Polygon, the Dancing Bear

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

2002:
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2003:
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2007:
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2008:
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Current entries

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):

Hollowell to split Michigan Democratic Party chair's duties, ending feud between UAW, Granholm (Detroit Free Press, Feb. 11)

Granholm, UAW at odds over choice of party chairman (Detroit News, Jan 31)

Michigan Dems in no rush to anoint (George Weeks column, Detroit News, Jan 21)

Old connections don't always pan out in wonderful world of poliics (Pete Waldmeir column, Detroit News, Dec. 20)

Granholm seeks new party leader (George Weeks column, Detroit News, Dec. 19)

....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.