the dancers came to take a greater interest in the Grange and its philosophy, history, and activities, came to know the families who had belonged to it for decades, and took leadership positions. Starting in September, the Grange Master or chairman of the local chapter (or "Subordinate Grange") will be a dancer.

The National Grange was founded just after the Civil War by Oliver H. Kelley. The intent was to bring together farmers of the North and the South, but the Grange was always strongest in the rural Northeast and Midwest. The concepts and rituals are based on agriculture and the seasons, using names and symbols of the old fertility godesses such as Pomona, Flora, and Demeter. Unsurprisingly, today's Fundamentalist Christians take a dim view of this, and some even denounce the Grange as witchcraft and paganism.

More important in the organization's history, however, has been its role as a powerful advocate for education and the advancement of farm communities. Grange meetings have always included an educational program, and state Grange organizations sent lecturers on tours to promote better farming methods, conservation of natural resources, and many other topics. (In recent years, the Michigan Grange has taken on Deaf Awareness and hearing loss as an area of special emphasis, and built a strong relationship with the Michigan School for the Deaf.)

Naturally, as the largest organization of American farmers, it had considerable political clout. The creation of a cabinet-level U.S. Secretary of Agriculture in 1889 was a Grange victory, as was the creation of the Weather Bureau. Most American agricultural colleges and agricultural experiment stations were founded at the insistence of the Grange. Most of the political reforms enacted in the late 19th or early 20th century were advocated by the Grange, including the Australian or secret ballot system in the 1880s, direct election of U.S. senators in 1913, woman suffrage in 1920, and primary elections for nominating candidates.

(This is not to say that the organization was ahead of its time on every issue. The Grange also supported outlawing the liquor trade, a halt to immigration from Asia, the abolition of Daylight Savings Time, and legislation "prohibiting the manufacture and sale of oleomargarine colored in imitation of butter.")

Growing up at Michigan State University, where my father was a history professor, I was well aware that MSU had been founded as Michigan Agricultural College, and that the institution and its original mission had been assisted and sustained across many decades by the Grange. Dora Stockman, state Grange lecturer, was an influential member of the College's governing board, elected in 1919 when woman suffrage went into effect here. (When the Michigan Woman's Hall of Fame was created in the 1980s, I nominated her, but she was not selected.)

The irony of the agricultural reform movement, of which the Grange was a part, is that it has almost put itself out of business. In 1867, when the Grange was founded, most Americans were in farm families, and the problems of the farm were America's most urgent problems. Achievements such as better education, better roads, and more efficient farming methods have led directly to a dramatic decline in the number of farmers.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Friday, July 25, 2003, 11:06 pm

The Fire. There was a big fire in downtown Ann Arbor yesterday evening, creating a colossal column of smoke visible for 30 miles. One of my friends, seeing it from the freeway coming into town, described it as being of "Biblical proportions". My wife, also seeing it from the freeway, phoned to say that it looked like the whole downtown was burning.

Where exactly was the fire? At first, it was hard to tell. We don't have any local TV news here, and Detroit media does not like to be bothered to drive all the way out to Ann Arbor. I searched the FM and AM bands, but local radio stations (mostly just national feeds for Clear Channel) had nothing to say about it. The Ann Arbor News web site, as usual, didn't mention it until the next day. Eventually the Michigan Daily's web site had a small article about it.

What Ann Arbor needs is an aggressively updated local news web site. Unfortunately, there is literally no local media outlet with the interest and ability to create such a thing.

The fire destroyed the already partly demolished Technology Center (so renamed by some optimistic promoter in the 1980s), a shabby industrial complex, including what was once the truck garage for the Washtenaw County Road Commission. It's immediately west of downtown (i.e., on the side away from the university), separated from the central business district by an old railway embankment.

Until recently, the Technology Center complex provided cheap, centrally located space for many artist studios, the Performance Network theater, and various small businesses including Partners Press (printer of my last round of campaign brochures).

It was, in short, Ann Arbor's headquarters for the scruffy/hip creative community, or the struggling artist subculture, or whatever you want to call it. If you don't live here, you probably imagine that this sort of thing is what Ann Arbor is all about. But it coexisted uneasily with its increasingly upscale neighbors, some of whom complained about loud parties and piles of trash and people living there illegally. A few months ago, the city, citing code violations, evicted the last remaining tenants.

Some called this the end of the arts in Ann Arbor, since it's hard to imagine any artist who's not already wildly successful being in any position to rent any comparable space in this increasingly expensive and yuppified city.

One reason the Technology Center was a cheap place to rent was its location, right in the middle of the Allen Creek flood plain — indeed, crossed by the so-called "floodway" itself. I don't have the contour maps and rainstorm data, but as I understand it, a flood event that would inundate the whole place is statistically likely.

However, it is not legally impossible to build in the flood plain; it just takes lots of money. And so the Ann Arbor Y (the joint YMCA/YWCA, I believe), disliking their now-passé (and asbestos-laden) early-1960s building downtown, obtained the Technology Center property to build a new complex. Demolition had already started when the fire took place yesterday.

The fire burned through the night, but was pretty much out by today. Downtown Ann Arbor and the U of M Central Campus are still permeated by the smell of smoke.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, July 21, 2003, 1:40 pm

Security from political buttons? Famed Internet guru John Gilmore was ejected from a British Airways flight last Friday, for wearing a small button on his lapel with the words "SUSPECTED TERRORIST".

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Sunday, July 13, 2003, 6:00 pm

Hooray! I finally got the new version of The Political Graveyard (my political history and biography web site) completed and installed yesterday around 1pm.

The new version lists 119,675 U.S. politicians, judges, and diplomats, compared to 107,137 in the previous version — an increase of more than twelve thousand. And, of course, I added a lot of new information on people already listed.

Among the new features are more than fifty new categories of politicians by occupation or industry, to wit:

(Of course, these lists are very far from complete, and are probably not even statistically significant. However, over time, as more information is collected, I expect these numbers to grow.)

Another major advance: U.S. ambassadors and other diplomats are now listed, logically, on the page for the country to which they were posted. Things brings together in one place diplomatic lists for countries known historically by different names (like Siam and Thailand or Persia and Iran). It also places them on the same page with lists of U.S. politicians who were born, died, or buried in that country.

The international pages have been further improved with incomplete but extensive lists of past U.S. Consuls posted there — most of them from the World War I era. At one time, consulships were plum political appointments, and very often went to defeated congressmen and so forth. Further, now that I have pages for every country and territory in the world, including oceans and seas, I added links connecting adjoining areas, as I already had for counties in the U.S.

The footer of each page of the new version contains a copyright notice, with a link to Feist v. Rural Telephone (facts are not subject to copyright), and a Creative Commons license permitting others to re-use my original material, with attribution, non-commercially, without any further red tape.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Thursday, July 3, 2003, 1:58 pm

Ohio Elects A Canine Congressman. Congress has had Yellow Dogs, and Blue Dogs, so this new member should not surprise anyone.

Lest you think the picture is a joke, consider that the Congressional biography site takes photographic images very seriously. Correspondents of mine who offered images of past Members were rebuffed due to strict rules about the quality and provenance of any pictures to be displayed on the site.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, July 1, 2003, 12:03 pm

Visiting The Bug House. My nearly 5-year-old daughter loves the "dinosaur bones museum" at the University of Michigan. I told her that there were many other kinds of museums, "even a bug museum."

It was an offhand comment, but she remembered it. Some weeks later, she announced that she wanted to see the bug museum.

The Bug House, as it is actually called, was established in 1996 by the Michigan State University Department of Entomology; it's located in two rooms in the MSU Natural Science Building. We went up to East Lansing to see it yesterday.

Welcome to the Bug House where we showcase insects, some of earth's most numerous creatures. There are more kinds of beetles in Michigan than there are varieties of birds on earth. Insects range in size from moths as large as bats to springtails smaller than grains of sand. Their life spans can last a week to over twenty years. They live in pools of petroleum and in the brine of the Great Salt Lake. They survive the heat of Death Valley and the cold of the Antarctic coast. They are the stars of the Bug House.

The Bug House is plainly geared to school tour groups, but it is open to individuals and families on Mondays from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Unfortunately, the associated gift shop is not open during that time.

One room is lined with mounted displays of hundreds of different kinds of insects, spiders, and so on. One can't look at the many, many examples of Coleoptera without thinking of the famous observation, by British curmudgeon J. B. S. Haldane, that the Creator must have had "an inordinate fondness for beetles".

The main room also contains a working beehive, a handsome wooden structure with plexiglass sides and a passageway to the outdoors. The bees, in amazing numbers and density, were hard at work doing typical bee things. My daughter wanted to hear the bees as well as see them; a hatch was opened, and the buzzing of thousands of bees could be heard through a screened porthole. "They smell good, too," said our guide, but I did not perceive any distinctive odor.

The other room had about a dozen terrariums containing live bugs. One tank had dozens of hissing cockroaches, a harmless but huge and disgusting-looking species from Madagascar. Hissing cockroaches are frequently used in filmmaking — they're the fat, slimy-looking bugs in Men in Black, and at least one of the Indiana Jones movies.

Digression. I'm a little startled to find, via Google, that hissing cockroaches are described as "the best starter cockroach species" for someone who wants to have exotic cockroaches as pets. They're easier to care for than goldfish: cockroaches are almost indestructible, can survive radiation and freezing, and can go without food for three months.
A personal cockroach collection seems highly peculiar to me, but on the other hand, I'm the one who has archived and cataloged hundreds of Nigerian fraud email messages.

Around the ceiling of the Bug House are attractive, inflatable bug models, no doubt available during the day from the Gift Shop.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Sunday, June 29, 2003, 11:42 pm

A Blogger Comes To Visit. Last Wednesday, I had the opportunity to meet Rick Heller, a Massachusetts blogger who writes SmartGenes. He's a centrist, and given the polarization of political bloggers, he finds it a bit lonely in the middle of the road. Why there are few blogs written about politics from a centrist perspective is a question which remains unanswered.

Rick is a brilliant guy and had many interesting things to say; I wish I had let him get more than a few words in edgewise. He has now posted a very kind account of our meeting.

My fear that we'd spend the entire evening arguing about the University of Michigan admissions cases turned out to be completely unfounded: the topic didn't come up at all.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Friday, June 27, 2003, 2:32 pm

Thoughts on Thurmond. Slate magazine posted a brief item today, noting Strom Thurmond's death, and linking to four earlier articles about him — including the Jacob Weisberg March 2001 piece Why Strom Won't Die, which drew on the data I published in The Political Graveyard.

At first, Slate's obituary was titled "Good Riddance", but the editors must have thought better of it — a few minutes ago, it was changed to "The Passing Strom". During today's outcry over the title, and Strom's career, I wrote the following in the "Fray" reader comments section:

I can't help but agree that the "Good Riddance" headline was tasteless and over the top, even for someone with Strom's record as being, at times, the nation's leading spokesman of racism.
I'm not at ALL in sympathy with Strom politically (I'm a Democratic politico in Ann Arbor), but I must say, Strom did accomplish many good things in his long career. He was evidently less racist in word and deed than many other Southern politicians of his generation. His rigorous push to prosecute the perpetrators of a 1947 lynching is thought to have put an end to lynchings in South Carolina. He led the effort to abolish the poll tax in South Carolina. He fought and openly denounced the Ku Klux Klan. He quietly worked to pass compromise civil rights legislation in the 1950s (though he filibustered against a stronger law in the 1960s). And, of course, in 1971, he was the first South Carolina member of Congress to hire a black staff member.
What we hear about Strom, in retrospect, echoes what we heard about George Wallace, about J. William Fulbright, about Lyndon Johnson, and other sometime-opponents of civil rights who showed little evidence of deep-seated racism in private life. The electorate of the Southern states before about 1970 was militantly pro-segregation, and politicians who failed to signal their sympathy with those feelings were rejected at the ballot box. Had any of those figures expressed views then which would be even minimally acceptable today, they would have been discredited, defeated and forgotten, and a whole different and probably much more virulent group of Southern politicians would have taken their place.
I'm not saying that political morality is relative and all should now be forgiven. Indeed, the politicians who mouthed segregationist rhetoric in the 1960s surely made things worse. But we can't really damn Strom and his colleagues without an understanding that, arguably, they were doing their jobs, representing the constituency they had at the time. By focusing on the evil in Strom's soul, we tend to forget the pathology of mass hatred that infected much of the white South at the time.

Update. One Fray participant disputed the inclusion of Lyndon Johnson in the above, saying that he was always an advocate for civil rights. I'm dubious about that, but agreed that maybe I shouldn't have listed him as a "sometime opponent". Another interpreted my comments above as saying that Strom was "the best of a bad lot." In response, I wrote as follows:

By no means did I say that Strom was "the best", and I pointed out that he was, for a time, the most visible national proponent of racism and segregation. Many other Southern politicos managed to support Truman in 1948; Thurmond led the ticket for the opposition. And long afterward, he remained the standard bearer for resistance to change in the South. He didn't need to say a word; he had proven his loyalty to Jim Crow.
Nor do I entertain the thought that, during the decades up to 1965, he was privately or in any way an integrationist. Plainly, he accepted and enjoyed living in the segregated world. And his public statements during that time, even if not as virulent as others, helped to intensify Southern rage and to unleash acts of racist violence.
What redeems him, if at all, is that for him, segregationism did not equal demonic hatred. As much as South Carolina blacks may have been oppressed by the system he supported, some lives were surely saved by his hard line he took against the KKK and lynching. And his quick turnaround in 1971 (albeit without any public disavowal or apology, as Timothy Noah points out) helped signal to other white Southerners that it was time to forget about segregation, and maybe even prejudice.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, June 24, 2003, 5:54 am

Political Graveyard Testing. My political biography website, The Political Graveyard, is periodically re-generated from a database. Periodically, I say, but the last time was August 2002, so a new version is long overdue.

Finally, a test version of the new biographical files is online, via a raw directory of some 2700 alphabetical segments: http://potifos.com/TEST-VERSION/bio/

Please let me know if you find any programming bugs I need to fix before generating the final version.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Thursday, June 19, 2003, 10:19 am

Giant Microbes. Cute plush toys shaped like disease micoroorganisms: Giant Microbes! (Via Vituperation.com)

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Wednesday, June 18, 2003, 7:02 pm

Health care realities. In another forum, a discussion of Hillary Clinton's new book quickly got into the politics and economics of health care, including the alleged horrors of government involvement. I wrote the following, none of which should be news to anyone who follows this debate:

Just about every industrialized country has worked out a way to provide health care for everyone in a reasonable way.
Here in the US, we rely heavily on private markets to provide these services, even though in many ways the whole industry is the antithesis of an Adam-Smith-style utility-maximizing resource-optimizing free market. Decisionmakers don't bear the costs; price comparison is largely precluded; the intricacy of medical tech deprives most participants from having much accurate information at all, let alone perfect knowledge. And there's the intractable problem of "moral hazard", which is to say, that the people who need health insurance the most are the ones most eager to buy it.
And middle-class American consumers have a sense of entitlement, that they should have whatever procedure they think they need, regardless of what it costs the system.
So we have tinkered with our system in an effort to remedy perceived problems. All of these attempted solutions (Medicare, Medicaid, COBRA, etc.) have done some good; many of them have also created or worsened other problems. Our mixed system turns out to be considerably more expensive than government-run systems typical in Europe, or government-paid systems like Canada's.
Our 40-some million uninsured are one reason. We don't give them access to routine care, except at steep rates they usually can't afford or aren't willing to pay; yet when their situation deteriorates, we can't deprive them of extremely costly emergency care. What could have been taken care of with a routine doctor visit becomes tens of thousands of dollars in emergency surgery, and when the patient dies or goes bankrupt, everyone else in the system bears the cost. That's why comprehensively covering everyone is a lot cheaper than covering only 85%.
If it's cheaper, why don't we do it? Because we can't bear to redo the whole system. Creating a special program for the 15% (or whatever) uninsured might be a net savings for almost everyone, but it would cost scarce tax dollars. Worse, the interaction between the Last-15% health insurance program and all other forms of health insurance would be ruinous. It would end up with all the people with super-expensive conditions that private insurers didn't want to deal with. Marginal employers could drop their health insurance benefits, at least for the lowest paid and/or most unhealthy categories of employees, and leave them to the "free" public system.
Encouraging insurance plans to compete is another idea which sounds good in theory, but in practice the most straightforward way to make money is to have an insured base of young and healthy people. And this is not difficult to do. If competing plans offer different benefit structures — and it's hard to see how they could meaningfully compete if they didn't — the ones which appeal to the sickest people would go into a high cost death spiral.
Another problem with our system is that it relies almost exclusively on employers to provide health insurance to employed people and their families. In other words, instead of paying through our taxes, as most citizens of advanced countries do, we pay indirectly through higher costs of everything. Naturally, having to manage this complicates the financial life of every enterprise: a firm could be very good at making good widgets cheaply, yet be wiped out by rapidly increasing health insurance costs. In some industries, like steel, US companies say they are paying more for employee health insurance than foreign competitors are paying in taxes.
Hillary's plan was a complicated nightmare because it attempted to juggle and compromise among all of these considerations, to patch up the private insurance system with as little change as possible, to try to make it sorta work for everyone. Maybe it wouldn't have worked very well, but it probably would have ameliorated some of the worst problems.
In the future, as the medical industry steadily grabs more and more of our resources, as the cost of even the simplest drug or medical procedure is mercilessly accelerated, as high-minded professionalism is replaced by avarice, as the ranks of those without any health insurance grow by many more millions, we will come to either a radical break (root and branch reform) or a breakdown.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, June 10, 2003, 11:35 pm

Paducah Notes. I returned on Sunday from a week in Kentucky, a trip which took me to a high school graduation in Paducah (or, well, technically, in nearby Reidland). On Friday morning, though I was awake, I didn't notice the earthquake.

Paducah is an old Ohio River town in western Kentucky, across the river from Illinois. Everybody there seems to know all about the Flood of 1937; today downtown Paducah is separated from the river by a colossal flood wall, on which murals in a wide variety of styles have been painted.

Photographs of downtown Paducah during the 1937 flood show water up to the second story of downtown buildings, most of which still exist in good condition. Presumably after the flood waters receded, they were dried out and put back into service. See the National Trust's advice for treating flood-damaged older and historic buildings for a sobering reminder of what the flood clean-up must have been like.

Paducah sights you won't see in most places any more: ashtrays in the County Clerk's record vault, right by the old bound volumes of deeds and other records; a beverage vending machine in the public library, just a step away from the bookshelves. In the libraries and archives where I usually do research, sugary beverages and lighted cigarettes are not even allowed, let alone encouraged.

Among the special oddities of Paducah (though I didn't visit it on this trip) is the 1964-vintage City Hall, a copy of the Edward Durell Stone-designed U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India. As it turned out, the building was poorly adapted to Paducah's climate. The awkwardly angled entrance doors are a victory of geometry over utility.

From a Jewish history perspective, Paducah was one of the cities affected by Gen. Grant's infamous General Orders No. 11, in 1862, which expelled all Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi:

...Grant's order was rapidly enforced. At Paducah, Ky., 30 Jewish families were removed. That removal affected 11 businesses and shops. At least two of those removed were Union Army veterans. In one incident, Jews were so rushed as they were being forced onto a riverboat departing for Cincinnati that someone threw a baby, almost forgotten in the wake of confusion from the general's order, aboard the vessel just before the vessel sailed. More than 1,000 Jews were forcibly removed from Memphis, many having first had their personal possessions confiscated. Only two elderly Jewish women were left behind in the care of Christian neighbors.

The order was eventually countermanded by President Lincoln.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, May 27, 2003, 4:45 pm

Butterflies Again. I wrote the following in the comments to a Jane Galt posting. Not that she brought up the 2000 election in Florida, and the "butterfly ballot," but the issue came up among the commenters.

Pictures of the butterfly ballot don't really do it justice. The problem with the old punch card voting stations is that the punch card is in a significantly different plane, behind the printed ballot. If you are taller or shorter than average, looking at the ballot presentation from the "wrong" angle, the holes do not line up with the names at all.
The non-butterfly version (with the names all on one side) is easier to figure out, since (a) there is usually more space between the names, and (b) there is an easy one-to-one correspondence of names to holes. Alternating the positions of the names, as the butterfly ballot does, makes it a good deal more challenging to locate the correct hole for a given name. Due to parallax and the dense use of every hole, each name lines up "better" with the "wrong" hole above or below it.
A careful person might pull out the punch card after voting and compare the numbers by the punched holes with the numbers listed with each candidate on the ballot, but not everybody has time or patience for that — especially in a presidential election with dozens of offices on the ballot, and a long line of people waiting to vote behind you.
Here in outstate Michigan, though we never had the butterfly ballot layout to my knowledge, we used punch cards for voting since the early 1970s. Apart from the awkwardness of the voting itself, it worked extremely well.
I personally went through several recounts involving punch card precincts: there was hardly ever more than one vote changed from the first count. Punch card results came to be regarded as being much more solid and reliable (and less subject to being changed in a recount) than results from traditional lever-handle voting machines, or worse yet, paper ballots (subject to varying interpretations of what different marks meant).
At first we were stunned that Florida had so much trouble with punch cards in 2000. I don't remember seeing "dimpled chads" or "pregnant chads" in any recount I was involved in. Punch cards were almost 100% binary: either the hole was punched out, or it was not, very few if any ambiguous cases.
Finally, it was disclosed that many of the Florida voting devices were packed full of old chads due to never being emptied. That would have been very unlikely in Michigan, where emptying out of every machine is part of the required legal process for opening and closing the precinct. I did this myself when I worked as an election inspector.
I suppose Florida's damp climate and perhaps cheap punch cards could have contributed, too.
Punch cards now stand discredited as a voting system. That is somewhat unfair. But punch card balloting, besides being a quaint old technology, has one colossal flaw: the ballots have to brought to a central counting center for processing — a very bad idea that makes the process vulnerable to fraud.
Much better to have the counting happen in the precinct, where it is less prone to manipulation, and more likely to be monitored by independent observers. Newer voting systems usually do this right — but you still have to worry about the software.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, May 27, 2003, 11:59 am

Changing the tone? This candid quote comes from the Denver Post:

"We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals - and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship," said Grover Norquist, a leading Republican strategist, who heads a group called Americans for Tax Reform.
"Bipartisanship is another name for date rape," Norquist, a onetime adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said, citing an axiom of House conservatives.

Certainly that tone-changing effort has succeeded in Michigan.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, May 19, 2003, 11:04 pm

Suicide Bombings and Grim Portents. Today, Atrios posted a rare (for him) item about the Middle East. Trying to put aside the historical arguments, he asks his readers to comment:

The point is, I'm asking to evaluate the success of the Sharon govermnent in purely utilitarian terms from the point of view of Israelis. My larger point is that Barak's attempts to negotiate and make nice eventually led to a new wave of suicide bombings, and no one had problems linking cause and effect there. Sharon's tough approach has led to multiple waves of suicide bombings.

Naturally, there were over a hundred comments, raising all the myriad issues he had wanted to avoid.

I did post to that thread, and tried to answer the question that was posed. The following is a somewhat longer version of what I wrote.

Unfortunately, it isn't at all possible to compare Barak and Sharon on an economist's all-other-things-being-equal basis, calculating bombings or deaths per year on either side, because all things are NOT equal for reasons that are not directly attributable to either man's specific policies. Things have changed over the last few years, particularly with the growing frequency and effectiveness of suicide bombings worldwide.

People generally give too much credence to religious fervor, individualized rage, or poverty/desperation as factors motivating suicide bombing. Rather, suicide bombing is a calculated, rational, political and military tactic, and unfortunately a very successful one.

Preparing and placing suicide bombers in more than trivial numbers requires an organizational infrastructure. The Israelis believe, with plenty of reason, that military control over the occupied territories enables them to disrupt that infrastructure and limit the number of successful suicide bombings (even as it deepens the anger which allows Hamas to recruit more bombers).

Much as I detest Ariel Sharon, I'm sure he's right in the short run about this. If the IDF were to withdraw tomorrow morning from even just the Palestinian areas of the West Bank, the number of suicide bombings would dramatically increase; probably tens of thousands of Israelis would die in a week, proportionately the equivalent of a World Trade Center-sized disaster in every sizeable U.S. city, all at the same time.

Dismantling the settlements in the occupied territories, which I have always advocated (but which Israel lacks the political will to do, to say the least) would make zero difference to Hamas. Moreover, dismantling the settlements amidst an inevitable onslaught of bombings would be effectively impossible both logistically and politically.

The prospects for the whole region are extremely bleak. Hamas has won: Israelis will be terrorized, and Palestinians will be stateless and oppressed, indefinitely if not forever. Violence and misery have been made permanent. There is literally no way out of this.

Postscript: What about the U.S.? Every terror technique developed to use against Israel eventually gets exported to the rest of the world, including the United States. But the characteristics of the U.S. complicate this simple extrapolation.

First, the use of suicide bombing as a routine technique is at least partly a response to widespread recognition (born of bitter experience) that unattended back packs or boxes may contain explosive devices. Bluntly, we in America are such soft targets that resort to suicide bombing is hardly necessary.

Second, we are geographically somewhat isolated from the populations who are angry enough to generate suicide bombers, and cultural norms here don't tend to promote an ideal of martyrdom. On the other hand, these things can change rapidly. Cultural approval of (a "right" to) suicide has been on the upswing in recent years, and that is one important element. And murder-suicide already accounts for a lot of our homicide deaths.

Third, as discussed in the current Atlantic Monthly (a not-online article titled "The Logic of Suicide Terrorism") the whole point of these bombings is to shrink social space, to make people stay home behind locked doors, unwilling to congregate. Unfortunately, Americans have gone a long way in this direction already without needing the impetus of maliciously placed explosives — see Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone for endless documentation on this point.

Suicide bombs on buses and street corners are a potent threat only to residents of old-style cities, typical overseas, but a dwindling minority in increasingly suburban, low-density, car-oriented America. A concerted campaign of suicide terrorism, the kind which has emptied Israel's cafes and public squares, would be little direct threat to the typical suburban middle-class American, who rarely uses public transportation or visits a traditional downtown.

In other words, the impact of terrorist bombings in America would be, specifically, to kill us city dwellers, to undermine urban community, to make the surviving alternatives to suburbia untenable, and to promote much more urban sprawl.

It's a gloomy picture.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Saturday, May 17, 2003, 5:51 pm

Blaine and Conkling. I recently received a prepublication copy of Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield, by Kenneth Ackerman. It's a fascinating story, even for those who don't share my deep interest in 19th century politics.

The opening section was news to me: I didn't realize that the feud between Roscoe Conkling (U.S. Senator, New York Republican boss) and James G. Blaine (Maine Republican, Speaker of the U.S. House, Secretary of State, and 1884 Republican nominee for president) went all the way back to a debate over a House bill in April 1866. Ackerman vividly describes the climax as follows:

But Blaine wasn't finished yet. The final broadside from Conkling — its arrogance and disdain — had caused him to lose whatever restraint he might have shown a moment before. In his anger, Blaine seemed to forget who and where he was: a U.S. congressman speaking in formal public session. All he saw, it seemed, was a conceited bully needing to be knocked down.
If any doubts remained about James Blaine's precise feelings toward his New York colleague, he removed them now.
"As for the gentleman's cruel sarcasm," — Blaine [to] the galleries, waving dismissively at his opponent — "I hope he will not be too severe. The contempt of that large-minded gentleman is so wilting; his haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, supereminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut has been so crushing to myself and all members of this House that I know it was an act of the greatest temerity for me to venture upon a controversy with him."
Blaine felt his oratorical juices flowing... He seized on the recent newspaper article by Theodore Tilton comparing the "strong, positive" Roscoe Conkling with the late Henry Winter Davis [a Civil War congressman and political hero], and turned it to ridicule. "The gentleman [Conkling] took it seriously, and it has given his strut additionl pomposity. The resemblance is great. It is striking. Hyperion to a satyr, Thersites to Hercules, mud to marble, dunghill to diamond, a singed cat to a Bengal tiger, a whining puppy to a roaring lion. Shade of the mighty Davis? Forgive the almost profanation of that jocose satire!"
Blaine sat down. There was silence, except for an embarrassed laugh or two that resounded in the chamber. Newsmen wrote furiously.
Today you can search the Congressionl Record and Globe through two hundred years of debate and never see a member of Congress insult a colleague so directly, brutally, and articulately, on the record, in public, looking directly at him across the room, as Blaine did to Conkling that day. It was one of the best speeches of Blaine's life — utterly spontaneous, memorably colorful, and profoundly destructive.
After the famous outburst, any hope of reconciliation between Conkling and Blaine disappeared. Bruises hardened into scars....

Conkling and Blaine differed little on the issues of the day, but their feud divided the 1870s and 1880s Republican Party into two camps, the "Stalwarts" and the "Half-Breeds." Both were avid upholders of the "spoils system" of awarding government jobs to loyal party workers, but Conkling, who defended President Grant even through the corruption scandals of his administration, was more outspoken against the civil service reforms which were proposed during the Hayes Administration:

Conkling, speaking to the [1877] annual New York State Republican Convention in Utica, lashed out against Hayes' "snivel service" reformers, calling them "the man-milliners, the dillettanti, and carpet-knights of politics." He said: "When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he was unconscious of the then undeveloped capabilities and uses of the word 'reform.'"

(Note that the above quotes are from my prepublication copy and are subject to correction in the final version.)

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, May 5, 2003, 12:45 pm

Mr. Morality. Bill Bennett's gambling losses are in the news lately, and the commentators have been busy. Michael Kinsley in Slate ("Bill Bennett's Bad Bet") writes that:

If a hypocrite is a person who says one thing and does another, the problem with Bennett is what he says—not (as far as we know) what he does. Bennett can't plead liberty now because opposing libertarianism is what his sundry crusades are all about.

But there is something missing here. It's easy to find fault with Bill Bennett as an anti-libertarian who uses libertarian arguments (and lies) when caught. But only the most dogmatic libertarians use the "if it harms none" standard as the sole yardstick of behavior.

Growing up in a Michigan university town, I knew little of gambling but rumors and portrayals in the media. But my wife is from Northern Kentucky; her mother was from Newport (Cincinnati's vice district then), and her father grew up next to the Latonia racetrack. Every male ancestor, on both sides, was a problem gambler who lost money his family needed. Gambling, and the harm it caused, was ubiquitous.

Bennett himself commented on the role that celebrities play as role models; behavior which may be a harmless diversion for a big star could be catastrophic when copied by millions of others. The gambling lifestyle (and contributing to the prosperity of casinos) is considerably worse as a model than, say, monogamous homosexuality.

I found a good exposition in this comment (by "BeingFrank") in Slate's Fray comments section:

Yes, gambling is legal in certain places. But are "legal" and "moral" synonymous? After all, adultery is legal almost anywhere in America, but there are very few who would argue that it is moral.
The question of the morality of gambling is not an easy one, though. For instance, if, as Bennett claims, he only gambles what he can afford, then where is the harm, and if there is no harm, can it be an immoral act? That's a dangerously relative standard, since it means that gambling is wrong for some and right for others, and Bennett himself has inveighed against moral relativism.
The issue of gambling reaches deeper than simply the economic harm that can come from a compulsive habit. It has to do with the motives for gambling, and the attitudes that it rewards and promotes.
What is the root attraction of gambling? It is, quite simply, something for nothing. The gambler hopes that by taking a risk, he will receive a reward that is out of proportion to the effort which he has expended. He may argue that by taking a risk, he deserves the possible reward, but the transaction is hardly equal. If the gambler wins, he has profvided nothing of value in return for his gain, and if he loses, he takes away nothing of value, other than an imperfectly learned lesson. This hope of gain without effort or exchange of value is greed, and is the root of dishonesty.
The commercial gambling establishments act immorally by promising something for nothing, even though their whole business model is based on breaking that promise. The gambler realizes that this is a lie, but is induced to deny it by the greed which the gambling establishments appeal to.
Further, gambling rewards the cheater. It appeals to those with an impaired moral sense by promising something for nothing, and then rewards those who are actively dishonest by giving it to them.
Essentially, gambling is a practice which, while not immoral on its face, is inescapably bound to immoral impulses, and promotes and strengthens those impulses.

Bill Bennett's defenders are also defending casino gambling as harmless fun. Whether and under what limitations it should be legal is a policy question; but that supposed upholders of morality would paint it as a positive good is appalling.

The unhappy trend of recent years is to make gambling ever more widespread and available. Fiscal pressures on state and local governments, deliberately engineered by the Bush Administration, are prompting more states — currently Pennsylvania — to fall to legalized casino gambling.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Sunday, May 4, 2003, 4:59 pm

Remembering May 4, 1970. Just the other day, I heard the old 1970 hippie anthem on the radio, and it all came back:

Did you pay your dues?
Did you read the news?
This morning, when the paper landed in your yard
Do you know their names?

Yes, my aged brain replied instantly, I know their names.

Allison Krause. Bill Schroeder. Sandy Lee Scheuer. Jeffrey Miller.

Probably some of y'all, of a certain age, know those names, too. Solid Midwestern German-American names, all of them (Miller usually comes from Mueller). Clean, normal college kids, not druggies or radical agitators, who for various reasons happened to be at an antiwar demonstration when the Ohio National Guard opened fire.

It's a funny kind of fame that comes from dying under those circumstances. Another kid was crippled that day, but he lived, and I don't know his name.

I was a high school freshman then, but I had already been to antiwar rallies. I don't even want to think about the mood of May 1970, the rage and fear and excitement of that time, the horrible sense that the era of "sharing and laughing" (as in the lyrics of that same song) was turning to bullets and blood. Fortunately, we were wrong about that.

Some think the "Sixties" (the concept, not the numerical decade) ended that day. I would put it a bit later, maybe in 1972 or 1973, but Michigan State was always a step behind the times. The last big antiwar demonstration in East Lansing happened in mid-May 1972; ours was the only major campus to decide that the mining of Haiphong Harbor was worth demonstrating against.

We have all come a long way in a third of a century. But May 4 always stirs up the old memories.

(I posted a similar text to an email list exactly one year ago.)

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, April 29, 2003, 11:21 am

Michigan Democrats back down. The Michigan Democratic State Central Committee, meeting in Belleville on Saturday April 26, voted to set the date of the presidential nominating caucus for February 7, 2004, formally abandoning the move to set the caucus for the same day as the New Hampshire primary.

I wasn't able to attend the meeting, but I will provide more details when I get a copy of the proposal.

U.S. Senator Carl Levin and others have argued for years that Michigan should challenge New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation supremacy by scheduling the caucus for the same date as the New Hampshire primary. The party's national office fought back, threatening to penalize the state (1) by refusing to seat half of its delegates at the national party convention, and (2) by withholding campaign funds.

The first threat is widely dismissed here, because no one expects the nomination to still be at issue by the time of the national convention. In other words, an early impact on the "spin" of the presidential race is likely to be more critical than a hundred or so votes on the convention floor. Further, if Michigan actually went ahead and smashed the New Hampshire monopoly, it would all be ancient history by the summer; if the penalty was imposed, it could be challenged and reversed in a floor vote at the convention.

On the other hand, if the penalty were made to stick, about a hundred party insiders would lose their convention credentials -- presumably including quite a few members of the state central committee who voted on the question Saturday.

The second threat carried more weight in 2000: then-US-Rep. Debbie Stabenow was running for U.S. Senator then, and she feared a loss of national party money would endanger her bid; her supporters vigorously opposed doing anything with the caucuses which would upset the national party.

In 2004, Michigan will have no headline statewide races except president, so the threat to withhold national party campaign funds is less potent. However, there are a couple of districts where Democratic challengers to Republican incumbents (specifically Joe Knollenberg and Thaddeus McCotter) might need national party funds.

Some thought that an early-date Michigan caucus would provide a boost to the presidential hopes of Dick Gephardt. Though Carl Levin has consistently advocated an earlier date across numerous election cycles, the Gephardt factor may have lent steam to the effort this time. But that doesn't mean supporters of other presidential candidates were opposed -- indeed, what Michigander could really argue with the benefit of seizing more influence for the state?

However, on April 15, the state AFL-CIO voted against supporting the early date, thus dooming the effort. At this writing, I'm not sure specifically why that happened.

The state party committee didn't even vote on the January date, but adopted instead the February 7 compromise.

(Also posted to Political State Report.)

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, April 22, 2003, 1:35 pm

The Ville du Havre. Wanting more information about the death of New York Court of Appeals Judge and former Congressman Rufus W. Peckham (1809-1873), who died in a mishap at sea on November 22, 1873, I sought an obituary in the New York Times (on microfilm).

I started with the date of death and scanned the news columns day after day. There were reports of marine disasters almost every day, but no mention of Peckham.

Then, finally, in the paper published ten days after the event, I found the news of the sinking of the Ville du Havre. It was apparently one of the largest and most advanced steamers of its day; the coverage and commentary seems an ironic foreshadowing of the sinking of the Titanic nearly 30 years later.

From the New York Times, December 2, 1873, front page, left column (paragraph breaks added):

AN OCEAN DISASTER

THE VILLE DU HAVRE SUNK--
OVER TWO HUNDRED LIVES LOST

The loss of the Ville du Havre is one of those dreadful accidents incidental to sea voyages which, by the magnitude of the calamity, throws a gloom over the public of two continents. At London, at Paris, and New-York the news was received almost simultaneously, and everywhere with surprise and a feeling akin to horror.
It was an accident which seems to discredit the statement often made that ocean traveling may be robbed of its perils by proper precautions on the part of ship-owners and navigators. The lost steamer was one of the best vessels afloat. She had been fitted with all the latest improvements in marine engineering, both for speed and safety; in construction and equipment, everything had been done for her which ingenuity could suggest; her accommodations for the comfort of her passengers were of the most complete and costly character, and an able and experienced navigator commanded the vessel, with a crew of picked men under him.
Nothwithstanding this, an ordinary sailing vessel, coming down in the dead of night, strikes the ponderous steamer amidships, and sends her almost instantly to the bottom, with four-fifths of her living freight.
The place of this accident, according to the latest accounts, would appear to be as nearly in mid-ocean, the fog which the Ville du Havre had encountered having doubtless delayed her, as she left this port on the 15th of November, and the collision occurred on the 23d or 22d. The weather at the time of the disaster was clear, and the steamer had her lights up; and the fact that a large number of the officers and crew were saved goes to prove that they were then on watch. Under these circumstances, the cause of the collision seems a mystery.
Its fatal effect is, unhappily, too clear. The Loch Earn was a vessel of 1,200 tons burden. She undoubtedly was going before the wind with all canvas set, and the crash of the collision must have been terrific. As the main and mizzen masts of the steamer fell a few minutes after the crash, it is plain that all the supports of the mainmast had been wrenched to pieces. No element of horror seems wanting to the scene. A heavy sea running, a bitterly cold Winter night, falling masts, boats crushed with their loads of frantic men and women, a vessel rapidly settling in mid-ocean--this seems enough to appal the most courageous.
The Captain and crew of the ill-fated steamer, and that of the Loch Earn, appear to have done all that brave men could do to save the passengers. There is some doubt about the degree of damage sustained by the latter vessel, as also of the number of survivors, still aboard. The earlier dispatches say she put back to Queenstown, and was dangerously injured; also, that she transferred to the Trimountain all but three of the rescued passengers. Later dispatches state that she continued on her voyage to this port, and was subsequently spoken, with ten of them on board.
It is possible that some might have been picked up after the Trimoutain left the scene; at least it may be hoped that later advices will bring some information of this character, and thus tend to mitigate, if ever so slightly, the horrors of this catastrophe.

See the December 2 and succeeding issues of the NYT (on microfilm at your local research library) for column-feet of additional details.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, March 31, 2003, 4:39 pm

Firewalls now illegal here? A new Michigan law, enacted during last year's lame duck session, takes effect today. Among the features of our new "super-DMCA" — similar bills, sponsored by the MPAA, are pending in many other states — are sweeping new restrictions on telecommunications.

Public Act 672 of 2002, besides amending various other criminal code provisions, purports to "update" prohibitions on theft of cable and telephone service. But the law as written would ban many widely used computer security measures.

The language is extremely broad: starting today, it's a felony to "assemble, develop, manufacture, possess, deliver, offer to deliver, or advertise" any device which are intended to, among other things, conceal the origin or destination of a communication, even without any intent to defraud anyone. That covers firewalls, encryption, steganography, remailers, NAT, tunnels, Kerberos, SSH, IPSec, pretty much the gamut of secure communications.

Act 672 (the DMCA part) amends three sections of the Michigan penal code: 750.219a, 750.540c, and 750.540h.

Penalties under the law range from 93 days to ten years in prison. Violation of the section which appears to ban most encryption technology is a felony punishable by four years in prison, or a fine of up to $2,000.

In his blog, Freedom To Tinker, Princeton University computer science professor Edward W. Felton describes the potential impact of similar legislation introduced in other states:

Here is one example of the far-reaching harmful effects of these bills. Both bills would flatly ban the possession, sale, or use of technologies that "conceal from a communication service provider ... the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication". Your ISP is a communication service provider, so anything that concealed the origin or destination of any communication from your ISP would be illegal -- with no exceptions.
If you send or receive your email via an encrypted connection, you're in violation, because the "To" and "From" lines of the emails are concealed from your ISP by encryption. (The encryption conceals the destinations of outgoing messages, and the sources of incoming messages.)
Worse yet, Network Address Translation (NAT), a technology widely used for enterprise security, operates by translating the "from" and "to" fields of Internet packets, thereby concealing the source or destination of each packet, and hence violating these bills. Most security "firewalls" use NAT, so if you use a firewall, you're in violation.
If you have a home DSL router, or if you use the "Internet Connection Sharing" feature of your favorite operating system product, you're in violation because these connection sharing technologies use NAT. Most operating system products (including every version of Windows introduced in the last five years, and virtually all versions of Linux) would also apparently be banned, because they support connection sharing via NAT.
And this is just one example of the problems with these bills. Yikes.

(Another incidental outrage in this little-examined bill: it doubles the criminal penalty for unmarried cohabitation. Michigan is one of the few states which still prohibits couples from living together without being married; the Legislature affirmatively decided to continue and even strengthen this law.)

Some other items on the spread of super-DMCA laws at the state level -- currently breaking news in legislatures all over the country:

(I posted a similar text to Political State Report).

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, March 24, 2003, 4:22 pm

How Caroline Got Embedded. Caroline Glick, a war reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times and Jerusalem Post, tells the story of getting press credentials in Kuwait:

I read on the Internet that the Kuwaitis issued a statement telling the international press corps in Kuwait that anyone transmitting reports to the Israeli media would face criminal prosecution.
I began to panic. I was about to board a flight to Kuwait where my primary objective would be to transmit reports of the war to the Israeli media....
On the face of it, the Kuwaitis could have easily passed over my name and not bothered with me. I am an American citizen. I applied for my Kuwaiti visa with a letter of accreditation from the Chicago Sun-Times. For the Kuwaitis to go after me they would have to really want to.
On Monday, after the cab ride from the Crowne Plaza where I was staying by the airport, to the Kuwait Hilton on the seacoast, I realized just how determined the Kuwaitis were.

Read the rest here (free registration required).

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, March 24, 2003, 2:50 pm

Churchill and Toy Theaters. Recently, the following comment about Winston Churchill's oratory was posted on a historic preservation email group:

Actually W.C. was a great kid who apparently never grew up verbally. A few years ago, I curated an exhibit of Victorian Toy Theatres, the miniature paper and wood table-model theatres for which many famous plays were written or condensed for use by the children and the childlike. During Victorian times, especially in England, they were the popular historic equivalent of TV today, — a box on a table with dramatic action happening inside for the amusement of people gathered around watching in the living room after supper. Anyway, Winny Churchill was a extremely avid toy theatre aficionado as a youth, and when you read the play scripts published for those plays that he performed, you will find phrase after phrase of famous lines used in his public speeches during his famous political career. It is easy to document. I guess it was just another example of the old English adage that all the world is a stage. Once you read the old plays, his most famous speeches begin to sound trite, just simple recitations of exciting old melodramas.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, March 24, 2003, 2:23 pm

The World, Upside-Down. Another dispatch from Ken Parker, retired Arkansas newspaperman:

I just received this from a friend in Switzerland:
You know the world's gone mad when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the United States of arrogance, and the Germans don't want to go to war.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Thursday, February 27, 2003, 5:05 pm

Ink breeds ink. Earlier, I marveled at a New York Times story which mentioned me in connection with my Nigerian Fraud Email Gallery As often happens, press coverage leads to more press coverage.

A Detroit Free Press columnist, Susan Ager, saw the Times story and called me. Today, a very flattering column appeared: Web master helps squash a cyberscam:

Kestenbaum, who is 47, created the site after a computer-savvy friend claimed never to have seen the come-on. "I was astonished. I'm kind of an electronic pack-rat, saving every e-mail I get in various folders, including the spam. So I said, Gee, I've got a lot I can share."
Now he maintains the site, wearily, as a sort of public service.
"It's a big world, and there's lots of gullible people out there," he says from his home in Ann Arbor, where he and his wife share five working computers (and two defunct ones in the basement). "We've gotten to the point in the U.S. where this Nigerian scam is a joke. But in Malaysia, and Bosnia and Russia, where people are just now getting into e-mail, it's still a big risk."
His site gets about 700 hits per day. People use the Google.com search engine to see if an African correspondent is legit, then find the name only on Kestenbaum's site, which is wallpapered with FRAUD! in big green letters.

It's interesting to see that the Detroit Free Press apparently doesn't yet recognize "email" and "webmaster" as legitimate words; no doubt the newspaper's official style guide requires editors to break them up with a hyphen in one case and a space in the other.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, February 24, 2003, 9:59 pm

Squandered. From an editorial in the current issue of the Jewish Forward newspaper:

Last Saturday, the world witnessed what was probably the largest mass protest in modern history. Between 6 million and 10 million people turned out on the streets of some 600 cities in 60 countries around the globe, united by a single, passionate plea: that President Bush not plunge the world into war.
Watching the protests unfold around the world, it was hard not to think of September 11, 2001, of the monstrous terrorist attacks unleashed on America that day and the mass outpouring of worldwide sympathy that followed — and of the breathtaking speed with which that sympathy has been squandered by the clumsy arrogance of this administration.
In the space of less than 18 months, America has been transformed in the eyes of the world from the embodiment of human freedom and world order into the greatest symbolic threat to that world order. Striving to lead the free world, we have instead become objects of fear and anger. In our zeal to rally the world against Saddam Hussein and his poisons we have achieved the very opposite: Our nation perversely finds itself isolated and reviled while the Butcher of Baghdad laughs in his lair.

The previous Bush Administration laid a careful foundation for war with Iraq, consulting repeatedly with allies and stitching together a massive international coalition. The current Bush Administration has re-assembled much of the same foreign policy talent, yet somehow it is unable or unwilling to repeat this diplomatic accomplishment.

This demonstrates, I think, the critical role of leadership from the top. It's not enough to have good advisors. George W. Bush is already a failure as president because his smirking, insouciant, screw-you style has become the official style of the United States government.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Friday, February 21, 2003, 4:40 pm

Judicial Elections. One of the less heralded glories of the American political system is the breadth of direct participation in elective politics. Other countries may have much higher voter turnouts than we do, as a percentage of the population, but I seriously doubt that any country in the history of the planet has ever had as many candidates and officeholders as we do. Counting federal, state, county, city, town, village, school district, and all the rest, there are an estimated half a million elected positions in this country. Here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, my personal vote helps fill over a hundred elected positions, including legislators, judges, university trustees, the county drain commissioner, and on and on.

From a civics-textbook standpoint, this rich smorgasbord of electoral choices is not necessarily a good thing. The multiplication of elective offices splinters accountability, leaving the voters with no one to blame for problems. Holders of important but little-understood positions may get endlessly re-elected on the strength of a familiar name despite poor performance. Voters have limited time and attention to devote to politics, and a bedsheet ballot covered in fine print wastes their patience and can frustrate the expression of political will.

Nowhere is the quandary sharper than in the case of judicial elections. We give judges enormous power in our system, and voters are reluctant to relinquish the power to elect them. Yet the problems of an elected judiciary are obvious and widely deplored.

Slight digression: one tiny little anecdote which illustrates the problem. I remember a race for a seat on the state Court of Appeals, our intermediate appellate court, between two candidates who were about equally matched.
I mean, not that they were equally qualified, since most voters had no idea about their qualifications, or that they had about equal campaign spending, since the district was so vast (one-third of Michigan) that the candidates' campaigns made almost no difference. I mean that they had about equally appealing names.
In punch card precincts in those days, judicial candidates were rotated one position per precinct. In a two way race like this one, that meant the ballot in Precinct 1 would list Candidate A first, then Candidate B. In Precinct 2, Candidate B would be first, then Candidate A. And so on. In other words, Candidate A was listed first in the odd-numbered precincts, and Candidate B was listed first in the even-numbered precincts.
Guess what? In my then-hometown that year, Candidate A won all of the odd-numbered precincts, and Candidate B won most of the even-numbered precincts. Ballot order, for what little it's worth in a two-way race, was strong enough to determine the outcome in most precincts, because there was so little else to go on.

Michigan has managed a kind of informal compromise that blunts the impact of elections on the judiciary. Incumbent judges are designated as such on the ballot (a notation which is a powerful draw for votes) and therefore rarely lose elections. But all judicial vacancies are filled by the governor until the next election, and the appointed incumbents get the ballot designation too. I don't know the current number, but at one point about 70% of the judges in Michigan had originally been appointed to the bench. So, though technically we have an elected judiciary, most people enter it by virtue of appointment.

Not satisfied with that level of protection, the judges' association lobbied for, and got, even more protection — a law that segregates incumbent judges running for re-election from any "open seats" that may occur. For example, if a judicial circuit has four seats open, with incumbents seeking re-election to three of those seats, the open seat is voted on separately. Meanwhile the three incumbents coast to re-election practically unopposed, without having to worry about the crowd of contenders for the open position.

Now, I learn from The LitiGator (who links to a Brian Dickerson column in the Detroit Free Press), that legislation has been introduced to make EVERY judgeship a separate electoral "slot", ending the "vote for four" or "vote for twelve" scrambles. This will make it possible for a challenger to run against a specific incumbent judge rather than take on the whole field. LitiGator endorses this, pointing out that it will make it easier to remove incompetent judges. Indeed, the principle of separate one-on-one races (rarely used in Michigan elections for multiple seats) is very appealing, especially in contrast with the sleazy "incumbents run separately from open seats" arrangement. This should have been enacted decades ago.

What makes me hesitate now is the likely motivation behind this proposal. The target is not really the incompetent judges as such, but black circuit judges in Wayne County, and any future judges appointed by our new Democratic governor in Republican counties.

Until a few years ago, felony criminal cases arising in the City of Detroit were heard by Detroit Recorder's Court. The judges of Recorder's Court were elected from Detroit, so unsurprisingly, most of them were African-American. Then Detroit Recorder's Court was abolished — or rather, it was merged with Wayne County Circuit Court. The Recorder's Court judges became Circuit Court judges, and have to run for re-election in Wayne County as a whole, which is predominantly white.

I'm not close enough to the Wayne County legal system to know whether and how many of the current circuit court judges ought to be defeated for poor performance. I hope the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press will identify at least the worst cases and support their challengers. But politically I expect that those judges who will be most vulnerable to challenge under the proposed single-seat election system will be specifically the former Recorder's judges, especially those with obviously African-American names — regardless of performance, philosophy, or any other factor.

A similar impact is likely to be seen on Gov. Granholm's appointees in large (multi-judge) Republican counties like Kent or Oakland. New judges of Democratic background, instead of joining forces with the other incumbents as part of a team, will be singled out and probably picked off by well-funded Republican challengers.

I suppose it's not too much to ask of an elected official that they can get more votes than a challenger, running head-to-head. Still, it inevitably means that judges will be more rather than less politicized.

In the old days, up through the 1930s, judicial elections used to be partisan. This is generally regarded as being a really bad idea and associated with corruption. But party labels at least gave voters some kind of clue about what was going on, and afforded at least a partisan assurance of the quality of the candidates. Partisan elections also tend to blunt ethnic and racial divisions, since parties like to create a "balanced ticket," and party loyalty crosscuts ethnic loyalty.

Taking away the party labels left little for voters to go on but incumbency designation and name. (Past Michigan elections have shown conclusively that Irish names do best, especially Fitzgerald and Kavanagh/Cavanaugh; Hispanic names do the worst.)

The Michigan Supreme Court is an awkward survival of the partisan-judge era. The candidates are nominated by state party conventions, but then pretend to be "nonpartisan" for the election. No party labels appear on the ballot. It's hard to discuss this system and its pernicious effects without rolling your eyes.

So here's a reform I'd like to see that would really shake things up. It would take an initiative petition because the Legislature wouldn't touch it. Call it "truth in voting" or some such: if a candidate is nominated at a party convention, they would be required to carry a party label on the ballot.

Maybe that would mean partisan elections for State Supreme Court. Fine, they are already partisan elections. But if open on-the-ballot partisanship is too horrible to contemplate (i.e., Democrats would win), then maybe Supreme Court candidates could be nominated in nonpartisan primaries like other judges. Yikes, cry the power brokers, that would open the high court to affluent self-starter candidates.

The fact that slight little changes in the election procedures make huge differences in the outcome just reveals how broken the whole system is. Judges really shouldn't be elected, because most voters don't have the time or inclination to evaluate the candidates, and because it leads to a deeply politicized judiciary. Let the Governor, whoever he or she is, pick the judges and be accountable for their quality.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Thursday, February 20, 2003, 1:08 am

Car Accidents and No-Fault Insurance. A friend of mine was involved in an automobile accident recently — no injuries, but extensive damage to both cars. The specific circumstances of this accident are under discussion in a local online conferencing system.

Normally, in Michigan, each party's injuries or damage are covered by his or her own insurance company, regardless of who's at fault.

In the course of the discussion, another friend of mine said she would prefer to be compensated by the at-fault driver's insurance, and characterized Michigan's system as "whacked". I responded as follows:

No, the system is not "whacked". The problem is that there are a LOT of car accidents, they happen all the time and are not going away. Most of them don't amount to all that much money.
The old system required legalistic finding of fault in each and every case. Every time an accident happened, we brought in the lawyers and the judges and the bailiffs and the whole rigamarole, and spent an enormous amount of public and private resources in an adversarial process of figuring out who was responsible — down to percentage points. This generated a colossal number of lawsuits; often, friend against friend, husband against wife, etc., since the ONLY way you could be compensated for your injuries or damages would be to have a court find that you were entitled to that compensation, so that your opponent's liability insurance would cover you.
Michigan, by some political miracle, sliced this whole knot apart thirty years ago. The no-fault insurance law cut all the litigation crap (absent actual death or dismemberment) and made everybody carry insurance; if you suffer a loss, you're compensated by your own insurance. It was surely the most anti-lawyer thing the state has ever done — and one of the smartest.
It hasn't made car insurance any cheaper. Nor has it made it more expensive. The vast amount of money that Michigan used to spend on adjudicating every car crash now goes directly to compensate car crash victims. If you get hurt in a crash and have a hospital bill, it gets paid, and quickly, no matter whether you, the driver of the car you were a passenger in, another driver, or bad weather conditions were at fault.
Other states have systems that they CALL "no-fault," but not one has gone as far as Michigan. Indeed, lawyers in other states gasp theatrically about the awful catastrophe of "Michigan-style" car insurance the same way insurance companies refer to "Canadian-style" health insurance.
The fact remains that, if you are in an automobile accident outside Michigan, you WILL almost certainly be mired in years of senseless litigation. But if the accident occurs within the borders of our fair state, you almost certainly will NOT.

Looking around the Web, I found some other essays which make the same point on different grounds, such as this column by Preston Lemer:

What would you call an insurance system that's expensive, discriminatory, encourages fraud, undercompensates the victims of minor accidents, and overcompensates the victims of major ones?
In most of the country, we call it the law of the land.
Under the tort liability system, as it's known, damages are recovered through civil suits or the threat thereof. Either as a result of a verdict or an out-of-court settlement, a driver who causes an accident — or, more typically, his insurance company — pays damages to the people he injured. These injuries may take such forms as dented fenders, broken bones, and the nebulous but costly "pain and suffering."
Determining fault, obviously, is a critical component of the tort system. In fact, that's what distinguishes it from its principal rival — no-fault insurance. In a no-fault system, injured parties usually recover damages from their own insurance companies no matter who caused the accident. This limits litigation and minimizes the motive for fraud.
At the moment, Michigan comes closest to true no-fault insurance. Twelve other states mandate a hybrid system that, in most cases, combines the worst of the no-fault and tort worlds. The rest of the country soldiers on with tort liability despite its notorious deficiencies.

The Michigan In Brief web site offers this historical background:

In 1973 Michigan enacted a modified no-fault system under which lawsuits are permitted only under certain conditions. Twelve other states and Puerto Rico also have enacted modified systems; limitations on lawsuits vary.
Before Michigan enacted a no-fault system, approximately 69,000 automobile injury lawsuits were filed each year. It is estimated that about a third of every premium dollar was spent for legal costs to determine who was at fault in an accident. While a lawsuit dragged on, the injured parties worried about medical bills and lost wages, and successful claims often were insufficient to cover an injured person's losses.
Those injured in hit-and-run accidents and single-vehicle mishaps faced particular problems under the tort system. With no identifiable party to sue, they had to turn to their own automobile policy to cover these losses. Under the tort system, however, policyholders typically opted for low medical benefits (frequently only $2,000), thinking they would have the option in every instance of suing another party to recover higher losses. Furthermore, not all accident victims had health coverage to help them with additional expenses, and, although most individual and group health plans provide substantial benefits, they also may require significant copayments, stipulate large deductibles, or set maximum benefit levels. If an injury is serious — such as to the spinal cord or brain.or results in permanent disability, medical and rehabilitation expenses can be extremely high.

There are certainly minuses to living in Michigan, and I'm not shy about discussing them. This aspect, however, is a very big plus.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Wednesday, February 19, 2003, 10:41 pm

Thomas Friedman on the Bush team. I know he's not popular with either side, but he has a good column today:

I side with those who believe we need to confront Saddam . but we have to do it right, with allies and staying power, and the Bush team has bungled that.
The Bush folks are big on attitude, weak on strategy and terrible at diplomacy. I covered the first gulf war, in 1990-91. What I remember most are the seven trips I took with Secretary of State James A. Baker III around the world to watch him build — face-to-face — the coalition and public support for that war, before a shot was fired. Going to someone else's country is a sign you respect his opinion. This Bush team has done no such hands-on spade work. Its members think diplomacy is a phone call....
I am also very troubled by the way Bush officials have tried to justify this war on the grounds that Saddam is allied with Osama bin Laden or will be soon. There is simply no proof of that, and every time I hear them repeat it I think of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. You don't take the country to war on the wings of a lie.
And there's more: read it.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, February 11, 2003, 11:56 pm

Ken Parker on the Iraq War. One of my correspondents is Ken Parker, a retired Arkansas newspaper editor. Indeed, he worked on the fabled Arkansas Gazette. He sent me the following, and readily gave permission for me to include it here. (It was probably written a week ago, so don't assume it takes account of the last few days of headlines.)

Today, I had a letter from a conservative Republican cousin with whom I correspond on genealogy. I have learned that he and I should not discuss politics. But today, he brought up the question of Iraq (and even expressed some doubts about our policy there). Here is what I wrote him.
About Iraq: Saddam is an evil, no-good, sorry sonofabitch, no question about that. However, if the job had been finished in the Gulf War, he would have been gone, which is what President Bush I swore was going to happen. Then, Bush I became enamored of the idea of ending the ground war in 100 hours, and when the 100 hours was up, he declared victory and brought the troops home. Saddam remained. Since that time, the United States (with Clinton as leader part of the time) and the United Nations have told him to stop his evil ways, but he has been the bad kid. We had a bad kid (with bad parents) as neighbors once. The bad kid was about five years old. One of the parents would stick his head out the back door and tell BK to stop what he was doing, and BK would say "But, I'm just..." and the parent would repeat the order, and the kid would repeat the but I'm just, and this would go on for four or five warnings, including a promise of a butt-swatting, and then the parent would say, "Well, but just this one time."
I think Colin Powell made a masterful presentation to the Security Council, but I don't think he proved a definite link between Saddam and Osama bin Ladin. However. After 9/11, we declared war on terrorism and swore we would get Osama. We still don't know if he is alive or, if he is, where he is, so that war suddenly morphed into a war to get rid of Saddam, since it was all his fault anyway.
I supported the Gulf War, and I would support Gulf War II, but I hate to see us do it alone (with the help of England, Romania, Bulgaria and Lower Slobbovia). Someone (it may have been Bill Clinton, come to think of it) said once that we had to decide whether we wanted to lead the world or run it. The United Nations was founded for this sort of thing, and we should do everything we can there before we strike out in what amounts to a unilateral war against an enemy we were supposed to have crushed once before.
Notice I have not even mentioned North Korea so far. I would do so only on popular demand, but you may rest assured I have ideas there too.
I would make only one other point: I do not trust Cheney and Rumsfeld, and it is obvious they are calling the shots on this war while Ashcroft takes this opportunity to subvert all sorts of civil liberties. Cheney and Rumsfeld never served a day in the military (nor did I). President Bush II got into the Texas National Guard, which was taking no more recruits, was sent to Alabama for training and never showed up in Alabama. Clinton wrangled a deferment until he got a high draft number, but he was never AWOL. I have always questioned the philosophy that a president of the United States should be a military man, preferably a military commander. But I am re-assessing that opinion. It seems the people who want to send us to war are people who have never fought in one. Was it Lee (or Jackson) who said something like, "It is good that war is so terrible, else we would become fond of it."
I am in favor of any war in which the commander in chief, the vice president, the secretary of defense, etc. (regardless of party) will personally lead the troops onto the field of battle with their sons and daughters in the second rank.
With all of this, I have probably ended my cousin-ship with you, but remember, Dear Cousin, you brought up the subject.

Ken Parker

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Tuesday, February 11, 2003, 4:01 pm

State Party Chair Fight Settled. Another bulletin about Michigan politics, posted at Political State Report:

MI: Dem leadership settled
A compromise has been reached in the quiet battle over leadership of the Michigan Democratic Party.
Melvin 'Butch' Hollowell, the choice of new Gov. Jennifer Granholm, will be the party chair; incumbent Mark Brewer, supported by the United Auto Workers union, will remain with the state party in a new capacity as "executive chairman".
Hollowell will serve as chair without pay, the first Michigan Democratic state chair to do so since John J. 'Joe' Collins in the early 1960s.
Insiders reported earlier that Brewer had rejected an offer to become executive director, and the Hollowell forces had rejected Brewer's offer that the two men be co-chairs. Today's compromise looks like only a slight modification of what Granholm's people had suggested at the outset, and will probably be seen as a victory for the Governor over the UAW.
The compromise is expected to be ratified at the Democratic State Convention in Detroit on Saturday.
Further reading (most recent first):

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, February 10, 2003, 1:48 am

Seeking your confidential assistance. Some while ago, annoyed and amazed at the many different versions of the Nigerian scam that were flooding my email inbox, I put a bunch of them up on a web page, and titled it Nigerian Fraud Email Gallery. Others forwarded additional examples, and pretty soon I had over 400 posted.

The Nigerian scam is so prevalent and familiar to Americans that it has entered the popular culture. The most recent example is the George W. Bush parody, which begins:

I am George Walker Bush, son of the former President of the United States of America George Herbert Bush, and currently serving as President of the United States of America. This letter might surprise you because we have not met neither in person nor by correspondence. I came to know of you in my search for a reliable and reputable person to handle a very confidential business transaction, which involves the transfer of a huge sum of money to an account requiring maximum confidence.

Today, this joke version of the scam came to the attention of the New York Times.

The article mentions me and my fraud gallery web site — the first time my name has appeared in the Times.

Update: Yesterday's New York Times Magazine has a James Gleick article about the commercial email epidemic, Tangled Up in Spam.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Saturday, February 8, 2003, 1:49 pm

Street Names. I have always been fascinated by the names of streets, and how the practice has changed across the centuries.

Naming or numbering streets is not universal in cities. For example, Tokyo doesn't name its streets. (Some major thoroughfares were given names for the benefit of foreigners visiting for the 1964 Olympics, and I am told that those names have stuck.)

In response to a query on an email list, I sketched out a brief history of street naming in America; it was so well received that I later made it into a web page on street naming history.

I mention this because I just updated that page with new links to books about the history of street naming in particular cities.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Friday, February 7, 2003, 10:46 am

Drunk Driving Horror. On a bulletin board at the University of Michigan Dental School yesterday, I noticed this horrifying poster of Jacqueline Saburido, survivor of a automobile accident caused by a drunk driver. (Link from No Watermelons Allowed.)

This hard-hitting ad campaign was motivated by the seriousness of the drunk driving problem in Texas. Like others, I admire this young woman for her willingness to appear in these ads and posters.

In 2000, Texas had 1,898 alcohol-related traffic fatalities, more than any other state. California, with 13 million more residents, had almost 500 fewer deaths. New York State, with about the same population as Texas, had less than a quarter as many deaths.

By rate of alcohol traffic deaths per capita in 2000, Texas was in the top ten, with a rate more than 50% higher than the national average. The leader, with a drunk driving death rate more than double the national average, was Mississippi.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Wednesday, February 5, 2003, 2:27 pm

Now hear this. Tonight, February 5, 2003, at 7pm, Gov. Jennifer Granholm will present her first State of the State Address.

Michigan Government Television will carry the State of the State Address live (both cable TV and via Internet) with coverage beginning at 6:00 p.m. and the Address at 7:00 p.m. The Republican response will follow the Address. The text of the address will also be available online.

(Also posted to Political State Report.)

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Sunday, February 2, 2003, 6:10 am

The "We Made It" letter. Today, I received in email a little essay listing the hazards of growing up in past decades. Very likely, you have received a similar one, spread from person to person in chain letter fashion. A Google search turns up over 300 copies of it on the Web. [Update 8/27/2003: now more than 700.]

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's or 70's, probably shouldn't have survived.

The political tone is set right away: "today's regulators and bureaucrats," are apparently so simple-minded and lacking in common sense that they wouldn't think anyone could survive a 1950s childhood. The unknown writer, eager to romanticize his idyllic youth, sees that things have changed and immediately blames the government.

I do very much agree that things have changed, not entirely for the better. But it seems to me that those areas affected by actual government regulation, enacted usually with some thought and deliberation through a democratic process, are the more limited and positive changes. The items on his list which are truly regrettable have come about as the incidental byproduct of social, cultural, and technological changes.

One change which has had an enduring destructive impact is the colossal increase in crime from 1960 to 1975. (No one really knows why this happened.) The most solid crime statistic is the death rate from homicide, which tripled during that 15 year period, and fluctuated within a narrower range since the 1975 peak. Crime is lower now than it was 25 years ago, but the shock of that tripling is still working through our culture.

Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.

Indeed. Not that this was much of a problem in the average middle-class home, where peeling paint wasn't tolerated. Rather, it affected poor folks who couldn't afford any better, and people who lived next to major highways when cars burned leaded gasoline. Survival isn't the issue: lead poisoning rarely kills anyone. Rather, it causes brain damage and makes people stupid. With regulation, we still have affordable bright-colored paint and high-octane fuels, but a lot less toxicity.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets,

The requirement of childproof lids on medicine bottles (in 1970) has greatly reduced the number of child poisonings at little cost in money or convenience. Similarly, childproofing of cabinets, electrical outlets, and the like, have probably prevented many accidents.

Today's intense focus on home childproofing reflects changes in family roles and economics: with both parents working, there isn't anyone in the family whose job is to watch the kids all the time and keep them away from dangerous objects and areas. Childproof latches and outlet covers are labor-saving devices for parents.

What has also changed is the attitude toward exposing kids (or ourselves) to risks. Americans are much less easygoing about this now than 30 or 50 years ago. This change did not come about through any legislation, but grew from the now-widespread belief that everyday life is getting more and more dangerous. In actual fact, most serious risks of death or injury for middle-class American families are lower now than they used to be.

and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. As kids we would be carted around in cars with no seat belts or air bags

From the earliest days of the automobile to the present, motor vehicles and roads have steadily become safer. The Model T had a high center of gravity, no brake lights, and an unprotected gas tank like a bomb under the driver's seat. The cars of the 1950s were full of sharp fixtures; every street and road was greasy and treacherous from the oil they always dripped.

Today, helmets, seat belts and air bags are widely used (especially for kids) because not using them is now seen as unacceptable risk.

and riding in the back of a truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

Last I heard, this practice was still being debated in states across the country.

(Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking).

Hitchhiking is still perfectly legal in most states, including Michigan. However, the practice has all but disappeared. The meme that hitchhking or picking up hitchhikers is acutely dangerous (an exaggeration) has become so prevalent that tales of hitchhiking in one's youth are greeted with shock.

Moreover, college students, who used to do a lot of the hitchhiking, are all drivers now, with cars of their own. The former ethic of college years as a time of almost monkish self-deprivation has been almost forgotten.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on and no one was able to reach us because cell phones hadn't been invented.

Or, more saliently, because parents in general didn't fear that their neighbors were potential kidnappers or child molestors. In a delayed overreaction to the crime wave of 30 years ago, we have developed an intense distrust for all strangers, and acting on this distrust hems in our lives in every direction.

We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no law suits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame, but us... Remember accidents?

Did tort lawyers cause this? Or was it a more general sense that, if something punctured our family's safety bubble, somebody (else) must be to blame?

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.

The implication is that such injuries (say, from a beating by another kid) are taken too seriously today. I think that proposition would be hard to defend.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle .... although we shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, no one actually died.

My grandmother, perhaps doubling [er, quadrupling] the old proverb about eating a peck of dirt, used to say "It takes a bushel of dirt to kill you." That casualness is charming, but now we know too much about E. coli and PCBs and anthrax and whatever else might be in that dirt. Who would let a child eat snow, in this era of acid rain? Who today would pick up a fallen apple from the ground and take an immediate bite? The original meaning of the word "windfall" implied that such fruit was perfectly good.

Standards for cleanliness and sanitation have risen dramatically across the centuries, a change which added more years to our lifespan than medicinie did. We Americans are notorious for our cleanliness fetish, but consider that millions of people around the world still die from things like drinking tainted water.

We ate cakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar cordial but we were hardly ever overweight...because we were always outside playing

Damn straight — plenty of excercise is good for you.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, video games at all, 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, Internet chat rooms ....

And all of those things can be enjoyed for hours without having to get up from your chair — no wonder we have to be careful about eating cake.

We had friends. We went outside and found them. We rode bikes, roller skated, or walked to their homes and stood in front and yelled for them to come out to play, or knocked on the door, rang the bell or just walked in to visit them. Imagine such a thing. Without asking a parent! By ourselves! Out there in the cold cruel world! How did we do it?

Here again, urban sprawl and fear of strangers has limited our social space. A 10-year-old can't ride his bike or roller skate to a friend's house when the friend lives in another subdivision a dozen miles away. You can't go knocking on a neighbor's door because your parents have no idea who the neighbors are — and tend to assume the worst.

Tests were not adjusted for any reason. Some students weren't as smart as others so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat it. And the next time they usually passed.

This part seems a little out of date. "Social promotion" is now an epithet.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected and there was no one to hide behind. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.

Attitudes toward the law and government have certainly changed. Thirty years ago, 75% said they thought the government did the right thing most of the time. Nowadays, 75% take the opposite view, probably including the unknown author. We live in a cynical age, and it should hardly be surprising that parents who can afford it will buy their kids' way out of trouble with the law.

And despite ... or, perhaps, because of all this ... this generation has produced some of the most outstanding risk-takers, problem solvers, innovators and inventors, ever. The past 50 years has seen an explosion of advancement and new ideas. Why? Because we were given freedom and responsibility: the chance to succeed and to fail. And we learned how to make the most of what we were given.

If you are one of us, congratulations!
If you're not, too bad!

Of course, the very same generation which enjoyed the alleged advantages of growing up in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, also helped bring about every one of the changes the writer laments — including that awful crime wave.

I will have more to say on a couple of these issues.

Update, from comments: Martin Wisse had this to say:

This letter is typical of a certain mentality amongst the socalled baby boomer generation: a kind of sick nostalgia for the good old days coupled with a refusal to take responsibility for the ways in which they themselves changed the world to the "sad sorry state" it is in now, all delivered in that infuriating smug, sneering tone that shows the author knows his generation is the most special ever concieved.
Always bragging about the things they did, yet denying their children the same opportunities and then complaining about it!
("his", because it seems to be mostly men who hold these views...)

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Saturday, February 1, 2003, 2:14 pm

More on Brewer/Hollowell. I've posted again for Political State Report on the emerging fight over Michigan Democratic Party leadership:

MI: Race is on for Dem State Chair

As the Democratic State Convention on February 15 draws closer, the race for state party chair is heating up. The two candidates are incumbent Mark Brewer, backed by the United Auto Workers, and challenger Melvin 'Butch' Hollowell, an ally of Gov. Granholm.

A compromise had been widely expected, to elect Hollowell the titular head of the party and hire Brewer as Executive Director. Reportedly, Brewer rejected this, and his counter-offer to be made co-chair with Hollowell was also rejected. Negotiations are said to continue, but the fight is now likely to reach the convention floor.

At today's county party conventions, campaign flyers for both candidates were distributed.

Mark Brewer is seen as the technical guy, someone with a focus on the nuts-and-bolts of party organization, though diffident as a public speaker. The United Auto Workers, a potent force within the party, is supporting Brewer's re-election; UAW folks are working to line up constituency groups on his behalf. Some other major unions, including AFSCME, have not taken a position as yet.

Brewer's campaign literature, plain text on one side of yellow letter sized paper, touts the "working team" of Brewer and vice-chair Tina Abbott, and point to the accomplishments of their tenure. The state party is debt free (Gov. Blanchard left it with a huge debt following his 1990 defeat). Straight party voting was saved (the Republican legislature had abolished it; the party helped sponsor a referendum to overturn the new law). Political bingos were saved (Michigan Democrats get $2 million a year from fundraising bingo games; a law to ban these was similarly overturned via referendum). The party hired a Youth Organizer and created or revitalized 15 constituency caucuses. The party leadership "has a reputation of inclusion, honesty, and openness. It has operated above board and has made the resources of the party available to all its members in a fair and upright fashion."

Brewer's flyer also says:

We are committed to giving Michigan the influence it deserves by holding an early, well-attended Michigan Democratic Presidential Caucus in 2004. By working closely with all segments of our Party — and adding new people to our coalition all of the time — we have built a Party that is both debt free and ready to deliver Michigan for the fourth time in a row to the Democratic column for President of the United States of America.

Butch Hollowell is seen as the more presentable public face for the party: articulate, passionate, and highly credentialed (he's a partner in a blue-chip law firm). His campaign flyer is considerably fancier than Brewer's, on slicker paper, with photographs of Butch against a blackdrop made up of a rippling American flag, the Mackinac Bridge, and the Detroit skyline. His slogan is "A new day. A new face."

Hollowell declares in his literature:

New leadership starts at the top. I look forward to working as a close partner with our new governor. The time is now for our Party to take the next step. As your new Chair, I will usher our party into a new era. My top three priorities will be: 1. To win elections. 2. To expand our base at the grass roots. 3. To further promote the Democratic Platform.

Hollowell also lays out a program titled "Score in 2004", which calls for the party to (1) increase fundraising by 50%; (2) triple the size of the party by having each of the state's 4,200 precinct delegates sign up 3 new party members; (3) recruit 3 new candidates for local office, such as school board or zoning board, in each of the state's 83 counties.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm has not yet made any public statement about the race, to my knowledge, but it is no secret that she wants Hollowell to be chair. There are some suggestions that she wasn't satisfied with the party's efforts in her behalf in 2002. Reportedly, she has been calling county party chairs to ask them to support Hollowell.

At some level, the confrontation is over who's really in charge of the Michigan Democratic Party. Despite the power and the efforts of the UAW, it is expected that the Governor will prevail on this.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Monday, January 27, 2003, 5:22 pm

Political State Report. I have finally made my first post to the new website http://polstate.com/, which follows state politics in all 50 states via reports from volunteer bloggers.

Here's what I wrote:

MI: New Dem State Party Chair?
Michigan Democrats will hold their convention at Cobo Arena in Detroit on February 15. Incumbent state party chair Mark Brewer says he's running for re-election, but Gov. Granholm appears to be supporting Melvin 'Butch' Hollowell instead.
Butch Hollowell is a black Detroit attorney who worked for Al Gore in the 2000 Florida recount and was the Democratic nominee for Michigan Secretary of State in the 2002 election. He is a close ally of Gov. Granholm.
Mark Brewer, who has been party chair since 1995, started in politics with former Congressman David Bonior, who Granholm defeated in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 2002. Brewer has strong support from labor groups in the party.
A rumored compromise would be for Hollowell to be elected party chair, but to continue his law practice, with Brewer moving to a new position of party executive director.
Both men have been criticized for ineffectiveness -- Hollowell for his unsuccessful campaign for Secretary of State, and Brewer for the many disasters the party has suffered on his watch. However, it's hard to see that either could have done a lot better under the circumstances.
Hollowell was running for a position which gets little notice in the hubbub of an election year, so that a large percentage of voters made the decision based on nothing more than the names on the ballot. "Melvin" and "Butch" are both names with extremely negative associations; these contrasted sharply with the bright, appealing name of the Republican nominee, Terri Lynn Land, who also had a lot of family money to spend on the race.
Brewer, as party chair, was saddled with the surprise winner of the 1998 gubernatorial primary, Geoffrey Fieger, a flamboyant lawyer best known for representing Jack "Dr. Death" Kevorkian; with Fieger leading the ticket, Michigan Democrats did poorly in a generally Democratic year. Brewer also gets indirect blame for the failures of the Democratic State House and Senate campaign operations, which get outmaneuvered and outgunned by the Republicans in election after election.
A probably overriding consideration is that the Governor is normally entitled to name the state party chair. To make an exception for Gov. Granholm would undermine her authority.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Saturday, January 18, 2003, 9:54 pm

The Eldred defeat. The biggest news of the past week, as far as I am concerned, is the disheartening decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft. In other words, the Supreme Court has ruled that it was within the powers of Congress to extend copyrights again and again -- perpetuity on the installment plan -- despite the words "limited times" in the Constitution.

The vote was seven to two -- the dissenters were Stevens and Breyer. Justice Ginsberg wrote the majority opinion (all PDFs).

Professor Lawrence Lessig, who argued on behalf of the plaintiffs before the Supreme Court, expected the Court majority (Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, O'Connor) to apply the Lopez test, which is to say, that any Constitutional grant of power to Congress carries limitations if it is properly interpreted. If the limitations on each grant of power aren't explicit, then they are implicit, say these five justices.

However, to his shock (later restated more calmly), the five conservative justices not only didn't apply the Lopez enumeration principle -- they didn't say a word about it. The other four justices don't believe in this principle, so not surprisingly it isn't mentioned in the opinions three of them wrote (majority opinion and two dissents).

No doubt lawyers and legal scholars will argue about this for a long time, but it looks to me like yet another cynical Bush-v-Gore-quality abandonment of claimed legal principles by the conservative justices. Striking down powers of Congress is mandatory if Congress is enacting liberal programs, but unthinkable if Congress is passing special interest legislation for powerful business interests at the expense of the public.

On this, I find myself in agreement with Glenn Reynolds, who commented:

The majority opinion by Justice Ginsburg largely ignored those questions, leaving such issues to Congress's discretion. (Though the influence of Big Media money on Congress suggests that the Framers were on to something where the corruption angle is concerned.) More strikingly, all the Justices who have stood for limiting Congress's powers in other recent cases (such as United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison) sided with her, calling their commitment to limited government into question. It was left to the unlikely duo of Justice John Paul Stevens and Justice Stephen Breyer to write, in dissent, about the importance of limited Congressional power. While many people are unhappy with the Intellectual Property implications of this decision, its most striking aspect is the strict constructionists' abandonment of the principles of limited government. I predict that this will come back to haunt them in future cases.

There is one hopeful idea which has emerged in the days since the decision: the proposed Eric Eldred Act, which would move unused old copyrighted material into the public domain after about fifty years, by way of charging a small tax (maybe $1 per work) and creating a database of owners of old copyrights. Works unclaimed by their copyright holders would be released to the public domain.

The principle is the same as the Michigan state law which eliminated the problem of surface ownership and mineral rights getting hopelessly separated across centuries of land title transfers: mineral owners have to file some papers every forty years or so to show they're still interested in keeping them, or those rights revert to the surface owners.

At the same time, the Eldred Act would create an easily searched record of validly held copyrights, which would make it MUCH easier to arrange publication of older copyrighted works.

Just for example, one of the things I'd love to do with my Political Graveyard web site would be to scan and include portraits of old-time political figures from my large collection of state legislative manuals. Most of these are copyrighted in the names of people or entities that no longer exist. To trace the current copyright ownership, which may have gone to hundreds of heirs or successor entities, would be ruinously expensive (per book!) and might not turn up anyone with the authority to grant or sell permission.

But let's say I go ahead and, say, scan a bunch of pictures from the 1929 New York Red Book (copyright 1929 by the J. B. Lyon Company), and put them on my web site. If somebody figures out that I have infringed on a copyright he inherited from his great-grandfather's estate, it doesn't make any difference that he wasn't using it. It doesn't make any difference if it would have been impossible for me to find him. It doesn't make any difference that I put the images up as a public service, and it is no longer relevant whether I made any money from them. Nor am I entitled to any notice or any opportunity to make restitution. The aggrieved copyright holder can swoop down out of nowhere, seize my computers, my books and papers, my bank accounts, and maybe even my house. Certainly it would be the end of my web site. And there would be criminal liability, too, so theoretically I could also be fined or sent to prison -- just for republishing forgotten pictures of a bunch of long-dead state senators.

My library includes at least tens of thousands of published photos of individuals listed on the web site, and all but the ones from before 1920 are at least potentially under some kind of copyright that could put me at risk for horrific consequences.

Under the new law just upheld by the Supreme Court, these copyrights now extend 95 years. And before they expire, they will surely be extended again.

The media companies that own lucrative copyrights practically own the Congress. Moreover, those companies and their lobbyists are in no mood to be reasonable. Under these circumstances, I don't expect the "Eric Eldred Act" to be taken seriously, let alone enacted. If anything, we need to prepare for a probably losing battle to keep Congress from passing even worse new laws -- not to mention extending the terms of all existing copyrights again and again and again into eternity.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Wednesday, January 8, 2003, 12:22 am

My wife is a clinical psychologist, so she receives monthly issues of the Monitor, magazine of the American Psychological Association. I don't normally give it a second glance, but the January 2003 issue has a number of interesting items:

  • Hostility leads to heart disease? Hostility, as measured in a standard personality test, is defined as "a stable tendency to interpret the world and other people in a cynical and negative manner." (Bloggers take note!) According to a three-year study of 774 white men, hostility is a better predictor of heart attacks or angina than smoking, drinking, overeating, or cholesterol levels. They're working on a fifteen-year followup.
  • Psychologist politicians. There are now five members of Congress with PhD's in psychology (though one of them "doesn't consider himself a psychologist"), and eleven members of state legislatures. Fourteen of the sixteen are Democrats. The pioneer in this was Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), who used to raise money among APA members as "the only psychologist in Congress." Aha, more data for The Political Graveyard!
  • The perils of profiling for the media. During the Washington-area sniper investigation, the media featured "experts" (some identified as psychologists) who stated confidently that the killer was a single white male. The perpetrators turned out to be a pair of African-American men. Seven forensic psychologists speak out on lessons learned in this case.
  • The unexpected benefits of basic science. In 1965, the designers of the World Trade Center wanted to find out how much a tall building could sway in the wind before occupants of the uppermost floors would notice. Researchers in Oregon set up a motion chamber disguised as an optometrist's office, so that unwitting subjects could be exposed to "horizontal acceleration" -- i.e., the room would move. They found that the threshold for noticing horizontal acceleration was ten times lower then the WTC engineers had thought. (In response to this startling news, architect Minoru Yamasaki himself came out to Oregon and took a ride in the device.) The study was replicated in New York; the findings were the same. As a result, the twin towers were redesigned to strengthen the exterior columns and reduce sway. On September 11, this strengthening is thought to be the reason the buildings stayed up long enough for most of the occupants to escape safely.

Belated update: The APA pages were relocated, so I fixed the links.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Saturday, January 4, 2003, 2:10 am

Gregory Hlatky, my politically conservative mentor in blogging, writes about the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He blames "politicians at work" for a couple of awkward transitions between the Turnpike and other highways, which involve traffic lights and congestion. That seems just a tad unfair, given that politicians brought about the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the Interstate system in the first place.

(His examples do remind me of the state of affairs that existed for years on the route from southern Michigan to Chicago: I-94 stopped at the Indiana state line, where its extremely heavy traffic was shunted onto Indiana 39, a winding two-lane road, for the dozen or so miles to the Indiana Turnpike. It was obvious that Indiana didn't feel like spending millions of dollars building a freeway link that would be used almost exclusively by out-of-state traffic.)

The more interesting historical point, though, is something he mentions only in passing: "the original road followed the right-of-way of an abandoned railway." Calling the route a "railway" both overstates and understates the case, like referring to Mickey Mouse as a rodent, or Craig Shergold as a cancer victim, or Piltdown Man as a fossil.

There don't seem to be any web sites which discuss this in any detail, but the South Pennsylvania Railroad was a phantom, a Potemkin railway, a skirmish between rival robber barons, and incidentally a stock swindle.

It happened in 1883-85. Col. William Vanderbilt's New York Central Railroad was under threat from a parallel track called the "West Shore" (New York, West Shore & Buffalo Railroad), financed by some of his rivals. This led to a "murderous rate war" (i.e., competition).

In retaliation, and as part of his effort to extinguish the West Shore, "Billy" Vanderbilt picked up the South Pennsylvania Railroad, a seemingly hopeless project to build a parallel railway across Pennsylvania in competition with the Pennsylvania Railroad. For Vanderbilt, it was a "blackmail railroad": he didn't really intend to build or operate it. He just wanted to put pressure on the "Pennsy" to drop its support for the West Shore.

But for the feint to be taken seriously, he had to pretend that he was serious about it. He hired some of the country's foremost engineers to plan a state-of-the-art rail line through the daunting mountains of central Pennsylvania. As George Wheeler writes in Pierpont Morgan and Friends:

But during the summer of 1884, some money was spent on showing the sincere purpose of the South Pennsylvania entrepreneurs. Forests were leveled for roadbed, tunnels were bored, piers for bridges to nowhere were built. Lives were lost, some said as many as two thousand.

That's not implausible -- construction work was dangerous in those days. But another account sets the death toll at only 27.

Then, in July 1885, J. P. Morgan (a Vanderbilt ally) arranged a meeting of the rival rail barons aboard his yacht, the Corsair. After a day of negotiations, the shutdown of the West Shore and of the South Pennsylvania was agreed to. Wheeler continues:

But all work on the blackmail railroad had ceased by July 1885. A violent clamor arose from all the investors in the $15 million operation, ranging from the widows and orphans right up to the master steelmaker, [Andrew] Carnegie, who went on railing against the fate of the South Pennsylvania for another four years.

Carnegie and the other investors were not the only ones who felt betrayed. I don't have a source for this handy, but I understand that the civil engineering profession in this country, inspired the dream of the brilliantly designed "tunnel route," nursed a grievance over it for decades. It was as if someone had set out to build the Taggart railway described in Atlas Shrugged -- and then when things were well along, suddenly said, "Never mind!"

At least by some accounts, the "tunnel route" became the Pennsylvania Turnpike, fifty years later, because the engineers never forgot about it.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Friday, January 3, 2003, 9:37 pm

Tolkien's Birthday. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien would have been eleventy-one years old today.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Wednesday, January 1, 2003, 10:39 pm

Out of office. As of the New Year, when my term expired, I'm no longer a Washtenaw County Commissioner. Redistricting put me in the same seat as another Democratic incumbent -- someone considerably better known than me -- so I chose not to seek re-election.

I was appointed commissioner in 2000 to fill a vacancy created by my predecessor's resignation. I ran for a full term that year, and was unopposed in the primary and general election.

County commissioners in Michigan are elected by districts to two-year terms. The elections are partisan. The County Board of Commissioners is a legislative body with mostly financial powers: to equalize tax assessments, to set the tax rates, to enact the county budget, to approve contracts for the county, and so on. There are many other power centers in county government, including elected administrators (sheriff, prosecuting attorney, county clerk/register of deeds, drain commissioner, treasurer), elected judges (circuit court, probate court, district court), and independent boards (road commission, parks commission, and others). The Board of Commissioners has varying degrees of authority over the different county departments, and very little authority to make laws or ordinances.

I represented the 4th District in southwestern Ann Arbor. The district has about 20,000 people, most of them in owner-occupied single family homes built in the decades following WWII, the rest in small apartment complexes. Within its boundaries are the University of Michigan football stadium, and nearby Crisler Arena, but on the whole, it's the part of the city that is least influenced by the university.

The district (which expired along with my term) wraps around the south, southwest, and west edges of Ann Arbor, along I-94. Its creators hoped it would elect a Republican, but that never happened. It's anchored by the Lansdowne neighborhood, once regarded as the local epicenter of ideological conservatism -- it was home to many executives and engineers for Bechtel Corporation. Local media used to illustrate Ann Arbor's range by contrasting conservative, pro-business Lansdowne with the liberal, academic Burns Park neighborhood.

But Bechtel relocated long ago, and Ann Arbor Republicans have been in decline for thirty years. Today Lansdowne usually votes for Democrats; the 4th District as a whole (considered a Republican area just ten years ago) voted for Al Gore in 2000 by a more than 2 to 1 margin.

The Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners, while I was on it, had had fifteen members (in that photo, I'm the bearded guy at the right end of the front row; one member was absent when the picture was taken). The new board, starting today, has eleven members.

Previously, in 1983-88, I served three terms as county commissioner in Ingham County, the Lansing-East Lansing area. In many ways, Ingham County and Washtenaw County are very similar -- they have almost the same population, similar demographics (they're the two most highly educated counties in Michigan), similar politics (they're the two most liberal counties in Michigan), and so on. But the county governments are very different.

Ingham County is like most Michigan counties in that it has no central executive figure. As a direct result, the county commissioner's job is very hands-on. We worked through the county budget in excrutiating detail, during weeks of long committee hearings. Each commissioner served on two of the five standing committees, not to mention other board and committee assignments. I was chair of the Personnel Committee, which among other things was the internal court of last resort for employee grievances. Full board meetings usually had an agenda of 60 to 80 items, each one to be reported on, argued, and voted on. All told, it was very typical for county meetings to take up 20 hours a week.

Washtenaw County's board, by contrast, has a strong county administrator (analogous to a city manager), and no committee structure. It's a lot like a corporate board of directors. The meetings are much less frequent than Ingham's, and relatively short, because so much authority is delegated to the administrator.

Ironically, Washtenaw's board is paid about twice as much as Ingham's. The salary is $15,500, plus "per diems" of $25/meeting, and mileage. Early on, I decided not to accept any per diems or mileage. I did this for a number of reasons: it was a lot of paperwork for a small amount of money; it was legally questionable for a salaried official to also receive per diems; and hell, we were already being well compensated. The county's corporation counsel (unnecessarily) wrote a provision into the board rules explicitly providing that a member could "opt out" of receiving these payments. The Ann Arbor News noticed this, figured out what was going on, and embarrassed me with a big editorial which noisily commended me as having "better ethics" than the other commissioners.

I turned 18 in September 1973, just over 29 years ago, and I have spent 20 of those 29 years as an elected or appointed official in local government. I don't have a politician personality, to say the least, so this is a startling record. Why wasn't I shouldered aside by more gregarious individuals?

It comes down to the shortage of candidates, first noticed in the late 1970s, and growing ever more severe since then. Fewer and fewer people (with the requisite background and qualities and mainstream views) are willing to run for and serve in elected and appointed policy positions at all levels, both parties, all regions. There are fewer activists, fewer volunteers, fewer people with the patience for committee work.

I will have more to say about this later.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Wednesday, January 1, 2003, 1:37 pm

Spam in your referer log. Most webmasters who have looked at their http logs -- or presumably the output of log analysis software -- know that each hit usually comes with a "referer" URL, typically the address of the previous site visited by that browser.

Often, it's a search engine address, usually showing the search term that was used. Or, it's the address of a page which has a link to your site.

Naturally, we webmasters are interested in finding out who links to us, so we try out those URL's to see what's there. Sometimes, the listing is just a fluke -- a site that someone happened to be at when they typed in our site address. But sometimes these "flukes" are pages of advertising. Could it be that those URLs were put into my http log deliberately?

Yup! It's called neural marketing. The promoters write:

We use our proprietary web robot technology to access a rotating list of 200,000 websites over a period of 5 days to leave a trail in each logfile. We touch more than one million unique webmasters per month. Our state-of-the-art statistical algorithms designed by Vincent Granville, Ph.D. simulate real browsing activity...

How 'bout that: a robot that pretends to be a human web visitor! Presumably that means it ignores the usual rules that apply to robots, like obeying the exclusions in your robots.txt file -- since checking that file would give away the game.

As the target website owner checks his daily site statistics, he will find a clickable link to your website in his report... The technique is not percieved as advertising by the recipient.

That will change as this gets to be better known!

Q. What are the products/services most suitable for this kind of advertising? A. Services marketed to website owners. More and more people have their personal website with access to daily site statistics. Typically, internet services of any kind are good candidates for this type of advertising. You can advertise two or more URLs that redirect to the same domain. We also rent a few domain names for this purpose. Contact us for details.

(You can ask to have your site excluded from the spidering -- but why bother? It would only reduce your traffic stats!)

I'm reminded of a telemarketing call I get occasionally for a carpet cleaning service. As you pick up the phone, there's a moment of chaos as the caller seemingly drops the phone or is interrupted. In other words, while you say "Hello?" or "Who is this?" he's got the phone away from his ear, saying "oops--hold on." When he comes back, he starts right in, somewhat apologetically, something very personal-sounding like, "I've had your name and number for a while and I'd been meaning to call you..."

The first time you get one of these calls, you might not realize that it's all a recording. We expect recordings to be perfectly enunciated by radio voices, not a guy sounding like an average Shmo who drops the phone. And the phone-dropping exempts the machine from having to make an appropriately timed response to the reicipient's greeting. It's extremely clever.

Of course, the carpet cleaner could probably get even better results per call by making the calls himself. But the machine can make thousands of calls with very little effort on his part.

We're going to see more and more of this: automated marketing campaigns that simulate human contact in order to get our attention.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum Comments


Friday, December 27, 2002, 2:15 am

I'm delighted to welcome Craig Cheslog's Political Parrhesia back to active blogging. I have moved the link back up from the "On Hiatus" section. Take a look -- he's done a lot just in the last few days.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Thursday, December 26, 2002, 12:08 pm

This is your final warning. Almost all the email I receive about The Political Graveyard is polite and helpful. But there are occasional exceptions, such as the following:

Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 13:12:09 EST
Subject: Your web site

Mr. Kestenbaum:

What business does a Jew have in placing the name of my uncle on their website? You will remove it immediately and without hesitation. Failure to do so will result in immediate legal action. This is your final warning.

I am not making this up! The uncle, named in the letter, was a 1940 candidate for a state legislative seat. I replied as follows:

Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 13:20:48 -0500 (EST)

I respectfully decline to remove his name. Your uncle, as a legislative candidate, was and is a public figure, and I do not need his permission (or yours) to reference him on my site.

See also my privacy policy at http://politicalgraveyard.com/privacy.html

He responded as follows, implicitly retracting his threat to haul me into court:

Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 13:37:30 EST
Subject: Get your information right then

Mr. Kestenbaum:

If you are going to ignore my request and claim legal laws instead of moral issues (a typical Jew) then you should at least get your information strait concerning my uncle. Your "half-baked" biographical sketch for him is all missinformation.

P.S. We haven't forgot who murdered Jesus Christ.

Ignoring the slurs, I asked about the nature of the error:

Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 14:01:36 -0500 (EST)

I am always open to making corrections.

Everything I have on your uncle came from
[a state legislative manual]. All I have is his name, and that he was listed as a [major party] candidate for [a state legislative seat], in the election on November 5, 1940. From this, I deduced that he was a resident of [county] at the time. If any of this information is incorrect, or should be supplemented with other factors, please advise.

Where I may have gone wrong -- and perhaps angered you -- is in assuming that someone who was a candidate 62 years ago is no longer living today. If he is living, I offer humble apologies and will immediately correct his entry. Please advise.

He did not reply.

In my database and web site, living or possibly-living persons are listed with a notation of "still living as of [year]", whereas those presumed dead are listed with a cemetery or other disposition, or "burial location unknown".

If the year of birth is 100 or more years before the current year, and I have no activity for them in the last 20 years, the person is presumed dead. Further, even if the year of birth is more recent than 100 years ago, but there is no activity in the past 60 years, the person is presumed dead.

If the year of birth is unknown, in the absence of some other evidence such as military service, education, relatives, etc., an estimated year of birth is calculated (automatically) as being 40 years before the first political activity in the database. (The estimated year of birth is used in calculations but not listed on the web site.)

The uncle of the correspondent above was a candidate in 1940, and there is no other information, so his estimated year of birth is 1900. So, both under the century-old birth-rule and the no-activity-in-60-years rule, he would be presumed to be dead.

Of course, he could have been as young as 21 in 1940, in which case he would be only 83 today -- and it's plausible that he could be living. But would it be reasonable to allow for this possibility by listing many thousands of entries with dates like "still living as of 1940" or even (because today's 99-year-old might have run for office at age 21) "still living as of 1924"?

My guess is that the uncle in question is actually long dead, and so all this is really moot as to him.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. D.J. Jones, 12/28/2002: It's amazing someone as "off their rocker" as that cretin has the intelligence to turn on a computer. My cousin, Mayor Kiel of St. Louis, is listed on TPG, and I'm proud to see that, whether the site is run by a Christian, a Jew, or a Vegetarian.

  2. David Weisman, 12/28/2002: Despite reading about your experience and my last name, I'll continue my political blog. I guess I wasn't really thinking about stopping, but reading this gave me a very unhappy feeling. Right now I don't post my e-mail address on the blog, though I'm thinking of starting, and I don't know if you would have read that if the writer had been obliged to leave it as a public comment.

    The Art of Peace

  3. Laurie Mann, 12/28/2002: You shouldn't have taken the name down. I get hate mail for being a feminist, and I simply stop reading it (and I can often tell within the first line!).

    I got one threatening letter from the spouse of a semi-obscure actor who'd been diagnosed with cancer.

    He was quite public about it. She strongly objected to seeing him listed on Dead People Server (even though I said "is alive, has cancer"), and I said, "well, he publically said he has the disease, so..."

    A few months later, he died, but I haven't heard from her since.

  4. julia, 12/28/2002: Perhaps you said something about his uncle which suggested that he breathed through his nose?

    Glory. Imagine if the freepers weren't on his side. He'd self-destruct.

  5. D.J. Jones, 12/30/2002:To Julia:

    What do you mean about "freepers" being on the emailers side ? Please clarify that, thank you.

  6. Lisa English, 1/16/2003: Great post and terrific blog, Lawrence! I am just loving it.

    This volley of correspondence you had with this guy is not really typical fare...at least not in my experience. Yeah, there are the occasional fruitcake, but for the most part, and just as in life...most people are wonderful.

    But what a hoot you've got here. He seems to have a real issue with "Jews"...I wonder if he'd have been such a sh*t if you were agnostic or Roman Catholic.

    Anyway...terrific blog. I look forward to your returning to the weblog template because you are a delightful read.

    Lisa


Monday, December 23, 2002, 2:28 am

An Unenviable Situation. Maybe it's the lateness of the hour, but I am just reeling with amazement and appreciation at an iconoclastic new blog I just found (via Sam Heldman). It's called An Unenviable Situation ("On Art, Politics, and those things In Between"), by Seth Edenbaum.

Edenbaum has no patience for the common pieties or dogmas of the left, right, or blogosphere. His insights are sharp. A few examples:

I do not dismiss criticism of fundamentalist belief on principle. I'm a New Yorker and I'm not an idiot. But I am angered if the criticism is based on the vague moralizing of the habitues of the land of the leasured. Painful transitions are now being forced upon people who have no idea what is happening to them, and who feel that they have no control of the outcome. And there are intelligent cynics who will use that anger to create and maintain power for themselves, based solely on their ability to steer anger in one direction or another. Do I have to list the ones who have done it recently?
Of all the reasons I use to justify my hatred and contempt for the philosophy of Libertarianism -aside from it's economic and moral stinginess- the most basic is its relentless defense of the shallow. The purblind celebration of individualism is the most extreme example of the horse/cart inversion that I know; the moral and logical equivalent of arguing that the works of William Shakespeare are more important to history than the English language.
Every moment of the day we use rhetoric. Every gesture, every vocal inflection, every choice of clothing is a representation of our thoughts and ideas, our delusions and misconceptions about ourselves and others. These gestures are the manifestations of our dreams. And without meaning to be too hyperbolic -since people tend to discount the logic of points made with the help of pat phrases- we ignore their meaning at our peril.
There is no line that divides information and rhetoric. A flat plane leads from the logical to the illogical, and from the rational to the absurd. If it weren't the case there would be no need to judge one from the other or argue abourt anything; and newspapers could be written by computer.
It is a cliché to say that blacks are still affected by the legacy of slavery. But it is true. And it is not yet somehow a cliché to say that Southern culture is still affected by the bloody and barbaric history of Scotland and Ireland. What can we say about South Boston? What is the reason for the extremely high drop-out rate of Italian American high school students in New York City? Why are so many prisoners the products of violent homes?
Reformers will always have a problem with the way people behave. And with reason. And I will always have a problem with reformers. But that is not the same as having a problem with democracy, or trying to make a moral justification for greed. There is none. Nor, for that matter, is there one for wealth. But sometimes, often, the easiest solutions to our troubles run smack into the brick wall of what it means to be human. I am less interested in writing even or especially political writing that does not take this into account.

And there's a lot more to provoke outrage and/or delight. Keep an eye on this guy!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Monday, December 23, 2002, 12:49 am

Twisted and Sad. I didn't know (until I saw it in Sassafrass Log) that more than 60 women have disappeared in Vancouver, most or all of them streetwalkers in the impoverished Downtown Eastside area, many of them Aboriginal. Fifteen bodies have been found, and the disappearances may date back as far as 1983. Finally, this year, a man named Robert William Pickton has been charged with the killings. The families of the missing women have accused the Vancouver police of ignoring evidence and giving the disappearances a low priority.

Unfortunately, the murder of prostitutes is usually not even seen as news. In Detroit twenty years ago, a newspaper article seeking to explain an increase in the murder rate mentioned that the total of homicide deaths among the city's prostitutes was more than the "normal number," as if a certain level of killings among that group was only to be expected.

Prostitution is illegal nearly everywhere, but prostitution themes and ideas and images are frequent in popular culture, including movies, popular songs, and bestselling novels. One typical meme is that prostitution is too powerful to be suppressed by laws or propriety; as Bob Seger put it in The Fire Down Below: "One thing for certain, it ain't ever gonna stop."

Yet while the inevitability of prostitution seems to be widely acknowledged, the criminal law has, if anything, facilitated the exploitation and marginalization of the women who are caught up in it. An anguished essay about the Vancouver murders raises some interesting questions:

Maybe we need to step back and ask: why is sex, in general, so twisted and sad in our culture? Why is it vast numbers of people will leap on the opportunity to exploit the poor and addicted to get it? Scores of women are working the streets of Vancouver right now because of something fundamental in our society -- something that not just allows for this to be the case, but somehow requires it. How can it be that the most revolutionary technological advances -- that is, anything having to do with the Internet -- are essentially fueled by the demand for quick, limitless access to images of something as banal as naked bodies?
I'm not saying sex is bad -- precisely the opposite. My question is, why do we, as a culture, want so badly for it to be? Why does it spur us to such zeniths of hypocrisy?

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum. Comments


Monday, December 23, 2002, 12:03 am

The Wonders of Dust. No Watermelons writes about dust:

But what is dust? Just "little bits of stuff"?
That depends on where you are. In the house it's probably flakes of skin from people or pets (dander), dust mites or other small critters, pollen, spores, settled particles of smoke from cigarettes or other combustion, and silica from dirt. So it is highly nonuniform and comes from diverse sources.

This post reminds me that the heating ducts in this house are overdue for being cleaned.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum. Comments


Sunday, December 22, 2002, 11:45 pm

Books for Sale. In the course of collecting hundreds of state legislative manuals and biographical compilations for my web site, I have accumulated an inevitable pile of duplicate volumes. I'm finally getting around to listing them for sale on Ebay. If you happen to be in the market for New York Red Books or Wisconsin Blue Books or the like, take a look. I'll be listing a few more every day or so.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum. Comments


Friday, December 20, 2002, 11:57 am

On the radio. I have just been informed that the Todd Mundt Show on National Public Radio will air a brief interview with me (about The Political Graveyard) during today's show at 1:00 pm Eastern time.

Update: It's about halfway through the hour-long broadcast. It sounds a lot better than I expected. One section we taped separately was apparently integrated seamlessly into the middle somewhere -- the magic of editing.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum. Comments


Wednesday, December 18, 2002, 11:13 am

Philadelphia architecture. Rob Bender of Heaven, Hell or Hoboken has posted more than a dozen photos of the Victory Building in Philadelphia, a corner commercial block that is very reminiscent of the Philadelphia City Hall. It seems Beaux-Arts at first glance, with the dramatic curved corner and strongly stated classical elements, but up close, a lot of the detailing looks like 1870s Italianate -- and it apparently has a mansard up top.

John Molloy in Dress For Success cautioned that none of his dress rules applied in Philadelphia, which has its own peculiar local customs. No doubt the design of buildings there is just as eccentric. As someone with little knowledge of Philadelphia architecture, I can hardly presume to guess when this building was built. Some time between 1860 and 1920? That doesn't narrow it down much!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum. Comments


Wednesday, December 18, 2002, 10:52 am

Gore's out: Late last month, Josh Marshall pointed to Al Gore's devastatingly low approval rating: only 19%. With that in mind, it's not very surprising that he dropped out of the presidential race.

Not that Gore's exit solves the problem for Democrats, as Avedon Carol points out:

It's not that I'm not willing to give Kerry or Dean a chance. It's just that I can already see that they have more minuses than Gore and fewer pluses. You can say what you want about needing a nominee who hasn't been tarnished by years of RNC spin, but you're in dreamland if you think the GOP can't make them up about your favorite candidate the same way they did with Gore. Remember, the things they said about Gore were lies. They said a guy who'd been captain of the football team was unable to make friends. They tried to pretend the Internet in no way benefited from Gore's input. They claimed that a man with a 20-year reputation as a straight-arrow was "a serial liar" with dirty hands. And these were things everyone in Washington knew were not true. They had to make it all up, because they had no head-start with Gore, he didn't give them anything to attack. So they had to take every good thing about him and turn it into a minus. He was known for his integrity, so they called him a liar. He inspired the lead character in Love Story, so they pretended that he just made it up and he'd been unpopular since grade school. He spent years working to see the piddly little arpanet turned into something we all had access to, so they made fun of his daring to say so and pretended it wasn't true.
So they can do it to anyone. They're already doing it to Kerry, and you can be sure they will do it with Dean. The spin on both is that they are arrogant and unpopular. Sound familiar? They've only just gotten started, and Dean isn't even particularly high-profile yet.

Interesting Times makes a similar point:

[O]ne of the key dynamics of the 2000 election: the GOP has an extremely sophisticated smear machine that is hooked into the establishment media (as well as the fifth columnists at FOX) at many levels. There is no Democrat out there, no matter how "comfortable he or she is in their own skin", that will be able to avoid getting the same kind of treatment that Gore got.
This is the mistake that the Democrats have made repeatedly for the last two decades (at least). They continue to think the problem their candidates have has something to do with the nature of the candidates. Whether it is the blandness of a Mondale or a Dukakis, the philandering of a Clinton, or the stiffness of a Gore, Democrats like Kutner have convinced themselves that, if they just find the right candidate, they can avoid these problems. But the problems these candidates had were primarily due to the one trait they have in common: they are Democrats.

The Republicans have gotten so good at lying -- about candidates, about policy -- that it's hard to be optimistic about 2004, no matter how bad things get.

Belated update 2/1/2003: In the comments to this No-Watermelons post, "Jim" ridiculed the above posting as evidence that Democrats "are rooting for things to go terribly wrong for our country in hopes that it will enhance their electoral chances." I responded as follows:

I am NOT "rooting for" things to go wrong. Rather, I FEAR how bad things will be under the unfettered rule of GWB during the next two years and more. Civil liberties, eroded away to nothing. Legal abortion all but gone as soon as Stevens dies and is replaced by another Scalia. Budget deficits that dwarf Reagan's. Environmental laws dead letter. Labor unions smashed or powerless. Tremendous growth in the uninsured, barely employed, alienated (hence non-voting) underclass. Y'all may look forward to that world, but I don't.
I agree that war against Iraq may be necessary, but like Josh Marshall, I do not trust GWB and his pals to carry it out in a responsible way. And I don't look forward to spending trillions of tax dollars occupying Iraq for decades thereafter.
The fear that I expressed is that GWB and his friends will carry out all this crap, and yet NOT get tossed out on their ears in 2004.
But, hey, I could be wrong. GWB and the Congressional Republicans could govern more wisely than I expect. Indeed, I certainly hope they do. But I'm not holding my breath.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum. Comments


Tuesday, December 17, 2002, 2:29 pm

One of the nicer preprinted thank-you cards I have received from a political campaign:

In my short campaitgn for the U.S. Senate, I was astonished by the spontaneous outpouring of help, like yours, from all over America. Joan and I were blessed to have those wonderful days to make our case for justice and decency. Your help inspired us and made it possible. Thanks for your kindness, and above all, thanks for your commitment to the best in America. We really need you, now more than ever.

With profound thanks,
Walter F. Mondale

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum. Comments


Tuesday, December 17, 2002, 12:26 am

New, Improved Sidebar: Today's new version features many changes and updates to the blogroll, including new categories. Inactive blogs have been moved to the "on hiatus" category at the bottom.

Many thanks to those bloggers who have found my infrequent notes of interest recently, including A Dog's Life (November 23 and December 10); Sisyphus Shrugged (November 29), Delaware Law Office (December 1), and Sassafrass Log (twice on December 14).

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum. Comments


Monday, December 9, 2002, 5:14 pm

Brief notes:

Ink: The Ann Arbor News has come out with a front-page story about me and The Political Graveyard web site. The print edition features an awful color photo of me, looking numb from the cold, standing in the snow by the grave of former Michigan governor and U.S. Senator Alpheus Felch.

Covisint: The Detroit Free Press reports that Covisint is falling flat. Just a couple of years ago, Covisint was, as the Freep puts it, "expected to become the biggest Internet company in the world." Now, Covisint is laying off workers and moving into cheaper space; one prediction is that it will be gone "in as little as six months." Back in 2000, Washtenaw County was one of many areas angling to get Covisint's headquarters, but we were warned that such a huge arrival would change our community forever.

Michigan's economy is traditionally dominated by the Big Three auto companies, and there is a strong tendency here to look to large, centralized organizations to solve any problem. Indeed, the focus on the needs of big business makes Michigan one of the most hostile states for small businesses. In this case, Covisint's lumbering pace as a colossal start-up was so slow that smaller competitors quickly made it obsolete.

Lott: It's been pretty well covered in the Blogosphere, but most people I see in person have not heard yet about Trent Lott's shocking comment. Last Thursday, at a 100th birthday party for Strom Thurmond, Lott said:

I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

According to the Washington Post, among the attendees at the party, who presumably were mostly Republicans and friends of Strom's, "there was an audible gasp and general silence." In 1948, Thurmond bolted the Democratic Party over Truman's desegregation of the Armed Forces and anti-lynching proposals. Atrios has posted a 1948 Mississippi election flyer which documents the point on lynching.

That liberals like Atrios and Josh Marshall disapprove of something Trent Lott said is hardly news. But many conservative and libertarian bloggers, including Greg Hlatky, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds, Jonah Goldberg, and Virginia Postrel, have denounced Lott's comments, or even called for his ouster as Majority Leader. However, the mainstream press has taken little notice, and the New York Times hasn't yet mentioned it at all.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum. Comments


Friday, November 25, 2002, 5:10 pm

I have received the latest issue (#100) of Derogatory References, Arthur Hlavaty's highly regarded personalzine. Arthur, who has turned 60 but disdains the title of Curmudgeon as "too flattering," has turned many a brilliant phrase in DR, and this issue doesn't disappoint:

A major function of the mass media is to deflect envy away from those with power to those with ability. The way most people use the word elitist shows how well it's working.

[Andy] Warhol represented scrap irony, the cheapest kind of negativism.

I think this whole "Silence Is Consent" meme is a bad one. There are times one is trapped in a situation where that is true, but that is the pathological case. Silence Is Consent goes with a lot of bad ideas, from blaming everyone in a country for the evils that go on there to feeling obligated to tell strangers on the street that they are too fat or don't really need their canes.

Depending on the kindness of strangers may not be as bad as depending on the competence of strangers.

The anti-downloading thing reminds me of that good old sexual warning, "If he gets free milk, he'll never buy the cow." Makes as much sense here.

And there's lots more, from the peculiar self-hatred of the Velvet Underground to the humor of the NFL Player Draft. To get an electronic copy, send email to hlavaty at panix dot com; to get the print version with artwork, send $1 to Arthur D. Hlavaty, 206 Valentine Street, Yonkers NY 10704-1814.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Friday, November 25, 2002, 12:49 pm

Back to Detroit. A few weeks ago, my class at Wayne State University Law School had a reunion; my classmates and I were invited to write some comments about our experiences in law school and since then. I wrote, in part:

We were at Wayne during the absolute nadir of Detroit's history, a moment when any hope for the city seemed foolish and misplaced. When we emerged from the law library in the evening, the smell of abandoned buildings burning was in the air; car alarms, ignored, would wail sometimes all night long; huge billows of foul-smelling steam poured from every street grating, since there was no money to fix the leaking steam pipes.

Longtime Detroit institutions were dying: the downtown Hudson's [department store] closed during our school years; the stately old train station was abandoned in favor of some temporary aluminum structures; the vast Ford Rouge auto and steel plant, which once attracted visitors from around the world, ended all public tours. Student life was a bit like the Samuel R. Delaney novel Dhalgren, which portrays a handful of eccentric holdouts living in the ruins of a big city.

Those images returned to me quite vividly yesterday when I saw the new movie 8 Mile, set and filmed in Detroit and showing the familiar scenes of abandonment and devastation. A couple of scenes are even set in the old Michigan Theater, a 1920s movie palace crudely converted to a parking garage, where the domed plaster ceiling, the proscenium arch, and even the tattered remains of the curtain can still be seen above the top parking deck.

As a law student, I didn't live the life of Eminem and his friends, but my classmates and I knew the same shattered neighborhoods, lived in the same run-down apartment houses, rode the same oh-so-familiar Detroit buses -- except that the real buses are much more infrequent, crowded, and noisy than the ones in the movie.

I'm not at all familiar with Eminem or his music. I only just found out that he was also known as "Slim Shady". I knew already he was a big rap star, a white guy in a predominantly black genre. Judging by the reactions of my fellow viewers -- a group of middle-aged Ann Arbor Jewish men as unacquainted with Eminem as I was -- the movie served as an effective introduction to the world of rap. Indeed, the rhythms rang in my head for some time.

Coincidentally, on the same day I saw 8 Mile, Maureen Dowd published a scathing column about Eminem fans among the middle-aged baby boomers. I'm sure such people exist, but I don't think I know any of them. My friends and I enjoyed the movie, but I doubt any of us will buy any of his records.

The group that Eminem hangs out with calls itself "313", for the Detroit telephone area code. It may be overly geeky to imagine an allusion to "414", the gang of early-1980s Milwaukee computer hackers who also named themselves for their area code.

When I lived in Detroit, in 1979-82, 313 was the area code for the entire region of Southeast Michigan, Detroit and all of its suburbs together -- the entire media market or metro area. In those days, I frequently traveled between East Lansing and Detroit; the Dorr Road overpass on I-96 between Howell and Brighton was something of a landmark to me: the actual boundary and symbolic gateway to 313. I visualized a billboard at that location: "WELCOME TO AREA CODE 313: PLEASE DRIVE CAREFULLY."

But southeast Michigan now has six area codes; with all the other territory peeled away, 313 is confined to Detroit and a few enclaves and close-in suburbs. I would guess that no other U.S. area code territory has a population as predominantly African-American as 313 -- not even Washington DC's 202.

And Eight Mile Road (Detroit's northern city limits) is an area code boundary. At one point in the movie, another character jeers at Eminem, "you're not 313, you're 810." Since Detroit has no mobile home parks, the trailer where the Eminem character lives with his mother and sister was presumably in Macomb County -- north of Eight Mile, in (what was then) the suburban 810 area code.

Back in 1969, when Arlo Guthrie had become famous, he got to make a movie called Alice's Restaurant, in which he was the hero and musical genius, struggling to do the right thing, unappreciated by the world but adored by all the girls; it seemed just interminable. 8 Mile is Eminem's version of this same project -- every bit as hagiographic, and just one minute shorter, but a lot more successful as entertainment.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. sim shady, 2/5/2003: Does anyone know the name of the song during the opening credits of 8 mile? it has a close up of the rappers mouth. Who is it also? ...

  2. koolkid88, 11/20/2003: Eminem is the hottest guy on earth!!!!!!!!!!! NO JOKE!! I have liked eminem for 3 and a half years now. He is the best rapper I know. I look up to eminem. I think of Eminem as my role model.

  3. Allison, 5/22/2004: What is the song from 8 mile called when eminem is driving around with his buddies. The lyrics go something like "you don't know" I can't remember it and I desperately want it. Fonzlev@excite.com

  4. bling bling, 11/10/2004: What is the song that is playing while M is riding around on the bus> When the lady is staring at him???? On his way to work after his car breaks down?

  5. kecko_20987@yahoo.com, 11/7/2005: hey i just wanted to know the first song that comes up on tha movie....its tha one that hes listening to on his headphones in tha beginning..


Friday, November 22, 2002, 1:15 pm

Grand Trunk Station. Some months ago, the editors of a literary magazine called Fourth Genre (published by the Michigan State University Press) chose one of my late father's photographs ("Grand Trunk Station") for the cover of their Fall 2002 issue. Normally, they also publish an essay by the photographer; since my father is gone, they asked me to write it.

Now the issue has appeared. Since the editors assured me that it would be all right to put the text on my personal web site, I include it here:

My father, Justin Kestenbaum (1925-1995), was born in New York City. Following the separation of his parents, he grew up in a series of foster homes and (after he got into trouble) in Pleasantville Cottage School, in Pleasantville, New York. It was there, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, under the tutelage of German refugees from Nazism, that he began his lifelong passion for photography.

In 1943, following graduation from high school, he lied about his age to join the Army, and was sent to the Pacific to join a unit already in the thick of hostilities.

After the war, my father and his brother Al, who also had photographic skills, worked in nightclubs from New York to Buffalo to Chicago. "Photo girls" would go from table to table taking pictures of patrons, while my father and his brother worked behind the scenes in a tiny darkroom, developing and printing the photos. later on, they settled in Chicago, where the two brothers worked at places like Lakeview Photo. In those days, photo processing was still done largely by hand, and required a lot of skill.

Eventually, my father, with the helo of the GI Bill and a William Randolph Hearst fellowship, pursued graduate work in American history at Northwestern University. In 1963, he accepted a faculty position in the history department of Michigan State University, where he remained a professor for the rest of his life.

But all this time, in each of the apartments or houses where we lived, he always had a darkroom full of sophisticated equipment and plumbing that kept the water at exactly 68 degrees Fahrenheit, considered ideal for developing black-and-white photographs. He mixed his own chemicals and even formulated his own developer, which he called "Justinol."

I disappointed him by seeing photography as a pragmatic means to an end, and took little interest in the details of darkroom work. But he generously shared his skills with many others, who came to our house and his darkroom to learn. I remember the little aphorisms he often repeated, such as "Expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights" (he always scoffed at the recommended settings) and "Film is cheap!" (that is, go ahead and make multiple images with different exposures.

He took pictures, too, but at first the picture-taking was almost casual, an adjunct to his darkroom work. We have boxes and boxes of hundreds of pictures he took of my sisters and me when we were kids.

By the 1960s, he was snapping candid, unposed pictures of his friends and colleagues, using only available light. Some of these portraits became quite memorable. One of the greatest was his picture of John Robison, founder of Jocundry's bookstore in East Lansing, showing John in a wide-brimmed hat with a twinkle in his eye. No other picture quite captured that twinkle. When John and more than two hundred others died in a 1979 plane crash, my father's portrait of John Robison became one of the main images used by the national media.

By the 1970s, he took a great interest in the photographers who traveled the country for the Farm Security Administration during the Depression, such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lenge. They made documentary photographs that transcended documentation, often unpeopled images of buildings and storefronts and signs that expressed the poverty and dignity and humor of America at that time.

He made a slide show of many of these images, accompanied by music and commentary about the United States in the 1930s. And pretty soon he and I were driving around the countryside looking for similar kinds of images he could photograph: abandoned barns and houses, the paint weathered off, old windmills, schoolhouses, and cemeteries. He would take the pictures; I would carry the cases and lenses and film. As I became more interested in architectural history and preservation, I guided our tours toward the most interesting (and threatened) old buildings of the region.

He and I visited both of the old railroad stations in Lansing while they were still in use for passenger trains: the Michigan Central station on East Michigan (now Clara's Restaurant) and the Grand Trunk station on South Washington. Both were built in the era when the railroads were far and away the dominant form of transportation in the country. A whole new architectural motif was invented for the train station: the wide roof with the sheltered platform to protect passengers from the weather; the large and very high-ceilinged space inside the terminal to provide glorious relief froi a long trip cooped up in a train compartment.

By the time he and I were exploring these places, they were no longer appreciated. Passenger train service was fading away, and the ornate, high-ceilinged train stations were seen as ugly as well as outmoded. So many of the old buildings of Lansing were being demolished at that time that we did not expect the train stations to survive.

In my 13-year-old pragmatism, I had a clear documentary purpose in photographing them, but my father was an artist. He considered the interior photograph of Grand Trunk Station to be one of his best.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. ken long, 9/24/2005: an obscure web search for your father led me to this post; i had the very great privilege of being a student of his while i attended MSU from 1978-1980; he was my faculty advisor and i had several classes with him; he encouraged my independent research in history and my desire to teach. i spent many hours in discussions with him and he stands out in my memory as one of the most influential people in my life (i just turned 48 a few days ago, retiring from the Army after 25 years). He taught me a lot about integrity, intellectual courage and honesty and the virtue of independent inquiry. It was a great priviledge to know and work with him, and i just wanted to let you know i think your dad was a helluva man

    sincerely,
    ken long
    longke@yahoo.com


Tuesday, November 19, 2002, 2:43 pm

At the movies. As parents of a four-year-old, we don't get to go out to see movies very often, but just in the last few weeks, we have seen a couple.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a fun movie, mostly deserving of the widespread praise it has received. But there is one thing strikingly odd about it.

The movie portrays a large extended family of Greek immigrants and their children in Chicago. They have small businesses: a restaurant, a dry cleaners, a travel agency, but they are basically working class. Apparently the heroine is the first in this large family to go to college. We see this family through many private moments at home, at work, at play.

Yet never once does anyone smoke!

It's not that I enjoy watching people smoke cigarettes -- quite the contrary. I saw my mother (a native Chicagoan and granddaughter of immigrants) smoke herself to death by lung cancer in 1985. At the county board meeting tomorrow, I plan to vote in favor of a proposed measure to ban smoking in most workplaces in Washtenaw County. But it strains credulity that the entire family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding would be nonsmokers.

As I commented earlier, smoking is now seen very negatively by television and presumably movie audiences, so that "if you put a cigarette in a character's hand, you're saying that he smells bad and doesn't take care of himself." That impression, at least among middle-class viewers, would interefere with the sympathetic image of the Portokalos family that the movie seeks to convey. So that aspect of realism was quietly excised from the picture.

I'm not even sure there's anything wrong with that. Including a lot of cigarette smoke would have made it a darker movie, even from a stylistic standpoint. And arguably smoking rates are declining to the point that the total abstinence in this context is, or soon will be, merely improbable, instead of inconceivable. Still, given all the in-your-face family foibles that the groom and his parents have to confront in the movie, it is ironic that one of the most commonplace is omitted entirely.

Bowling for Columbine. A few weeks ago, we went to Royal Oak to see a preview screening of Michael Moore's new movie, "Bowling for Columbine." Afterwards, Michael Moore himself was on hand to answer questions about it.

Those of us who grew up in mid-Michigan have been aware of Michael Moore for a long time. He's a radical kid from Davison, a working class town just east of Flint. He got elected to the local school board at age 22 (another friend from Davison explains: "It was a low turnout election"), started the Flint Voice alternative paper, which reached a statewide audience and was renamed the Michigan Voice. In Flint, he discovered and published a column by Ben Hamper, a/k/a "Rivethead", a marvelously funny writer about life on the assembly line.

Then he went off to San Francisco to become editor of Mother Jones, which turned out to be a debacle. So he turned himself into a filmmaker and made a documentary about the decline of Flint titled Roger and Me.

I wasn't too impressed by Roger and Me (maybe because I had already seen almost all of it in the pages of the Michigan Voice), but a lot of people liked it, and it made Michael Moore into a national figure. He had a TV show and a couple other good gigs since then.

Now he's come out with a new film called "Bowling for Columbine". It's won some awards, and supposedly it's breaking box-office records for a documentary (though that may not be saying much).

I guess this is what you might call an "argumentative documentary". Moore explores the Columbine incident, not the details of what happened there (though we were stunned to see graphic security camera footage from inside the high school during the massacre), but the Why questions. What makes the United States such a violent society?

At first, he seems inclined to blame guns, but then he discovers that guns are even more plentiful in peaceful Canada. Others interviewed in the film point to the U.S.'s violent history, but other countries have much bloodier histories. Moore's answer seems to be our "culture of fear", a topic which is rarely addressed these days.

Moore is surely older than me, but he still looks and carries himself like a kid: a fat, sloppy kid from the wrong side of the tracks, dressed in a limp t-shirt and jeans and baseball cap, with a patchy beard that is grotesquely unflattering. Perhaps because he looks like a harmless slob, so seemingly gentle in his questioning, his interviewees are unguarded, sometimes startlingly so.

"How did you get people to open up to you like that?" I asked him after the movie. I didn't record his exact words, but he said approximately: "That's the $64,000 question. You'd think they would know who I was. Really, nobody should talk to me. Hell, I wouldn't talk to me. But they probably thought I would be lucky to get on community access."

Moore has a paranoid's fixation on coincidences, and there are a number of them here, all useful for connecting parts of the story together. The Columbine massacre took place the same day as the biggest day of U.S. bombing in former Yugoslavia. One of the two creators of "South Park" was a student at Columbine High School, and hated it. And on and on.

The political line of the film is not simplistically pro-gun-control. But the NRA is not presented positively, to say the least, and Charlton Heston, leading a pro-gun rally in Denver only days after the Columbine killings, is the heavy. The climax of the movie, the part you have already heard about, is where Moore confronts Heston is his Beverly Hills mansion, and Heston hangs himself on camera, with some racist comments about "our ethnic problem", which gets even worse when he tries to clarify it. A moment later, Heston flees, with Moore pursuing him Colombo-like with just one more question.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Laurie Mann, 11/27/2002: Smoking in Movies

    Before the '80s, smoking in movies was common. All kinds of characters smoked. In the '80s, it seemed like only evil characters smoked. Beginning in the '90s (particularly in Pulp Fiction), evil characters and "cool" characters smoked. While I am as fascist a non-smoker as they come, I think movies and TV should reflect real life, which means that about 23% of all kinds of people should smoke - old and young, cool and uncool, good and bad.


Tuesday, October 15, 2002, 3:33 pm

Fighting the Copyright Extension. Lawrence Lessig offers an interesting postmortem on the oral argument in Eldred v. Ashcroft.

I was also happy to see a New York Times editorial a few days ago:

A coalition of Internet publishers and others interested in defending the public domain argued in the Supreme Court this week that Congress's latest copyright extension went further than the Constitution's language permits and also failed to achieve the founders' goal of promoting art and science. They are right, and the court should hold the law to be unconstitutional.

Whatever the future direction of copyright law, it's critically important that Congress not be allowed to make copyrights perpetual, either explicitly or on the installment plan.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Monday, October 14, 2002, 1:20 pm

Bad news from Boise. An anguished correspondent from Idaho writes:

In Boise our officials are allowing developers to tear out 2 full blocks of historic homes and an old school from 1894, which are all inside a national historic preservation district and a local historic conservation district. Century old trees are being killed as well, all for some generic box apartments and parking lots. Some of these old buildings are one of a kind. The location of the destruction rips into the safety, continuity, and function of the remaining neighborhood. The pain and loss is worse because there are 47 city blocks of redevelopment land available just within a stone's throw. We are all fearful of the precedents being set to destroy block after block of heritage. The city refuses to respond to questions about where they will draw the line, the preservation and conservation designations apparently having no value.
The developers have already stated that they intend to encroach further into this historic neighborhood, tearing down modest historic homes to build much larger and more expensive ones. Ironic that we aren't allowed to make changes to the fronts and sides of our homes, yet developers can come in and tear down houses and build new ones with vinyl windows, cheap siding, and bad roof pitches. Investing in Boise was one of the worst decisions in our lives, a decade of full out assaults by officials and developers. Greed determines everything here. Schools, children, neighborhoods, and heritage are given no value whatsoever. The air quality is getting bad enough that we will have to leave anyway, but we grieve for what this city used to be, and might have been.
Good luck to all of you who fight to save old places and authentic character. I feel driven out of my mind with the endless and senseless brutality and waste. In the case of our old neighborhood, it has been very much like seeing someone you love deliberately hacked to death, a prolonged agony. There is a term, Schadenfreude: "To take malicious satisfaction in the misfortune of others." This is what we are experiencing from too many local officials and developers, several of them constantly telling us they plan to bulldoze our homes and gut the neighborhood. At times the threats and stress becomes unbearable. Many have fled, leaving their homes standing vacant. The officials aren't even trying to go around the edges of the neighborhood, or respecting the function of what is here, instead choosing to rip the very heart out and to degrade every single school environment and pedestrian route. We are filled with the pain each and every day these many long years, with conditions getting worse every single month, every single year....

Some more about Boise's process:

As far as I saw in the testimonies and paperwork we picked up, not a single historic preservationist provided any information for the hearings regarding the destruction of the 1894 Whittier School and the vintage houses behind it. I know several of them care about the school and the negative changes that will occur all around it when torn down, so am not sure what happened. Three people testified in person, 6 others sent in testimony. In the development approval papers the city only recorded 3 parties of record.
The oak tree they are going to kill for the parking garage entrance is magnificent. The developers have been harassing the old woman across the street to force her to sell to them. All those headlights are designed to shine into her house, the developers smirking that she won't be there much longer. You can bet the P & Z [Planning & Zoning] Commissioners wouldn't have allowed this to happen to themselves or to their family members.
The highway district slipped their hearing on the issue past us, didn't even do a staff report, just approved the destruction without considering the fact that these streets are already over traffic capacity - or even that they are in a national historic district and a local conservation district. Our city hall is full of developer's reps, as is the highway district. Lots of talk of payola in this city. Too much money with this massive growth rate.
There was a recent citizens' effort to dissolve the highway district, but they called in favors with the big money development pacs and everyone was scared off before the public hearing. Only one couple on the petition even showed up to testify, against a roomful of big name developers. It was a party atmosphere when it should have been treated as serious business, but apparently they were celebrating the decision before it was official. I wasn't part of the petition, didn't know about it until it hit the news, but still received several threatening attacks to keep me away. This is the environment in this city for most people trying to protect community quality or even try to get them to follow the comprehensive plan and adopted policies. Lots of scared people, which is why the hearings are so poorly attended.
They've scheduled the hearing for the second block of destruction for this Wednesday - at noon - so very few people can attend. I don't think the media has even published a date for that hearing, or listed any of the issues. The neighborhood association recently got creamed in court by the City, on yet another approval based on broken agreements, so they haven't even sent out notices to the neighborhood about the hearing dates or issues. The Cathedral of the Rockies church is the developer, with several of our officials as members. A shining example of 'do unto others', along with community and family values.

I used to think that Idaho was one of the least corrupt states. Apparently I was wrong about that.

Delving into history and geography, as I do constantly in building my web site, I find myself developing images of places I have never visited. My site has a page for every county in the United States; sometimes a native of one of these places comes across the corresponding page and assumes it to be a stand-alone web site. "Why are you so interested in Dimmit County, Texas?" one wrote, with what I took to be an edge of suspicion in his tone. Maybe when somebody in far-away Ann Arbor takes an interest in your little county, which you had assumed had nothing to attract tourists or the news media, you wonder if you're being stalked.

Of course the first answer to such a query is that I didn't single out Dimmit County; the page was generated as part of a system as neutral and impersonal as the Census Bureau.

But the real answer is that I think every county is interesting. Each one has its courthouse, its county seat, with a collection of storefronts and law offices and industries, a grid of streets lined with trees and houses, neighborhoods successively newer toward the edges of town, with farms or forests or deserts beyond, and other small towns, located precisely here or here, on rivers or railroad lines or on favorable topography. The surnames, the churches, the names of streets, the styles of architecture, the methods of agriculture all reveal aspects of the history of the place, who came here and why, what kinds of lives they lived and struggles they had. And all that even before you arrive at the cemeteries, where a lot of this history is literally carved in stone.

What usually doesn't enter into my imagery is the powerful drive to destroy what is distinctive about each of these places, to forget their history, and make them more and more like the generic American suburb. And this is happening the fastest in the places that are forgotten, places like Boise which most people wouldn't suspect of having any historic neighborhoods.

As the Tip O'Neill paraphrase goes, "All preservation is local," but the places where the physical remnants of the past are most cherished and protected tend to be those which arrogantly assume that the whole world is interested in their streetscape details. Places like New York or Concord or Oak Park or Key West or, yes, Ann Arbor. But these are hardly the only places with landmarks and neighborhoods worth keeping.

Perhaps I mistook the edge of suspicion in those emails, demanding to know why I bothered to catalog and document the careers, misdeeds, and accomplishments of political figures who were born, lived, died, or buried in their particular county. After all, they have grown up believing that their community and its heritage are of no particular interest or significance. In other words, How dare you take more interest in our history than we do ourselves?

Perhaps it is no wonder that so much is being destroyed.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. D.J. Jones, 10/15/2002: Don't get me started with what they've done in Nashville where preservation is considered a low priority and so much has been lost (including an Anti-Bellum mansion at the corner of my street which fell victim to the shady politics of rezoning). I was in Charlotte, North Carolina back in the mid '90s talking to a local about their downtown (or, rather, "uptown" as they refer to it), and he gritted his teeth at the "designated" historic area there remarking, "the only thing 'historic' about it is the dirt." Most of Downtown Charlotte has long-ago since demolished its historic structures, including levelling an entire black neighborhood (same here in Nashville when they levelled the "Hell's Half-Acre" neighborhood around Capitol Hill). Gotta love that "urban renewal." :-(


Wednesday, September 11, 2002, 2:52 am

Flight 93 and the U.S. Capitol. Flight 93 was the hijacked airliner which crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, last September 11, apparently due to intervention by passengers. The terrorists were heading the plane to Washington, but the specific target they had in mind has been a matter of speculation.

News items now quote al-Qaida sources as revealing that they planned to crash Flight 93 into the U.S. Capitol Building.

To me, this is a surprise. Another one of the hijacked planes had to execute a fancy turn and veer right past the Capitol in order to hit the Pentagon. If the vast Pentagon complex was such a high-priority target, it made sense that al-Qaida would want to hit it in two places. That would also make for a certain symmetry: two planes for the World Trade Center, two planes for the Pentagon.

But now it appears that model of the terrorists' intentions was incorrect.

What would have happened if Flight 93 had hit the Capitol? An unthinkable but unavoidable question, especially for those of us in historic preservation.

As horrifying as it was to hear on September 11, as the World Trade Center towers were falling, that "the Pentagon is burning," it would have been so very much worse to hear that the Capitol was also burning. Possibly the additional blow, right at the symbolic center of our democracy, would have led to a different kind of national reaction, but I doubt it.

On the other hand, the Capitol and other major buildings in D.C. had already been evacuated by the time Flight 93 would have arrived, so loss of life (apart from those aboard the plane) would have been minimal.

Lucky for us, the Flight 93 hijackers waited until the plane was near Cleveland before taking it over, a delay which made it possible for the passengers to learn via cell phones what was going on elsewhere, and for potential target structures to be emptied of people.

Presumably the terrorists would have aimed for the dome, an obvious symbol of U.S. democracy, and the only part of the building that is instantly visually familiar worldwide. And they could easily have destroyed the dome, which is made of cast iron.

But think about what that would have meant for the scope of the disaster. There really isn't much underneath the dome, mainly the Rotunda. The House and Senate are in the wings to either side, actually at some distance from the Rotunda, if you have ever walked it. And the Capitol, due to its location and layout, is considerably more accessible to fire fighting crews than the Pentagon, so the fire could probably have been confined to the center section.

Damage, in other words, might well have been quite contained, with the rest of the building restored to service within days.

(It is possible that a plane hitting the dome above its base would have smashed right through it, ending up beyond the Capitol and possibly destroying other buildings, maybe the Library of Congress or the Supreme Court. But the Capitol is exposed on a hill, so it wouldn't have been hard to hit it lower down, the way the Pentagon was. And the Capitol grounds are pretty spacious, so the impact zone of a plane angled down toward the building would probably not have spread into the surrounding neighborhood.)

In the aftermath of such a catastrophe affecting a historic landmark of major national importance, we surely would have seen two divergent lines of opinion:

(1) "Put it back!" Make it just like it was, or the terrorists have won. Presumably this would be a stronger and more effective movement for the Capitol than it turned out to be for the World Trade Center.

If this line of thought had been successful, there would have been a big new call for artisans skilled in stone carving and cast iron work. Undoubtedly the historic preservation field would have benefited both directly and indirectly. Purists would still point out that the replacement is a new building, not the historic landmark. However, if the wings both survived, SOMETHING would be needed to connect them. (Ironically the Capitol started as two separate sections on opposite sides of where the Rotunda was later built, and those two sections were burned, but not destroyed, by enemy action during the War of 1812.)

(2) "The nation is its people, not a building." Why replicate an inefficient 19th century structure at great cost? Let's create new symbols, or at least, modern buildings.

This argument would be a good deal stronger if the Capitol were destroyed in toto, and the debate were between re-creating the quirky original or replacing it with a modern building with some superficial resemblances. A plastic or fiberglass dome would look exactly the same on TV as the cast-iron original; some would surely point out that cast iron was the fiberglass of its day.

Remember The Onion's piece last May (reprinted as news in China), about "Congress Threatens to Leave D.C. Unless New Capitol Is Built"?

The spoof "quotes" Dennis Hastert as saying "Don't get us wrong: We love the drafty old building ... But the hard reality is, it's no longer suitable for a world-class legislative branch. The sight lines are bad, there aren't enough concession stands or bathrooms, and the parking is miserable. It hurts to say, but the capitol's time has come and gone."

It's not hard to imagine the real Hastert, or others in Congress, saying the same thing over the ashes of the old building.

The most extreme form of this might even have included calls to relocate the national capital to the heartland, say, to central Kansas. Here again, this kind of thing rises in likelihood with the scale of the destruction. If the White House and the Capitol had both been totally destroyed, and the Pentagon perhaps more heavily damaged than it was, the concept of starting over someplace else might have gotten a lot of momentum, notwithstanding the colossal investment of other federal facilities in the Washington area.

Just a few grim thoughts about what else might have happened one year ago today -- and the debt we owe to the heroic passengers on Flight 93.

Dave Barry wrote a very thoughtful and moving essay on the parallels between Gettysburg and Shanksville, including the role of monuments, memory, and random chance. Read it.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Paul, 9/13/2002: Larry,

    Just read your invigorating post, and when you mentioned the **hypothetical possibility of building a modern Capitol** I literally started to spasm while waving my arms and yelling "No! No! No! No!"

    We've rebuilt it once. We would do it again.

    And a new White House?

    "No! No! No! No!"


Wednesday, August 28, 2002, 11:40 pm

Political Graveyard update. I am happy and relieved to report that I have at last completed and put online a completely new version of my web site, The Political Graveyard.

The new site lists over 107,000 politicians (compared with about 81,000 in the last one), and introduces a number of new features:

  • Politicians Portrayed on Money -- U.S. or Confederate coins or currency. It is ironic that Andrew Jackson, lifelong foe of paper money, has his visage printed on so much of it these days -- but that practice started less than 20 years after his death. Jackson is one of only two political figures (George Washington is the other) whose portraits have appeared both on U.S. and Confederate bills.

  • Politicians Who Were (or took part in a) First. Many of these are politico-demographic milestones (the first woman, the first Catholic, the first Republican, the first black, the first Chinese-American, etc.). Quite a few of the rest are accomplishments of politicians in other fields: the builder of the first flax mill in America, author of the first book about American law, captain of the first U.S. war vessel to carry the Stars and Stripes into battle, and so on.

  • Gay or Lesbian Politicians, with 31 listed: Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin and Jim Kolbe and Gerry Studds and more than two dozen others.

  • There are a bunch of additional organizations for which I have (incomplete) lists of politician members, including the American Dental Association and the once-mighty Anti-Saloon League. But the Freemasons continue to lead the list, with 2,294 politician members.

  • The Politicians Named for Other Politicians page is back. George Washington has the most pols named for him (84), followed distantly by Benjamin Franklin (46), Thomas Jefferson (35), Andrew Jackson (28), Henry Clay (20), and 53 others, including such unlikely heroes as Roscoe Conkling, Franklin Pierce, Chester A. Arthur, and Millard Fillmore.

  • The Political Families list has been expanded. The threshold for including a family has been reduced from four politician members to three, and each family now gets a separate page with full information about all members. Of particular interest are the Adams, Roosevelt, Taft, and Kennedy families, but there are more than four hundred others both famous and obscure.

  • I already had a page for each of the more than 3,000 counties in the U.S., listing politicians who were born, lived, died, or buried in that area. For example, here's the page on Schenectady County, N.Y.. The heads of those pages now have more links relevant to that particular county, including the county's official web site if available. And now for the first time I'm treating Alaska's boroughs and census areas as counties, giving each its own page, even though some are conspicuously lacking in politician data.

  • Entries for some politicians now feature links to biographies and histories about them at Amazon.com. Naturally, any actual book sales that result will generate a small kickback to me. Not enough, unfortunately, to let me quit my day job and work on the web site full time.

The popup ads, which were NOT my idea, are supposed to go away by tomorrow. If they didn't annoy me so much, I'd be temped to say: hey, even the hoary, dignified New York Times web site has popup ads now. They do generate about an extra $10/day. But I can't stand them.

I hope people have as much fun browsing The Political Graveyard as I have putting it together!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Paul, 8/31/2002: Great to have you back!


Wednesday, August 14, 2002, 5:05 pm

Oops. Well, I was wrong about the outcome of the congressional primary: John Dingell was renominated by an unexpectedly wide margin.

I spent the day of the election cooped up in a couple rooms in the city hall in Taylor, a Dingell stronghold, watching the absentee votes be counted. Since poll challengers at an absentee ballot counting board can see how the votes are coming out during the day, they're required to sign an oath not to reveal anything before the polls closed. They also locked us all in: 20 election workers, two poll challengers (I was there for Rivers, and a former Taylor city councilwoman represented Dingell), and a cop. No one could leave until 8:00 pm.

Taylor had over 3,900 absentee ballots -- an unprecedented number in a primary. Most of them voted in the Democratic primary, and over three-quarters went to Dingell -- a margin which I knew meant he had won districtwide.

Detailed analysis of the vote is still lacking, but voter turnout in the Downriver industrial areas was quite robust and very pro-Dingell. The Dingell campaign and its allies distributed absentee ballot applications throughout the Downriver communities; relentless recorded "robo-calls" reminded voters to send in the applications, and then when the ballots arrived, to send in the ballots. These calls annoyed some people -- one Dearborn resident, old enough to remember Dingell's father in Congress, announced that he would vote for Rivers because he hated Dingell's computerized phone calls -- but they were effective, and almost all of those votes went to Dingell.

There is also some indication that a few thousand Republicans, especially in Monroe County, crossed over into the Democratic primary to vote for Dingell, just as thousands of Democrats voted for McCain in the Republican presidential primary two years ago. Here in Michigan, where even the concept of party registration is political anathema, voters are given a ballot with two party sections, and get to choose in private which one to participate in.

Almost any glib conclusion that could be drawn from the Dingell/Rivers race is flatly contradicted by the outcome of the gubernatorial primary, where Attorney General Jennifer Granholm won by 20 points over U.S. Representative David Bonior and former Governor Jim Blanchard. The United Auto Workers won big with Dingell and lost big with Bonior; Emily's List did the opposite with Rivers and Granholm. Second Amendment activists loved Dingell and disliked Rivers, but they had plenty more reason to detest Granholm, who took part in the unsuccessful effort to suspend the shall-issue concealed weapons law. Dingell's win was touted as a vote for the experienced candidate, but two highly experienced candidates for Governor lost to the relatively untested Granholm. And so on.

The one thing Granholm and Dingell had in common was much more campaign money to spend than their opponents, but I would argue that to be more a symptom than a cause of their success.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Friday, August 2, 2002, 8:00 am

Quick, breathless update: Tensions over the primary are at a fever pitch here, not just the congressional primary but also the primaries for governor, state senate, state rep, and county commissioner. The negative ads -- especially in the gubernatorial race -- are flooding the airwaves: we are hearing a lot from the throaty Scary Voice Lady (audio from Mock the Vote 2000), and prerecorded "robo-calls" with smears about candidates.

On Tuesday, I attended the funeral of my highly esteemed colleague Regula Herzog, who died of pancreatic cancer over the weekend. Characteristically, she worked almost to the end; most of us didn't know she was sick until just a few days ago when she could no longer come back to her office. Regula was involved in research on topics ranging from cognition among the elderly to control of urinary incontinence, worked closely with social scientists and psychologists and surgeons, was mentor to many graduate students.

On Wednesday, I stopped for a sandwich at an Ann Arbor coffee shop, and was startled a few minutes later when conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick Posthumus sat down at an adjoining table. "In person," I said softly, but Posthumus heard me and was obviously pleased to be recognized. We shook hands and chatted for a bit.

Posthumus, who is cruising to an easy victory in the Republican primary, is said by one of his backers to be "consistently underestimated". I guess time will tell, but I was underwhelmed.

Then another surprise: Posthumus was in this particular coffee shop to meet Washington Post columnist David Broder, who has been in Ann Arbor reporting on the Dingell/Rivers congressional primary. After Posthumus was interviewed and left, I introduced myself to Broder and we talked for a while about Michigan politics.

Yesterday, the Washington Post ran Broder's article on the Dingell vs. Rivers race:

[S]ources in both campaigns say television ads for Rivers have been making steady inroads in Dingell's old territory, especially among college-educated women. He, on the other hand, apparently has converted few if any of her supporters, male or female, in Ann Arbor, the spawning ground for physician-assisted suicide initiatives and other liberal causes.

That's also my impression (though note well, this liberal Ann Arborite is strongly opposed to the legalization of physician assisted suicide). Dingell supporters in Ann Arbor are few and almost furtive; polls are showing Rivers support at startlingly high levels. A 90% vote for the congresswoman in the city of Ann Arbor does not seem out of the question.

However, as if to prove the local saying, "The Ann Arbor News Hates Ann Arbor," our hometown paper has endorsed John Dingell. Given the sneering contempt that the Ann Arbor News' editorial voice usually takes toward local Democrats, the influence of its endorsement in a Democratic primary is questionable.

As I write this, another computer is churning out web files for the expanded, updated, and improved new version of my web site The Political Graveyard. It's the first complete new version of the site in over a year, and for the first time, there will be over 100,000 politicians listed.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Monday, July 29, 2002, 4:50 pm

The Economist and the U.S. Andrew Northrup quotes the Economist, and then adds:

I'm a fan of the Economist, although their coverage of the US often seems to be completely confused and wrong-headed (please refer to their coverage of the Clinton-Lewinski nonsense.)

I don't read the Economist regularly, and I don't remember what they had to say about Clinton's scandal, but I do remember one article about the US, a few years ago, that made my jaw drop.

The subject was a comment by Steven Bochco, creator of the Hill Street Blues TV police show. I can't find the exact words in Google, but it was a comment about smoking on television, approximately as follows: "Nowadays, if you put a cigarette in a character's hand, you're saying that he smells bad and doesn't take care of himself."

What Bochco was saying is that the eyes of the audience had changed since the 1960s, and that as a result, a smoking character would be seen negatively.

However, the Economist didn't understand it that way. Over in England at the time, cigarette smoking was still the norm and not seen as negatively as in the U.S. Therefore, they assumed that Bochco, rather than commenting on perceptions, was declaring a propaganda war on smoking. So they denounced him!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. Andrew Northrup, 7/31/2002: The Economist had a cover photo of Clinton, with the caption "Just go." Inside was a feature on how America was being torn apart by Clinton's salacious behavior. This cover appeared at the time the national mood was changing from "why am I being bothered with this nonsense?" to "bring me the head of Ken Starr."


Monday, July 29, 2002, 4:30 pm

Sam Heldman, in his new labor law blog, commenting on media coverage of the nomination of Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asks the right questions about any judicial nominee:

But the news media so rarely give us the underlying data. Part of the problem -- a big part of the problem, I think -- is that practicing lawyers are understandably cautious about giving frank negative assessments about sitting judges, even when those negative assessments can be accompanied by actual supporting facts. Surely every good appellate lawyer in Texas knows whether Justice Owen understands and applies the basic principles of how to do appellate judging fairly, or not. They could also tell us whether she ever, or often, joins or writes an opinion that is pro-individual rather than pro-corporate in difficult and disputed tort cases; whether she ever, or often, joins or writes an opinion that is pro-defendant rather than pro-government in difficult and disputed criminal cases; or whether on the other hand her vote is nearly always predictable on the cases that divide the Justices. They could tell us, bottom line, whether her judicial opinions conveniently wind up in line with her politics even when it requires lots of fancy footwork to reach that convenient result, or whether they don't. They could give us, even better, specific examples of cases where she's gone out on a limb or ignored the record or ignored precedent in order to reach a result in line with her politics, or they could tell us that nobody can come up with a case where she's done that. Then, further, they could tell us whether, even on cases that involve honestly disputable novel issues of law, she always (or usually or only sometimes) reaches legal views that coincide with the Republican Party's political views; even if this wouldn't necessarily show dishonesty, it is relevant for the legitimate political aspect of the confirmation process. These are the sorts of things what we, and the Senate, need to know, rather than battling spin-quotes from the usual CNN suspects.

Unfortunately, I suspect that the current administration would not be very interested in nominating a judge who failed to show absolute adherence to the political outcome, the law and legal principles be damned.

Thanks to Nathan Newman for pointing out Sam Heldman's site.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.


Friday, July 26, 2002, 5:15 pm (updated Saturday 9:09 am)

Political Update. In the last couple of days we have gotten dueling polls on the Dingell/Rivers congressional primary. Emily's List released a poll showing the race tied, 47% to 47%. And the Dingell campaign released another one with Dingell leading 50% to 38%.

Obviously both pollsters are telling their clients what they want to hear. The Dingell campaign is stressing the "invincible" image, at the risk of keeping its voter base complacent. The Rivers campaign (or in this case an organization supporting Rivers) wants the outcome to be in doubt, so as to best energize its base. These polls serve those goals.

What makes the numbers so iffy is the difficulty of determining in advance who is likely to actually vote in the primary. And even after you do your poll, and have a bunch of interviews in hand from people who say they're going to vote, you have to consider how to weight the different parts of the district. Past elections are not a perfect guide to this, because voter turnout notoriously varies widely from place to place and election to election depending on which districts have contested races.

Dingell's press release cites figures from the 1998 primary election, when 40,572 votes were cast in the territory of the current 15th District. Of those, 49.5% were cast in Lynn Rivers' current congressional district, 47.1% in John Dingell's district, and 3.2% in areas neither represented (but located near Ann Arbor). The release implies that other polls weight the parts differently.

The conservative Detroit News and the liberal Detroit Free Press have both endorsed Dingell. The Ann Arbor News is apparently waiting until the last moment to announce its choice.

I still haven't seen any attack ads, but independent groups have been busy. The National Rifle Association has sent out letters to Republicans calling on them to vote for Dingell in the Democratic primary. The Brady Campaign has set up a web site called DingellAndGuns.com which documents Dingell's pro-gun legislative record. And the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has put up a bunch of billboards supporting Rivers.

The Humane USA PAC sent out a mailing with the message emblazoned on the envelope: "URGENT: Animal Advocates Unite for Lynn Rivers for Congress. Dingell is an enemy of animal protection."

We also received a card from "Great Women for Dingell," inviting us to a Dingell campaign rally starring Tipper Gore. A fine-print list of dozens of women supporters didn't include any Ann Arbor names that I recognized.

Tomorrow morning, the candidates will hold a debate (the only one scheduled), and the Detroit Free Press will release another poll.

Update: The Detroit Free Press poll has been released; it shows Rivers leading Dingell 46% to 45% -- a statistical tie.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. D.J. Jones, 7/27/2002: Ah, you didn't tell me the tied poll was Emily's List ! That's going to be skewered a bit towards Miss Rivers (though the Dingell 12-point spread in his poll is a bit hard to believe). What one needs is a likely-voters poll. Still, taking the two polls into account probably makes this a slight Dingell lead of no more than 3-4 points (my aforementioned "liberal" guess of 52-48% for Dingell). If the Ann Arbor paper fails to endorse its hometown gal, she might lose by a bigger margin (that 55-45% range I also mentioned before). Still not a lost cause for her, though, Miss Rivers just needs a really good GOTV effort on her behalf -- perhaps a knock and drag ? :-)

  2. Lawrence Kestenbaum, 7/27/2002: Detroit Free Press poll, released today, shows Rivers leading by 1 point.


Thursday, July 25, 2002, 1:12 am

Boston Corner. There are some pieces of territory that are just troublesome, and I don't mean the ones which currently inspire armed conflict.

The geography of the United States is so conceptually tidy that it's natural to program one's databases around certain assumptions, for example, that state boundaries are unchanging. Then these obscure little exceptions show up and force you to rethink all that program code.

One such exception is Boston Corner, which used to be the southwest corner of Massachusetts. According to The Corner Corner, a remarkable web site about boundary points:

The original boundary between Massachusetts and New York created a 1010 acre parcel lying west of the Taconic mountains but belonging to Massachusetts. This area, known as Boston Corner, was difficult to govern due to its remote location. By the early 1850's it had become a haven for outlaws who raided nearby New York counties and then took refuge across the state line. In 1853 Massachusetts ceded a triangular section of land to New York by moving the southwest corner of the state east to its current location. The cession was approved by the U.S. Congress in 1855.
Another account has the story as follows:
Previous to 1853 the boundaries of Massachusetts included a small district in the southwestern corner, called Boston Corner, that was separated by rugged highlands from the rest of the state. For obvious reasons, this became a resort for desperadoes. This condition finally brought about its transfer to the neighboring state of New York.

Still another source mentions prizefighting as part of the problem:

Boston Corner was incorporated as a district, April 14, 1838. It then occupied the extreme southwest corner of the State; but being separated from the town of Mount Washington, which was the extreme southwestern town, by a lofty ridge, was physically inconvenient for jurisdiction by the State; and it consequently became the theatre of prize-fighting and other illegal practices. In order to bring it under proper restraint, it was ceded to the State of New York, to which it naturally belonged, May 14, 1853. It contained about 940 acres of land and 75 inhabitants. It was first settled by Daniel Porter, in 1763, or earlier.

If you examine a map of the area, you'll notice that a little triangle was snipped off from what might otherwise have been the sharp southwest corner of Massachusetts. That triangle is Boston Corner.

I care about this because a Connecticut congressman named William Henry Barnum -- third cousin once removed of famed circus showman P. T. Barnum -- was born in Boston Corner in 1818, when it was still in Massachusetts. And that means that the entry for Barnum in my Political Graveyard web site needs to accurately convey that Barnum was born in a part of Massachusetts which is now in New York -- mentioning Berkshire County (MA), but linking to Columbia County (NY).

This came up again today, because I'm working on a new version of the web site. Despite all my prior efforts to get it right, tiny little Boston Corner generated another error message and stopped my program, meaning yet another round of time-consuming code fixes to accomodate this one tiny exception.

Incidentally, the Corner Corner web site, mentioned above, also features the Michigan/Indiana/Ohio boundary intersection, in the middle of an otherwise obscure gravel road. It was all covered with snow when I visited the place five years ago.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. D.J. Jones, 7/25/2002: I'm sure you used a few "colorful metaphors" (as Spock said) when you got that error message ! =8-0>

  2. Lawrence Kestenbaum, 7/25/2002: Yeah, well, I got past Boston Corner, and then the program tripped over another one: Phoebus, Elizabeth City County, Virginia. Elizabeth City County is extinct, so it has no page and can't be linked to; that area is now part of the independent city of Hampton. I thought I had provided for such a case, but apparently not THIS exact configuration of former-city, former-county, different-new-city (that also happens to be a county equivalent). Argh.

  3. D.J. Jones, 7/25/2002: Oh, yeah... VA is a real pain, especially with all those mergers, new creations, etc. of those Independent Cities/Counties. Case in point, there was once a "Princess Anne County" a rural entity situated right on the ocean (just below the Delmarva peninsula) and within it was a tiny little hamlet more noteworthy for being the haven of famous medium Edgar Cayce called Virginia Beach. The county seat of P.A. Co. was Princess Anne Court-House at that time (1950s), barely a blip on the map. Then, all of a sudden, folks started to discover Virginia Beach (only a few thousands souls in those days), and flooded in like gangbusters. Virginia Beach became an "Independent City" consisting of a few square miles outside of P.A. County's aegis. The growth continued unabated and VA Beach gobbled up Princess Anne County, which it merged with. Now even in the most rural reaches of the former P.A. County, it's Virginia Beach. The old hamlet of Princess Anne Court-House is still there -- the courthouse now consisting of a massive complex out "in the sticks" that covers VA Beach (now the largest city in Virginia ! How many times do you see a "county courthouse" of 450K out in the woods ?!). If that isn't confusing enough, on the western edge of the Tidewater region, is the independent city of Suffolk. It hasn't had nearly the growth of its neighbors, but it inexplicably gobbled up the county with which it served as the seat, Nansemond. I know there was another locality in the Tidewater called Warwick that at some point used to be an independent city, than was a county (or was it the other way around ?) and then vanished altogether along with the aforementioned Elizabeth City County into Hampton City. Fortunately, at least I have some bit of familiarity with those old locales, but even at that, I still say whomever hatched this nutty and incredibly confusing system in VA should be seriously flogged.

  4. Paul Musgrave, 7/25/2002: When I was designing my database of congressional voting records for my current thesis, I discovered that more people then just Bob Smith and Ben Nighthorse Campbell had switched parties in the years 1993-2001. Damn them! Damn them all!

Thursday, July 18, 2002, 11:29 pm

[deleted]


Wednesday, July 17, 2002, 4:00 pm

Michigan's gubernatorial race. Here in Michigan, we have a big primary election scheduled for August 6th. No runoffs, so whoever gets the most votes is the nominee.

For Governor, conservative Republican incumbent John Engler is term limited at last. His heir apparent is Lt.Gov. Dick Posthumus, who is even further to the right than Engler. Engler is nominally Catholic, but basically a secular figure who allied with the religious right; Posthumus is the religious right.

Posthumus is considered to have locked up the Republican nomination, but he is still opposed in the primary by moderate McCain-ite state senator John Schwarz, M.D. There is gloom in GOP circles about Posthumus's chances in November, but so far that hasn't translated into support for Schwarz.

Meanwhile, there is a lively Democratic primary with three very well known figures: former Gov. Jim Blanchard, who lost to Engler in 1990 and went on to become U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Attorney General Jennifer Granholm, and U.S. Representative David Bonior.

Granholm, the only one to have won a statewide election in the last ten years, is favored and leading in the polls -- but her lead is slipping (more about that later). She has by far the most campaign money, so much that she has opted-out of Michigan's public financing for gubernatorial elections. Some of us have doubts about her given her questionable civil liberties and Internet speech record as Attorney General, and her sponsorship by (and lack of independence from) Wayne County Executive Ed McNamara, a political boss. Some of her supporters imagine her to have almost magical vote getting powers, but a more sober analysis of the 1998 vote shows that she merely held on to the Democratic base, while her then running mates predictably did not. She reversed her position on abortion, becoming pro-choice just in time to get Emily's List money, but is now waffling again.

Blanchard is the former governor and well known, but those of us Democrats who remember 1990 still blame him for the arrogance and complacency that lost that election, and gave us twelve years of John Engler. Until just the other day, I didn't know anyone supporting Blanchard who didn't literally receive some appointment from him while he was governor in 1983-90. Blanchard is surely the most reliably pro-choice of the three, but there is much to criticize from his gubernatorial reign, including inept handling of environmental issues and appointment of political hacks to important posts. And besides, the state's economy was terrible under Blanchard, and it dramatically improved as soon as Engler took office. Nominating Blanchard would make the campaign an argument about the economy of twelve years ago, and put Engler/Posthumus in the best possible light.

Bonior comes from Macomb County, the fabled home of the socially conservative and economically liberal Reagan Democrats, the suburban white ethnic and Catholic voters who supported John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in the 1960s, Richard Nixon in the 1970s, Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and Gov. John Engler in the 1990s, while often also voting for Democrats in congressional and legislative races -- and Al Gore in 2000.

Back in the early 1970s in the Michigan House, Bonior was a member of the "kiddie caucus" of young liberals: Lynn Jondahl, Howard Wolpe, Perry Bullard, Jeff Padden, Dave Hollister, and others. They all stood out like heroes (at least to me) in the legislature of those days.

Bonior won election and re-election in Macomb County in a gloriously counter-intuitive way: not on lunch pail issues, but on the environment. His campaign symbol was a tree, and his campaign volunteers handed out thousands or millions of tree seedlings to voters all over the district. Presumably by now Macomb County has many mature shade trees that started out as Bonior campaign seedlings.

Running as the underdog in a three-way primary, he was elected to Congress and eventually rose to the position of Minority Whip. In this position, he was the point man in the Democratic attack on Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich in the mid-to-late 1990s, filing many ethics complaints against him. The Republicans who defended and supported Gingrich back then still see Bonior as a viciously partisan attack dog -- a view not shared by his Macomb County constituents. In election after election, the GOP poured vast resources into defeating Bonior in his district, all to no avail.

Labor unions owe Bonior so much for his work in Congress that he has their support without ceding them any control. He also has an outstanding environmental record and the endorsement of all the major environmental groups. Bonior's father-in-law lost his job in a McCarthy-era witchhunt; no surprise that his civil liberties record is excellent. I have mixed feelings about his views on Israel and trade policies, but these are not state issues.

More troubling than that is Bonior's record on abortion. "He's neither fish nor fowl," says one of his colleagues; he has gotten ratings in the middle of the scale from the advocacy groups like NARAL and Right-To-Life. Neither side regards him as an ally, indeed, he's on the list of pro-abortion Catholic politicians nominated for excommunication.

Essentially he has opposed late-term abortions and some funding measures, while strongly supporting stem-cell research and opposing any constitutional amendment to reverse Roe v Wade.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, a mushy position like this would have disqualified him among pro-choice voters. Medicaid funding for abortions for poor women was a major state issue, an appropriate litmus test for all candidates. Every year, the Legislature would pass a budget with a limit of $1 for Medicaid abortion, and every year, Gov. Milliken or Gov. Blanchard would line-item veto it and permit Medicaid abortions to continue. Anyone running for governor in those days would face the Abortion Question first thing. I remember when a friend and I cornered then-Congressman Jim Blanchard, early in his gubernatorial campaign, and got him to promise that he would veto any and all bans on Medicaid abortion funding. I'm sure he was hearing the same thing at every campaign stop -- his record in Congress had been ambiguous.

But finally, in 1988, petition signatures were gathered, the issue was put to a statewide vote, and the voters of Michigan chose decisively to ban spending on Medicaid abortions. Wrong answer, but that was that. I don't think it has mattered since then how the governor feels about abortion funding.

Granholm and Blanchard are get-along-go-along types. They have both done plenty of good things, sure, and I'm sure they'd accomplish some more if elected governor. But as politicians, they lack something. They are all too eager to be liked by the pollsters and the powers that be. They are always ready to make the easy but unsatisfactory compromise, at telling people exactly what they want to hear. They are skilled at executing the quick changes in position demanded by one interest group or another, while pretending that nothing has changed, why, that was the way they felt all along.

Bonior is as skilled and as nimble a politician as anyone, but he has maintained his independence and principles in a way the other two have not. And that is more important than any particular issue.

The abortion issue is an example of that. "I am what I am," he told me, when I quizzed him about this. Granholm wasn't pro-choice either, but she wanted the backing of Emily's List, and so she signed the pro-choice pledge (and then later backed away from it).

Granholm has been criticized for her thousands of "yes" votes on Engler policies as the only Democratic member of the State Administrative Board. Granted, she was in an awkward position of having to defend the Republican administration's policies in court, but her seemingly automatic vote in favor of many controversial Republican policies is hard to explain or defend in a Democratic primary.

Blanchard, with the residual name-ID from his two terms as Governor, led in the polls at first, but eventually Granholm, the widely acknowledged favorite, caught up and passed him. The latest poll shows Bonior gaining the most, still in third place but only 8 points behind Granholm.

The latest dramatic development in the race: Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was expected to endorse Granholm, announced his neutrality instead.

In theory, any of the three could win the primary. If I had to bet, though, I'd bet on Bonior.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

  1. D.J. Jones