Polygon, the Dancing Bear

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

2002:
May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2003:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2004:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2005:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2006:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2007:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2008:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July

Current entries

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:

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:

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 ? :-)
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:

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>
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.
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.
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:

D.J. Jones, 7/25/2002: As one who tries to pay close attention to all of our states' primaries (quite a job !), I try to use my "expertise" to see if I can beat other fellow pundits as to who will grab nominations. I've had a bit of a mixed record this year for Gov's primary races (nailing it in Alabama GOP for Bob Riley (after initially favoring Steve Windom), but being a bit off with my prediction for the Dem. side for a last-minute surge for populist-liberal AG Commissioner Charles Bishop against troubled incumbent Don Siegleman; also nailing that Bill Simon, Jr. would blow away the ultraliberal Republican (jawdroppingly described as a moderate by many media types) Richard Riordan (who I termed "Tricky Dick II" in his attempts to have it both ways with innumerable issues), in IL, predicting that both Jim Ryan (carrying the albatross of having the same last name as the troubled retiring incumbent) and Rod Blagojevich would prevail in their respective primaries, NM (Bill Richardson was a given for the Dems, and I held out that the GOP would strongly support a Hispanic, John Sanchez, over the sitting Lt Gov, predicting that one correctly), in OR with standing firm on principled Conservative Kevin Mannix when pundits predicted he would come in 3rd on the GOP side (Ted Kulongoski already seemed a winner for the Dems), in PA, missing Ed Rendell's victory over Bob Casey, Jr. (but Casey was more wishful thinking, as I held his dad in very high esteem with the yeoman work he did for the pro-life movement), in SC I totally blew it on the GOP side, initially thinking colorful Attorney-General Charlie Condon would win over Lt Gov Bob Peeler (totally discounting Mark Sanford) in that obscenely overcrowded GOP field, and equally surprised at pro-McCain Sanford (a thorougly reviled RINO (McCain, that is) amongst GOP rank-and-file) took it from Peeler, but the race was practically a carbon-copy of Alabama. SD was interesting, but was hard to follow, that is until the savagely ugly circular firing-squad on the GOP side fatally wounded the top two poll-leaders, handing it to the genuinely shocked-to-win distant (formally) 3rd placer, Mike Rounds. The Dem side was scarcely covered at all (but I think they were happy about that, more grinning at the GOP bloodbath), so I declined to comment on their candidates. Also some of the others that have held primaries, IA I did not try to wade into (far too little coverage), same for ME, and NE.

Now, for my MI picks, I initially leaned toward Granholm (as the lone woman in the race), but I'm finding myself now tilting towards Blanchard (call me crazy, I just think it's a gut feeling). Without Blanchard in the picture, Bonior might've been able to take it, but he still seems to be coming up a tad short (despite his smart move in trying to grab African-American support by placing Alma Wheeler-Smith as his #2). Ironically, what might have BOOSTED Bonior would've been his defeat at the hands of Candice Miller in '00 (who was leading in polls against him until her bizarre withdrawal, and obviously a reason why he chose not to run this time around), as he would've had 2 years to have focused like an arrow on the Gov's race (assuming he wouldn't have sought a rematch with Miller), rather than dealing with his obligations as a sitting member of the House leadership. As for the GOP side, if Posthumus fails to get 80% of the vote, I'll be quite surprised. Mr. Schwarz draws nothing but snickers from many websites I'm on, so unless he manages a '00 McCain-like stunt of bussing in thousands of African-American Detroiter Democrats to vote in a GOP primary, he'll soon fade into obscurity...

August 7 Detroit Free-Press Headline: "Blanchard by a nose !"

(Sorry, Larry !)
Lawrence Kestenbaum, 7/25/2002: Very interesting points on numerous states. As to Michigan, agreed that Schwarz is widely considered RINO, and will run poorly among the overwhelmingly conservative electorate which votes in GOP primaries. McCain's win in 2000 happened when there was no simultaneous Democratic primary at all; Michigan Democrats are unlikely to abandon interesting Democratic primaries to vote for Schwarz in more than tiny numbers.

On the Democratic side, it really is anyone's race. Conventional wisdom still strongly favors Granholm, who has a colossal money advantage, but she isn't coming off as well as her supporters hoped. Blanchard has benefited the most from Granholm's weakness. Bonior's pickup of Alma Wheeler Smith is more a gesture to Ann Arbor liberals and pro-choicers than to the Detroit-based African-American community where she is little known. She had only 1% in the polls when she dropped out. However, she gives the Bonior campaign a third feisty campaigner (after David & Judy Bonior) to speak at rallies, etc.
D.J. Jones, 7/25/2002: I should probably list my picks for the coming primaries and see how well I do... Quite true about McCain's win due to the lack of a Dem. primary that day, otherwise Dubya would've likely prevailed. Well, like I said, my guess that it would be Blanchard again is just a gut feeling (as I've seen some slippage for Granholm). I still believe that Bonior's selection of Mrs. Wheeler-Smith is good for him in the Black community (even if she's not a Detroiter), although I'm probably more viewing her selection through the prism of Maryland politics. To explain, many African-Americans there are quite angry that, as the most loyal Democratic voters, they've been generally shafted when it comes to shots at statewide office (I realize that there is not necessarily that level of genuine anger in MI, since they've had at least one long-serving Black in high office, Sec of State Richard Austin), not to mention getting short-shrift in legislative seats (the Dems cynically place just enough Blacks to ensure GOPers can't win many seats in general elections, but exclude enough Blacks to ensure that Whites that are part of the "good ole boy" network still win the primaries). The White Democrats ramrodded through an absurd legislative gerrymandering plan that maintained (and added) to the status quo, shafting both Black Dems and Republicans. Both groups howled, and the lines were deemed so outrageous that judges had to redraw them, making it more competitive for Blacks and Republicans (though probably still not enough to dislodge the White Dem power structure). If this wasn't enough to really enflame bedrock Black Democrats, the all-but-assured Dem. nominee for Gov., Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend made a colossal error in selecting a whitebread Republican military type (!) as her running mate (passing over a respected local Black official) while the Republican, Bob Ehrlich, made a smart move in selecting the Black GOP State Chair, Michael Steele. Ehrlich has been going after the Black vote with a passion unseen since the days of Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin (a Republican revered by Blacks, the last GOP Mayor of Baltimore and an ex-Gov), and it is paying off. A member of the legendary Mitchell family (whose head was Parren Mitchell, the first Black Congressman from the state) has openly endorsed Ehrlich (although conversely, the descendents of McKeldin endorsed KKT), and others are expected to file suit. While Ehrlich isn't likely to get a majority of the Black vote (which last was majority GOP in MD in the late '50s), he's already at 15% (double what it was a few weeks ago) and climbing. If he gets 20%, Ehrlich will win (becoming the 1st GOP MD Chief Exec since Spiro Agnew prevailed in an ugly 3-way contest in '66). What was expected to be a cakewalk for KKT is now already a tied race. Expect KKT to go negative a la Glendening-Sauerbrey '98, where the incumbent practically had poor Ellen wearing bedsheets. Now that's something to watch !
Lawrence Kestenbaum, 7/25/2002: Interesting about Maryland politics. Michigan Democrats don't currently have that kind of racial tension, perhaps partly because Democratic leaders don't have to shoulder any blame for redistricting. It is taken for granted that, no matter who wins the gubernatorial primary, there will be a black person on the statewide Democratic ticket; there always has been since 1970. If Bonior wins, it will be Alma Wheeler Smith for Lt.Gov. If Granholm wins, it will be Melvin (Butch) Hollowell for Secretary of State.

(Candidates for Lt.Gov, Sec.State, and Atty.Gen. are nominated at a post-primary convention, and traditionally the gubernatorial candidate gets to pick; the alliances are already in place.)

Monday, July 15, 2002, 1:44 am

The flood of spam. Since I am something of a public figure, I have never attempted to conceal or obscure my email address. By now, it appears in countless places online, not only on my own web pages, but on Usenet and mailing list posts, guestbook entries, the county's web site, etc. During most of this time, I have usually tolerated the spam email that comes my way. For a long time, my policy was to write complaints about spam only if it was an illegal pyramid scheme or contained threats.

Just in the last few months, however, I have become more and more annoyed at the volume of spam. I didn't and don't want to give up my email address, but I now report a lot of my incoming spam to Spamcop (automated service which figures out the headers and generates complaint letters to ISPs).

Despite these efforts, the flood has achieved a milestone of sorts: June 2002 was my first thousand spam month.

Here are the awful statistics: number of spam emails received by month since January 2000:

Month	Year
Month	2000	2001	2002
January	107	139	442
February	63	138	399
March	56	229	604
April	63	206	777
May	63	214	862
June	62	223	1072
July	64	268
August	84	210
September	87	259
October	102	326
November	128	355
December	108	419

Of course, that growth in volume doesn't mean that legitimate businesses have discovered spam; the overwhelming majority is still obvious fraud and scams. Nigerian advance fee fraud is a large and growing presence, as well as medical quackery like penis or breast enlargement, online casino scams, pyramid schemes, loan sharking, etc. A lot of my spam is in Chinese or Korean; I can only guess what those are advertising.

If the present rate of growth continues, the quantity of spam will soon be so overwhelming, and the "hit" rate so vanishingly small, that it won't be worth the trouble of sending it, even for scammers. Unfortunately, by the time we reach that point, email will have been destroyed as a communication channel.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

Jennie, 7/15/2002: My spam count (heh!) has always been low, but just in the last few months it's been going up like crazy. I have no idea what this is due to. I get more spam at work than actual email. Strangely, the number of spams I've received has gone up since I *stopped* using Usenet. I'm sure that's not causative, though.
D.J. Jones, 7/25/2002: When @Home went defunct at the end of February, I was having to deal with perhaps 25 spam emails a day. Now, a few months later with my new Comcast account (and an additional Yahoo one), I'm fortunate to have fewer than 5 a day (although the Yahoo (where I allegedly have a spam block) ones are hysterical -- apparently they don't understand that "naturally-enhancing penile products" emails aren't spam). Que sera sera, as Doris Day used to say... :-)
Lawrence Kestenbaum, 7/25/2002: As I will document in a future blog posting, the biggest factor in the huge increase in my incoming spam is the stuff in Chinese and Korean and other languages.

Of course, medical quackery -- penis and breast enlargement, human growth hormone, herbal Viagra, diet pills, etc. -- is still a huge factor, second only to the foreign-language spam.
D.J. Jones, 7/25/2002: Because I received messages in Outlook Express (and as such, had to directly click on messages in order to delete them), I used to panic when I'd receive those bizarre foreign spam (not knowing if they contained a secret trigger to open a window, and perhaps a virus), so I'd have to bookend those messages with empty emails in order to select the message in a "block" so that I wouldn't have to worry (a real pain). As for more wacky spam, I just recv'd an email for "increase your (female) partner's multiple o--'s !" Well, goodnight, nurse ! (I mean, hey, what about us men, don't WE count, too ?!). :-)

Sunday, July 14, 2002, 9:23 pm

[deleted]

Friday, July 12, 2002, 4:50 pm

Gunderloy's back! I'm glad to report that the Larkfarm Weblog has been restarted in a new version, and is once again highlighting sites of startling bizarrness or fascination.

Some recent entries:

Strom Watch, with an image of Strom Thurmond's face morphing into a skull, a ticker showing how much time is left in his term, and various helpful tidbits about the Senator, such as: "He holds the record for the longest filibuster in U.S. Senate history at 24 hours and 18 minutes, in opposition to the Civil Rights Act. He began his filibuster by reading the election laws of all 48 states."

CRIMINAL DOCKET FOR CASE #: 1:01-cr-00455-ALL, showing the filings (with PDF copies) in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th hijacker.

The Empathy Belly Pregnancy Simulator, to enable men and teens to experience over 20 medically accurate symptoms and effects of pregnancy.

Anyway, there's lots more where those came from, and I'm glad to see they will keep coming.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Friday, July 12, 2002, 4:00 pm

I won't stand for this. Strongly agreed with Greg Hlatky's lament over the cheapening of the standing ovation.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Thursday, July 11, 2002, 2:20 pm

Political spam? Steve Biener, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Delaware, has a unique campaign strategy. He is doing no fundraising, putting up no signs, buying no television commercials. Instead, he is collecting Delaware email addresses from a variety of sources and sending campaign messages to them.

According to Doug Isenberg's column about this (which came to my attention via Declan McCullagh's Politech), the mass mailings provoked complaints and led Biener's ISP to suspend his account.

Earlier this year, Bill Jones, a candidate for governor of California in the Republican primary, was unapologetic about the use of spam to promote his campaign. Jones hired a spamhaus, which distributed his message via the usual sorts of tricks, including forged or misleading headers and overseas relays. It didn't reflect well on the candidate.

Back in 1999, a New Jersey Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Murray Sabrin, generated quantities of unsolicited campaign emails and got into a nasty fight with anti-spammers. See this Salon article for details.

There once was a site called PinkPols, which had an archive of political spam; I'm sorry to see that it's gone. I can't even find it here. Maybe somebody could revive it?

Sending mass unsolicited email messages is spam and is always a bad idea for a political campaign. Absent a massive cultural and technological shift, it will always be a bad idea for a responsible mainstream candidate.

As Isenberg points out, the First Amendment surely immunizes political messages from any existing or future anti-spam laws in the U.S. But that doesn't mean it's a good tactic for someone who is trying to win an election.

Politicians are tempted to spam because, in electoral politics, an opt-in audience is never enough. A political campaign has to communicate effectively to people who might not choose to hear.

Radio and television ads are decreasingly cost-effective for this because (1) political ads, if not repeated at saturation levels, are lost in the noise, (2) cable TV and Internet radio have shattered the audience into hundreds of specialized pieces, (3) while broadening the geographic scope far beyond any specific district or constituency.

Political campaign web sites serve to preach to the choir, and perhaps provide useful information for a relative handful of highly motivated voters, but are not an effective way to campaign. With hundreds of candidates running for dozens of offices in a typical general election, only the most dedicated and well-informed voter would ever think to seek out campaign sites of people running for for county commissioner.

Hence, for the foreseeable future, we politicos must print our messages on old-fashioned paper and distribute them by hand or by postal mail.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments:

Steve Biener, 7/18/2002: I appreciated your thoughtful comments regarding use of e-mail in political campaigns, including my own.

I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment "Absent a massive cultural and technological shift." A couple of thoughts on that statement: I think that shift is underway. I think the commercial spammers have been more effective than you realize in getting the masses to view e-mail solicitations as background noise. I think Murray Sabrin's experience in 1999 was a product of his time. The response to my e-mail message has been much less vociferous than I expected, especially after I read the Sabrin article in Salon. Second, for the shift to continue in a positive way from a political standpoint, you have to have some people willing to be out in front, taking some lumps. I was willing to be one of those persons. Perhaps my unorthodox political platform and campaign has helped soften the reaction to my e-mail. Perhaps other, more conventional, candidates soliciting for money would not have been treated so gingerly.

Getting the ISP to reinstate me within 24 hours was not terribly difficult.

Frankly, I have received about as many positive comments on my e-mail as I have received anti-spammer messages. Still, about 95% of the recipients have been unresponsive. Have they read the e-mail? Have they deleted unopened? I do not have the technology to figure that out.

Clearly my request for people to forward on my e-mail has been effective, as I have gotten many e-mails responses from people I did not send to.

I think the key issue the political use of e-mail will bring to a head is the control of access to the internet that the ISPs have. I could not believe the undeveloped state of the law in this area. To the extent it has developed, it has developed in a way anathema to the First Amendment. I think that will untimately lead legislatures to mandate open access for political speech.

I would be interested in your thoughts.

Steve

Wednesday, July 10, 2002, 1:56 pm

Doug Kelley and the IDPA. Back in 1951, when he was only 22, my friend Doug Kelley founded the International Development Placement Association (IDPA) to place American students in temporary jobs with indigenous organizations and governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This was the forerunner of the Peace Corps.

Doug made a pitch to the Ford Foundation for funding, only to be told:

"There simply aren't enough young Americans wanting to do that kind of thing."

Maybe not as many of orders of magnitude wrong as Bill Gates' 1981 comment that "640K ought to be enough for anybody", but 163,000 Americans have now served in the Peace Corps.

Read his interesting account here.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Tuesday, July 9, 2002, 11:42 pm

[deleted]

Saturday, July 6, 2002, 6:30 pm

Dancing Bear goes interactive? Here's an experimental new feature -- comments! Well, at least access to a special-purpose little discussion board for each item from now on, courtesy of QuickTopic.

Update 7/19/2006. Quicktopic has been overrun with spam, so this feature is being discontinued. However, I am saving the actual comments.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Comments: